Insights:Tag – is yours it?

Developing the perfect tagline for your company can be a difficult process, but the fact that it can enrich your bottom line makes it worth it.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what a tagline is.

The simple way of thinking about your tagline is to think of it as a promise you’re making to your customers.

A promise of how they will feel and the value they will get if they chose your company.

Taglines are not descriptors. Their purpose is not to describe your product or service. They are also not slogans.Slogans are typically used for a single product or one marketing campaign.

Taglines are designed to promote your entire company and should be used consistently for the life of the tagline.

Life of the tagline? Do they die, you may be asking. Taglines do indeed come with an expiration date.

Some last a year, others decades, but if the tagline you’re using no longer aligns with your consumers wants and desires or your company has changed direction or market segments, then it is time for your old tagline to rest in peace and a new one created to take its place.

To be effective, taglines need to resonate with your audience, be easily remembered, and be used in the majority, if not all, of your marketing materials.

The real challenge is doing all that in a few well-chosen words.

Years ago, I had a client in the nautical industry who used to call taglines-ratlines. No matter how many times I politely tried to correct his terminology, he still called them ratlines.

I don’t think he did this intentionally, and the more I thought about the word ratlines, the more appropriate it seemed.

Ratlines are small ropes fastened to a ship’s shrouds that act like rungs in a ladder so sailors can climb easier and adjust sails so they can get to where they are going in the most efficient way.

When you think about the fact that a small tagline (or ratline) can truly propel your business faster, it kind of makes sense.

Click here to visit the portfolio section of Insight’s webpage to see some great taglines we’ve created for our clients.