Looking for a catchy slogan to tell people why they need your product and what it can do for them? Have you spent hours wracking your brain to find the words? It doesn’t have to be that hard. There is a simple shortcut to writing the perfect tagline that will grab people’s attention and let them know immediately that your product is right for them.
So what’s the shortcut? Let your customers write your tagline for you.
What? Like hold a contest or something? Well, you could do that, but just listening to your customers may be enough.
First, a few things you should know about the perfect tagline:
- It needs to accurately describe what you offer, and it needs to speak directly to your target market. They may not use the same words as you would to describe what you do. Speak their language, not yours.
- It’s got to show your uniqueness. Whatever it is that you’re selling, odds are there are plenty of others selling something similar. What makes you stand apart from the crowd? What benefit do you provide that others don’t?
- It’s got to be easy to understand and remember. Memories are exceedingly short and the competition to be heard is getting tougher every day. Keep it simple.
So, remembering that it needs to be accurate, unique and simple, let’s look for that tagline.
What do clients tell you they need or, better, what do they say you did for them? For example, career coach Julie Jansen helps people find their ideal work. What do her clients frequently tell her about what they need? “I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this.” That became the title of her book.
Another career coach kept hearing, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” She resisted using the phrase at first because her clients were very grown up and she thought it might offend them. However, once she added it to her website, she immediately heard from more new clients.
Two software designers were showing an investor how their software worked. The investor suddenly exclaimed, “That’s so simple, my mother could do it!” Voila! They had their tagline.
An author wanted to write and speak about male-female communications. With the room full of people, she talked about scenarios in which they were all trying to communicate with the opposite sex but having difficulties. One gentlemen yelled out, “Can’t she see I’m watching the game?” And her tagline was born.
If your tagline captures exactly how your ideal customer feels, you’ve got it right. Try it out and see what kind of response you get. You can always tweak it or even dump it and try something completely different.
As you can see, you don’t need to come up with the perfect tagline yourself – instead, simply listen to your customers.
