Taglines are often the most important piece of copy most companies write. They’re often the most difficult, as well. Taglines have to be both short and sweet, clearly and succinctly communicating your brand statement. Just because taglines are only a few words long, doesn’t mean they don’t require lots of work.
If you want to make the work worth the time, and want to get the most out of your tagline, here are some of my tips.
1. Do your prep work. To me, taglines are a shortened version of your about page. To write one effectively I start with the page, narrow it down to a paragraph, then to a sentence, and eventually to a carefully-crafted tagline. Trying to go right to the last step, without doing the work to uncover the ideas your tagline has to convey, will only get you right back to where you started.
2. Write out your options. Sometimes, you can catch lightning in a bottle, and come up with the right tagline on the first try. More times than not, however, it will take many options and much revising. I advise you start with 5-10 different ideas, picking out pieces you like of each, and working your way toward a final version over 2-3 edits. Plus, you never know what will happen when you start jotting ideas down onto paper… sometimes lightning strikes when you least expect.
3. Speak your options out loud. To me, the effectiveness of a tagline is as much a matter of sound, flow and feel as it is of meaning. I’m not suggesting you abandon ideas, here, or slack in picking the words that work best for your brand. I’m just saying that you also have to pay attention to how those words sound. Read your tagline options out loud, selecting parts you like by how they resonate with you.
4. Find a fun voice. I think there are a lot of bad taglines out there. Almost all of them are single sentences, blandly rehashing a value statement. Like: “Example Dentistry: Let us help you find your best smile.” Instead of this approach, I recommend finding some more exciting way to make the same point. My favorite is adding a period into the middle of a tagline (”Your Smile. Improved”), but each situation and company calls for a slightly different tool.
And lastly, be prepared to let your tagline go. As I’ve hoped I communicated here, taglines are serious business. They take effort to get right, and can help determine the success of a company in their own way. However, I’d also like to caution you against trying too hard creating your tagline. Do your best, put in the effort, strive for perfection, then stop with a final product before you’ve gone too far (and broken the flow that’s so necessary). Easy enough.
YOUR INPUT: Anything you think I’ve gotten wrong here, or that you discovered just by reading this post? Does anyone think I’m overstating the importance of taglines?
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