There are many things a good business slogan can do for your business like few other things can. Sadly, many entrepreneurs or business owners either overlook or totally ignore this powerful business boosting tool.
Some are even lax with their business naming processes, selecting business names out of the blues without careful planning and consideration. This is a huge disservice to your business.
Smart entrepreneurs know the power of a good business name and an apt slogan. These put in effort to get names and slogans that effectively communicate their business’ core values and services.
This is crucial for grabbing customer attention whose span is now no more than a Goldfish’s at 8 seconds.
Bearing in mind that competitors are also competing for their slice of your prospects attention, the big question becomes can your business slogan (and name) aptly capture, communicate, connect with and convert customers within (less than) 8 seconds, say when they drive by your signboard or glance at your business card?
In this article, we outline what a slogan is exactly, 5 powerful business benefits of a good one, and how to pick a catchy one.
What is a Business Slogan?
At its most simple, a tagline serves as a catchy phrase representing the nature of your business.
“Things go better with Coke.”
“Finger lickin’ good.”
“We try harder.”
Each of these is an example of taglines so good they withstood the test of time and remain associated with Coca Cola, KFC and Avis, even though they haven’t been used in years.
This is because they described, in a succinct fashion, what made each company unique and communicated a benefit. Keeping this in mind when you design a logo will help you create a “sticky” combination.
A business slogan is a word, group of words or catchphrase that succinctly captures and communicates your entire business. It basically explains what your business is about in few words, it summarizes your business.
A good business slogan isn’t just a string of words hurriedly assembled but one carefully and thoughtfully constructed, one that truly and beautifully represents what you do.
Combined with a good business name, a good business slogan can do wonders for brands.
A good slogan can earn you fans for life, customers who know and memorize your slogan from childhood to old age ensuring continued patronage.
What a Good Business Slogan Can Do for You
1. Drives Your Message Home
Some commercials, adverts or jingles are way too verbose to make simple sense. Others say or show a lot without saying anything in particular.
An advert is basically a message, and at the heart of every message is communication, effective communication that is.
A good slogan idea helps you better drive a good message home in a way that it is clearly understood and drives corresponding (re)action from hearers or readers.
I also like to think of your intended message as building blocks scattered here and there. A good business or campaign slogan as the cement that can hold the many building blocks of your message together. And a skilled copywriter as the architect and builder that transforms these into a befitting building or house.
In short, a good business slogan helps you drive your intended business message home.
Read also: 5 Key Elements of a Strong Logo That Will Make Your Brand Successful
2. Creates Connection with Customers
A good business slogan that can drive your core message home will be such that can create a strong connection with customers; a connection necessary for commerce to commence.
It’s also easier for people to give to causes they feel connected to than otherwise. For instance, Kittyo reached its fundraising target in record time by targeting pet lovers, particularly cat lovers.
In the same vein a bad, poorly conceived, or hastily contrived business slogan will not only fail to connect with customers but may actually forge a disconnect or act as a major turn off, none of which you want.
Hence, you’ll need a good business slogan to connect with customers and cause them to convert.
Business slogan generators are a great place to start, they help you generate business slogan ideas that are good.
3. Summarizes Your Message
A good business slogan is a lesson on summarization. It compresses and condenses your message for easier digestion, which is great for connecting with customers.
Remember, the average human attention span is shrinking. Hence keeping your slogan short and sharp is a great way to enable customers to catch and retain your message.
Imagine a dying man who has a lot to say, but only allowed 10 words before he dies. How do you think he’ll use those 10 precious words, recklessly or very carefully?
A good slogan is like that dying man, has a lot to say but uses only a few words to encapsulate its entire message.
4. Enables Brand Recall
By definition, we say a slogan is catchy, a catchphrase, that phrase people can catch and keep.
When a slogan is well captured, presented and projected, it sends the right message and strikes the right chords. A good slogan is catchy, nearly everyone can catch it.
After which, they keep it in their memories. A good slogan is for keeps.
This can greatly strengthen brand recall in the event of a purchase decision. Repetition will ensure that customers see, hear or read about it constantly, thus reinforcing your business slogan.
Generally, the catchier your slogan, the easier it is to capture, retain and recall when needed, recall being key for purchase.
Read also: How to Brand Your Business on a Budget
5. Can Mitigate Business Name Change
A business name change can be costly.
For a Mom n’ Pop shop it’s probably not a problem. But for a retailer the size of Amazon, business name change/rebranding will be expensive.
What if your business successfully scales and you suddenly realize your business name could be upgraded but you’re worried about the cost or time it will consume?
A good business slogan says “not to worry, I’ve got your back.” Why? Because you can use different slogans for different campaigns. Hence you can use your business slogans to mitigate an outright name change.
Several big companies run several campaigns featuring different slogans. This can take the focus off of an otherwise weak business name.
Read also: How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website
How to Create a Catchy Slogan for Your Business
Here’s what you need to do.
1. Strive for Simplicity.
Each of the taglines above is short, to the point and uses basic language.
Rather than wowing people with the depth and breadth of your vocabulary, delight them with your grasp of language and your ability to turn simple phrases into powerful statements.
If your tagline idea runs more than 10 words, you need to give it some more thought and pare it down.
2. Ensure Functionality.
Ideally, your tagline will communicate your values while also giving people a sense of what you do.
In other words, your tagline should tell your story in ten words or less when it’s combined with your company’s name.
Kentucky Fried Chicken;
Hey, who doesn’t want chicken so good you’ll lick the grease from your fingers?
3. Prompt Visualization.
The words you choose should inspire people to create pictures in their heads.
Getting back to the KFC tagline, you can see yourself licking your fingers after eating a piece of the chicken—and the image makes you want to do so.
Meanwhile, “Things go better with Coke;” conjured a multiplicity of images.
You see people having a good time while enjoying a frosty bottle of the beverage. But you can also see it sitting on a red and white checkered tablecloth next to a juicy burger and fries.
Such is the power of a great tagline.
4. Play on Words.
When possible, give your tagline more than one meaning.
A literal reading should convey the value you provide for the customer, while the secondary meaning should make people smile at its cleverness. This will make it more memorable.
Returning to our examples above, Avis’s “We try harder.” says you can count on the company to do everything possible to ensure your car renting experience is a pleasant one. But it also takes a jab at the company’s chief competitor, saying Avis tries harder because it has to in order to be competitive.
5. Aim for Timelessness.
Back in the early days of mobile phones, spotty service was considered a justifiable tradeoff for the convenience of having a phone you could use just about anywhere.
Verizon capitalized on this by implying its service was more reliable than all others with its “Can you hear me now?” campaign.
However, as technology improved and dropped calls became a thing of the past, the resonance of that tagline was reduced.
Further, people don’t really “talk” on smartphones today—they text. Yes, people still think of Verizon when they hear it the line (even though Sprint tried to hijack it). But it no longer speaks to a fundamental truth in the marketplace.
Long story short, the idea of what makes a great tagline can be boiled down to crafting a phrase with simplicity and timelessness—while communicating your unique value proposition in ten words or less. And, if you can work in a clever play on words, that’s even better.
So basically, think different and just do it.
Conclusion
A good business slogan is not an accident. It is a product of careful thought, planning and execution.
Bearing these benefits in mind will remind you to put in the effort required to come up with business slogans that effectively encapsulate and project your message.
About The Author
Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business/Ecommerce B2B/B2C copywriter. He’s available for hire.
