How to Create a Powerful Tagline to Get Your Business Noticed and Remembered

In a crowded marketplace, it’s difficult to stand out and get remembered. You can spend thousands of dollars on marketing and advertising for your small business, but still not be remembered by your target audience. An effective tagline or slogan will highlight the benefits and express emotion about what you offer. This emotional connection is essential because it’s been proven that emotions play a large role in decision-making. But how do create a phrase about your business that achieves this aim? Read on as we go over the steps to take in this important part of your marketing strategy.

A tagline is a short sentence or phrase association with your company name and overall brand that is used continuously over time. Slogans apply to particular products or services and are usually used for campaigns of limited duration. The word ‘slogan’ is Scottish for ‘battle cry’ and applies to your current campaigns (which can be compared to battles) while your tagline is a permanent description that applies to your brand.

For example, the tagline for Disneyland theme parks is “The Happiest Place on Earth”. This often appears as part of the Disneyland logo. Over the years Disneyland has created advertising slogans used for particular campaigns. These have included:

• “Happiest homecoming on Earth.”
• “I’m going to Disneyland.”  
• “Where the magic began.”
• “Where dreams come true.”  

Overall, the starting point should be to create a good tagline that captures the essence of your business and the benefits it offers. When the time comes, you can create a catchy slogan to use in particular campaigns.

The first step is to think about your offering is unique. Get together with people who are close to your business and brainstorm ideas of what defines your business. If you have a small staff or are a sole trader, ask family members, friends and loyal customers to offer their ideas. Questions you can ask include:

• What benefit (or benefits) do we want our customers to gain by using our products or services?
• What are your main selling points?
• How do our products or services make the customer’s life better or easier?
• How does our business stand out from our competitors?

Also consider the core values of your business. These might not be obvious to your customers and staff, so you will want to bring these up in the discussions for developing business slogans and taglines. If your core values are not obvious, you will want to spend time defining your core values and get staff involved in applying these to the business.

With your brainstorm group, think about the words that could be associated with your brand, including adjectives, nouns and verbs. Consider any testimonials and positive feedback you have received from your customers. Are there any common terms or themes they use when describing your products and services? These descriptions can be a starting point by uncovering people’s positive perceptions of your business.

The most memorable tag lines and company slogans are short and simple. A study of taglines and slogans of top US companies showed the average length to be four words, with the longest at 12 words.  A few examples of short and memorable taglines include:

“The Burgers Are Better At Hungry Jack’s” – Hungry Jacks.

“We’re For Dogs” – Pedigree

“Keep Walking” – Johnny Walker

“For a Hard-Earned Thirst” – Victoria Bitter

“Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands”  – M&Ms

“Think Different” – Apple

“A Diamond is Forever” – De Beers

“Just Do It” – Nike

“I’m Lovin’ It” – McDonald’s

You can see from these well-known and effective advertising taglines that it’s best to keep it short and simple. Also, notice that these slogans contain plenty of adjectives and verbs.

A figure of speech is a way of organising words in patterns to make them more memorable. Examples include:

Triad (using three similar elements):

• Inform. Enrich. Empower. – Equifax
• Performance. Power. Reliability. – Micron Technology
• Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. – Amazon Inc.

Alliteration (repeating consonants):

• People. Passion. Possibilities. – AbbieVie
• Fueling the Future. – Tesoro Petroleum Co.
• Every Connection Counts. –TE Connectivity Ltd.

Notice how the first alliteration example uses the rule of three as well.

Assonance (repeating vowel sounds):

• Do you Yahoo? – Yahoo Inc.
• It’s Amazing What Soup Can Do! – Campbell’s Soup
• Anticipate Innovate Accelerate – Cerner
• The safer way to pay online. – PayPal

Antithesis (juxtaposing opposites):

• Expect More. Pay Less. – Target Corp.
• More Control. Less Risk – St Jude Medical
• Work Globally, Act Locally. – Whirlpool Corp.

Antimetabole: (when two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures):

• All for Good. Good for All. – Alliance Data Systems
• Fun For All. All For Fun. – Carnival Corp.

Learn more about using figures of speech to make catchy taglines and slogans.

You will want your slogan or tagline for your product or company to be powerful and memorable. For this reason, you will want to get feedback from people who are familiar with your business, such as staff and customers. 

Once you have created the perfect tagline for your business or slogan for your campaign, you can start sharing it far and wide. Update your logo to include your tagline and use it on company communication including email signatures. Using your tagline on social media will help people recognise your brand. Include your tagline on your website text so it can be picked up by search engines.

Major corporations invest a large amount of time and money to develop their taglines and slogans. Even if you don’t have the funds to create your tagline, you can spend a bit of time to make your brand more memorable.

For a bit of fun, try the online Slogan Generator. You probably won’t get a high-quality slogan for your business from it, but you’ll be entertained.