Your tagline is simply a short, memorable phrase that conveys your brands message, USP, personality and identity. The purpose of taglines are to provide clarity, and for your consumers to feel a sense of connection to your brand, so therefore, they are pretty important to get right!

There are multiple resources out there highlighting the good and successful taglines used in business across the world, and how to create yours, but just before you do that, we wanted to warn you about what it is you need to avoid.

Using technical jargon

There is nothing wrong with insider terminology…when it stays inside. But for your clients and prospects on the outside, it’s imperative to communicate on their level. If you don’t, they will lose interest and focus on your competitor who is saving them time and energy in understanding what they want.

Keep your tagline as concise as possible whilst making sense as to what it is you are offering. At refiine, we offer a whole array of marketing services, from search engine optimization, to HTML emails and packaging design. We’re also part of a wider communications group which allows us to expand our offerings to videography, printing & publishing services. However, in order to avoid confusion, we appeal directly to what the client wants (which is essentially marketing services that do their job, and sell right?)

“Grow your business with captivating designs and websites that sell”

…and once that is understood, the client can then allow themselves to read further into our website/offering, or reach out to find out more about the specific service they want and learn all about the techy jargon that comes with that.

When you are trying to teach a child to read, you wouldn’t start by opening the doomsday book. So why try to communicate with your clients using language they won’t understand, and will lose interest in the process?

Be clear, not clever.

Being too smart

When trying to create taglines without any insider terminology, don’t fall into the trap of making it too cryptic to figure out either.

High street lingerie brand Victoria’s secret were criticised for their cryptic tagline “A body for everybody”. Whilst this can be interpreted as brand inclusive for every body shape and size, for someone who does not know the global brand well or purchase often, it can be slightly misleading, and it doesn’t give away any indication of the products they sell. Victoria’s secret sells underwear and clothes right? Not bodies…

So nowadays, you’ll see the tagline “Lingerie made to be seen”, which appears way more obvious and gives out the clear message that their lingerie is sexy and appealing enough ‘to be seen’.

Talking about yourself too much

How mind-numbingly boring is it when you’re having a conversation with another person, and all they do is talk constantly about themselves? Wouldn’t life just be easier if you could walk away from these kinds of people without feeling rude? Luckily, when it’s a brand or a company talking about themselves, you can! More brands have people walk away and lose interest than you could imagine.

Take this example. An imaginary children’s activity book publisher has a tagline “one of the UK’s leading Children’s book publishers”. It sounds impressive and certainly positive, but compared to the tagline “Fun content that keeps your child ahead of the class” which one appeals more to the needs and wants of the client? The second one of course, because the client wants a product that is going to do the best for their child and dreams of their child getting good grades and being successful. That doesn’t mean to say that being a leading children’s book publisher isn’t important, but this information just doesn’t belong in your tagline.

So to wrap it up, put yourself in the clients shoes, think about what they want and understand, and don’t overthink your tagline so much that it ends up being in a different language!