Driving Sales

Need to Create a Tagline? Just Do It

A well-crafted tagline can be a memorable and valuable tool for quickly conveying your brand promise, differentiating you from your competition, and bringing a unifying message to all your marketing and communications efforts going forward.

Or . . . it can be an empty and senseless exercise in wordplay that stops people cold and opens you to ridicule, rejection and hostility from men, women and children.

Now that you understand what's at stake when doing the tag line tango, let's look at some examples of . . .

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Good Tag Lines

"M'm! M'm! Good!" Campbell's Soup

"The quicker picker upper." Bounty

"Can you hear me now? Good." Verizon

"Be all you can be." U.S. Army

"Let your fingers do the walking." Yellow Pages

What do all these slogans have in common? They promote the product or organization in a memorable way and make a meaningful promise about the brand experience. Now for the misfires.

Bad and Ugly Tag Lines

"I'm lovin' it." McDonalds

"When it rains, it pours." Morton Salt

"The choice of a new generation." Pepsi

"No rules, just right." Outback

"Every kiss begins with Kay." Kay Jewelers

What do all these slogans have in common? The make statements that aren't easily understandable, aren't based on genuine strengths, and don't reflect things that are important to customers. Opps!

Tag, You're It: Making Your Tagline Memorable

So how do you avoid creating a tagline that lands you on "the bad and the ugly" list and has a potent influence on driving sales and improving your bottom line? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Your tagline should be simple, clear, and concise and convey your marketing message.
• Make sure it speaks to your customers in words and tomes that are important to them.
• If possible, include words or phrases that connect with your logo -- words and images working together make the most powerful impression.
• Once you create a strong tagline, commit to using it over the long haul. Changing taglines too frequently can impair awareness of your brand and weaken your competitive advantage.

One final tip: Never, we repeat never create a tagline that contains any of these five worn-out words from a million sound-alike mission statements -- commitment, quality, service, value and trust. Unless, of course, you want to wind up on a future "bad and ugly" tag line list with an entry like "Our Commitment to Quality and Service is a Value You Can Trust." Arghh!!

For more ideas that drive sales, check out the archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.

Blog Behavior: Best Practices for Reaching Bloggers

To blog or not to blog -- that used to be the question. Today, as bloggers create a vast, ongoing dialogue across the media landscape, the question of whether or not to blog has been replaced by how best to gain blog exposure for your company and its messages through bloggers who can influence your target audience.

Armed with a knowledge of emerging best practices for reaching and winning credibility with bloggers, your chances of influencing the people who influence people who are important to achieving your business goals are excellent.

Know your target bloggers. Who are the bloggers with the greatest potential influence within your niche? Reading the "About" page of a blog is a quick and useful way of determining whether your issues and products are relevant to the blogger. To be 100 percent certain, the best test is to subscribe to the blog for about a month. In that span of time, you will begin to understand the blogger's motives, learn who else is monitoring the blog, and follow links to establish a network of blogger relations.

Speak your blogger's language. When you identify a blogger who might be interested in your company, find out how to communicate with them. Bloggers have their contact preferences and personal idiosyncrasies. If you want to make a strong impression, take the time to personalize communication and show that you have actually read their blog. Focus on building a rapport.

Refer or link to the blog. One of the most meaningful ways to show appreciation to a valued blogger is to take every opportunity to refer or link to their blog. The added bonus in adopting this practice is that linking is like passing out a business card online to make the blogger aware of you.

Be persistent. Even with a well-founded knowledge of a blog's preferences and priorities, sometimes your timing will be off and your first attempt to get exposure on a blog won't happen. As the saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try again. Being persistent (without being annoying) will eventually pay off.

Nurture the relationship. Don't get complacent and fall out of touch once you make it onto a blog. Like all good relationships, blogger relations need continual nurturing. Neglect this one simple rule and all your hard work will be wasted.

For more ideas that drive sales check out archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.