How to Create a Great Tagline for Your Brand in 4 Easy Steps

Have you ever thought to create an outstanding tagline for your business; a tagline that encourages your audience and makes it simpler for them to keep in mind your brand? With this article, I go over how to create a great tagline in four easy yet important steps.

You can stand out from the competition and create an impact with an impressive tagline. If you ask people what they associate with brands like Nike and Apple, you will likely find that they say things like the Nike Swoosh or the Apple logo, but you’re not far behind. Those will probably be, ‘just do it’ and ‘think different’ now.

Although taglines are often an afterthought, great brands tend to have great taglines and they start working on this crucial branding element right from the beginning. Great brands invest time, money, and effort in the whole process, and time times they hire branding mentors and trainers for their teams.

Also Read: 7 tips to Become A Great Coach And Mentor

What is a Tagline?

Taglines have a few different definitions depending on the context. But when it comes to marketing and branding your business, your tagline is a short statement, phrase, or question that helps to position and differentiate your brand and or clearly define the brand and the value that it gives to your audience.

One thing to remember is a tagline is not a slogan. These are two separate things. Taglines relate to the whole brand while the slogans relate to specific campaigns. A campaign might run for a long time, but the tagline is about the brand which goes for a lifetime.

Let’s find out how to create a tagline that helps your brand stand out in the crowd.

1- Keep it Simple

Taglines can be over-thought overworked and end up feeling disconnected from the brand and hard to remember for your audience. Simplicity is key to a great tagline, and that is harder than it sounds.

To be as memorable as a tagline, such as ‘just do it’, ‘I’m lovin’ it’, you need to resist the urge to keep adding words to your tagline. It needs to boil it down to the shortest length possible while still remaining true to the brand and delivering the essence of the brand. Think about how you can communicate what your brand stands for in the most succinct way.

2- Differentiate

It should differentiate. So for early-stage businesses, especially, your tagline wants to work hard to differentiate your brand and tie that to your brand name and logo. As children, we learn to tie a word to a thing, and then we build an idea around that connection.

So we have to first learn what something is and what its name is. In order to build up an idea about it and what it means, this is what branding is trying to do for your business. It’s all about cultivating, meaning.

The logo is the thing, the brand name and the tagline are the name, the word that ties to it. And then the idea that gets created around that in your audience’s mind is the brand experience. By differentiating with your tagline like M&M’s ‘melt in the mouth, not in the hand’ and Dollar Shave Club’s, ‘shave time, shave money’.

You are clearly positioning your brand and articulate your difference from the competition. Comment below with your brand’s tagline if you have one and if not, what is your favorite tagline of all time? So put that in the comments below. What is the one that has got some serious real estate in your mind? Put it in the comments below.

3- Add Meaning

A generic tagline that has no meaning attached to it will not only fail to differentiate your brand but will also position your brand as something that is unremarkable. There is no such thing as no branding and a bad tagline would just reflect badly on your brand.

People, experience brands across all of their senses. So no matter what you do, your audience will feel something after interacting with your brand, whether it’s good. Or bad so what you want to try and do is add meaning to your tagline and take back control of that narrative. To add meaning to your tagline, tap into your brand’s purpose and vision.

The reason you exist beyond making a profit and where you are trying to head to, what is your ultimate goal as a brand? If you can tap into these, they can help pull in and add meaning to your tagline.

If we take Nike’s vision, for example, ‘to bring inspiration and innovation, to every athlete in the world. And if you have a body you’re an athlete. If you then look at their tagline, which is ‘just do it’, this is a rallying cry to move everybody towards that vision, and ‘just do it’ as a tagline is starting that inspirational process that they are trying to achieve.

Other great examples of taglines that have meaning in them are, Apple’s think differently and BMW is the ultimate driving machine. And when you hear both of these, you feel them. You know, even, even think different, although it’s challenging you to think differently, you feel it it’s a counter-culture call to creatives everywhere to think differently about how they do things.

The ultimate driving machine really is a visceral thing that you can, you can feel that BMW really is the ultimate driving machine is something that really, pulls you in and adds meaning there’s something else to it another layer that a lot of taglines don’t have. So, what you want to do is try and add that meaning into your tagline and create an emotional response from your audience.

4- Get People Talking

A lot of brands try to make their taglines too clever, and they try and put too many words in there. And what you don’t want to do is break any of the previous points, especially keep it simple, but if there’s room for it and you’ve done the other three points, making your tagline catchily memorable, and depending on your brand, adding in some fun, you can really give it legs, get people talking about that tagline.

This can actually lead to people talking about your tagline a bit more reciting it. And also it is used in things like popular culture. Things like rhyming, repetition, alliteration, double entendre, are things that you can use. To make your taglines more memorable, catchy, and adding a bit of that fun. For example, Bounty paper towels. The tagline is ‘the quicker picker-upper’, which uses rhyme repetition and a little bit of humor. And he doesn’t want to try and say that too many times too quickly. Uh, it’s a right tongue twister.

Another example of repetition is the US Marines and their tagline. ‘The few, the proud, the Marines’. It’s a great way to use repetition. So it’s three short statements. Put together and what it does, it helps to build up that momentum in the tagline to the last bit, which talks about who they are. So remember when you’re developing your tagline, keep it simple, differentiate from your competition, add meaning, and if you can get people talking by making it catchy memorable. And if you can, if, if your brand is right for it, add in a little bit of fun, a little bit of humor, or a little bit of something different.

Summing it up

An impressive tagline is essential not just for the tech and the FMGC businesses, but also for micro businesses like small scale cleaning services or a home based bakery. I am sure, now you understand how to make a great tagline. If you want to build on your brand further dive deeper into it. If you’re looking to develop a new brand, start a side project, or take an existing brand to the next level.