AdvertisingSolution.info

A marketing tag line is the one or two line descriptor that often comes after a product logo or company name. It is one of those things that looks simple but isn’t. Large companies pay advertising agencies a lot of money to develop tag lines for their companies and brands.

Many companies, however, do not have a large enough budget to hire an advertising agency. If you belong to one of these small budget businesses, do not despair. With some creativity and persistence, you can develop your own tag line.

First, decide what you want to communicate with your tag line.

If you have a positioning statement and/or unique selling proposition, write them down. Your tag line should reinforce them.

Ask yourself these questions.

1) Who are your customers?

2) What benefits do you give your customers?

3) What feelings do you want to evoke in your customers?

4) What action are you trying to generate from your
customers?

5) How are you different from your competition?

Try to get one or more of these across in your tag.

Second, prepare to brainstorm tag line options.

Gather tag lines from other companies and brands. Look in other categories besides your own and try to find tag lines from both large and small companies.

As you find tag lines, write them on index cards or individual slips of paper. You will be mixing and matching them and pairing them with unrelated items as you brainstorm.

Pay attention to the words used, how they are put together, and which of the above questions they address. By doing this, you are more likely to come up with a unique angle for your own tag line.

NOTE: You are looking at others’ tag lines only to spark ideas. Do not plagiarize. You must come up with your own, original tag line.

To find tag lines, look around. You may find them anywhere there are advertisements, packaging, or logos. Look in cupboards, around desks, in magazines, on TV/radio commercials, in print advertisements, and on Web sites.

To get you started, here are some tag lines I found in only a few minutes:

- hp - “invent”
- Craftsman - “Makes anything possible.”
- Kenmore - “Solid as Sears.”
- Hersheys.com - “The sweetest site on the Web.”
- WebSiteMarketingPlan.com - “Marketing Plan and Web Promotion Strategy.”
- Marketing Best Practices - “The Web’s leading small
business marketing newsletter.”
- Nike - “Just do it.”
- TLC - “Life Unscripted.”
- Surprise by Design TV show - “We’re not just changing
rooms. We’re changing lives.”
- Schnucks (Midwest Grocer) - “We make it easy.”
- Berry Burst Cheerios - “Naturally sweetened whole grain
oat cereal with real berries.”
- Altoids - “Curiously strong peppermints.”
- The Name Stormers - “Company and Brand Name Development.”

Find your competitors’ tag lines - look at them and strive to be better and different.

Gather together books to help you come up with different ways to phrase similar ideas. My favorite is “Word Menu.” Others likely to be of help are “The Describer’s Dictionary” and “Twenty-First Century Synonym and Antonym Finder.”

Third, brainstorm.

This works best if you can get a small group together, but can also be done solo. Set up a place with a lot of writing space - use dry erase boards, easels with big paper pads, note cards, etc.

Go through your props. Look up words or concepts in the books. Rearrange your various props so you can look at them in different ways. Write down *everything* that comes to mind and all the new ideas each phrase sparks. They do not have to make sense. You want a large number of ideas.

Fourth, consolidate your list.

After brainstorming, go through all of your ideas. Pull out those few you think have the best potential. Try to reduce longer ones to fewer words.

Fifth, choose the one best tag line.

You should be left with a short list of possibilities. To pick the single best tag line, get others’ opinions. If you have some funds budgeted, work with a market research firm to test the tag lines with your customers.

You can also conduct informal research. Set up a free survey at SurveyMonkey.com and encourage people to take the survey. If you have direct contact with customers, ask them what they think. Give them an incentive to help you, such as a discount or small freebie.

When you are done, you will have a tag line that will help your business thrive.

About the Author

Bobette Kyle draws upon 12+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, Marketing MBA, and online marketing research in her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com and author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book “How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business, howmuchforspider.com/TOC.htm .

Copyright 2003, 2004 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.

Share This

You may use this article for reprint, as long as it
remains unaltered and the resource box and author
information are included. - Isaiah Hull

Why You Cannot Afford to Be An Anti-Social Internet
Marketer

Anti-social internet marketing is a critical flaw that
will destroy even the best, most creative sales strategies.
If you do not build relationships and follow up on them
–through personal interaction and automation–you will
spend most of your time either a) repeating trivial tasks
that can either be completed exponentially faster with the
help of other people or b) plodding away on a course
that will never result in sales conversions.

Building and maintaining marketing relationships will
help you do the following:

1. Avoid wasting time and money on outdated products
and services that are no longer valid in the internet
marketing world.

2. Create massive contact lists of people who trust you
and want to buy your products and follow your advice.

3. Diversify and maximize your sources and quantities
of leads.

4. Setup joint ventures that will generate immediate
sales for you and add potential buyers to your long-term
customer database.

5. Explode your backend sales from follow-ups.

6. Increase your credibility with potential buyers.

Many internet marketers fail to realize that personal
interaction is in fact the catalyst that allows internet
businesses to make that jump from expensive to profitable.
Rather than seeking this medium to boost their sales, they
assure themselves that the internet is an isolated,
anti-social medium, where people do not need connections
to succeed.

Again, this is a critically-flawed system of thinking.
Without personal connections, you will not succeed with
any internet business.

Here are some ways you can increase your sales conversion
numbers by integrating personal interactions into your
marketing strategy (you may already use some of these):

1. Keep your reciprocal links directory–but also actively
seek links for your main page and your other content
pages. You can do this by finding related websites
on search engines and then personally emailing the
webmasters. Explain what you like about the website–and
how your link would fit in with what they sell. Also
include where you plan to link back to their site.

Make sure all of your emails are personal. Do not make it
look like you sent out some spam robot to hammer every
webmaster with flattering, form-letter reciprocal link
requests. This will not work.

One prominent link from a high-PR, high-traffic website
can potentially reap more sales conversions for you
than 100 reciprocal links that are locked away with
thousands of other link prisoners in the dark depths of
some website’s dungeon of a directory. Just
think of the time you could save! So do not be stingy.
offer partner sites good link positions. If your sales
copy is good enough to pull profits, then you do not
need to worry about links stealing potential sales
from you.

In addition to getting you more productive
reciprocal links, this strategy will also allow you to
develop important relationships that can later result in
profitable joint ventures or even free product exchanges.

2. Encourage your database of customers or mailing list–
or whatever you use to contact potential or previous
customers–to interact with you on a personal level when
you market a product or service to them. You need
to be very honest with your customers if you want them
to trust you. It is fair to say that people are generally
dissatisfied with programs they opt-in to and information
they purchase over the internet. If you have a product
that has actual value, then you should have no problem
explaining any questions they might have, which will
relieve the general queasiness related with internet
purchases. If you do not believe in the product you
are selling enough to field questions about it, then
find or make one you have enough confidence in before
you apply the ideas outlined in this article.

Scientific marketing tests have repeatedly proven that
an increase in contact (and therefore trust) correlates
with an increase sales. The more you personally contact
and talk to your potential customers, the better chance
you will have to make a sale. In the process, you will
also help people who are in your database by giving them
more information about the product or service you are
providing.

3. Join a large internet marketing community and
participate in the discussions. This is hands-down
the most effective way to shape a marketing plan.
You will get the chance to discuss important issues
with people who have succeeded and failed trying
the same exact plans you want to use. You will also
be able to quickly find out what methods are outdated
and which are still valid–which is direly important to
know when you own a business in the most dynamic market
place in the world.

In addition to this, you will be able to generate sales
by attaching a signature with a link to your website or
affiliate gateway below each of your posts.

Again, interacting with other marketers–whether it be
through emails or forums–can get you involved in
joint ventures and free product exchanges, which
will cut back your advertising costs and boost
your sales. Forums are one of the best places
to do this.

So, to reiterate:

1. You greatly inhibit your success by limiting personal
contact with other marketers and potential customers.

2. There are three major ways to improve your marketing
methods and results through personal contact: personally-
emailing webmasters for mainpage links; encouraging your
database to contact you–and then following up with
any questions they have; and joining a large internet
marketing community.

If you follow these simple steps to increase your
personal contact with buyers and marketers, you will
see an increase in growth and sales. I use these
methods to make money–and I encourage all my affiliates
to do the same.

Isaiah Hull is the CEO of an internet marketing and
business-building business. He is also the publisher
of Home Business Tips Newsletter and a member of the
top Internet Marketing Group in the world, the Internet
Warriors. To receive step-by-step training, a free
profit-pulling website, and a membership to the
Internet Warriors, click here to learn how you can begin
working for yourself by working with Isaiah:
http://www.workathomerightnow.net

Share This

If you have a business or a product that you would like to promote, where should you spend your money to advertise it? I bounced ideas back and forth with my TOP marketing friends for hours before coming up with my top five. There are literally dozens of effective ways to promote your website. However, I wanted to save you time and money, so I’m giving you the 5 most profitable marketing methods.

Here are my top five:

#5) Adwords - Google Adwords is a solid place to advertise. People who are looking for a specific product or service turn to Google. They type in certain keywords and if you’ve paid for your ad to appear for those specific keywords, then your ad appears on the right-hand page of their search results. Your goal is to convert these visitors to buyers, but your website must meet three essential elements: PRICE, PRODUCT, and EASY ORDERING. When customers visit you from Adwords, you get about 8 seconds to show them these three things so they can fork their money over to you OR move on to the next ad.

#4) Autoresponders - If you have a product or service, then you must have a newsletter or opt-in form somewhere on your website. If you do not, then you could be losing out on potential future customers as well as missing the opportunity to capitalize on those customers visiting your site right now. Aweber says that your product must be seen FIVE times before a customer will make a decision to buy. By consistently emailing these potential customers, you increase your changes of turning a visitor into a buyer.

#3) Teleseminars - This is starting to take off big time in the marketing world. There are places that offer FREE 800 numbers for people to dial in and listen to you speak. There are two ways to capitalize. If you have a product or service, you can host your own free or low-cost teleseminar and hold an hour telephone call promoting your product or service. If you want to make money as an affiliate for a specific product then interview the creator of that product and direct people on the phone to your affiliate webpage (add the affiliate link to the product).

#2) Magazines - Write article after article after article. At the end of the article, add a “Resource Box” that will direct customers to your product or service. RSS Feeds and Search Engines are picking up these articles and that equals free advertising for the life of the article. Your article can be picked up by hundreds of websites - and be seen and read for many years.

#1) Joint Ventures - Don’t do all the work, let your other business owners push your product. Let’s say that you are working day and night making about 10 sales per week at $10. You pocket $100 a week. If there were 20 people pushing your product at 1 sale per person, then you pocket $200 but you really didn’t do anything. Now, if those 20 people made the same 10 sales, then you pocket $2,000. Subtract their fees, and you have made some decent money. Add about 100 people to your sales force, and think of the possibilities. The easiest way to do joint ventures is to set up an affiliate program on your website.

Kit Elliott, SuperAffiliate.com,

Share This