What does your tagline say about you?

Earlier this week, Lisa worked with Katie Rowland of KRC Coaching to present a workshop on taglines to the WIBN group in Reading.  We got some great feedback and lots of ideas were generated, so we just wanted to share some of the key points.

What is a tagline?

Also known as a slogan or a strapline, a tagline is a short phrase that tells your audience what you offer. With just a few words, your tagline must be understandable, summarise the product or service, build trust or incite to buy.  Taglines can be your best and least expensive form of advertising. 

No matter what your company does, your tagline creates a first impression.  Make sure this is the right impression!

A tagline can be a powerful message to enhance your brand.  Who hasn’t heard of:

Tagline – Things to consider

A tagline should be:

•       Memorable

•       Clear not clever

•       So what? – Benefits

•       Personality

•       Can include a call to action e.g. Think Different

•       Keep it simple – single words can work well (always good in threes) e.g.

Review your taglines

It's never too late to change a dull, tired, non-communicating tagline. Even the biggest brands with famous taglines change their slogan every few years. Most people remember when Coke was "The Real Thing," but look at all the other taglines they've used over a period of 20 years:

• 1970: It's the real thing.
• 1971: I'd like to buy the world a Coke.
• 1976: Coke adds life.
• 1979: Have a Coke and a Smile.
• 1990: Can't Beat the Real Thing.

How smart is your tagline?

The best taglines separate you from your competition, express your personality and add to your branding and marketing campaign. A tagline should tell not only what your company does; it should also make it clear how you are unique compared to your competition.

Assess your current tagline by asking yourself three questions:
1. If you left your business card somewhere, could someone glance at it and know exactly what your company does?
2. Would your tagline work if your competitors used it?

3. Are you proud to use your tagline every day?

Where should you use a tagline?

Now you have your tagline, make sure you use it!!  Places to include it are as follows:

•       Business card

•       Website – We recommend homepage

•       Email signature

•       Networking events

•       Marketing collateral eg appointment cards

•       Any presentation title slide

•       Social media

Even we benefitted from the workshop.  Our old tagline was “Making your marketing solutions as simple as 1,2,3”.  We’ve now tweaked this to:

Making your marketing as easy as 1,2,3

So what changes will you make to your tagline?

It's our birthday…….

Lisa and I are celebrating our fourth year in business together this month – it’s quite amazing to us how quickly those four years have flown by but then they do say ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ and we are blessed to say there has been a lot of fun over the past 48 months!

I’ve turned to some wordsmiths other than myself to sum up how we feel about our work as we move into our fifth year in business so all that remains to say is a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has been part of our journey so far, it’s been great having you along for the ride!

What a start we’ve had …..

January is already proving to be a fantastic month and there's a feeling in the air that 2014 is going to be a great year. 

We’re working with new clients on projects that include local PR, social media strategy and an event promotion. We’ve run workshops on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and we’ve been networking….not bad considering it’s only the 13^th of the month as I write this!

We certainly think that starting the year with a bang is the way to go and our plans for 2014 are to continue adding value to our wonderful clients’ marketing strategies and to continue having fun with what we do.

We are constantly wanting to learn – webinars are a big part of our continuing development to ensure we are up to date on the latest social media platforms and trends – they change so often that it’s easy to get left behind.

Pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone is also important to us – we love a challenge and we run a ‘one size most definitely doesn’t fit all’ policy when it comes to preparing workshops and materials for our clients. I think we can safely say that no two workshops we run are ever the same. Lisa ran a LinkedIn workshop last week that was specifically helping the client look for a new role……..that was a first for us!

Networking forms a big part of our personal and professional development plan. As members of the WIBN and Athena networks we wouldn’t be without our monthly meetings and the drop in sessions run by the likes of Business Biscotti are also a great way of meeting new business contacts and like-minded professionals.

Most importantly we have a plan! We know where we want to be in 6 months time – we invest time in our own marketing as well as helping other businesses and it really helps to keep us focused.

We will be celebrating our 4^th year in business next month – watch this space for some news on how we’ll be celebrating this milestone!

We’d love to know how your start to the year has been.

Well where did the year go?

I can remember being young (just!) and my parents telling me that time seems to go quicker as you get older – it’s true isn’t it? I think we all cram so much into our lives that the days and weeks whizz by….remember when six-weeks holiday in the summer seemed like a lifetime?

Lisa and I always get together in December to review our year in business and plan for the next 12 months. We shared so many highlights with each other and realized just what an amazing 2013 it’s been for One to Three!

To round off our working year (we’re finishing up soon to spend time with our small people) we wanted to share our highlights with you – getting it all down on paper is really therapeutic and makes us do a little jig of delight!

We love working with our ongoing clients – AB Walker, Companion Care Vets and Forest Laboratories are among the businesses who’ve been with us right from the start –but getting to know new companies has been a definite highlight of the year.

There’s been too many to mention everyone by name (almost 50 companies have used our services this year!) WOW

  

Working with small businesses such as RedLeopard and Creative Dynamic Print we’ve formed firm relationships based on a mutual desire to succeed and a real passion for what we, and our clients do.

We’ve worked with larger organisations including Lavendar and Stone – the divine chain of beauty salons that use us to manage their social media marketing. With four salons in the mix and endless topics to discuss they are a client that allow us to indulge our ‘girly’ sides!

2013 saw us working with large, established marketing agencies for the first time. Lisa delivered an SEO workshop to the Eclipse Marketing team and we are already planning a social media workshop for 2014 where Claire and Lisa will cover the benefits of using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest. Who’d have thought ‘little old us’ would be called in to train the staff of a multi-million pound agency?

In fact our SEO workshops were brand new to 2013 and have gone down a storm. Between us we’ve delivered over 30 social media workshops and the best part about this, is knowing we’ve empowered small businesses to take control of their online marketing.

Networking has played a huge part in our business once again and huge thanks go to the Women in Business Network and the Athena Network for providing us with endless contacts. Claire presented at two Athena meetings in the Autumn, delivering an introduction to LinkedIn and Facebook training session.

Talking of presenting, Claire also visited Basepoint, a serviced office complex in High Wycombe in November and gave a social media taster session to some of the tenants – a workshop has been booked for 2014 and Claire has been added to the recommended speaker list for the Basepoint Group!

This blog really could go on and on as there have been so many memorable moments but the one we’d like to end on is that we get to work with each other every single day.

Lisa and I are the best of friends – we have never fallen out, our work ethic is the same, our creativity, when together, knows no bounds and we know that our joint ambition to run a successful business where honesty, hard work and friendship are key will see us right for a successful 2014!

We are SO lucky to be able to say we love what we do. 

Thanks to everyone who has worked with and supported us in 2013.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

x