What A Marketing Tagline Is/Isn't, And How To Use Them To Position Your Content

How a marketing tagline positions your business and also your content, and why having a unique content perspective on your market helps eliminate competition.

A quick peek at the usefulness of marketing taglines, how to create them, and why your business, brand and marketing campaigns will benefit from a clear tagline.

Why this is important

At it's most basic level a tagline is a slogan associated with a brand.

Generally considered as a specialty of the advertising world, taglines are sure to make their way into inbound and content marketing as marketers begin to realise how to, and get comfortable, publishing content.

A tagline is not positioning is not branding is not a USP. A tagline is an expression of a business positiong that informs the audience of context and potential meaning for the brand experience. It is only in this very distant use of the word positiong that tagline helps to create a mental map that "positions" the brand within the life experiences of the audience.

Taglines are the most socially oriented communication devices used by business to communicate with it's audience of customers, leads and prospects.

Taglines change over time and are mainly associated with advertising campaigns that are attempting to communicate positioning. Two very well known examples are "Where's the beef?" for Wendy's restaurants and "When it absolutely, positively, has to get there overnight." for FedEx.

Where do taglines/slogans fit with content marketing?

Because your content campaigns have distinctly different purposes (get traffic vs convert a lead) your marketing department has the opportunity to craft and design each campaign around a distinct, compelling selling point. Different taglines can then be written to express the concepts and benefits and business outcomes - and be published over time.

The consistency of the tagline will then help identify and differentiate your content, no matter what media, channel or form it's published in. And slogans tend to help create a certain depth to the brand experience that is missing in the type of content that is published as one-off elements meant to support the business.

Benefits driven taglines are about defining, suggesting or reminding customers of the results they'll achieve by purchasing and using your stuff. Note that this is not any longer considered a positioning statement, as was propounded and written about by Ries & Trout)

Point of difference taglines are built upon the premise that your stuff has benefits, yes, but that the benefits are a special point of difference that creates a deeper, better, more meaningful, satisfying brand experience.

Witty taglines are normally constructed around a short, single thought (not a concept; a distinct, single thought) expressed in an pithy, short phrase. Sometimes these phrases are called memes, because they have the power to viral and become a part of the culture's social discourse. Witty taglines have present the highest risk of failure because of their unpredictable reception by the public.

A descriptive tagline can be a very good choice for a product launch or rebranding project. If the intended audience of customers, leads and prospects are unaware of the product, or you've rebranded in a ultra-competitive marketplace - descriptive taglines can help the customer understand what your stuff does or is for or should accomplish.

How can a tagline be visionary? When it applies to your business and not your stuff. Conglomorates that have a need to promote the corporation before WHAT the corporation can do regarding problem solving struggle with a unified presence that crosses categories and countries. That is when using the corprate mission statement in altered formcan become a visionary, although darned elusive and unconnected to the customers, leads and prospects - tagline. (warning: this type of tagline has the greatest risk of not failure, but disinterest, which is a symptom of failure.)

Motivational taglines can sometimes succeed in telling/suggesting to your customers, leads and prospects what to do as a next step. The danger here is similar to the visionary style of tagline: a lack of customer involvement. There's a risk of every reaction being: "who cares?".

Taglines constructed within the tone and manner of the brand, that are presented as a natural extension of the brand character and personality are sometimes the strongest taglines to create brand experiences and share of mind in your target audience.

Finally, be aware that taglines never adhere to nicely written descriptions like those. Taglines are slippery creatures and tend to have multiple tagline personalities combined into one. Don't worry, that's the kind of tagline you'd like to meet because your customers are more likely to find it remarkable.