Taglines for fun and profit

I'm celebrating 15 years of doing business as CC-T Unlimited with a new logo and tagline. You'd think the process for a one-woman shop would be fairly straightforward. But, alas, there is no shortcut for developing a tagline that suitably sells your services.

I've taken the opportunity to research what makes a good tagline and how to write one. Here's what worked for me:

1. Learn all about taglines.
The best resources gave specific, how-to instructions.

• Top Tips for Taglines That Engage First-Time Visitors
• Tagline Blues: What's the Site About?
• Explain Your Site With A Tagline

2. Read lots of taglines.
As I read the taglines of well-known brands, I thought about what makes them work:

• Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame -- The Best in Branding.
• Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

3. Study competitors' taglines.
I checked out the business cards and Web sites of dozens of clients, colleagues and competitors whose createive strategies I admire, such as:

• lookandfeel new media
• Lofstrom & Company
• Wylie Communications

4. Define a goal.
Based on what I'd learned, I knew my tagline needed to:

• Explain what I do
• Differentiate me from the competition
• Answer the WIIFM question
• Be 12 words or less

5. Inventory key words.
To make sure every word I used worked hard, I took inventory of words that have been used to describe my work and put them in a spreadsheet labeled:

• Product (what it is)
• Service (what I do)
• Feature (descriptors)
• Benefit (wiifm)
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP, the differentiator)

To come up with this list, I searched my hard drive for client testimonials, copied content from my Web site, and compiled all the elavator speeches I've ever drafted (there were a lot).

6. Draft lots of taglines.
All along the way, I'd been writing draft taglines and saving them in another spreadsheet. I sorted them alphabetically and decided which ones got off to the best start. I picked about 10.

7. Test for originality.
I googled each one, seeing what popped up. If an exact phrase matched, I scratched it. If certain words turned up businesses in unrelated fields, I scratched them. If they turned up sites whose mission paralleled mine, I saved them.

I also I tested a few with Sloganalysis. Wow!

8. Ask for feedback.
With the list narrowed to five, I asked my best clients and closest friends to tell me which ones achieved the goals I'd set. That eliminated two.

9. Rewrite.
I tweaked and tweaked, wrote a couple more, then put all the words I'd used in a spreadsheet and sorted the list alphabetically. I highlighted the words that appeared most often and shaped them into one tagline.

10. Pick one and go with it.
Figuring this process could easily go on forever, I decided I had learned enough about taglines, my business and my clients. I picked one:

Compelling content, on dealine. Get read. Get reaction.

I'll be rolling it out next month, along with my new logo, in a postcard mailing and targeted email marketing campaign. Let me know what you think!