Develop A Great Tag Line
The 5 Qualities of a Great Tag Line
By Casey Truffo
A catchy tag-line can be a great answer to the question: “So, what do you do for a living?” I call this your “short answer” or your tag line. It is basically two sentences.
“I am a special kind of counselor.”
“I teach/help/work with (your target market and the problem that they see themselves as having)”
Below are some proven examples:
“I teach couples how to get along better.”
“I work with women who are tired of trying to be perfect.”
“I help people who are afraid of going to the dentist.”
“I teach singles how to find and keep a great partner.”
“I help frustrated parents and teens.”
Here are some best strategies that can help you create a great tag-line, but the first thing I want to suggest is that you get together with people who understand what you do, who will brainstorm together with you and who will give you honest, real-time feedback.
It starts a conversation.
The key to successfully marketing your practice is having a lot of people know what you do – and remember it when it comes time for a referral. So, when people ask you what you do for a living, it is a marketing opportunity. By sharing a quick few words that invites the other person to ask questions, you are on your way to building a new referral relationship!
It is simple to say.
Some tag lines look great on paper but don’t roll off the tongue easily. For example. “I teach women how to be heard by their mates” can sound like “I help women to be hurt by their mates.” Now, that can get you some really strange looks!
It uses simple language.
Are you still using “jargony” terms when you describe what you do?
I really notice this when I coach financial planners. When they use technical financial terms, I (as the listener) feel uncomfortable. Instead of increasing my faith in them (“Boy, she knows her stuff”), I feel stupid. This is not how you want someone who could be a referral source to feel.
You need to know what words to use and what words you should absolutely avoid unless you want to drive potential clients away.
It is interesting.
This is tricky. You want to encourage the person to ask you questions and maybe to tell you about their own struggle, but you don’t want to be doing therapy on the spot. One therapist who said “I work with women with body image issues,” found that people would act uncomfortable when she said that. She changed it to “I teach women how to feel better about their bodies” and started attracting crowds and lots of conversation!
You love to say it.
Far more important than the words themselves, I want you to love talking about what you do. I want you to light up when people ask you what you do. Have fun with it! Let your passion out!
People don’t care what you do until they know what you care. So, let them see that you love what you do and they’ll be more likely to ask you more about it. Far better to get connected with them than simply having a catchy phrase.
So, pick a tag line. Go test it – but test it with therapists and non-therapists and particularly people who don’t know you.
Casey Truffo, MFT is an award-winning speaker and coach to therapists on five continents. She is the author of Be A Wealthy Therapist: Finally, You Can Make a Living While Making a Difference. Founder of BeAWealthyTherapist.com, her vision is to teach therapists how to ethically and honestly earn a good living.
If you have any questions, please contact us at (949) 309.2590 or visit our website at http://www.beawealthytherapist.com
This article may be reprinted as long as full attribution is given.
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Budget Strategically
Budgeting is not something we usually love to do. Check out this article over at Entrepreneur magazine. Tim Berry gives 9 tips to stay on course in your budget in “Budget Strategically to Stay on Course”…more
Achieve Organizational Bliss
Many dream of being able to work from
home. What could be better than getting up, throwing on sweats and
being there for your kids when they need you? It sounds ideal, but with
the demands of family and business, we need to be as organized as
possible in order to be productive…more
Organizational Structure and Innovation
Encourage Values and Add an Organizational Structure That Will Stimulate InnovationEncourage Values and Add an Organizational Structure That Will Stimulate Innovation
By Donald Mitchell
Many people associate innovation with high technology products and services, and certainly those industries create lots of innovation. On the other hand, almost every business seems to enjoy the potential to be more innovative if people think about the business that way.
Few industries had a greater reputation for being stodgy than steel making during the 1950s and 1960s. Today, the industry has been totally reshaped, by relying on technology that did not exist until it was developed in the United States. Talk to North American profit leader, Nucor, about this success as a technology story, and they will tell you that you have it all backwards. The success was due to the organizational culture and system that Ken Iverson emphasized for Nucor.
Mr. Iverson’s successor as CEO, Dan DiMicco, sees the foundation as being found in the company’s values:
(1) Don’t overextend yourself
(2) Be a risk taker and take on the unknown
(3) Focus on long-term rather than short-term, whipsaw thinking
(4) Treat customers, employees, and other stakeholders the way you would like to be treated
(5) Minimize barriers to effective communication
(6) Build relationships
(7) Hold people accountable to honor the relationship and perform
(8) Take your time in evaluating people you hire
(9) See continuous improvement as a nonstop journey up a mountain
(10) Give people the freedom to do it
(11) Help people learn
(12) Don’t penalize failure because big flops are part of necessary learning.
To implement these principles, Nucor has made many innovations. The company has only two organizational levels between the head of a division and the floor worker in a mill. Responsibility and authority are delegated as much as possible.
Education is generously supported for employees, their spouses and children. The company emphasizes promoting from within. In hiring, Nucor looks for people who want to move ahead in life.
To encourage them, everyone in the company gets variable compensation based on the firm’s profit performance n the Profit Sharing program. And production bonus incentives are paid weekly to constantly encourage the “pay for performance” culture of profit consciousness.
The vision behind this culture and structure was to be a growing company and to take advantage of commercializing new technology to leapfrog the competition.
If such opportunities can be found in steel, why should your company and industry be any different in terms of providing profitable innovation? Work on your values and organizational structure, and who knows what you can accomplish.
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for accomplishing 20 times more by registering at: www.fastforward400.com
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Google’s Chrome Browser and Their Long Term Strategy?
Casual observers may have concluded that Google’s introduction this
week of its ‘Chrome’ web browser was a direct assault on the dominance
of Microsoft’s Explorer. But Wharton professors David Hsu and Kevin
Werbach see a longer-term strategy at work…more
