Are you wanting your home service business to grow, but feel like you’re getting ignored? Here’s 3 steps to creating a tagline that will grab customers’ attention.
When your tagline fails
It’s great if you can incorporate your service into your business name, such as “Linda’s Landscaping” or “Fred’s Farrier Services”.
But sometimes you can’t. That’s where a short, descriptive tagline comes in handy. An effective tagline can not only tell customers what you do, but what problems you’ll solve for them and with what attitude you’ll do it.
Without a business name or tagline that connects, customers will likely move on to somebody else.
The problem with vague tagline
Let’s pretend there’s a company called “Orange Street Home Services”. The company name is vague, but there’s a hint that they provide some sort of home service.
Now, imagine they had the tagline, “Because we care”. That’s great that Orange Street cares, but what does that mean? Do they provide lawn services, interior cleaning, hospice care?
“Because we care…”
Orange Street Home Services
Let’s switch it out with something that gives a better clue what they do: “Because we care about your gutters”. Aha! They do something with gutters, either cleaning or repairs.
Perhaps even better would be “Carefully cleaning your gutters so you don’t have to”. In that tagline, it’s clear what this company does and why they do it.
3 steps to creating a clear, concise tag line
Here’s three easy steps to creating a clear and concise tagline for your home service business, which I learned from Platform University, a membership site that provides training courses for developing an online platform.
Describe the vision for your home service brand
Before you can create an effective tagline for your home service business, you need to know where you want your business to go, in particular, where your brand will go.
- GROWTH: How big do you see your company becoming? Where do you see yourself serving?
- SERVICES: What will be your core services? What will you do, and what will you not do?
- CULTURE: What will working for your company be like?
Define a Value Proposition Statement
This is going to be your elevator speech, or your chamber mixer blurb, so that whenever anybody asks you what your home service business does, you’ll explain it promptly in a way that it connects with potential customers. Value proposition statements usually follow this formula:
We are [your professional title].
We help [your ideal customer] with [your core services] so that [your promised transformation for your customer]
So let’s try this formula with Orange Street Home Services, which happens to do gutter cleaning for this example.
We are professional gutter cleaners.
Orange Street Home Services
We help homeowners in the greater Sacramento area with their gutter cleaning so that they can preserve and enjoy their homes.
Wasn’t that easy? Give it a shot with your business.
Declare a tagline based on the promise you’re giving customers
Using your value proposition statement, now create a short tagline of about 5 to 7 words that communicate the promise you’re giving customers.
For example, using the same value proposition as above, here’s some possible taglines:
- Leave your gutter cleaning to us
- We clean your gutters so you don’t have to
- Clean gutters to help protect your home
Recapping
So if you’re concerned about the current tagline for your home service (or perhaps lack of one), just do the following:
- Describe the vision you have for your home service brand
- Define a value proposition statement that includes a promised transformation for your customer
- Declare a tagline based on the promise you’re giving customers
Hope that helps. Next week, I plan to cover how creating service packages for your home service business can be a win-win for you and your customers. If you have any questions, please contact me as I’d love to help.
Additional Resources
- Platform University, a great membership-based content marketing resource.
- 48 Days Eagles Community, an online community of entrepreneurs helping each other, many of whom are in the home services industry
- “Building a Story Brand”, a great book by Don Miller on how to create marketing content that connects to customers through stories.
Photo courtesy of Kevin Bidwell from Pexels