Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

"Great Homes Great Loans" isn't a call to action. It could be a sales pitch, but it could also have been about your past success in getting great homes or loans for yourselves. You need to start at the beginning - why would someone in your community want to work with the 3 of you? Who specifically would be a great client for you 3?

I like Great Homes Great Loans as a tagline. But "Dream Homes and Dream Loans" is stronger. Taglines don't have to be a call to action. Advertisements do .

Your comments that people don't know what you are selling is not unique. Every company faces that dilema. It only points out, marketing is a journey, not a destination.

Good Daily Marketing Habits create sales.

Sell Well and Prosper tm

When you mention how people said "if we didn't know you we'd wonder what you are selling" tells me that you didn't do your research. Howie Jacobson of Google Adwords for Dummies fame does a lot of this kind of work - finding out what a business needs to say to their customers. He does this through the Google paid advertising networks which are very fast and relatively inexpensive. He finds out what people need to know (= their questions answered) and what the business needs to say in its message to them.

The point of saying this is that it will cost you perhaps $250 dollars in investment and a few weeks of using the internet advertising medium to fine-tune your message. That is way cheaper than getting it wrong on the entire side of a bus.

As Carol says, marketing is a journey. You arrive at a tagline and use it for six, eight months - and it goes off the boil. So make sure that you have a campaign ticking away in the background that is keeping up with what your customers are thinking. At the six month stage (or whenever a drop-off is beginning to happen) change your tagline. The details are irrelevant, the point is that you are keeping up with the changing nature of your market.

My point is not to ask us, but to ask those people who count - your customers. Now you have a business and you have customers. You can start by asking them why they chose you and not other companies - you are in a tight market, after all and their choice is based on things that may not be immediately apparent to you. So just send an email blast with the simple question "why did you choose us?" and see what comes back. That is the starting point for your internet campaign. That is when you come back here and get some really snappy taglines and mottos - things that are going to work on the side of a bus because you tested it online.

Your current tagline "Dream Homes, Dream Loans" has a disconnect - unless the link between the two is made visually, people are going to wonder if you do homes or loans. They aren't going to think of both. One needs to point to the other, so to speak.

So how about "Dream Homes & Dream Loans" (which will only require a & sign to paste onto the side of your bus!)

A dream loan buys your dream house
Your dream house with a dream loan

A little longer, only now we have a connection between the two. Only, as I say, your customers aren't choosing you because they want a dream loan, there is something way more special. They know what it is, and all you have to do is ask them!

WE CARE YOUR HOME FINANCE...

This may build trust in your customers. You need to build trust in your customers such that they may come to you. It is similar to that most banks do. This tag line is suggested with a logo in blue. Also, you could advertise on buses with two hands covering a home which conveys that you are taking care of their financial needs for a home sweet home.