Show Your Customers What You're All About

By Erin Quinlan

Many businesses have slogans or taglines that go something like, “Honesty, ethics, value, integrity.”

We’ve all seen them, right?

But would you walk up to someone you’ve never met before and tell them how sexy, charismatic, or charming you are? Of course not.

So why would you do that with your business? Why would you tell people what you want them to believe about your business and not train them in what your business actually operates with in terms of those ethics guidelines?

One recent example of a poor tagline is Berkshire Bank’s slogan of “America’s Most Exciting Bank.” There’s nothing exciting about a bank until you look at your account and realize that you overdrafted and they never set up the account right to protect you.

This is not America’s most exciting bank because America can’t have an exciting bank. Show me what you really are and how you operate!

Showing your customers what you’re all about is a far more effective method than just trying to convince them of something using a tagline or slogan.

Show-don’t-tell marketing forces you to be truly honest about the story you’re sharing. You can say whatever you want about your business, but showing it means you have to actually run your business with integrity. You have to stand behind the story you’re sharing.

Ethical business practices include assuring that the highest legal and moral standards are observed in your relationships with the people in your business community. A reputation for ethical decisions builds trust in your business among business associates and suppliers. Strong supplier relationships are critical to a successful business. Consider the problems you might have if you could not supply what the customer needs... at the time that they need it.

So, whatever kind of business you run, fix your motto, fix your tagline. Allow people to experience what your motto is through the values that you employ on a regular basis, not through what you tell them they should believe.

Need some help?

Give The Silent Partner Marketing a call at 866-432-6456 or e-mail Kyle Reyes at kyle@thesilentpartnermarketing.com and we can help you out.

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Erin Quinlan is the Content Marketing Manager of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology. You can find The Silent Partner Marketing on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.