Here’s the thing: Nearly every mission-minded organization, author, or coach could get better by doing one thing: clarifying your messaging.
The way to make your messaging better is by helping people clearly understand what you do and what you offer through a one liner and a tagline.
Your one liner is your elevator pitch. It’s how you tell people what value you can offer to them in a simple sentence or two.
Similarly, your tagline is an abbreviated version of your one liner that you use in more condensed spaces like your website header area.
It’s not your mission statement. It’s different than that.
Your mission statement tells people what you are all about. It’s a big, lofty goal. Nobody really cares about your mission statement except you and your team.
What people care about is “what’s in it for me?” What value can you offer them that helps improve their world and make their lives better? That’s what should be in your one-liner.
Here’s the problem: most organizations have a version of a one-liner, but it’s not great. It’s often vague because most of the time you haven’t done the hard work of thinking about what it is you offer, how you offer it, and what problem it solves.
If you can truly work out those three areas, you’ll be able to simply write a one liner and tagline that serves yourself and your audience in a very practical way.
Let’s take a look at the three steps of creating a one liner in more detail…
Step 1: Define Your Offer
Ask: What is it that you do?
The important thing here is to really think about what you offer. If you coach churches on how to do better fundraising, how do you do that? Is it one-on-one coaching? Is it through an online course? Do you send them a binder? Do you work alongside them in the trenches? Is it done-for-you or done-with-you?
What are the tangibles they get from working with you? What end result can they expect?
You’ve got to take it a level deeper than, “I help churches with capital campaigns.” That’s too ambiguous. HOW do you help churches with capital campaigns. What are the deliverables? What does it look like?
Step 2: Who Is Your Offer For / Who Do You Serve?
Ask yourself who benefits from what you have to offer.
Using the fundraising example from above, do you help large churches? Small churches? Churches doing building campaigns? Churches who simply need to get better at offering talks? Do you work with senior pastors? Elder/deacon boards or finance committees? Executive pastors?
Step 3: What Problem Does it Solve and How Is The Problem Impacting Your Customer/Audience?
Think benefits not features.
What benefit does your solution bring to your specific audience?
Think about the deep-down emotional benefits. We sometimes refer to this as the “benefit-behind-the-benefit” or the 2nd factor and 3rd factor benefits.
Do you help coach senior pastors with fundraising by elevating their offering storytelling? If so, what does that do to help the pastor?
The First Factor Benefit might be: More money in the church’s bank account.
But to what end does that help?
(Second Factor Benefit) It helps provide resources for the church to do more ministry.
So what?
(Third Factor Benefit) The church can have a greater impact for the Gospel in their community.
Once you dig deep into the benefits your service offers and the benefit it brings, it’s easy to write a one liner.
The Formula
Put it all together with this formula:
One Liner –
Most [(who) customer/audience] experience [this problem] which causes [this frustration]. We help [customer/audience] do [(what) solved problem] by [(how) your offer] in order to [benefit].
Tag Line –
We help [customer/audience] do [(what) solved problem] by [(how) your offer].
So, for the example above, the one liner might be:
Most senior pastors aren’t great at raising money about giving which causes their budgets to be tight. We help senior pastors improve their offering storytelling through one-one-one coaching to help them have more funds so they can have a larger impact in their community.
And the tagline would be:
One-on-one coaching to help senior pastors improve their offering storytelling and raise more funds.
A Few More Examples
MissionAlign (Ours!)
One Liner:
Most mission-minded organizations experience misalignment in their organization which causes them to fail to have the impact they desire. We help them align messaging and marketing to accomplish their mission.
Tagline:
Aligning your message and marketing to accomplish your mission.
Courage to Lead
One Liner:
CourageToLead helps high-capacity leaders, teams and organizations grow healthier and grow faster through customized, scalable coaching and organizational design.
Tagline:
Helping you lead growth, stay healthy and create teams great leaders want to be a part of.
Michael Hyatt & Co.
One Liner:
With growing leadership responsibilities, more demands on your time, and increased pressures at work, your success in other areas of life can be shortchanged. We help you have the Double Win—where you win at work and succeed at life.
Tagline:
Win at Work and Succeed at Life
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If you’d like a FREE audit/analysis of your one liner and tagline, we really enjoy helping organizations and individuals work through it. Contact us and we’ll book a time to chat. No pressure or obligation…just a chat…we’re here to help.