50 Catchy Marketing Phrases That Sell (And How to Improve Them)

Most business writers would agree that creating marketing collateral would be a lot easier if there were words and phrases absolutely guaranteed to sell. If only there were some magical, hypnotic phrase that tapped directly into your audience’s brain and convinced them to take action!

We can’t provide you with any magic words, but there are certain marketing phrases with a long, proven history of engaging and persuading potential customers.

You’ve probably seen these power phrases for sales used many times before—in advertisements, documents, signage and other business collateral. Even though the best marketing phrases are often considered business cliches, that’s only because they’re a tried-and-true method of grabbing your audience’s attention.

Consider incorporating any of the following marketing phrases and slogans into your next sales or business writing project:

‘Buy one, get one free’ is a common marketing phrase that tends to get consistent results. That’s why you frequently see it in a wide variety of marketing across multiple mediums. Photo Credit: Tim Bland

Making Marketing Phrases Your Own

These are good starting points, but not all of them will be a good fit with your particular company. There also may be times when standard marketing catch phrases just won’t do—especially when your collateral will be placed adjacent to that of other businesses (such as the tourism rack cards at a hotel or a board packed with various flyers). No one wants to be just another voice in a crowd, saying the exact same things as everyone else. Try to be creative and put your own unique spin on these power phrases.

Consider what makes your company stand out and apply these properties to your writing. For example, say your business specializes in pain psychology. “Talk to an expert” is catchy, but it’s fairly generic and could apply to any number of businesses. To make it unique to you, you might specify the type of expert customers can talk to: “Talk to a qualified psychologist.”

Going one step further, you could also tweak the phrase so that it communicates the benefit customers will receive: psychologists will “ease your pain.” If you combine these elements together, you end up with “Let our qualified psychologists ease your pain.” That’s a much more powerful tagline than “talk to an expert.”

Alternatively, consider the ad below for the Bud Phone mobile service, which uses a more general approach but rewords a marketing phrase in a unique way. Rather than simply saying “Pay nothing” or “Get it free,” the advertisement makes a comparison to emphasize the negative consequences of not taking action.

Photo Credit: Liam Mooney

“Pay nothing” and “get it free” are very powerful and catchy sale phrases, but we see them all the time, and many of us have preconceived emotional responses to those words based on our past experiences. For example, I signed up to receive a newsletter from a company at a trade show because of the free prize, but by the time I got it home, it was broken. Because of that experience, I might associate “Get it free” with “Get a piece of junk for free” in my head.

Instead of a call to action, it’s almost like a call to inaction: “Don’t pay.” That sounds much easier to do, doesn’t it? It also implies: “If you pay for this, you’ll be wasting money because you can get it for free.”

It’s a universal concept that any audience can identify with regardless of the product being sold, so in this case, being more general actually works to the company’s advantage. It helps the headline to get past people’s preconceived conditions (their satisfaction with their cell phone service, their anxiety about changing their current service, etc.). Therefore, the word “something” is more impactful and engaging than a more specific term like “cell phone service.”

Conclusion

Catchy sale phrases can help to power up your business writing, but be careful not to use them as a crutch. The best business writing consists of an artful blend of dependable marketing phrases and personal creativity.

Can you think of more great marketing phrases that sell? Or an interesting way of spicing up one of the power phrases listed here? Please leave your ideas in the comments!

Posted in Copywriting