During our planning sessions for 2022, as a team, James and I recognised that Xava needed to pivot and start providing solutions for our clients. As such our existing tagline of “bePresent, beSocial beFound” seemed an inadequate fit.

Also, we no longer provide the social media related services directly so having it in our tagline seemed like a luxury we couldn’t afford anymore given the fact that we operate in a very competitive business landscape.

I felt that our tagline needed to connect with my clients straight away. This set me on a journey and I started with 3 goals – craft a simple message, convey that message quickly and make sure the message is memorable. Being memorable was important when trying to stand out of the crowd so I decided to rely on my old literary friend, alliteration.

Personally, I find alliterative text easy to remember and rather memorable. And seeing as I am the founder and owner of Xava, I had complete control over the process so the decision was quick and simple.

Create & Connect

I started by listing the services Xava provides or would like to provide for its clients and the list was:

1. Design of websites
2. Development of websites and related functionality
3. Customisation of website
4. Optimisation of websites
5. Management of websites
6. E-Commerce design and sales funnel optimisation
7. Implementation of the sales funnel optimisation
8. Consultancy and advice on how to expand your online business
9. Search Engine Optimisation

There were other minor services but a little soul searching, market analysis and client interviews informed me that I needed to focus on our core service of website design and development. Keeping that in mind I could classify the above list in 2 main areas:

The table made it abundantly clear that there were 2 primary business verticals – one focussed on helping people start something new and the second around helping people manage and grow an existing online asset.

Once the 2 business verticals had been clearly defined, it did not take long for me to label the 2 verticals as “Create & Connect” because, essentially, Xava helps its clients create a website to connect with their customers.

I agree that there are some longer term services such as the website management that are more under the category of staying connected with customers but a little bit of poetic license took care of that I settled on “Create & Connect”

Telling the world about Create & Connect

Now that I had settled on the “Create & Connect” tagline, I needed a way of communicating this with my target market and I decided to use an animated video explainer because, a colleague of mine, Paul McDermott, not only creates them but is also very good at what he does. So I picked up the phone and call Paul and told him that Xava was going to work with Social Video HQ for our marketing video to showcase the “Create & Connect” tagline to the world.

The result is a video that I am very proud of, least of all because I did the voiceovers, because in one minute it tell my customers all about our design process in an engaging and meaningful way.