What Is a Business Motto?

A business motto is an important symbol of your company. For customers, it is an expression of the value that your company creates through a unique combination of business practices. For employees, a motto is the purpose for the company and an expression of the company's culture. The simpler that you can keep the business motto, the easier it will be for people to remember. You can also use this expression to brand your company.

For many companies, a motto is a short statement that gives them recognition in the marketplace. According to "Entrepreneur's" Small Business Encyclopedia, a slogan is "a catch phrase or small group of words that are combined in a special way to identify a product or company." It's best to pick a motto that is broad and inclusive enough to represent multiple products or services if it will represent the entire company.

Your business motto can be memorable to customers, but competitors might use variations of the words to downplay your business model. Therefore, it's important to invent a motto that communicates your company's vision without undermining future products or services that you might introduce to the market. Simon Middleton offers an example of the Tesco grocery chain, based in Great Britain, in his book, "What You Need to Know About Marketing." He describes how Tesco grew to build huge grocery stores at the edge of town like Wal-Mart. The chain also introduced smaller neighborhood stores. Competitors have changed its catch phrase -- "Every Little Helps" -- to "Every Little Hurts," in a reference to the impact of its big-box stores.

Your motto should inspire staff to behave in ways that support company operations and reinforce the brand. After all, you want employees to take pride in working for your business and for the quality of products or services delivered to customers. Employees will appreciate it if you take the time to test a new motto on them before publishing it.

Writing a new motto is a chance to get employees involved in developing the direction of the company. They will have many suggestions, and in them you might see the beliefs that are most important to them as well as the values that you communicate as the business owner. If employees invest themselves in the future by contributing to this mini mission statement, you will already have some of their support when it's time to pursue new goals. The goals will have to change according to fluctuations in the market. Whatever motto you and your staff choose must also resonate with customers.