There are many books in marketing that talk about the elevator pitch. So why is it that the elevator pitch is actually something valuable in online marketing?
In my opinion it has to do with the fact that it allows the business owner (or the marketer) to become clear about what he is offering to the target market. In my experience, I have seen many examples of business owners that have an incredibly difficult time explaining what is the exact problem that they solve. Not to mention, that when they do explain it, its different every time.
When I help business owners come up with their elevator pitch, I have a set routine that I make them go through so that the result is a memorable (something they can memorize) paragraph that they can share with the world.
Allow me to share this routine with you.
1. Who are you?
The answer to this question is pretty straight forward. You may be tempted to just introduce your business name, instead of your personal name, however people like to be introduced to a person. If you introduce your business without introducing yourself, you’ll distance yourself from the person and that will come through. Think of your name and how you want your audience to receive that name. For example is it better to use Margaret or Maggie? Is it better to just introduce yourself with just your first name? Think about the effect that you want to create in your audience.
2. Who are you in your business?
Now that you have said your name, you need to give yourself a title. This title doesn’t have to be a real title necessarily. For example if you are the vice president of marketing, you don’t necessarily have to introduce yourself as James Vanderbilt, vice president of marketing. You may chose to use “I am in charge of making things happen at”, or “I’m the rainmaker at” or “I’m an uber-evangelist at”, etc.
3. What is the name of your business?
Self explanatory in my opinion.
4. Location of your business. Because you do business on the web, it is important to share where is your business located. This may be considered an optional element if you are the kind of person that has a few offices in different locations. But for the most part, even if you have to say just one of them, it is better for your audience to “draw” a picture of where you are from. There’s also an important issue here. If you are from a city that has a negative connotation, think twice before sharing it. I remember an example of a perfume company that was based out of a small city in North Carolina and they decided to include the name of the city in the box. Their sales were under performing. Once they changed the city in the box to one of their offices in Paris, France, their sales took off. This small change made a huge perceptual difference. People don’t want to wear perfumes that come from unattractive cities. They want glamour. They want shinny lights. So make sure that to leave out the city, if you feel like it can hurt instead of help.
5. What do you do that provides immediate value to your audience?
This part is as simple as defining the core value of what you offer. If you sale car parts, your immediate value can be “saving car owners money” or “increasing car performance with little effort” or “increasing car’s fuel efficiency”, etc.
Phrase it in a way that your audience will feel drawn to you. In other words, make sure that it grabs their attention and interest.
6. How do you intend to do deliver the main value? Or in other words, what are your main products or services? In the example of the car parts, it can be something along the lines of “through carefully engineered parts” or “by sharing industry’s top mechanic secrets”.
Putting it all together would look like this:
Hi, my name is James Vanderbilt and I am the Auto Part Dude from Texas! I am in a journey to make car owners bring the highest performance to their machines by finding the industry’s best components.
Another example:
Hi, my name is Cesar Vanderbilt, and I am the Dog Enchanter. I take dog problems away and make their owners truly enjoy their pets. Let’s embark on a journey to make your pet your real best friend by using professional dog psychology, training and resources.
