What’s Your Elevator Pitch?

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you are often asked what you do.  Be it from family, friends or attendees at a conference, people want to know about your business. Knowing this, how many times have you started and ended with something like, “huh?” Well, get ready for your story to change.

Having a quick, interesting, powerful answer — an elevator pitch — is a simple and effective means to not only describe what you do, but may lead to opportunities that you did not even know it existed.  As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

When you describe your business, you want to prepare a pitch that will spark someone’s interest and have them saying, “Tell me more!”  Here are a few questions you must answer to create a good elevator pitch:

1.  What problem are you trying to solve?
2.  Can you keep it simple?  Use plain English, be intriguing and speak with conviction.
3.  Why would people want to know more?  Instead of “I am a graphic artist,” start with “I help people get more business by illustrating their dreams.”
4.  Does it accelerate your heart rate?

While these questions should get your creative juices flowing, grab a copy of Chris O’Leary’s Elevator Pitch Essentials to get the full run down on how to get your point across and leave a lasting impression in two minutes or less. You can also get some tips over at StartUp Nation.

Developing A Marketing Plan

Marketing, advertising and branding makeup your business image.  If they reinforce one another and communicate a unified message, then your business image will result in a clear identity that people can recall.

Marketing, boiled down, is the combination of all your efforts to get people to remember your business.  It includes everything from how you answer the phone to how you deal with complaints to how you design your signs, logos, letterhead and promotions.  Marketing, more than anything else, is what builds your brand. An identifiable brand is the hook that gets people to remember your business.  And, if they remember you, they will likely buy from you.

When framing your business, you want to create a distinctive personality and a memorable brand, by marketing a consistent theme.  Developing a marketing plan will help you do just that.  To get started, consider the following:

1.  Determine the purpose, size and budget of your marketing campaign.
2.  Decide what medium (or media) works best for your business, brand and budget.
3.  Come up with marketing materials that build on that brand.
4.  Test the materials.
5.  Once you are convinced that you have a marketing method that works, roll it out.

For more details and a step-by-step system to create a simple, effective and affordable marketing campaign, take a look a Marketing Plan Pro designed by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Plan Pro contains a structure to complete a well thought out actionable plan and allows you to monitor the progress you are making. It includes great instructions with the videos embedded of John Jantsch giving helpful tips along the way.

Failing To Prepare Is Preparing To Fail

An essential part of any business is a strategic plan. Creating a strategic plan can mean the difference between you working 60 to 80 hours a week and barely breaking even or working 10 to 20 hours and making a profit. [Read more]