One of the most important things an owner or manager can do to help market their business is to have an accurate and up to date business description. If you think of the 30-second elevator speech as a framework, the 5+1 business description will be a concise tool used to begin your company’s story. We’ll take a look at the 5+1 structure, which is taken from news journalism for its simplicity and accuracy. That structure is the basic “Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.” This is the 5 W’s + 1.
Reason #1 “Who are you?”
This is rather straightforward and generally needs no amplification. A factual statement of your company. This is the foundational piece for your business description. Here is our example:
Total Online Marketing LLC is a Dallas, Texas based digital marketing company with the primary office located at 8330 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy, Executive Tower III. The principal owner is Derrel Allen and the two additional members are Jon W. Ball and J. T. Moran. Contact information for Total Online Marketing by phone is (469) 324-9783 and toll free at (866)827-5337. Digital communication is via email [email protected] and the primary website is https://www.totalmagic.com.
Your business description helps navigate online
Reason #2 “What does your business do?”
Without going into super-sales mode, this part of the business description states what it is that your business does. This might be more mundane than what you would generally present to a prospect, but it should be the truthful and descriptive explanation of your day-to-day operations. Take a look at ours:
Total Online Marketing LLC manages client digital properties which generally includes their website(s), social media properties, and digital marketing communications. This digital properties management is accomplished by consultation of strategy, content processes, advertising spend management, and other necessary digital marketing tasks. Total Online Marketing works with the client and their team to provide website properties that are highly converting for sales and customer engagement. Additionally, our staff will directly manage search and social marketing advertising channels such as Google Adwords Partner Program, Facebook Advertising and others. Total Online Marketing can design and implement websites and social digital properties on behalf of our clients.
Reason #3 “Where do you do business?”
With where, the implied question is “where are you located?”, but could actually be “where can we meet?” In my example of “Reason #1” above, I stated the company location part of the the business description. I can now take the opportunity to reinforce that information and include other pertinent facts. For example:
Total Online Marketing is flexible in meeting with clients and prospects. With the landscape of the world wide web, digital meetings are common and employed by us; however, we generally love face-to-face meetings and will strive to make those arrangements. Meetings can take place at our office location in Dallas or at client’s facility.
Reason #4 “When are you available to do business?”
There are some time restrictions that have to be considered when doing business. Look at a clock, there are only 24 hours in a day. By stating your hours of operation clearly, you can set expectations of your prospects and customers. Granted there will be times that these boundaries are expanded, but establishing a set time frame will help prevent abuse when push comes to shove. Here is our example:
Our normal business hours are Monday — Friday, 9am-6pm Central Time.
Reason #5 “Why do you do business?”
This is where your company vision statement and mission statement can provide direction in creating the business description. Sometimes describing your company world view, influences of current events, and life happenings will clearly define your business purpose and meaning. A manufacturer of health products could be in business to help people maintain a healthy life because of issues with family members who were afflicted by poor health. Auto manufacturers build vehicles to help people be more mobile and stylish. Here is our example of why we do what we do:
Total Online Marketing LLC seeks to help businesses gain more customers, clients and patients. We realize that increasing a business’ sales will give them the opportunity to share their success in their community with more jobs, charity and happiness.
That’s the Five W’s. Now for the final point: HOW!
Reason #+1 “How do you do your business?”
Your “how” business description should contain the general statements of what processes, strategies, and functions your company employs to provide your product and service. This description provides the opportunity to detail your unique selling proposition. You didn’t invent the wheel, but if you sell a wheel, what makes your wheel better than other wheels? Here is the example we provide:
Total Online Marketing uses industry standard best practices to create a digital environment that produces top ranked business websites. These practices include optimal social media engagement, authoritative content, practical imagery and video assets, and guideline approved data structure. These practices insure positive reaction by the search engines to give our customers priority position in the search engine results pages.
Get Started On Your Business Description Today
This outline has given you a process to build your business description. Using the 5 W’s + How method will help you focus on giving customers, clients and prospect the information they need to make a decision regarding your company. If you need further help in building a description, use our discovery form to help dig into how you understand your business. This form will go through the process of your business cycle and allow you to quantify your customer and current digital marketing processes.
