Once you know:

• WHAT your business is
• HOW you are solving people’s problems, fulfilling their desire, or meeting their needs
• WHO your ideal site visitor (customer) is, and
• WHY they would want to follow you, read your stuff, subscribe to your site and buy from YOU, rather than a competitor…

…then it’s time to distill all of that information into one or two sentences.

Cocktails & Elevators

Some people call this your elevator speech: You’re in an elevator and someone asks you, “So what do you do?” and you have to answer them before the door dings and they get off the elevator.

Other people call it your cocktail party answer: You’re at a cocktail party (or networking event) and you’re just introduced to someone new, they ask you, “So what do you do for a living?” If you give a boring answer, they will either drop the topic, or go find someone else to talk to. If you have a good answer, the person will likely ask you for more details or information – because you have piqued their interest.

Many people are highly resistant to encapsulating their business this way – if that’s you, then it most likely signals that you have resistance to putting yourself out there. So again, are you in, or are you out? If you’re in, then get that pesky little ego out of the way and get your cocktail party answer together. Already have one for your existing biz? You know what I’m going to say! Tighten your belt, wipe the slate clean, do it anyway, and see if any new insights emerge.

This is not so that you’ll have something to say at cocktail parties, or when riding in elevators! Your one or two sentence answer to the question, What do you do? is crucial for these reasons:

• You need the answer for your website; where you will have 3 – 6 seconds to capture your site visitor’s attention before they click away.

• You will need it for networking, business meetings, bank meetings, radio interviews, teleseminars, etc.

• You need it for the person at a dinner party, or on the soccer field, or after church who asks you what you do and just happens to be your next customer.

Make sure your answer to the question, What do you do? includes the benefits or problem that you solve for your customer, not just a dry descriptor.

Rather than saying, “I’m a mortgage broker”, say, “I help people finance the house of their dreams.” You see the difference?

Or how about, “I train horses” versus: “I help horses and owners overcome their blocks and achieve unity.” BIG difference when you focus on the benefit.

It is vital that you know WHO your average customer is and WHAT it is that they want or need before you continue here and start drilling down to create a compelling elevator speech. If you haven’t already done so, the stop here, bookmark this page, and follow these links: How Do I Figure Out Who My Customer Is? And How Do I Offer Exactly What My Customer Needs?. Take a bit of time to go through those processes FIRST on paper, screen, or recording device. Without these answers, you won’t have much to draw on for your elevator speech.

Still with me?

Stories sell because they show you are resonating emotionally with your site visitor. And if you are emotionally in touch with your ideal customer (follow the links above if you don’t think you are!), you will know which benefit they are longing for, or needing to experience.

So let’s make it easy with some some fill-in-the-blank formulas that you can use to create your cocktail party, or elevator speech…

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Look back over your notes about who you customer is and what they need or want. Then take the top benefit(s) your customer experiences with you and make those benefits into a descriptive sentence. This descriptive sentence (or two) is going to be your cocktail party, or elevator speech.

Make sure your answer gives the problem you solve, the pain you relieve, or the desire you fulfill. This automatically ensures that your business description contains a benefit to your site visitor.

Remember everything you’ve learned about how and why storytelling sells? This your chance to tell your story, but in speed format, like a trailer for a movie or a summary phrase on the back of a book.

If you’re stuck, use these phrases to kick off your elevator speech. Just write out your answers and fill in the sections in the square brackets [  ] for yourself:

So when someone asks you, “What do you do, exactly?
” You say…

1. I help [who is your customer] have/reach/get/achieve [benefit].

Example: I help high school grads have the best college experience by finding them the perfect school for their strengths and talents.

OR

2. I teach [who is your customer] how to [benefit].

Example: I teach dog owners how to have a calm, happy dog by transforming their relationship dynamic and helping them become the Pack Leader.

OR

3. I show [who is your customer] how to [benefit].

Example: I show realtors how to double their sales and cut their ad budget in half.

OR, a little different…

4. I connect you with [emotion or benefit] so you can [benefit].

Example: I connect you with your best self so you can live your best life.

OR

5. I make people’s lives [emotion or benefit] by [benefit].

Example: I make people’s lives more meaningful by connecting them to their true desires.

OR

6. I give people [emotion or benefit] so you can [benefit].

Example: I give people hope by providing the support structure they need to care compassionately for their disabled child.

 

Here are some other phrases you can use to kick off your benefit-laden elevator speech that answers the question, What do you do? Now write yours here:

 

I transform…

I facilitate…

I write…

I paint…

I program…

I enable…

I empower…

 

Can you think of any other ways to start your elevator speech? Go ahead and brainstorm as many different elevator speech answers as you can (do at least 5!):

1.________________________________________

2.________________________________________

3.________________________________________

4.________________________________________

5.________________________________________

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If you find you’re still not crystal clear on how to define your customer or your business, Mark Silver’s workbook What Do You Do? also helps you nail down who your customer is and what problem you solve for them. Right-click to download: What Do You Do?

 

Once you’ve worked out your elevator speech (your one or two sentence answer to the question, “What do you do?”) it’s time to take that answer and distill it down even further into a single line of text, or approximately 10 words.

This is called your tagline and it is such an important little snippet that even Google+ is making you come up with a 10 word tagline to describe yourself when you register for an account!

Why Do I Need A Tagline?

Site tracking software shows that when someone visits your site, you have about 3 – 6 seconds to grab their interest, or they will leave your site.

So part of what will immediately hook them in and make them feel like you’re talking directly to them is a strong, benefit-laden tagline. You can read a tagline in about 1-2 seconds, so that still leaves you with 4 seconds to communicate visually how you can solve their problem, soothe their pain, or fulfill their desire.

So let’s look at an example of how to create a tagline.

It took my hubby and I two days of emailing back and forth to create this tagline for LTYF by distilling it down until it went ‘click’ I love it! So ask your family and friends for help and take your time with it.

Also, don’t worry too much if you don’t get it perfect. You just need to get something decent for now and use that until you come up with something fabulous.

That’s what happened with my health site, Listen To Your Gut. We were so crazy busy getting that site up, because we were amalgamating about eight different sites into one – with literally thousands of pages of content. We just did not have time to come up with a good tagline.

So for almost a year, the tagline on that site was:

It was okay, but not great – not something you’d even remember! The benefit was the “tried and tested” part. And because we were also in the process of switching our primary brand from Jini, to Listen To Your Gut, we wanted people to know they’d still come to the right place.

How To Brainstorm A Tagline

Then we got some time and space to come up with a better tagline. And I figured it would also be the perfect opportunity to show you exactly how we arrive at a good tagline.

Below is my brainstorming session with my husband Ian. I wanted to share it with you to give you a clear idea of how a great tagline can develop over time, and what a good brainstorming session may look like. Here we go…

So we started by asking the same type of questions you’ve been answering:

When someone comes to Listen To Your Gut, what are they wanting to feel?

Finally giving people the hope that they can actually live a better life – whether it’s Crohn’s, acne, rectal spasm, flu, etc.

What is their need?

They want to get better. They’re desperate, they’re at their wit’s end. They can’t believe that this might actually be it, really??

What is their greatest desire?

Be rid of their condition.

Why? What will change if they get rid of their condition?

They will have freedom; go to the bathroom normally, play sports, play with their kids, travel, feel healthy and strong

What’s the ultimate benefit for trying all my stuff?

Okay, now here’s where we start distilling down and fleshing out the benefits – in one sentence only. Here’s our dialogue of answers to this last question as we just pinged them back and forth. You’ll see that some of them stink – that’s okay! In fact, that’s good, because it proves that you’re truly letting it all flow and trusting that you’ll eventually get there:

DAY ONE

What’s the ultimate benefit for trying all my stuff?

Freedom, healthier, more joyful.

Giving you hope to live a freer life

Giving you the hope to feel healthier every day

Giving you the hope and tools for healing

The hope to have a freer and healthier life

Giving you hope for a freer, joyful, healthier life

Live a more joyful, free, healthy life

Good health is true wealth

Full body, vibrant health, joy and freedom

Live free. Live fun.

Finally live free

Finally be free

Finally live in freedom, joy and be healthy

Finally live free. Smile every day. Enjoy your life.

Finally live free. Live joy.

Finally live free. Enjoy your life.

Finally live free. Enjoy living.

Finally be free. To live and enjoy.

Finally live free. Have hope. Feel good.

Finally live free. Be hopeful. Feel good.

DAY TWO

Took a break from tagline brainstorming and hung out with the kids.

DAY THREE

Came up with these by myself, and emailed them to Ian for feedback and further brainstorming:

Hope. Renew. Finally live free.

Feel hope. Renew. Finally live free.

Feel hope. Heal. Finally live free.

Get hope. Heal. Finally live free.

Gain hope. Heal. Finally live free.

IAN wrote back:

no – does not work for me…there is no joy here….the feeling is an ecstatic feeling of joy, relief and being able to do the things you never ever thought you would be able to do again,,,,

So…

Listen to your gut
Giving you hope to live in joy to be free to live the way you always wanted…
or something like that.

THEN I emailed him:

Wishing you joy at the relief of finally getting your life back.

Be yourself again ~ Hope, Healing, Joy

Find yourself again – live in hope and joy

Hope, joy, freedom – get your life back.

Then Ian emailed me:

Bringing you the hope to be free to live in joy again!

DAY FOUR

I emailed him:

Bringing you hope to live in joy and freedom again!

IAN wrote back:

Bringing you hope to live in joy and freedom forever!

I wrote back to him:

just not gelling…. we need a new angle.

How about…

Your gateway to hope, joy and freedom!

Your gateway to hope, freedom and joy!

Start here for hope, freedom and joy!

Helping you in your healing journey to freedom and joy

Journey to hope, freedom and joy!

OR

Take back your hope, freedom and joy – take back your life!

Find your hope and joy – get your life back!

Rediscover hope, joy and freedom.

Rediscover hope, joy and freedom – take back your life!

Ian wrote:

Let’s go to lunch tomorrow and discuss it then.

We then let things sit for a full week.

DAY ELEVEN

I sent these to Ian after some more verbal brainstorming:

Heal your life. Embrace joy

Heal your whole self – live joyfully

Heal your whole self and live in joy

Welcome joy and heal your whole self

Embrace joy and heal your whole self

Live in joy and heal all the parts of your self

Live Joyfully and Heal your Whole Self

Vibrant health is real wealth

Your path to vibrant health, joy and real wealth

Your Pathway to Vibrant health, Joy and Real wealth (sounds like an MLM scheme!)

Vibrant health is REAL wealth

Joyful, vibrant, full-body health

Vibrant Health : Full-body Joy

Ian emailed back:

Attain vibrant health. In freedom and joy!

DAY THIRTEEN

I emailed Ian:

Solutions for Joyful, Vibrant Health

Your Pathway to Joyful, Vibrant Health

Facilitating your Healing Journey to Joyful, Vibrant Health

Ian emailed back:

Inspiring joyful, vibrant health

Inspiring you to live

Heal your body, heal your life

I picked up the phone to brainstorm verbally and then we came up with:

Giving you motivation, inspiration and hope for a joyful, vibrant life

Which we shortened to:

Motivation, Inspiration and Hope for a Healthy, Joyful, Vibrant Life

And that’s the one you now see on the homepage of our site at: www.ListenToYourGut.com

However, we kept our previous tagline the same on our Shoppe – because we felt it more accurately reflected the benefit of why someone should buy their health products from us, Tried & Tested.

So don’t get discouraged if it takes you awhile to come up with yours. Alternatively, you might have a flash of inspiration and nail yours in five minutes flat. It’s all good.

Your Turn

Alright, so let’s start your brainstorming process for your tagline. You may want to begin with just you and a pen and paper and that may be all you need to tap into something brilliant. Or that may just get you part of the way…

Then you take the best ones you’ve been able to come up with and you brainstorm some more with a friend or two, and/or your partner or anyone else you trust and who “gets” what you’re doing.

Remember, you just have to come up with something “good enough” at this point. As long at it contains your top benefit(s) it’s all good. You can always improve upon it later, so let’s just get started!

Don’t brush this off as too much work! Your tagline is one of the cornerstones of your business – think of these taglines and how they’ve wormed their way into your brain and even an entire culture and you’ll see why this is so important:

Live your best life.	Oprah
Just do it.	Nike
Don’t leave home without it	American Express
Takes a licking and keeps on ticking	Timex
Reach out and touch someone	AT&T
Melts in your mouth, not in your hands	M&M Candies

 

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Take your one or two sentence elevator speech, which answers the question, What do you do? [that solves my problem, or heals my pain, or entertains me, or fulfills my desire] and write it here:

So what do you do?

 

Answer each of these questions to summarize your elevator speech even further (trust me!), and distill it down to the crucial points:

When someone comes to my site, what are they wanting to feel?

 

What is their need?

 

What is their greatest desire?

 

Why? What will change if they ___________________________ [achieve their need, fulfill this desire, relieve this pain]?

 

Now you’re ready for the final question that will eventually become your tagline. So answer this question with as many one-sentence (roughly 10 words) answers as you can brainstorm:

What’s the ultimate benefit for trying/using my stuff or services?

 

NOW, go through this entire process with at least two other people who understand what you’re trying to do with your new business. Ask each of them all these questions and write down their answers.

Don’t worry if their wording is not great. What you’re after is their ideas, a novel way of looking at stuff you’ve been staring at for so long now you can’t see the wood for the trees!

Buddy #1

When someone comes to my site, what are they wanting to feel?

What is their need?

What is their greatest desire?

Why? What will change if they ____________________ [achieve their need, fulfill this desire, relieve this pain]?

What’s the ultimate benefit for trying/using all my stuff or services?

 

Buddy #2

When someone comes to my site, what are they wanting to feel?

What is their need?

What is their greatest desire?

Why? What will change if they _________________________ [achieve their need, ful ll this desire, relieve this pain]?

What’s the ultimate benefit for trying/using all my stuff or services?

 

Amalgamate

You should have at least three sets of questions and answers from your tagline brainstorm session now. Let these sit for a day or two and then go over them all again. Pull out what you think is your best tagline for right now. And write it down:

My Tagline: __________________________________

Don’t worry if this takes you a day or a week to hit upon something you like. Just keep working it. Letting it sit. Then working it again until you get something you’re happy with. I always carry a tiny notebook and pen in my purse, because my best ideas can strike when I’m out doing something totally unrelated.

Also, get together with a good, supportive friend and brainstorm together. It is always more creative and the ideas flow easier when you are bouncing them around with another person.

Once you have an idea for your business nailed down, you’re going to need to dig even deeper and uncover your true feelings about your new business. Your feelings, perceptions and experiences are going to combine to “tell your story” about your business – your products, your service, your solution, your help, your fabulous thing that meets their desire or need.

I’m going to take you through this process because you really need to have your story – stories about your products, your services, your journey – up-front in your mind when you’re designing (or rethinking) the presentation and flow of your site. If you only take one thing from it all, let it be this:

People don’t buy objects, they buy stories.

This means that the benefit your buyer will experience is more important than the ‘thing’ you are selling. It means that the final decision to part with money is an emotional one; yes, you also have to meet all the logical, operational requirements, but the final decision as to whether a site visitor buys your widget, or someone else’s, is an emotional, gut-based decision.

Let me share a few examples (stories!) with you to illustrate exactly what I mean and just how important it is to tell stories about your products and process.

Ebay Experiments

David Ogilvy was one of the first big advertising guys to prove that storytelling (a full page worth of small-font size text) sold extremely well.

When we think of story-based advertising, we may think of those mile-long Internet sales letters, or slick ads in niche-market magazines. But the two examples following show the unmatched power of storytelling even in difficult markets like art and flea market sales.

Chris Tyrell, who teaches artists how to market their work, tells a story about an artist who tested storytelling as a sales technique:

The artist I interviewed conducted an experiment by offering the same artwork (an etching) for sale on two different websites. She provided two dramatically different stories about the piece on each site: one story was extremely poignant while the other was mundane. The piece with the compelling emotional story attached to it sold for almost double the price of the same piece that was described in cool, unemotional and technical terms.”

Chris goes on to provide other examples to prove his point and the one that struck me most was an Ebay experiment; where a group of testers took items purchased at thrift stores and flea markets and then put them up for sale on Ebay… with a good story attached.

They hired professional writers to write a unique, interesting, emotionally-driven story for each piece listed for sale.

What they discovered was that $128 worth of second-hand purchases netted them $3600 on Ebay – simply by attaching an emotionally compelling story to each piece! Following is an example of what they did.

They took this wooden animal figure, purchased for 75 cents at a local thrift store:

They listed it on Ebay, along with an emotionally compelling story about how the seller received this handmade, hand painted carving from her boyfriend after he ran off to Cabo San Lucas with her best friend… and it sold for $108.50!!

They also made sure that the photos of each object were good ones (as shown) – presentation always helps. But the bottom line here is that the customer paid 75 cents for the product and $107.75 for the story!

So how can you work more storytelling into your business, products, or service?

So many people are hesitant to tell their personal stories – either thinking they’re not that interesting, they don’t want to boast, or they simply don’t feel comfortable sharing their private details.

Well, if you can’t tell your own stories, find other ones to tell. Or tell a story about something you read or heard about. As long as it’s interesting, or moving, that’s all you need.

Proving The Point

Justin Gignac is a New York City based artist and entrepreneur. He began selling garbage in 2001 after a co-worker challenged him over the importance of package design. To prove his point, he set out to find something that no one in their right mind would ever buy – and package it (story, branding, positioning and presentation) in a way that would sell.

Looking around the dirty streets of Times Square, garbage was the perfect answer. Who would pay money for garbage?

However, Gignac designed the packaging, positioning and branding for his product – NYC Garbage – in a way that was kitschy, attention-grabbing, told a story, and would automatically prompt people to discuss the story (What is that?? Where did you get that? That’s hilarious! etc.). Here’s what his NYC Garbage cubes look like – and note the price point:

Eleven years later, over 1,300 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold and now reside in 29 countries around the world. Gignac has a retail location in New York, along with his online store: www.nycgarbage.com

I’ll say it again: YES, you must have a quality product or service to offer. You can use an emotionally compelling story to sell a crappy product ONCE, but will that person buy again? And will they refer their friends? And will they go on Facebook, forums, blogs, Twitter and recommend you? Probably not.

Will they go to these same social media platforms and insult you and vent their anger and frustration? They probably will. So dig deep into your own integrity and make sure that whatever you sell is something that you yourself would be happy to have spent your money on. And then go tell stories about it.

In fact, let’s start right now, grab your favourite way of writing or recording and answer these questions – these ones are going to be incredibly useful to you written down, so don’t skip this part!

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Read each question one-by-one and immediately write (or voice record) your answer. Or, have a friend ask you the questions and you answer them truthfully and fully:

Your Story

1. “What made you start this business?”
2. “How did you come up with the idea for this business?”
3. “Where did your motivation come from to o er this to people?”
4. “What’s the story behind your product/service, how did you decide to turn this into a business?”
5. “Where did you come from, what did you do before this and how did that lead you to here?”

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Voila! Guess what? You’ve just written your copy for the ABOUT page on your website – didn’t I tell you this would be useful? But wait, we’re not done…

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Your Product Story

If you have a product-based business, or you offer a specific service (like tax returns, or healing sessions, or house appraisals), then also tell stories about each of your products or services. Answer all of these questions for each different product or service you offer – and if you don’t know the answer yet, imagine what it could be and write that. Again, pretend your company is already successful and a reporter has called you and is asking you:

1. “Why did you choose to do this product, instead of product X (another product you could have done)?”
2. “There are already lots of X on the market, what made you think there was a place for yours?”
3. “Why is your product be er than all the others?”
4. “What do you do differently from other companies?”
5. “Why has your company succeeded when so many others struggle or have failed?”

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The most common place on your site to use these kinds of stories is on your ABOUT page and you will likely use part of it on your Homepage. But you will also use them repeatedly in your marketing materials, teleseminars, interviews, discussions with customers, etc.

It is your own personal stories that engage your site visitor’s emotions. Telling stories about your personal journey, or stories about your product or service lets your site visitor get to know you, and then they feel connected to you; they are emotionally engaged.

If someone feels you’re speaking directly to them, if your story touches their heart, or makes them feel recognition and a resounding “yes!” inside them, then you have them.

So if you haven’t yet, just pretend you’re live on-air and answer the questions above – also give any other details, info, or other stories, examples that pop into your mind. Don’t edit now! Just let everything flow out.

Remember, if you hate to write, then grab your mp3 recording device and record your stories. Then you can have someone else transcribe them into a Word document that you can just copy/paste into your website. Either hire someone from Elance or Fiverr, or get your Mum, daughter, cousin, whoever is willing, to do it for you!

And if you’re struggling to start, or you haven’t written down anything that makes you full-of-beans excited for the next step, why don’t we dive a little deeper into why that might be?

When you have a niche, or business idea that you are excited about and want to pursue, or when you’ve got something up and running but business is slow, pull back for a short time and do a quick scan of your competitors in that niche.

This will give you a good look at whether your idea is specialized enough to stand out, or not. If you find that it isn’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have chosen a bad idea, or that the market is already flooded with people doing what you want to do, so you better find a new idea. Not at all. Remember all you have learned about your special uniqueness!

What this will help you to do is realize where you need to emphasize, develop, or dig deeper to REALLY set yourself apart from others, or where you need to speak more authentically to your ideal customer.

Kitchen Wisdom

Let’s take the Recipe Blog niche as an example. Been online lately? You’ll notice that the Internet is completely flooded with really great baking and cooking blogs. This niche is super-developed, with gorgeous photos, original artwork, cohesive branding, cookbooks for sale, you name it. Sounds like a bad niche to pick doesn’t it? Even if you love cooking more than anything.

But wait! Look for the opportunities, look for the holes in marketplace…

Let’s say you specialize in gluten-free baking – that’s a niche specialization isn’t it? Go search for gluten-free baking sites, research your competition, and you will find the same thing: Thousands of them. So dig further…

What about gluten-free and sugar-free? Ah now we’re talking! Sugar is used in abundance to make up for the browning and mouthfeel missing from gluten-free (GF) baking. Go ahead, try and find sites with great recipes for GF, sugar-free baking. Good luck. Because there are very few – and none that I’ve found with good recipes – good enough that my kids will eat them.

So now we have niched down within your field of interest to a sub-sub-category that is wide open and begging for inspiration and leadership! What if you became the expert on healthy, natural sugar substitutes like stevia, xylitol (from hardwood trees, not GMO corn), lo han guo (Chinese fruit extract) and Thaumatin (extracted from African Ketemfe berries). AND you become one of the few places where customers can purchase these sweeteners?

Or, what if you realize that everyone features printed recipes and photos. So you decide to stand out by shooting a video for every recipe. Maybe you wear kooky outfits, or maybe you love haute couture, so you dress to the nines – you choose a visual persona that encapsulates YOU. And that becomes yet another way to stand out.

Maybe you’re a guy and you talk about photography while you’re cooking. Maybe you tell jokes, or goof around, or swear a lot. There are hundreds of ways to differentiate yourself! Just make sure you are pulling out or emphasizing an authentic part of you, not acting.

Maybe you take it one step further and you go gluten-free, sugar-free and grain-free… Now you are hitting the paleo diet market, the digestive disease market and the weight loss market. Maybe you become the place to go for supplies and you come up with a killer grain-free flour blend of potato flour, coconut flour, almond flour and cassava flour. Nobody else is selling this blend and as your recipes become popular, and word of your culinary prowess spreads, you decide to package up your blend and sell it on your website, and then on Amazon. And then into Whole Foods.

Okay, I’ll stop there! But you get my point: Finding out you have rigorous competition, or that your market is already flooded, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to find a new idea, or different niche to play in. It may just mean you have to dig deeper, specialize further, and become even more unique or different.

But you DO have to take a look at what’s happening in your chosen field. See what people are already doing, so you can figure out how to make yourself stand out.

Don’t put your head in the sand and invest hundreds of hours of work and wads of cash in a doomed enterprise, just because you are afraid to take an honest look around you. Knowledge is power and lemons can always be made into sugar-free lemonade!