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If you’ve ever been to a formal networking event, you’ll have had to do a 60 second pitch about your business. I’ve delivered hundreds of these so-called elevator pitches, usually off the cuff and often, if I’m honest, a little garbled. It’s not easy summarising who you are, what you do, who you work with and what you’re looking for in a mere minute.

That’s why at Entrepreneurial Spark they’re so insistent about practising your pitch over and over and over and over again. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to feel like it was a bit much, having to start every meeting and mentoring session with a pitching session. But as I mentioned in my recent blog post about what I learned during my time on the programme, it turned out to be one of the most important things I did there.

So how exactly do you go about writing the pitch? Here’s how I constructed mine, following Entrepreneurial Spark’s format of Hook – Problem – Solution – Traction – Ask.

TL:DR

Pitch step 01: HOOK

“Just do it. Every little helps. Finger lickin’ good. When it comes to creating powerful marketing copy for your business, you don’t need many words, just the right ones.”

How you choose to open your pitch will determine if people keep listening or switch off. A clever question, interesting fact or statistic, or something else a little quirky that will make people take notice is what’s required here. Remember always to think about your target audience and what will resonate with them.

Pitch step 02: PROBLEM

“There are over 200,000 words in the English language and the average native speaker has an active vocabulary of around 20,000. So how do you find the right words to describe what your business offers and make your brand stand out from the crowd?”

Here again it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal client or customer and understand what the problem is from their point of view. I might be able to see that someone’s website content has syntax issues or lacks clear calls to action, but for them the problem is more likely to be, “How do I make people notice my business?” So that’s the problem I need to be talking about in my pitch.

Pitch step 03: SOLUTION

“I’m Rin Hamburgh and I love words. I’ve been a professional writer for 14 years and set up Rin Hamburgh & Co last year when I saw the need for reliable, top quality yet cost effective copywriting services. By bringing in my team of freelance writers on a project by project basis, I can keep costs reasonable while also meeting the tightest of deadlines.”

This is where you get to talk about your business and how what you do can genuinely add value for your target audience. My solution starts off by explaining who I am and what I do, and then goes on to give a bit of detail about how I do it. This kind of insight is really valuable when it comes to differentiating your business from your competitors.

Pitch step 04: TRACTION

“We work with anyone who can’t write, doesn’t enjoy writing or simply doesn’t have the time, and since our launch in August last year we’ve helped over 80 clients ranging from small businesses to household name brands improve their marketing copy.”

The next step is traction. This is a particularly important step for a start up – especially if you’re looking for funding – and is your chance to show that you’re already up and running and having some success. But it’s also a valuable section for more established businesses. Telling people that you’ve been going for 20 years or have worked with a number of well known brands gives you credibility and helps build trust.

Pitch step 05: ASK

“Now we’re ready to increase our capacity, so I’m looking for introductions to keen junior copywriters who can join our growing team. And of course, if you know anyone who is struggling to find the right words to make their brand stand out from the crowd, we’re always here to help.”

Finally, it’s really important that your pitch has a clear ask, especially in a formal networking situation. My pitch was aimed at fellow ESpark entrepreneurs, so it was less about sales and more about support – hence the request for leads for new copywriters. But you might be looking for an introduction into a particular business, referrals from within a certain industry or people to sign up to your newsletter or join a focus group to help you test a new product. The more specific you can be, the easier people will find it to help you.

Once you’ve written your pitch, go through it and try to cut out any unnecessary words or even whole sentences. You’ll need the overall word count to be less than 180 words, which is roughly how many you can fit into a minute without rushing.

Then all that’s left is to practice and practice and practice some more, until the words roll off your tongue and you feel comfortable delivering your pitch in any situation, even at short notice – like if you should happen to get stuck in a lift with your ideal client.

Making the decision to spend money takes some thought, and the more money involved, the more thought it needs. Assuming you’re not selling penny sweets, your clients and customers are likely to go through a journey something like this when it comes to their relationship with your brand:

Know – Like – Trust – Try – Buy – Repeat – Refer

This is a helpful way to think about your marketing, which should be meeting customers wherever they are along that path. And each stage will have a particular style of marketing that suits it. Although you’ll need to experiment to see what works best for your brand, here are a few ideas to get you started…

Know

Brand awareness is an important marketing goal but it can be hard to track ROI (return on investment). The key is to target fairly widely while keeping costs low. For that reason, social media is a good option at this stage. Make sure that you’re very clear about differentiating yourself from the competition, and be sure to clearly communicate your core brand values, benefits and so on from the outset.

Like

If you’ve done your client personas, you’ll know exactly what your target audience wants and needs, which means it shouldn’t be too hard to get them to like your brand. You can use pretty much any kind of media to engage your audience at this stage – blog posts, video, social – so long as it adds value for them. Creating personalised and segmented content will help get them to the like stage much more quickly.

Trust

People are far more likely to buy from you if someone they know or respect endorses you. Testimonials, case studies and referrals on platforms like LinkedIn can go a long way to building trust, so don’t neglect this aspect of your marketing. Establishing expertise is another important way to build trust, and this can be done very effectively via a blog or vlog, or by being quoted as an expert in relevant press.

Try

Promotional offers are a great way to get people to try your products and services, reducing the amount of thought they need to put into the transaction by reducing the price. But some brands prefer to avoid discounting as a strategy. In that case, you could offer a taster product or service. For example, free webinars or low cost workshops are a popular way for service businesses to get people trying what they have to offer. The equivalent in retail might be sample size perfumes.

Buy

This is the stage where you leave the realm of marketing, and step sideways into sales. But don’t ditch your marketing hat completely. If you’ve got a potential buyer who is wavering, you’ll need to support their transition to the sale by reinforcing all the messaging you’ve used in the stages leading to this moment, especially the ones around trust. That’s why testimonials on a sales pages are an absolute must.

Repeat

If you think that once people have reached the buy stage you can forget about marketing, I’m afraid you’re wrong! If you’ve spent all this time getting a client on board, it would be frustrating for them to disappear after one transaction. Capturing email data at this stage is vital so you can use it to follow up and ensure that the aftercare they get reinforces their great customer experience so far.

Refer

Getting referrals from happy clients is the holy grail of marketing, but most businesses forget to ask for them. There’s nothing wrong with a follow up email a week or two after a sale has been made or a job completed, checking on how everything is going, whether your customer would be happy to write a testimonial or refer you to someone they know who might be looking for something similar. You could even incentivise referrals, for example offering discounts to both parties for any work that comes from it.

Thinking through your customer’s buying journey like this will help you create the right message for the right stage, and should get more people to ‘buy’ and beyond. As always, experiment and don’t hesitate to ask for feedback when people reach the buy stage to find out what helped them along the way.