Describe your business so the right people recognize it

Every marketing plan rests on a sentence you could say out loud: what you sell, who buys it, and why they come to you. If that sentence is vague, everything built on it is vague too. The ads are aimed at "everyone", the posts sound like everyone else's, and the budget goes to places your customers never look.

This post is a method for writing that sentence. It takes about ten minutes, and you will use the result everywhere: on your profiles, in your ads, and in the first box of the uraudience finder.

The four parts

A useful description answers four questions, in words a customer would use.

1. What you sell. Name the thing, not the feeling. "Furnace repair and replacement", not "comfort solutions". "Sourdough and pastries", not "artisan experiences".
2. Who buys it today. People you could picture, not a demographic. "Homeowners in older houses", "office managers at small firms", "parents who need a cake by Saturday".
3. Where they are. How far you travel, deliver, or ship. "Three towns north of the river", "the whole state", "anywhere we can ship".
4. Why they pick you. One concrete difference. "We answer the phone on weekends." "Every pen is restored by hand and tested before it ships."

Words that do nothing

Some words feel like description but tell a reader nothing, because every competitor uses them too: quality, solutions, best, passionate, customer-focused, one-stop shop, innovative. If a word would fit your competitor's description as well as yours, cut it, and put a fact in its place.

Before and after

Here are two rewrites.

We provide quality HVAC solutions with a customer-first approach.

That could be any heating company in the country. Now with the four parts:

We repair and replace furnaces and air conditioners for homeowners in Elm Park, Riverside, and Northgate, and we answer the phone on weekends.

A second one:

A passionate local bakery offering artisan baked goods.

And rewritten:

We bake sourdough and pastries every morning for two cafes and our own counter on Main Street, and we take cake orders two days ahead.

The second version of each is longer, and it is also easier to act on. You can see who to reach, where they are, and what to say to them.

Name who you do not serve

It helps to say, at least to yourself, who is not your customer. A roofer who does not do commercial buildings, a bookkeeper who does not do personal taxes, a groomer who only takes small dogs. Knowing the edge of your market stops you from paying to reach people who will never buy.

Test it on a stranger

Read your sentence to someone outside your trade and ask them two questions: who is this for, and why would they choose it? If they cannot answer both, rewrite it. If they answer with words you did not use, consider using theirs, because those are the words your customers use too.

What uraudience does with it

The finder's first box asks for exactly this sentence. It reads your description to work out what kind of business you run and who you sell to, and it reuses your own words where it can, so the report sounds like your business and not like a template. The more specific the sentence, the more specific the report.

When your sentence is ready, start the finder with it.