A great company profile can engage and attract the right customers or supporters for a business, or it can bore them to sleep driving them to your competitors which are easily googled in seconds.
For media attention, a business needs an intriguing profile to entice editors or reporters to gain an understanding of the company's mission, products, services, personnel and uniqueness.
To acquire financing, a comprehensive company profile should be submitted with a business plan to feature unique qualifications of the company or personnel, that aren't generally outlined in a business plan.
Without a well-crafted company profile, a company may not be attracting the best candidates when posting job descriptions, or even suppliers and vendors to help them grow.
THREE STEPS TO FOLLOW
These 3 steps will help any company craft a commendable company profile that is true to your vision, perception and even beliefs. Visit our site if you just want our tool that writes your profile for you.
Provide useful information in lay person's terminology.
A profile should include key personnel, descriptions of the company's products or services in a manner that laypersons, as well as industry personnel, can comprehend. Why?
Because, a reporter might be looking for relevant businesses for a story they are preparing. Naturally, including your company could possibly bring great 'free exposure' to your intended market (if it's a positive story, of course). But if the reporter -- or anyone else who is googling the product/service you provide -- cannot figure out what you offer, your profile won't help sell your products, nor entice media to interview your company personnel.
This does not mean you cannot include high level industry information, just be sure to also include some easy-to-comprehend lay terminology in your description.
Infuse some personality A great company profile should be filled not only with descriptions of products (or services), but also some sense or personality of the business' culture. Adding information about the company's purpose, community support or mission (not one of those trite mission statements, though) can add human personality to a profile, thus adding interest to the reader.
People relate to people. So, add something from a human perspective.
Your business could explain how profits benefit local animal shelters or homeless populations or you might even employ a humorous style in the description if it's appropriate to the company's products.
My own profile talks about my belief that 'marketing is a spiritual practice' because in my experience a company thrives the closer it matches it's values and purpose that is at the 'soul' of that company. No, it's got nothing to do with religion. But it has everything to do with marketing not being hype, but being a deeply felt expression of a company's core competency, attracting clients who are right for one's company--that's the reason to infuse personality.
I've always enjoyed the clever and silly product descriptions of Benefit Cosmetics--and I don't even wear makeup. The company's co-founders are twins who feel they 'benefit' by learning from each other. They share this love by, yes, 'benefitting' the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. Hype or personality? You be the judge. Either way, it grabs a readers attention.
Claim your unique assets. By explaining a founder's uniquely circuitous route to the company's development, or stating the special awards and honors a company has garnered, the donations or volunteering it's employees provide the community, it gives the reader some grasp of how the company is unique, special or different from others in it's same category.
Elaborating a bit on the education, training, credentials or experience of personnel excites customers and helps them identify the company that fits their own beliefs and criteria.
Being generic and obtuse in your company description makes it really hard for any readers to understand why they would want to do business with a company or buy products/services that sound like any others.
Above all else, be honest and interesting, since plenty of bland, boring and hype-filled profiles already abound.
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Allison Bliss Consulting is one of the top full service marketing & communications firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their website has a tool for businesses that writes your company profile for you (www.allisonbliss.com/resources). Instead of paying a writer $500+ for a profile, this tool ($24.99) asks a series of questions and assembles answers into a complete, professional company profile.
Allison Bliss (www.allisonbliss.com) is founder of Allison Bliss Consulting, a Bay Area marketing and communications agency that creates branding, strategies, promotional materials, web development, television commercials, and workshops teaching companies to entice just the business they want. In addition to on-demand consulting and coaching services, Allison offers Marketing Coaching service packages that include the “Knowledge is Bliss” business evaluation, podcast production, search engine optimization, marketing database training, and marketing plans.