Company profiles are an opportunity to let your customers in on the various aspects of your business that should make you their preferred partner. All your work building a strong brand wouldn’t amount to much if your clients didn’t know about it.
To be an industry leader, your target market should know what sets you apart. A good company profile highlights your key attributes and makes a good case for your brand. It’s like a resume for your business.
You should be aware of the following do’s and don’ts if your company profile is to achieve this:
Do share your identity
Brands take an entirely different identity from their founders and become part of society in their own right. Look at Google; it’s an entity over and above Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
You could be wondering who those two are, but I bet you know Google. This gives you, the entrepreneur, an opportunity to build a brand that thrives despite your personal limitations or shortcomings.
Your company profile should include a clear vision statement, mission statement and introduction to your business so your target audience can relate to it. Most important though is a value statement that clearly illustrates your reason for being.
This is an important window into your company and lets your clients get to know it. Make a good impression, because people tend to deal with those they know, and like.
Make it easy to communicate
Use your company profile to start a conversation and build a community. There are many touch points in the customer purchase journey and your business invests in a lot of them.
It’s important to include not only your address, phone, email, support lines, and website, but other means of communication like social networks and forums.
Do craft a compelling value proposition
Your value proposition could be the decisive factor in the success or failure of your business. It sets the tone for your brand and builds a relationship with your stakeholders. All you want to achieve with a good company profile is embodied in a good value proposition.
Don’t be technical
When you are a leader in your industry, it’s easy to be tempted to go on about the technical revelations you’ve brought to the world. You can’t be blamed either, you work hard to innovate and you want to be recognised for that innovation.
However, that innovation would go unnoticed if you threw in all the jargon you can find to present it. Imagine how many people would read a Microsoft profile if all they spoke of was the code that goes behind coding Windows.
The answer is not much and with good reason. Instead, focus on telling a story and people will relate more. Translate that jargon and innovation into simpler terms and your clients will be more engaged.
This is because, at the end of the day, people are not interested in what changed in each version of Windows, Office or Explorer. They are more interested in how it made their computing lives easier.
Tell that story instead, and keep the facts about caches and command lines to internal meetings.
Don’t be salesy
Your company profile is valuable during the discovery, consideration, preference/intent and purchase phase of your sales funnel. At each of these stages, it should provide relevant information, not try to “sell” clients on your brand.
A company profile should, therefore, approach information from the perspective of clients, not the company itself. It should be about what the client wants to read, not what the company wants to say.
At discovery, the client wants to know what they get out of dealing with you. They are only interested in what you can do only in so far as it solves a problem for them. This applies to consideration as well, and these two stages will skew their preference to you and lead to a purchase.
If the information considered during discovery and consideration turns out to be true, this may lead to a repurchase. So it’s important for your company profile to make an impression, and be accurate.
This can be done, just avoid the temptation to self-praise. Instead, make it about the client. Take every single thing you want to say and relate it to a problem you want to solve for clients.
Don’t skimp on design
Making your company profile appealing to the eye will not only increase its chances of being read, but it also increases the chances of all of it being read. This is important for your readers to get to the juicy part that could ultimately lead to them converting.
Making the company profile a large body of text will not help in any way. Break the flow with images, lists, bold colours, and well-formatted text boxes. Use these to showcase the most relevant information.
Even if your reader is scheming through the company profile, these important sections will still catch their eye.
Do prioritise internal assets
A company profile is a window into your business, so it’s important to showcase what’s happening inside. If you are running a new business then you could be forgiven for using stock imagery.
For well-established businesses, use the company profile to showcase your rich history with personal images of staff, events, awards and anything else that adds to your character.
Do be comprehensive with product lists
A good company profile up-sells and cross-sells your clients. Whichever product introduces them to your brand, a good company profile should allow them to consider your entire catalogue. Extend your list to include not only all products but all their uses.
If you make paper clips, your company profile should let your clients know all “101 uses of the paper clip”.
Finally, relate your products to one another. If your product range is crafted to be complementary, let your clients know. This will leverage the market share of your top performers and give your marketing efforts exponential growth.
Do showcase past, present and future success
When it comes to your company profile, your business could benefit from a humble brag. People, by their nature, want to be part of success, so it’s important to showcase yours. Carve out a section to showcase accomplishments, just be tasty about it, and always, relate it to your clients. You can include:
- Important Clients
- Flagship Projects
- Your Talented People
- Good Reviews and Testimonials
- Industry Awards and Certification
- Recognition in Media and Society
Do throw a little shade on the neighbours
It’s important to set your brand apart and let your clients know what makes it different. That difference is relative to your competition, so at some point, you have to show why you are better than them.
Your company profile is a good opportunity to do this. This doesn’t mean bringing out the claws or mentioning names. It can be an open-ended comparison of your strengths that you know are unique to you.
Just try to bring out those elements that can’t be easily replicated, or that clients would be willing to give up. You’d be better off showing quality as a strength as opposed to cheaper pricing.
Do humanize your brand
Brands that come across as being all about money get demonised by society and lose their market share. Your company profile needs to give your company a caring touch that all your stakeholders can benefit from.
A statement of social responsibility will make your clients feel like they are part of something bigger. They’d be more inclined to deal with you if you are uplifting communities, translating to them uplifting communities as well.
They also want to feel reassured by a statement of how your brand is committed to quality and standard. This will make them feel their needs will always be put first. Finally, a commitment to being a quality employer will help attract good talent that would move your company forward.
This just means adding a compassionate element to how your business operates and sharing it in your company profile. Do make it about more than just clients. A company profile should set your business as a brand, and strong brands are more than just about selling.
What it means is
Your company profile is a great opportunity to open up your brand to clients, present and potential. All you need to do is make them see how they fit into your family. What’s critical is making it less about what you are capable of and more about what you stand to gain from those capabilities.
Concentrate less on making sales and more on making connections. If you are successful, the former will follow naturally. The latter is a gift that keeps giving. It’s a little harder than it sounds, but when done correctly, the rewards are great.
Here’s an example of how we did it. You can talk to us if you need any help with yours.
