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3 Places to Use Your One-Liner To Convert More Customers

Are you telling your customers who you are before you tell them what you do?

This is a common mistake in the marketing world. We want our customer avatar to know our brand name, so the first thing we do is tell it to them. The problem is, that name is meaningless until we tell them what we do for them.

Your customer avatar doesn’t care about the clever name of your company until they know what your company is going to do for them. Sure, your name is important… but only once they’ve been assured that your company is relevant to a problem they’re having in their life.

That’s where the one-liner comes in. CEO of StoryBrand Donald Miller brought us through his strategy for creating stories around brands in a recent Insider Training. He taught us how to sell with story, as well as what one of the most important aspects of that story is.

It’s the one-liner.

We’re going to give you a look inside Donald Miller’s Insider Training and show you what a one-liner is and the 3 places you can use it to get results.

Let’s get started.

What is a One-Liner?

A one-liner is the single sentence that describes what your company does in a specific format to make sure the person listening actually cares. That’s the secret of a one-liner—it delivers information based on the priority of importance to the reader or listener.

There are 3 components of a one-liner and here’s how you’re going to deliver them:

Component #1: State the problem or pain point your customers face

Component #2: Talk about your product or the solution to the problem you just stated

Component #3: Talk about the results someone will experience if they buy that product

Here’s an example Donald Miller gave of a one-liner for an E-Bike company based in Nashville:

Component #1: State the problem or pain point your customers face

With 110 people moving to Nashville every day, people are wasting more and more time sitting in traffic.

Component #2: Talk about your product or the solution to the problem you just stated

With a Circuit E-Bike fitted just for you…

Component #3: Talk about the results someone will experience if they buy that product

…you’ll get to work faster and add hours back in your day.”

When we put that one-liner together, here’s what it looks like:

With 110 people moving to Nashville every day, people are wasting more and more time sitting in traffic. With a Circuit E-Bike fitted just for you, you’ll get to work faster and add hours back in your day.”

A great one-liner filters out the people who will care about your product in the first line. That’s why the first line talks about the pain point. If someone doesn’t live in Nashville, they’re not going to be very interested in a Circuit E-Bikebecause they don’t need to be. You don’t want a leads list of people living outside of Nashville if you can only deliver your bikes to Nashville.

Your first line tells your audience who this is for. Anyone living in Nashville living through the traffic problem is immediately going to think, “Yes, I AM wasting more time sitting in traffic, and it’s only getting worse with all these people constantly moving here.”

Only after you’ve drawn them in with their pain point is it time to tell them your solution. This is when you can talk about your products or your solution and guarantee you have their interest at heart.

Lastly, you’ll remind them of why they want to have this problem solved. Anyone sitting in traffic wants to have that time to spend with their family or friends instead (or really anything but sitting in traffic). Your one-liner ends with the result your customer avatar gets to experience if they choose your product.

Your one-liner answers the question of “What do you do?” in a clear, concise way. If someone wants to know more, then you can go into your expanded elevator pitch that gives them the detail they’re looking for.

Where would someone want to learn more?

Your one line can be used in a lot of places, and we’ll only be able to cover a few here. Pretty much anywhere that your customer avatar is going to run into your brand for the first time is the best place to put your one-liner.

Keep reading for examples of what that’s going to look like on:

  1. Your social media profile
  2. Your website
  3. Your email signature

3 Places To Use Your One Liner

Your one-liner will live in more places than just these three options, but we wanted to go with the options that you’re most likely going to be able to use. Let’s take a look at what your one-liner would look like on your social media profile, your website, or your email signature.

Example #1: Social Media Profile

Your social media profile is a hub for brand awareness. You’re going to be meeting a lot of your customer avatars here, so it’s crucial that they know who you are and what they do. It’s more important that they remember it.

It’s easy to make a social media profile that doesn’t help your customer know who you are. If you have a marketing agency, it’s easy to forget that our customers need more than just, “We’re a marketing solution for ecommerce companies.” to understand what our business does. That’s why Donald uses one-liners.

Instead of saying something general like, “We’re a marketing solution for ecommerce companies,” let’s create a one-liner that says exactly what your agency is about.

For background, let’s say you have a marketing agency for ecommerce businesses and you only focus on Instagram marketing.

Component #1: State the problem or pain point your customers face

Juggling ads on too many social platforms?

Component #2: Talk about your product or the solution to the problem you just stated

We can take your ecommerce business to 6+ figures just using Instagram…

Component #3: Talk about the results someone will experience if they buy that product

…so you can refocus on growing your business.

When we put that all together, it looks like:

Juggling ads on too many social platforms? We can take your ecommerce business to 6+ figures just using Instagram, so you can refocus on growing your business.

Everyone who finds your profile is going to know what you solve (juggling ads on too many social platforms), what your product and solution are (ecommerce marketing to make 6+ figures), and what the result is (refocus on growing your business).

Example #2: Your Website Landing Page

Your landing page will be seen by people new to your brand, familiar with it, or ready to buy. The clearer you can be about what problem you solve, what your solution is, and what results come from it—the better chance you have of conversion.

Your one-liner will go as high as possible on your landing page with the hope of it being one of the first things a visitor reads when your page loads. If you can put it in your above-the-fold content, that’s perfect.

Since your website gives you more room than the 150-character bio limit on Instagram, we can expand this one-liner a bit to give a bit more detail about the problem, solution, and results our company focuses on. Slack has done a great job of putting together a one-liner and using it in their above-the-fold content.

Their one-liner is:

Teamwork can be hard, messy, complicated…and still the best way to work. That’s why we made Slack—a place where people get work done, together.

Let’s breakdown the components of Slack’s one-liner:

Component #1: State the problem or pain point your customers face

Teamwork can be hard, messy, complicated…and still the best way to work.

Component #2: Talk about your product or the solution to the problem you just stated

That’s why we made Slack—

Component #3: Talk about the results someone will experience if they buy that product

a place where people get work done, together.

After their one-liner, Slack includes a call to action button with “Try For Free.” When you’re using your one-liner in your above-the-fold content, always make sure to include a CTA just like Slack has.

Example #3: Your (and Your Team’s) Email Signature

Yep, we’re taking it from social media profiles and fancy websites to emai l. When’s the last time you opened your inbox? If you’re like us, it was a few minutes ago and as you’re reading this article you just saw a notification for a new email.

If you’re emailing potential clients regularly, your email signature is a prime-time location to put your one-liner. You can also use this in the signatures of your team. For example, every time a sales associate reaches out to a potential lead your one-liner is after their name. Or, your customer support team always ends their emails with your one-liner.

We’ll let you decide if you want your entire team to have your one-liner or some of the team members, but we will say we’re pro the former. You never know when somebody knows somebody who could use your help. The only way for them to know what problem you solve, how you solve it, and what the result is if you tell them.

Let’s say you’re a freelance marketer. Your one-liner is going to talk about:

  1. What problem you solve
  2. What your product or solution is
  3. What the result is

For this example, we’ll say you specialize in helping software businesses with their content marketing strategy using your signature “Distribution Matrix.”

Here’s what your one-liner will look like:

Component #1: State the problem or pain point your customers face

Software brands can create interesting content.

Component #2: Talk about your product or the solution to the problem you just stated

Using the Distribution Matrix…

Component #3: Talk about the results someone will experience if they buy that product

…you can maximize your content reach and consistently bring in qualified leads.

When we put it all together, your one-liner is hyper-specific about who you help (software companies), what you help them with (content), and what the result is (qualified leads).

Software brands can create interesting content. Using the Distribution Matrix, you can maximize your content reach and consistently bring in qualified leads.

Congratulations—you just turned your email signature into a lead generator and we (and Donald Miller) couldn’t be prouder.

Creating a one-liner bypasses one of the biggest mistakes a company can make: thinking their customers care about their brand before they know what they do. With your one-liner, you’re going be able to tell the short story of your brand. But, that’s just the start.

There’s more to creating an engaging and converting story. Learn from the master storyteller himself, Donald Miller, about creating a brand story that your customers can’t forget inside our StoryBrand Playbook.

Mark de Grasse

Mark de Grasse

Mark de Grasse is the President and General Manager of DigitalMarketer and has worked with thousands of business owners to create brands, companies, and marketing campaigns.

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