To EP or not to EP .... that is the question

When you first set up in business many people, rightly tell you to obtain as much free information from other business people and 'wise' contacts to basically learn from their mistakes. So you use the good stuff that they've gleaned via trial and error over their lives and therefore you don't need to repeat others mistakes - I suppose eventually you'll make a whole new load of them yourself regardless - but that's another story.

Since setting up in business I've tried to use as much information from others as possible and regularly learn new things when I thought I already knew best. I have a meeting tomorrow with someone whose opinion I respect and I think would qualify as a mentor. He's asked (suggested) me to work on my elevator pitch (EP) for Localventure and I thought it would be useful to discuss elevator pitches here and also share the current iteration of it with you.

To my mind the EP is not just the short hand for what your business 'does' but it also covers two other vitally important areas. Firstly, it should re-ignite the passion and fundamental 'idea' that sits behind the creation of the business in the first place for the owner. Secondly, it takes this passion and translates it into a sales message that tells everyone and in particular potential clients what you're about.

So if the elevator pitch doesn't excite the business owner (me) then it has no chance of passing on that excitement to the customer (you).

Below are several versions that that I have used in recent weeks to begin to crystalize my ideas from a fairly wordy set of jargon to hopefully something that works in the way I describe above :

Version 1, written to send to my mentor a couple of weeks ago :

Localventure is an on-line small business focused community offering free advertising/guest blogging for members; business interviews & general small business resource/comment to monetized via provision of business related services to members/SME database where service providers pay to participate."

Very catchy isn't it ? Kind of does what is says on the tin but it is neither elegant, memorable or anything more than pedestrian.

Version 2, total change from the above :

Localventure - local business, national support

At least this one was mercifully short. I'd tried to think about tying in the Localventure name into the EP in some way - I like this one but it doesn't describe the business except at a very high level and a reader would be left wondering ... what ?

Version 3, starting to get down to basics, quite elegantly simple and I've even been using this one in marketing literature a little bit :

Free blogging, support, resource and member services for UK small business

Version 3 - this is the current 'final' one :

The on-line community that gives small business : free blogging, support, cool articles and useful business services.

What this one does I think is to combine the ideas from versions 1 & 3 giving a bit more detail in a more fun way. This is the one I'm going to take to my contact tomorrow and see what he thinks - this will almost certainly change then and I'll let you know how it goes.