Investopedia summarizes elevator pitches as a “marketing tool for themselves or their ideas.” Being a freelancer, you probably have lots to do already. Why worry about writing an elevator pitch? Well, if you are serious about your work and business, an elevator pitch is exactly what you need.

Managing a scuba shop is fun, but a hard task. Scuba shops have to set themselves apart to offer value over the next one. Closing sales first comes from qualifying your customer. Having the elevator pitch ready using the SCUBA technique will help you write your to market yourself successfully.

S – Keep it simple. An elevator pitch is only a brief outline of what you offer. A scuba shop that wants to promote safety uses a different pitch from a shop offering shark dives in a steel cage. Of course, the shop with the shark dives wants to promote safety too, but its main promotion is capitalizing on thrilling the customer.

Fine tune your business. List a few angles you can market your services. Do you find that most of your services lean toward work at home moms, entrepreneurs, or businesses needing copywriting? Once you know your angle, the elevator pitch comes naturally.

C – Write clearly. In writing courses for business and magazines, we learn to write clearly. Having a clear pitch is important to communicating your value to customers. If you need practice with writing clearly, pitch a few tag lines in Twitter. Writing in Twitter limits you to 140 characters. An elevator pitch should be half this character amount. One sentence is perfect and you can test pitches in Twitter.

If you have trouble with defining your business clearly, ask someone who knows your business to summarize for you. You can even ask your customers to help. By reading what others say, you will know if you are getting your message across clearly.

U – Understand your audience. Knowing who your present customers are helps you define your elevator pitch. Do you want to continue marketing to them? Write a pitch based on their needs. If you have a blog, read their comments to see what they want. Having a certain customer in mind, if you have no customers yet, will help you write just for that person. Stephen King in his book, On Writing, tells us that he writes for his wife, Tabitha. By having her in mind when he writes, his thoughts and writing come easily.

B – Be able to give an elevator pitch in 60 seconds or less. When you are standing in front of a potential customer, you have their complete attention for about 60 seconds. Rambling on about your business is likely to turn them off. By knowing what your elevator pitch is in advance, you can easily deliver it concisely. Practice this once you write yours. If you need to refine yours, go out and give your pitch to at least five people per day. Do this until you have one say yes and ask for your business card.

A – Attract the right client. By writing your elevator pitch and defining your business, you plant your stake into the stream of money available. This is your specialization. You make your stand. At this point, you will now attract the right clients to you. Once word gets around, you will find that people flock to businesses with clearly defined elevator pitches and offerings. Why? Call it human nature, but people like clarity and strength. By making your stand with your elevator pitch offering, you speak your truth.

Need an example? Here’s one listed by the San Francisco Chronicle for a site called Polyvore. “Polyvore is a social site that lets you make collages of clothes, with pictures pulled from various websites.” – Nick Saint, Business Insider. Under his simple elevator pitch, you will see a longer pitch. According to Darren Rowse in his eBook, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, he discusses the need for blogs and businesses to write a simple elevator pitch and a longer one.

So, what’s your elevator pitch? Does the SCUBA method help you write yours? Post what you come up with in the comments section.

photo credit: particlem