You’ve stared at the “About Us” box on your website or Google Business Profile for twenty minutes, deleted three drafts, and landed on something like “Quality service you can trust.” It sounds fine. It also sounds exactly like every other business on your street, and it tells a potential customer nothing about why they should choose you.

If you’ve ever struggled with how to describe your business, you’re not failing at writing. You’re facing a problem almost every business owner hits: you know your business too well to explain it simply, and not knowing where to start is completely normal, not a sign you’re bad at this.

Why This Is So Hard to Get Right

Part of the problem is that you’re too close to it. You know every detail of what you offer, so when you sit down to describe it, everything feels equally important, and the result is either a vague sentence that says nothing or a long one that says too much. This is especially common with newer businesses, because there hasn’t been enough time yet for word of mouth to fill in the gaps a website leaves unclear. Our guide to the trust gap facing new businesses in Toronto goes deeper into why this matters more in the first year or two than it will later on.

Part of it is also that describing your business the way you’d explain it to family or a friend back home doesn’t always match how a customer here actually searches for or reads about a business. A sentence that feels warm and natural in conversation can read as unclear or overly formal on a website, and a customer who’s scanning quickly won’t stop to work out what you meant.

And part of it is simply that nobody ever taught you a method. Most business owners either copy phrases they’ve seen elsewhere or write from instinct, and neither approach reliably produces something clear.

The Real Problem: You’re Describing Yourself, Not Solving Their Problem

One widely cited industry report on small business branding found that around three-quarters of new businesses lean on the same handful of generic words — family-run, experienced, quality, trusted, leading — and some don’t include a real description at all. None of these words are wrong, but none of them are specific either, and specific is what actually gets remembered. When every business on the street uses the same ten adjectives, none of them stand out, and a customer scrolling through search results or Google Maps has no real way to tell you apart from the shop next door.

The shift that fixes this is small but important: stop describing what your business is, and start describing what it does for the person reading it. A bakery doesn’t sell cakes. It sells a stress-free birthday for a parent who’s out of time. A bookkeeper doesn’t sell spreadsheets. She sells a business owner’s ability to stop worrying about their numbers at 11pm. The product is the same either way. The sentence a customer actually responds to is not.

A Simple Formula You Can Use Today

You don’t need a marketing degree to write this well. One structure, sometimes called the StoryBrand approach, treats your customer as the hero of the story and your business as the guide who helps them get there — a shift in perspective explored in more depth on the official StoryBrand framework. In plain terms, it comes down to one sentence:

“We help [specific customer] get [specific result] so they can [bigger outcome].”

Step 1: Name Your Customer Specifically

Who do you do your best work for? Is it \”everyone,\” or \”small businesses,\” or \”new parents in Vaughan,\” \”restaurant owners with under ten staff,\” or \”newcomers filing their first Canadian tax return,\” for example? The more specific you are, the more the right person feels like the sentence was written just for them.

Step 2: Name the Problem You Actually Solve

Not the service you perform, the problem underneath it. A plumber doesn’t sell pipe repair. They solve “a flooded basement at 11pm with no idea who to call.” Ask yourself what your customer was worried about right before they found you.

Step 3: Name the Outcome They Actually Want

This is the feeling on the other side of the transaction. Not “a clean website” but “customers who finally understand what we do.” Not “an accountant” but “no more dread every March.”

Put together, a formula-based sentence might read: “We help newcomer families in Toronto find a family doctor within their first month, so they don’t have to navigate the healthcare system alone.” That’s one sentence, and it already tells you more about the business than most full “About Us” pages do.

Notice, too, what the formula leaves out. There’s no mention of years in business, awards, or certifications. Those details can still matter, but they belong further down the page, after the visitor already understands whether they’re in the right place.

Before and After: What Changes When You Do This

Generic: “We are a full-service marketing agency dedicated to quality and results.”
Specific: “We help small restaurants in the GTA get fully booked on weekends without spending on ads.”

Generic: “Trusted tailoring for over ten years.”
Specific: “We help professionals get a suit that actually fits within one week, no matter your body type.”

Notice that the specific version is not longer or more complicated. It’s simply aimed at one real person with one real problem, instead of trying to sound impressive to everyone at once. This is close to what we worked through with Marose Couture, where the brand needed one clear sentence customers could repeat back before anything else about the visual identity could really land, and something similar happened with TAK Kaviar, where the entire premium positioning had to be summed up in a single line before the photography and packaging could reinforce it.

Where to Actually Use This Sentence

Once you have it, use it everywhere, word for word, rather than rewriting it slightly differently on every platform:

• Your website homepage, in the first thing a visitor reads.
• Your Google Business Profile description, so it matches what people search for.
• Your Instagram bio, shortened if needed but built from the same sentence.
• What you say out loud when someone asks what you do — practise saying it naturally, not reciting it.

Keeping this identical across platforms is also a brand identity issue, not just a writing one. If you’ve read our guide to logo vs brand identity, this is the voice and message layer we talked about there — the part that matters just as much as your logo, and the part most businesses skip entirely.

Common Mistakes When Describing Your Business

• Trying to appeal to everyone. A sentence written for “anyone who needs X” ends up meaning nothing to the one person it should have grabbed.
• Leading with your history instead of their problem. “Founded in 2018” is fine on an About page, but it’s not what earns the first three seconds of attention.
• Using industry jargon. If a customer would have to Google a word in your description, replace it.
• Writing it once and never testing it. Say your sentence out loud to a friend who knows nothing about your business. If they can’t repeat back what you do, it needs another pass.
• Translating word for word instead of rewriting for the reader. A sentence that works well in one language rarely lands the same way translated literally; rewrite the idea, not just the words.
• Skipping the exercise because it feels too simple. A one-sentence formula can feel like it’s missing something after years of thinking about your business in complex terms, but simple is exactly what a visitor scanning for five seconds needs.

A Simple Exercise to Try This Week

Grab a blank page and fill in your own version of the formula:

1. Who do you excel at? Specify a neighbourhood, age group, or business type.
2. What problem are they dealing with right before they find you?
3. What do they actually want to feel or have afterward?
4. Combine the three into one sentence using the formula above.
5. Read it out loud to someone outside your business and ask them to repeat back what you do.

If they get it right on the first try, you’ve found your sentence. If not, you’ve found exactly which part to sharpen.

The Bottom Line

Knowing how to describe your business comes down to one shift: stop talking about yourself, and start naming the customer, their problem, and the outcome they want. Write that one sentence, use it everywhere, and test it on someone who’s never heard of you. If you’d like help turning that sentence into a full brand identity and website that carries it consistently, take a look at our brand strategy services or our complete guide to building a business website, and get in touch. We’re happy to help you find the words.

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