How to Create a One-Pager: A Step-by-Step Guide with Free Templates and Examples

Why do I need it?

• Capture Interest: Investors see hundreds of pitches every day. They might remember the gist of a presentation, but often they don’t. A one-pager is designed to entice, inform, and resonate. It starts with a captivating cover image, a bold company name, and a gripping tagline, then moves into the essentials—positioning, fundraising plans, and intended users.

• Identify Potholes: If you find a section of the template tricky or it stirs up debate among your team, this is the perfect place to begin. Working on the one-pager will help you identify gaps in your business plan and areas that need more attention or tweaks. Along with various one-pager examples, we also recommend checking out our Business Model Canvas. It’s a great tool to capture your business plan in a clear, one-page diagram.

• Focus Decision-Making: Sales and marketing teams, as well as designers, can use the one-pager to make sure their work aligns with the company’s core values and goals. For extra inspiration, take a look at our marketing examples below.

Overview: Header

Company Name

What’s in a name? For a young company, your name is often the first impression you make on a potential consumer or investor. Make sure your name is well thought out and truly reflects your product, service, or philosophy. Here are some tips to help you create a strong company name for your one-pager:

• Consider the 5-10 Rule: “Great companies throughout history had 5 to 10 letters in their name, at least one hard consonant, and many had a repeating letter,” notes entrepreneur and startup consultant Peter Gasca.

• Say It Out Loud: There’s a running joke on the TV sitcom 30 Rock where Jenna stars in a film called “The Rural Juror.” On paper, the name is clear, but when spoken aloud, it’s incomprehensible. Make sure your name works both on paper and when spoken.

• Prepare for social media restrictions. Your company name will be shared in email subject lines and social posts. Short, simple, and unique titles stand out on social media platforms. Ensure your name is easily shareable and performs well across different digital formats.

• Secure your name and vanity addresses. Ensure that your name isn’t already trademarked and check its availability on common social media channels. If your name is available, secure it immediately! Even if you’re not active on the account, owning the account name prevents others from taking it and potentially confusing consumers when they search for your company.

Logo

Mathews Hale emphasizes the importance of a logo being recognizable and impactful, even when reduced to the necessary dimensions for mobile devices and small screens. Check out this article on Best Global Rebrands and Logo Redesigns of Major Brands. It shows the companies’ former logos side-by-side with their updated versions. The overall trend shows logos becoming simplified and flattened. This trend can be attributed to the need for logos to be visible, recognizable, and clean on mobile devices and small screens.

Tagline

Your tagline should engage people while describing the core value of your product or service. A few tips about writing taglines:

• Keep it short. You’ll have room in other sections to go into detail about the inner workings and background of your product. Keep your tagline brief and direct. YouTube needed just two words — “Broadcast yourself.”

• Communicate with clarity. Business jargon, complicated phrasing and obscure words deter readers. Your tagline should simply convey the benefit of your company, product, or service.

• Narrow the focus. The broader your tagline is, the more people will forget about your product. The more focused it is, the more people will think about your product when a specific, real-world scenario occurs. That’s when the tagline is triggered in their minds, and they think about your product. You have to be specific and scenario-driven.

• Make them do a double take. Choose wording that captures readers’ attention and piques their curiosity to learn more about who you are.

• Update your tagline as your company evolves. Whether your business shifts to cater to a certain audience, scraps features to focus on others or switches in-person to on-line sales models, your tagline should reflect these developments.

Social Media

What’s the best way for outside investors and consumers to connect with your company? Maintaining multiple social media accounts takes time and thought. Ensure you’re on the sites that will get you the most traction, then focus your energy on building a following and maintaining it.

Positioning

Positioning Statement

A positioning statement is a one or two-sentence declaration that communicates your brand’s unique value to your customers in relation to your main competitors. The goal is to create a unique impression in the customer’s mind so that he or she associates something specific and desirable with your brand that is distinct from rest of the marketplace. Positioning statements are useful for internal decision-making, as they guide and unite the marketing, sales and development teams’ choices. A positioning statement helps you make key decisions that affect your customers’ perception of your brand.

Highlight your company’s unique value by using this positioning exercise:

For (your target customer) who (has a specific need or opportunity), (your product or service) is a (type of product category) that (supplies this benefit). Unlike (competitors), (your product) (has this unique advantage).

If you’re having trouble forming your positioning statement, you may need some help to determine how to position yourself in the market, and in the minds of your consumers. Try Xtensio’s Brand Positioning Canvas and check out this helpful article on how to nail your positioning. You can also explore the user persona template and other strategy exercises to help find your market fit. 

Here are some questions to ask to determine if your positioning statement is working.

Does your positioning statement:

• Differentiate your brand from your competitors?
• Match customer perceptions of your brand?
• Enable growth?
• Identify your brand’s unique value to your customers?
• Express your brand promise as believable and deliverable?

Is your positioning statement:

• Focused on your core customers?
• Memorable and motivating?
• Easy to understand?
• Difficult to copy?

Will your positioning statement:

• Withstand counterattacks from your competitors?
• Help you make more effective marketing and branding decisions?

Product/Service Summary

Core Offering

Introduce your product or service with a description of your core offering. Elaborate on your positioning statement. Include a description of what it is, who it’s for, why it’s needed, and why it’s better than other products or services. The summary sections help you elaborate on the problem faced by your consumers and how your product provides a solution.

Milestones and Funding Goals

A Brief Timeline

Highlight your company’s major accomplishments. This section offers readers a quick understanding of your business’s timeline, where and when you started, the path you’ve taken and where you currently stand in terms of users, features, funding, employees, community recognition etc. Increased number of users, increased revenue and additional services prove that:

• You can sell

• You can scale

• You can iterate and develop

• You’re in the right market

• You can attract talent

How Much Money Do You Plan To Raise?

Why do you need a certain amount of funding? How long do you expect your funding to last? Adjust the graph’s legend to illustrate your budget allocations. No matter the stage of your business, if you’re just starting out or thriving in the marketplace investors are going to want to know exactly why and how you’re using their money.

Consider these tips when defining the funding you need:

• Focus on the specific. What are you currently looking to achieve: product development, product/market fit, sales expansion? Know precisely how funds will be applied to get to the next step.

• Run lean. More money is not always better. Especially if you’re just starting out, working with a strict budget can be useful. It ensures every decision is made with care and all choices are precise, well-researched, and efficient. Also, you’ll learn to problem-solve, work within parameters, think outside the box and leverage free resources. 

• Factor in unexpected fees. Because you never know what issues and opportunities are waiting down the road.

Problems and Solutions

The Problems

What crucial problems do your consumers face today?

Quick tip!  Avoid writing down high-level problems. These tend to be obvious, too large in scope, and difficult to achieve. Yes, people in real estate want to sell real estate. Get more specific.

If your consumers have no problems, no frustrations, no desires—this is a problem. It means you have nothing to offer them and, therefore, you don’t have a business. Problems lead to working business models.

The Solutions

What makes your company best suited for providing solutions?

Present the features and capabilities that define your service and make it the top tool for addressing consumers’ needs. Your solutions should specifically address the problems you listed on the one-pager, and should clearly explain how they help your consumers overcome them.

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

What elements of your business do you anticipate raising the most concern? Consider these from an outsider’s perspective, identifying potential points of confusion and red flags. Reflect on aspects of your business that you haven’t covered elsewhere on the one-pager.

Core Team

The Face Of Your Business

Investors aren’t just signing on to work with a company, they’re signing on to work with people. In this section, humanize your company by providing relevant information about yourself and your teammates.

This section is also useful when onboarding employees. It will give them a quick and clear impression of the people at the core of the business—individuals they’ll be supporting and helping steer the company.

Email Collection

Building An Email Base

You’ll want to keep track of everyone who expresses interest in your business. Attracting potential investors, users, employees, and journalists requires communication. By collecting email addresses, you can reach out with updates, invitations, and product launches. As you’re growing and refining certain areas of your business, send out questionnaires, surveys, and personal inquiries to better understand the people who are interested in your company. Particularly after pitching to investors, you’ll want to follow up to thank them for considering your business and to gauge their interest. If you don’t send an email to touch base—you’ve missed an opportunity.

Final Thoughts

Bringing It All Together

Your One Pager is not set in stone. Like other Xtensio templates, it should be repurposed, revisited, and revised. Startups frequently use one-pagers to make sure their efforts are aligned with their vision. But the template can also work well for established companies, small businesses, and others. Ultimately, the goal of the one page summary is to succinctly convey your message to your target audience: be it potential investors, users or employees.

BONUS: To make a winning case for potential customers create a digital brochure.