Boilerplate descriptions

What boilerplate descriptions are

Boilerplate descriptions are the standard paragraphs about your business, written once and kept in three fixed lengths: about 50 words, about 100 words and about 200 words. They are what you paste when a directory, an event programme, a partner site, a journalist or a proposal template asks you to describe the company in a set space. All three say the same thing. Only the depth changes.

They are not a tagline, not an about page, and not a sales pitch dressed up as a description. They are also not the same document as a company profile, though the two are usually bought together and I would rather write both than one. The profile is the factual layer — legal and trading names, locations, year founded, certifications — written at 25, 75 and 150 words to be checked rather than admired. Boilerplate is the marketing register of the same business at the lengths marketing keeps asking for. The profile is what you send a regulator. The boilerplate is what you send a conference organiser.

When you need them

You need boilerplate when you have written a description of your own company from scratch three times this quarter, each time at midnight, each time slightly differently, and each one is now published somewhere you do not control. Nobody comes back to ask you to confirm the text.

You need them when something has changed and has to propagate: a second location, a new trade name, a certification gained. With the lengths agreed you send the block and the recipient pastes it. Without them, every request becomes a small writing job at the worst moment.

You do not need them if the only place a description of your business appears is your own site and you are happy with what it says. That is a page rewrite. And if what people keep asking for is the spoken version rather than the pasted one, the thirty-second spoken version is the cheaper piece of work.

What goes in them

The three lengths are not one paragraph trimmed twice. Each is built for the space it lands in.

• The 50-word version. Two or three sentences: what you do, who for, and the one thing that separates you. Event programmes, sponsor listings, award entries, any directory with a character limit.
• The 100-word version. The workhorse. The same, plus where you operate and one proof point. Partner sites, association profiles, media kits, the foot of an announcement.
• The 200-word version. The full account, with scale, history and credentials worked into the language rather than listed. Tenders, longer programmes, speaker introductions.
• The fixed elements. Legal name, trading name, how the founding year is stated, the certification wording, the contact line. Never varied, so a reader comparing two listings sees one company.

Every version is checked against your value proposition, so the claim at 50 words is the same claim at 200.

What you get

The three descriptions. Plain text in one document, each with its word count stated, ready to be copied without reformatting.

The paste sheet. One page you can forward to anyone who asks, carrying all three lengths, the fixed elements, and a line telling the recipient which to use for what. Most of the value of boilerplate is that somebody else can use it without asking you.

The where-it-lives list. Every place I can find your current description published, with the version sitting there now, so you know what has to be updated and who to ask.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A commercial landscaping company in southern Ontario, eleven staff, selling grounds maintenance and snow clearing to property managers. It sponsors two trade events, sits in four association directories and appears on three partner pages. Searching for its own name turns up nine published descriptions, six of them different, two still naming a service it dropped three years ago, and one calling it a landscaping and design firm, which it has never been.

The work is an hour with the two owners, a read of the existing nine, and a decision they had been avoiding: whether snow clearing leads or follows. It leads, because it is what a property manager panics about in November and it is what brings the maintenance contract with it. The 50-word version therefore opens on winter work. All three drop the design claim, name the service area as a region rather than a city list that keeps going stale, and use one wording for the licensing. Two partner pages update within a fortnight of being sent the sheet; the third never replies, which is the normal outcome and the reason the list exists.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the business does, where descriptions keep being asked for, and what you think the current ones get wrong. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Agreed before anything starts.
3. Collection. I find the descriptions published now; you send the ones I cannot see. Two days.
4. One recorded hour. With whoever can settle a claim without asking anyone else. This is the part that decides the lead sentence.
5. Drafting. Three to five working days. The 100-word version is written first, then built out and cut back.
6. One round of revision. You mark up the three, and the sheet and the list arrive with the final copy. About a week and a half in total.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, agreed in writing, and not changed without your agreement. The price depends on how many published descriptions have to be found and read first, and on whether the company profile is being written at the same time, which makes the pair cheaper than the two bought separately. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works.

What happens next

Most owners spend an afternoon sending the paste sheet to the places on the list that will accept it. If the descriptions were hard to write because nobody could agree what to claim, the approved list of things to say settles that properly. If the facts turned out to be the problem rather than the words, the factual profile is the usual companion. And if the description has to exist in French, adapted rather than machine-translated versions are a short separate job. This work is complete on its own: three descriptions and a sheet you can send, and nothing further is assumed.