How to write a marketing bio that gets you hired (or referred)

Pull up your LinkedIn About section or your website bio right now.

Does the first sentence describe you? Your years of experience, your title, your specialisations, your passion for something?

If yes, you've written a bio that serves you and loses the reader.

The person reading it (the prospective client, the recruiter, the referral deciding whether to pass your name along) doesn't care about your career arc in the first sentence. They care about whether you're relevant to them. Whether you understand their situation. Whether you've seen their problem before.

A bio that answers those questions generates enquiries. A bio that summarises your CV generates polite indifference.

Here's the difference between the two, and how to rewrite yours.

The inside-out problem

Most marketing professionals write their bio from the inside out. They start with themselves: who they are and what they've done. Then they list services. Then they add a line about passion or approach. Then they stop.

It reads like a resumé summary. Which is fine if you're applying for jobs. For generating inbound or building a referral network, it leaves most of the work undone.

The prospective client who lands on your profile doesn't know yet whether you're relevant to them. Your bio's first job is to answer that question: fast, specifically, from their direction.

That means starting with them.

The outside-in reframe

An outside-in bio opens with the client's situation. It names the problem they have. It explains where you come in and what changes. Credentials come last, as proof rather than pitch.

Before and after. Same person, completely different effect.

Before:

"Sarah is a senior marketing strategist with 12 years' experience across B2B and B2C brands. She specialises in brand strategy, content marketing, and digital communications. Sarah holds an MBA and has worked with clients across financial services, professional services, and technology. She is passionate about building brands that connect with their audiences."

Read this as a prospective client. What do you know? Sarah has been doing marketing for a while. She works across a wide range of things.

What you don't know: whether she's seen your specific problem, or why you should contact her rather than the ten other consultants with similar CVs.

After:

"Sarah works with professional services firms that have strong expertise but struggle to translate it into visible market presence (the firms that are genuinely good at what they do and perpetually frustrated that their pipeline doesn't reflect it). She helps them identify what makes them specifically different, then build the content and positioning infrastructure to make that difference visible. Most of her clients see inbound enquiries shift within the first six months.

15 years in B2B marketing strategy. MBA. Previously at [agency/company]."

Same person. The first version summarises a career. The second version describes someone who understands a specific situation, works with a specific type of client, and has seen specific results. The credentials are still there, doing a different job.

The rewrite framework

Line 1: Name the client.

Who specifically do you work with? The more specific you are, the more the right reader feels immediately addressed.

"I work with B2B technology companies..." is better than "I work with businesses." "I work with B2B technology companies that have built a strong sales-led motion and are trying to shift toward product-led growth" is better still.

Line 2: Name the problem.

What situation are they in? What's the thing they're trying to fix or achieve? Make it specific enough that someone who has that problem recognises themselves.

The test: can a prospective client read this line and think "that's us"?

Line 3: Describe your entry point.

What do you do, and what changes because you do it? One sentence. Outcomes matter more than methodology.

Line 4: One proof point.

A result or a specific outcome you've seen. Something concrete that makes the preceding lines credible.

Line 5 (optional): Credentials.

Brief. One sentence. Years of experience and notable employers or clients. The "why you can trust what came before" line.

Where to use it

The bio you've just rewritten belongs everywhere someone might be deciding whether to contact you.

LinkedIn About section. The first two sentences carry the most weight because that's all most people see before clicking "see more." Make those two sentences the client's situation and your entry point.

Website About page. You have more room here, so you can go deeper on proof: case study references, types of clients, specific results. The same outside-in structure still applies. Start with them, end with you.

Speaker bio (conference/podcast). Event organisers and hosts are choosing between multiple possible guests. The bio that describes who benefits from hearing you consistently beats the bio that lists your career highlights.

Email signatures and proposals. A one-line version of your positioning, the client and the problem, does more work in a proposal context than your title and company name.

The one rewrite worth doing this week

Take the first sentence of your current bio. Read it as a prospective client. Does it answer "is this person relevant to me" in their language, or does it describe you in yours?

If it's the latter, rewrite that sentence only. One sentence: who you work with and what problem you help them solve. Then update every place your bio lives.

Get the first sentence right, and the rest of the bio has something to build on.

The HEM free toolkit includes a positioning map template: the exercise that forces you to answer "who specifically" and "what problem specifically" before you write a word of your bio. The map becomes the source material for every version of your bio across every platform.