Brand messaging, positioning, and website design in Chicago

Watch a 100-year-old company find its sentence.

Turn on the sound to hear this 100-year-old company react to its new first sentence.

What you get People understand you Your visitor reads one line and knows whether this is for them. Most sites never manage this.

What you get Selling gets easier Almost nobody suspects the words! They see low conversion rates and assume “buy more traffic.”

What you get AI recommends you Search engines and AI need to know how to refer you as a solution to someone’s problem.

The proof Watch it land Turn on the sound to hear this 100-year-old company react to its new first sentence.

Set up a brainstorm call

The problem

People visit your website and still have no clue what you do.

Let alone how you can help them or why they would want to give you their money. That is a failure of words, but almost nobody traces their efforts back to it.

i.
You already paid for a design.It looks fine. It might even look expensive. People still are not calling. It’s the words.
ii.
The leads you get are price shoppers.They ask what it costs and disappear, because your words never told them why you are valuable to them.
iii.
The page is about you, not them.Count the sentences on your homepage that start with we, our, or your company. On most sites it is over half. Those are the wrong words.
iv.
So you buy more traffic.Conversion is low, you assume it is a numbers problem, and you go blast more people who do not care. The words are your problem.

The fix

Get the words right, first. Then build around them.

Keep your current website and marketing company, just fix the words. Two ways to do that:

Your Words Expert

I find your words.

Ten years of writing first sentences, and now using AI to define your customers, analyze your position, and validate hypotheses. I’ll be able to tell you which conversation is worth having with your customers.

Analyze your message and positioning
Compare against competitors
Write your new words
Send the new words to your marketing team

Your Senior Webmaster

I make you look great.

250+ websites created and a degree in design. Hand me your site and stop thinking about it. Your site gets written, designed, and maintained. We’ll meet every few weeks to discuss analytics and opportunities.

Written, designed and built
Hosting, updates and fixes handled
Analytics set up and discussed
I work with the team you already have

Set up a brainstorm call

Either way, it starts with the same conversation.

A few of the sites I write, design, and look after.

See all the work

Katy Mickelson Divorce attorney · Chicago

Every divorce attorney describes the same service. She leads with the cases she takes.

Every other firm in the city says compassionate, aggressive, results driven. Naming the cases she takes means the wrong caller screens themselves out and the right one knows on the first line.

Visit the site

Abel Concrete Contractor · Villa Park, IL

“I just need a good concrete guy.”

The headline is a direct quote from the builders who hire him.

4Leads in the first two weeks

0In all the years before

$25kPotential new work from those four

Visit the site

Chicago Pizza Tours Food tours · client since 2017

Corporate bookings went from a rounding error to most of the business.

5% to 60%Corporate revenue

80%Revenue up

Visit the site

Matt Pittman Realtor · Chicago suburbs

A realtor who gives away tacos, and means it.

Most agent sites are an interchangeable headshot and a listings feed. Matt is a musician who actually enjoys this, so his properties read like a zine rather than a brochure. Two sites, one voice.

Visit the site

Digital Guidebooks SaaS startup · Chicago

“More tips. More emails. More reviews.”

The old line sold the product: it lets guests follow along with your tour on their phone. Operators argued with the features. The new one sells the outcome instead, so the conversation is about what an operator gets rather than what the app does. Launched in March and still a private rollout, converting at a rate nobody expects to hold once it opens up.

25%Of operators shown it sign up

Visit the site

How it starts

Let’s meet up in person, in Chicago.

Every engagement kicks off face to face in Chicago over a meal. It’s part of the beauty of us both living here. Let’s actually meet up.

This is my preferred way to hear how you talk about your business and kick things off.

Not in Chicago? Then we do it over Zoom and it’ll be just as great.

Joe Martin and Dinner with the owner of Chicago Pizza Tours — Dinner with the owner of Chicago Pizza Tours, whose site is up there in the work. Client since 2017.

Before you ask

The questions I get every time.

Do I have to let you build the site?

No. The words are yours and you can hand them to whoever built your site. Plenty of people do exactly that. It is only a website project if you want it to be.

I already paid for a redesign. Why would this be different?

Because a redesign changes how the page looks and almost never changes what it says. Three of the clients on this page arrived the same way: they had already paid a design company and people still were not calling.

What if I already have a marketing team?

Good. This is a short specialist stretch of the work, not a replacement for anyone. Once the message is settled, your team picks it back up and everything they were already doing starts working harder.

How long does it take?

The first call is short and costs nothing. A working session on your first sentence is an hour. The full messaging engagement used to run six weeks and now runs less than that, because AI shortens the research without shortening the thinking.

Do you only work with businesses in Chicago?

No, but Chicago clients get dinner and you do not. The work itself runs the same anywhere.

What does it cost?

The brainstorm call is free. The working session is a fixed price and everything else depends on scope. Nothing starts without you knowing the number first.

Start with the easy wins.

Set up a call and let’s go look for the language on your site that could be working harder. Small changes you can make this week. You will leave with something useful whether or not we go further.

Set up a brainstorm call Test your site free