Get Clear. Get Found. Grow.
Messaging, websites, local SEO, AI search and ongoing marketing leadership for owner-led businesses. Every engagement starts with finding out what is actually broken — because the most expensive marketing is the kind aimed at the wrong problem.
Start here
Two ways in, depending on how ready you are to spend money.
AI Readiness Snapshot
No cost, no call
What AI assistants actually say about your business today.
- Scored against eight signals
- Shows the gaps costing you work
- Two minutes to request
Total Online Presence Snapshot
One-off, no commitment
The wider picture — how findable your business is everywhere, not just in AI.
- Website, Google Business Profile, listings
- What your competitors are doing
- Where the traffic is actually coming from
Strategy First
From $7,500
Thirty to forty-five days working out what is actually wrong before anyone builds anything — and a written 90-day plan at the end that you can hand to any team, including your own.
- Three or four working sessions
- Your messaging, written properly
- Presence, competitor and keyword research
- Interviews with your own best customers
- Your customer journey mapped end to end
- A prioritised 90-day plan
The easiest way to start is a call. Tell me what is going on and we will work out together whether this is even the right step for you.
You do not have to start with either one. Plenty of clients arrive knowing exactly what they need — a message, a website, help getting found — and we get on with it. The diagnosis exists because guessing is expensive, not because it is compulsory.
Get clear
Nothing downstream works if the words are wrong. A beautiful website that says the wrong thing is an expensive way to be ignored.
Messaging campaign
A ninety-minute session, then your BrandScript, your brand story, five one-liner variations, suggested taglines and the keywords that reach your ideal client. Covers up to three customer types.
What a BrandScript is · How a one-liner is built · The three-step plan · Aspirational identity
Website copy
Wireframe copy for your home, about, services, call-to-action and thank-you pages, written from the BrandScript. Competitor keyword research is included. Additional pages such as individual services are $500 each.
Messaging for several customer types
If you serve two or three kinds of customer — or nine — each one gets its own message, and we find the language they share for your homepage. The first three are included; each further group of three is $500.
StoryBrand coaching
Done-with-you instead of done-for-you. You get the resources and the homework, you do the work, then we spend an hour tightening it up. If you are capable of writing it, this costs you a fraction of the alternative.
Learn it first
The whole framework is written up, free, if you would rather understand the method before you spend anything on it.
The StoryBrand framework · Without the StoryBrand vocabulary
Get found
A clear message nobody sees is still a secret. This is the half of the work most messaging people do not do.
Total Online Presence Audit
Not just the website. Your Google Business Profile, directories and citations, backlinks, social, analytics and search data — how present your business actually is, anywhere.
Website optimization
For the site that looks great and gets no traffic, once we have established that visibility is the actual problem. Messaging and keyword research included, then the structural changes search engines are looking for. Rises with the size of the site.
AI Search Readiness Review
A full review of whether AI assistants can find, understand and recommend your business, scored against the eight signals, with the gaps and how to close them.
Content that AI can quote
Done-for-you content built to be found and cited: a pillar page and a cluster of posts written around the questions your buyers actually ask. Three tiers depending on how much ground you want to cover.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile
A three-month campaign — $2,000 to begin, then $1,900 for each of the next two months. Getting picked up in your community when people search, and this is where we do our best work.
Social media management
A quarterly strategy call, a monthly report, and where it helps, an interview to mine the content only you have. Volume scales to what you want to publish.
Ads and paid media
I do not run Google Ads, LSA or pay-per-click, and you should have someone excellent on it rather than someone ordinary billing you for it — so you get introduced to a StoryBrand Guide who specialises. I will still tell you to run ads for the first three to six months, because that is usually how you cover the gap while organic search builds.
Grow with confidence
Once the message is right and people are finding you, the job becomes building something that keeps working without you holding it up.
One-page website
A single long-scroll StoryBrand site in GoHighLevel, carrying the whole framework on one page rather than a stripped-back landing page. Includes the messaging and the copy. The subscription covers email, calendar and basic automations.
Starter website
Home, about and contact in WordPress, including the messaging and the copy for home and about. Six months of hosting and website care included.
Complete website
Home, about, service pages, contact and a tracked thank-you page. Includes the messaging, competitor keyword research, custom copy, design and build. WordPress or GoHighLevel, same price either way.
Website makeover
A StoryBrand rebuild of the site you already have, on any platform. Often the fastest return of anything on this page — one client’s homepage went from bouncing 98% of visitors to 10.2% in a year.
Lead generator and email sequence
Something worth trading an email address for at $2,000, and the six-to-seven email follow-up sequence behind it at $3,000. The two clients I have worked with longest both arrived this way.
CRM and automation
Getting the follow-up out of your head and into a system, so nothing depends on somebody remembering. Built in GoHighLevel: email, calendar, text, payments and automations from one place, from $97 a month.
Fractional CMO
Ongoing marketing leadership that includes the execution — strategy and the work, from the same person. Three clients at a time.
E-commerce and custom builds
Selling online adds roughly $6,000 to a build, because product setup, payments, tax and shipping take a long time to get right. Fully custom platforms are built from the ground up in code and quoted individually.
What everything costs
Most agencies make you book a call to find out. Here it is.
| Service | Price |
|---|---|
| AI Readiness Snapshot | Free |
| Total Online Presence Snapshot | $297 |
| StoryBrand coaching (done-with-you) | $350 / session |
| Total Online Presence Audit | $1,000 |
| Messaging campaign | from $1,000 |
| One-page StoryBrand website (GoHighLevel) | $1,500 + $97 / mo |
| Starter website (WordPress, three pages) | $3,500 |
| Website copy (five pages) | $3,500 |
| Additional page copy | $500 each |
| Website optimization (existing site) | from $3,500 |
| AI Search Readiness Review | $3,500 · $2,000 existing |
| Lead generator and email sequence | $5,000 |
| Content packages | $5,000 · $7,000 · $9,500 |
| Local SEO campaign (three months) | $5,800 |
| Strategy First | from $7,500 |
| Complete StoryBrand website | $8,000 |
| StoryBrand website makeover | from $8,000 |
| Social media management | from $2,500 / mo |
| Fractional CMO | from $3,500 / mo |
| Ads and paid media | referred to a specialist |
Why a few of these say “from”. A five-page website and a forty-page website are not the same job, and quoting either one before understanding the business is how people end up paying for things they did not need. Anything with a starting price is quoted in full before it starts, so you never get an invoice you did not agree to.
Rebuild or makeover? If your site gets no traffic, start clean. If it does get traffic, be careful — those visitors arrive on pages that rank because of the words on them, and a brand-new site deletes those words along with the rankings. Advantage Roofing’s old site was carrying a lot of dead weight, but it was also putting thousands of people in front of the business every month. They were just bouncing straight back out. So a large part of a makeover is the analysis that separates what is genuinely earning attention and only needs refining from what is dead weight worth cutting. A few of those original posts were ranking well, so the core of that copy was kept and the pages were rebuilt in an E-E-A-T format.
Paying for it. Everything above is the price paid in full. Most people spread it: $2,000 down, then twelve monthly payments covering the balance plus six months of website care at $250 a month. There is no interest beyond that care. Every price, and the reason each one costs what it does →
Which one do you actually need?
It depends on what is broken, and most owners guess wrong about their own business — usually because the thing that is broken is invisible from the inside. Four patterns worth recognising:
People arrive and leave
Traffic is fine. Enquiries are not. The problem is almost always the message, not the marketing.
→ Start at stage oneNobody arrives at all
The message may be perfectly good and entirely unseen. A clear message nobody sees is still a secret.
→ Start at stage twoThe leads are the wrong ones
That is a message problem wearing a marketing costume. You are attracting people you cannot help.
→ Stage one againIt only works when you push it
Everything functions, but nothing runs without you. You do not need another project.
→ You need stage threeAnd if none of those describe you, that is exactly what the first call is for.
What this has looked like
One client, eighteen months, and a homepage that was turning away almost everyone who found it.
Return on marketing spend
Revenue, in 18 months
Homepage bounce rate, same two weeks of February a year apart
Owners using the website wireframe
For the first time in my career I am conveying a simple yet powerful message that leads the right prospects to raise their hands.Gordon Haave, Sales & Marketing Expert / CIO, Advisormax
Read the Advantage Roofing case study, including Tim Mallory telling it himself on video. There are two more: a new Iowa business getting found from a standing start, and a nonprofit whose website became a lifeline.
Questions, Answered.
Do I have to buy every service, or can I start with just one?
Start with exactly what your business needs and nothing more. Some clients only ever need a clarified message. Others need a website. Others want the whole system. Because every engagement begins with working out what is actually broken, you spend on the thing that fixes it first and grow from there if it makes sense.
Do I have to do Strategy First before anything else?
No. It is the front door for a business that does not yet know what is wrong, and it is genuinely the best money most owners could spend — but if you already know you need a website rebuilt or a message clarified, we can simply do that.
Should I rebuild my site or make over the one I have?
If your current site gets no traffic, rebuild. If it does get traffic, be careful. That traffic comes from pages that rank because of the copy on them, and a brand-new site throws that copy away along with the rankings, which puts you back at month one waiting three to six months to reach where you already were.
A makeover starts at $8,000, the same as a fresh build, and part of what you are paying for is the analysis that separates what is genuinely working and only needs refining from what is dead weight worth cutting.
Can I pay monthly?
Yes. $2,000 down, then twelve monthly payments covering the balance plus six months of website care at $250 a month. On the $8,000 complete website that works out to $625 a month.
Paying in full includes those six months of care at no charge, so a monthly plan costs $1,500 more in total — there is no interest beyond that. Because I manage the site and the hosting during that period, it stays under my management until it is paid in full, and then it is entirely yours. The full breakdown is here.
What size business is this for?
Typically $1M to $10M in revenue with a team of five to fifteen, where the owner is still making the decisions. Below that, a focused messaging and website project usually delivers more per dollar than anything ongoing — and I will say so rather than sell you a retainer.
Do you work with businesses outside Iowa?
Yes. StoryWorks Marketing is based in Waukee, Iowa, and clients run from New England to Portland and San Francisco. The roofing company behind most of the numbers on this page is in Cincinnati. Nearly all of the work happens over video.
How is this different from hiring an agency?
An agency is accountable for its service. Everything here is aimed at the outcome, which is why the diagnosis comes first and why some of these services get recommended against. If your Google Business Profile is the thing holding you back, that is what the plan will say — even though it is the cheapest item on this page.
Who am I actually working with?
Me. Tim Yates — a Certified StoryBrand Guide since 2020 and a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Fractional CMO. Both are verifiable: StoryBrand Guide directory · Duct Tape Marketing directory. Work is not handed to someone junior. More about me.
That is exactly what the first call is for
Tell me what you have tried and what is not working. I will tell you honestly which of these you need, which you do not, and whether the answer is something simpler and cheaper than you expected.
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Write a Website That Sells — One Section at a Time
The same StoryBrand website wireframe we use to build client websites — including a complete working example. Find the words that turn your website visitors into customers.
No spam. Just the wireframe and a few helpful tips.
The Storybrand Website Wireframe
Write a Website That Sells — One Section at a Time
The same StoryBrand website wireframe we use to build client websites — with a complete filled-in example. Find the words that turn visitors into customers.
The exact section-by-section wireframe we use with paying clients
A complete, real-world example to model your own pages after
Built for clarity, SEO and AI Search — so you get found and chosen
Joined by 1100+ No spam. Just the wireframe and a few helpful tips.
Clarity-first marketing for growth-minded local businesses. StoryBrand messaging, local SEO, and websites built to get found.
Certified StoryBrand Guide.
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