Clarifying Messaging for Two Audiences
A Brand Strategy and Website Project with Rita Thompson Coaching
A lot of thoughtful, highly skilled practitioners have a hard time explaining their work in a way that makes immediate sense to the people they most want to reach.
That was true for Rita Thompson, a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach whose practice supports older adults through aging, life transitions, health changes, and questions of identity, purpose, and daily well-being.
Rita’s work is nuanced. She helps clients build routines, strengthen emotional well-being, and follow through on changes that support long-term quality of life. She also collaborates with provider practices and understands how to work alongside clinical care.
What needed attention was the messaging.
Her website had to speak to two very different groups:
Older adults looking for support
Healthcare providers and other referral partners considering whether to send patients and clients her way
Those audiences were coming to her work with different questions, different priorities, and different language. The site needed to make her value clear to both.
That became the focus of our work together.
The problem we were solving
Early in our work together, one thing became very clear. Rita’s work lived in a space that can be difficult to describe quickly.
She supports behavior change, emotional well-being, and practical follow-through. Her work is personal and relational, but also grounded in evidence-based methods and clinical understanding. She can work well with self-referred clients, but she is also especially strong in provider-adjacent settings where collaboration and communication matter.
That created a few messaging challenges.
For potential clients, the website needed to explain how Rita helps when someone feels stuck, overwhelmed, lonely, or unsure where to begin. Many of the people she works best with know something needs to change, but they do not know how to get started or how to stay consistent once they do.
For providers, the website needed to answer a different question. Why refer to Rita instead of another coach, and how does that referral support the practice as well as the patient?
That part was especially important. Rita’s strength is not just that she helps people set goals. She helps patients follow through on clinical recommendations, prioritize what matters most, and build realistic routines between appointments. That can support better outcomes, reduce repetitive conversations, and free providers up to focus on clinical care.
Those distinctions were there in her work all along. They just needed to be pulled forward and expressed more clearly.
Starting with strategy
We began with my Brand Clarity & Content Strategy Series, a three-session process designed to clarify positioning, audience, messaging, and direction.
Across those sessions, we looked closely at:
the clients Rita most enjoys and is best equipped to support
the emotional and practical struggles those clients are navigating
the concerns and needs of providers who may refer to her
the language that felt most accurate, useful, and resonant for each audience
We also spent time refining how to present Rita’s credentials, title, and overall positioning so her depth of training and clinical credibility came through clearly.
From that work, I created a Brand Clarity Roadmap to guide the website updates and future marketing. The roadmap defined her positioning, clarified audience insights, developed client-facing and provider-facing messaging, and outlined content pillars and offer structure.
One important insight was that Rita’s brand should be rooted in daily life, emotional grounding, and sustainable change rather than language that could feel overly clinical, vague, or judgmental. The roadmap describes her work as sitting at the intersection of emotional well-being, sustainable behavior change, and collaborative care.
That framing gave us something much stronger to build from.
Clarifying the client-facing message
For prospective clients, the messaging needed to feel clear, warm, and grounded.
Rita had noticed that certain words, especially health-focused language, could create resistance. Some people hear words like healthy or healthier and immediately feel judged, shut down, or like they are being told they have failed in some way.
So we moved away from language that could trigger that reaction and focused instead on what her clients are truly looking for.
They want more structure, more steadiness, more support, and a clearer path forward. They want help creating routines they can actually sustain. They want to feel less overwhelmed and more connected to themselves and other people. They want daily life to feel more manageable and more fulfilling.
Her client-facing message became centered on supportive habits, daily routines, meaningful connection, and a more active, fulfilling everyday life. That language is reflected in the Roadmap and became a key anchor for the homepage.
Clarifying the provider-facing message
The provider-facing side needed a different lens.
Busy physicians, therapists, and dietitians are not reading long paragraphs to figure out whether someone may be a useful referral partner. They need to understand quickly what problem is being solved and how that support fits into care.
Our work clarified that Rita brings value to providers in very practical ways. She helps patients follow through. She helps them prioritize. She helps translate recommendations into realistic daily action. She can reduce some of the repeated conversations that happen when patients know they need to change but are not making progress between visits.
The provider-facing message in the Roadmap reflects that clearly. It positions Rita as someone who supports older adult patients with evidence-based behavior change coaching that translates clinical recommendations into realistic habits and sustainable action, leading to stronger follow-through, fewer repetitive touchpoints, and improved satisfaction and outcomes.
That message also helped shape a new provider page on the site, where her collaborative value could be explained in a more direct and provider-relevant way.
Translating the strategy into website updates
Once the messaging was clarified, I moved into the website copywriting and design phase of the project, applying that strategy to Rita’s existing site.
This included:
refining the page hierarchy and structure
rewriting key website copy
developing messaging for a provider-focused page
creating a new About page
shaping language around her coaching approach and offers
making design and layout updates to improve flow and readability
designing a simple type treatment logo for a more polished, cohesive visual identity
We were not starting from scratch. The goal was to strengthen what already existed and make the site feel more aligned with Rita’s current work, voice, and business direction.
That also meant thinking carefully about what should and should not appear visually. Rita wanted the brand to feel grounded, human, and credible. She did not want generic stock photos of smiling “healthy” people or visual cues that felt performative or prescriptive. She wanted the site to feel real, thoughtful, and reflective of the kind of support she actually offers.
The result
The updated website gives both audiences a clearer path in.
Potential clients can better understand who Rita helps, what kind of support she offers, and why her coaching may feel different from other options they have tried.
Providers can more quickly see how her work fits into collaborative care and why referring to her may benefit both the patient and the practice.
Just as importantly, Rita came away with a stronger messaging foundation she can continue using across her website, provider outreach conversations, and future marketing.
That kind of clarity makes a real difference. Once the message is more focused, the website becomes easier to structure, the copy becomes easier to write, and the business becomes easier to talk about as a whole.
Why this matters
A lot of website projects are really messaging projects underneath.
When the positioning is unclear, the site often ends up trying to do too much, say everything at once, or speak to different audiences in the same way. That usually asks too much of visitors who are trying to quickly understand what the business actually offers.
Starting with strategy helps create a clearer foundation.
Rita’s project is a strong example of what can happen when that foundation is in place. Her website now communicates her work more clearly, gives each audience a clearer path, and better reflects the depth and credibility of what she offers.
