Urban Umbrella

06/22/2026

Most businesses don't have a marketing system. They have a collection of marketing activities. A website that was built a few years ago. Some social posts that go out when someone remembers. An ad campaign that ran once and didn't get followed up on. A CRM that has contacts in it that nobody is reaching out to. Each piece exists in isolation. None of it talks to the other pieces. And when something doesn't work, there's no way to know which part of the chain failed because nobody is looking at the chain. That's not a marketing problem. That's a systems problem. And it's the most common thing we find when we start working with a new client.

Visit weareumbrella.co to learn how Urban Umbrella builds connected marketing systems for small and mid-size businesses. Link in bio.

06/19/2026

In 2014, I helped create a photograph that had never been made before.

Shot from the top of One World Trade Center. 1700 above Lower Manhattan. Three hours of shooting. Four panoramas stitched into a single image using a custom mechanical rig built from drawings by an engineer who had never assembled it in the field.

It became the first three-page cover in TIME Magazine's 91-year history.

But when we look back at that project, it was never really a photography project. It was a systems project.

The photography was the output. The system was the thing that made the output possible.

We think about that constantly in the work we do today. Because the operators and experience businesses we work with across Alaska face the same problem.

Extraordinary at what they do. No system behind their marketing.

The asset is there. The infrastructure is not.

The full story and what it means for your business is on the blog. https://www.weareumbrella.co/post/what-the-first-three-page-cover-in-time-magazine-s-history-taught-me-about-marketing-systems

06/17/2026

Most businesses treat cheap leads as disposable.
When leads cost two dollars each, that logic feels sound. Why spend thirty minutes chasing a two-dollar lead when you can just run more ads and get another one tomorrow?
Here is the problem with that logic.
A two-dollar lead that converts to a booking is worth four thousand to six thousand dollars. Not two dollars.
If one in twenty leads converts, every twenty leads represents one booking worth five thousand dollars. That means each two-dollar lead is actually worth two hundred and fifty dollars in expected revenue.
We worked with a bareboat charter operator in Alaska who had 1,300 contacts sitting in a database. Leads who had raised their hand and then gone quiet after one or two follow-up attempts.
Most operators would look at that database and see 1,300 dead leads.
We looked at it and saw over $50,000 in recoverable revenue.
We were right.
The full breakdown of what we did and what we recovered is on the blog. weareumbrella.co/blog

06/15/2026

You invested in a video. Maybe you hired a photographer. Maybe a content creator spent a week capturing what you do.
The content is good. You know it is good.

And then nothing much happened.

This is one of the most common and costly misunderstandings in small business marketing. The belief that great content will find its audience on its own.

It will not. Not without a distribution system behind it.

The question is never whether the content is good enough. The question is whether enough of the right people are seeing it.

Full breakdown on the blog.

You invested in a video. Maybe you hired a photographer. Maybe a content creator came up and spent a week capturing what you do -- the early mornings, the gear check, the moment your client's face lights up when they see what they paid for.The content is good. You know it is good. You posted it on y...

06/12/2026

Two web design projects. Two different industries. One consistent result: sites that finally do their job.Project 1: A Southern New Hampshire flooring company. Three-week rebuild. Clear residential and commercial intent split. Client feedback: Urban Umbrella's abilities for web design far exceeded expectations. Project 2: An Alaska tourism company. Full rebuild structured to drive direct bookings. Result: $27K in owned channel revenue for the full prior year, now $120K in the first five months before season.Different clients. Different problems. Same approach: understand who's visiting, build the site around them, and make the next step impossible to miss.

Visit our website to learn more about how Urban Umbrella approaches web design. www.weareumbrella.co

06/10/2026

The homepage of a business website has one job: get the right visitor to the right place as fast as possible. Not explain everything the business does. Not showcase every service equally. Not to tell the full company story. Get the right visitor to the right place. Fast. That means the homepage needs to understand that different visitors have different needs and route them accordingly, before they have time to get confused or lose interest. A homepage that tries to be everything to everyone ends up being nothing to anyone specific. And nothing to anyone specific doesn't convert.

Visit our website to see how Urban Umbrella designs homepages that route visitors, not just inform them. www.weareumbrella.co

06/08/2026

There's a version of a business website that looks completely professional and still fails at its core job. Good photography. Clean layout. Comprehensive service descriptions. And visitors still bounce without converting. The reason is almost always the same: the site explains what the business does but doesn't guide visitors toward what to do next. Explanation and direction are two different things. A website that only explains is doing half its job.

Visit our website to learn how Urban Umbrella builds sites that guide visitors, not just inform them. www.weareumbrella.co

06/05/2026

Two web design projects. Two different industries. One consistent result: sites that finally do their job.Project 1: A Southern New Hampshire flooring company. Three-week rebuild. $3,500. Clear residential and commercial intent split. Client feedback: abilities for web design far exceeded expectations.Project 2: An Alaska tourism company. Full rebuild structured to drive direct bookings. Result: $29K in owned channel revenue for the full prior year, now $92K in the first three and a half months before season.Different clients. Different problems. Same approach: understand who's visiting, build the site around them, and make the next step impossible to miss.

Visit our website to learn more about how Urban Umbrella approaches web design. www.weareumbrella.co

06/01/2026

There's a version of a business website that looks completely professional and still fails at its core job. Good photography. Clean layout. Comprehensive service descriptions. And visitors still bounce without converting. The reason is almost always the same: the site explains what the business does but doesn't guide visitors toward what to do next. Explanation and direction are two different things. A website that only explains is doing half its job.

Visit our website to learn how Urban Umbrella builds sites that guide visitors, not just inform them. Link in bio.