What you’ll have at the end
A first draft of a landing page for one of your services or offers — headline, sub-head, three to four sections of body copy, and a call to action. Not finished, not perfect, but specifically about your business in a way the “write me a landing page” prompt never gets you.
Time on task: about thirty minutes if you’ve got your services and offers in your head. Forty-five if you’re going to write them up first (recommended).
You can do this in ChatGPT, Claude, or Codex — the workflow is the same. Codex is faster for repeated runs because it can hold your business context across sessions; for a one-off draft, any of them work.
The mistake most people make
You open the chatbox. You type “write me a landing page for a [your business].” You get back four paragraphs that read like a HR consultant on a slow day:
“Welcome to [Business Name]. We are a family-owned [type of business] with over [X] years of experience servicing the local community. Our friendly and professional team is dedicated to providing the highest quality service to all of our valued customers.”
You close the tab. The landing page never gets built.
The output isn’t bad because AI is bad. The output is bad because you didn’t tell the AI what your business actually is. Same blank prompt, same generic output your competitors are getting from the same blank prompt.
The fix is the next thirty minutes.
What you need before you start
Five things, written down. Bullets are fine — full sentences if you want. Don’t skip this part; this is the whole guide.
- What you sell. Your services or product, in plain words. Not “marketing solutions” — “I rewrite small-business websites and run their Google Ads.”
- Who you sell to. The buyer, specifically. Not “small businesses” — “Geelong-area trades businesses that have a website but aren’t getting calls from it.”
- The one offer this page is selling. Not your whole catalogue. The single thing you want the visitor to do. “Book a free 15-minute call to see if you’d benefit from a website review.”
- Your tone of voice. Three adjectives + one don’t. “Direct, warm, no jargon. Don’t use the word ‘solutions’.”
- The customer’s biggest worry about buying. The objection they have before you’ve even said the price. “That they’ll spend money on a website and still not get calls.”
If you can fill those five in, the AI can write you something useful. If you can’t, the AI is going to make it up — badly.
The brief, ready to copy
Open your AI tool of choice. Paste the block below. Fill in the brackets with your five answers from the step above. Then hit enter.
Don’t want to fill the brackets by hand? Open the Landing Page Worksheet — type your five inputs once and the briefed prompt generates for you, ready to copy. Saves to your browser.
You're helping me draft a landing page for one of my services.
My business:
[what you sell, in plain words]
My ideal customer:
[who buys from you, specifically]
The one offer this page is selling:
[the single CTA — book a call, request a quote, etc.]
My tone of voice:
[three adjectives, plus one word I don't want you to use]
The customer's biggest worry before buying:
[the objection they have before you've named a price]
Please draft the page with the following sections, in this order:
1. A headline (under 12 words, specific, not "Welcome to…")
2. A sub-head (one sentence, names the outcome the customer wants)
3. The two or three things the customer is actually worried about, addressed plainly
4. What's included / what they get
5. Who this is for — and who it isn't for
6. A clear call-to-action paragraph leading into the CTA
Constraints:
- No marketing buzzwords (no "solutions," "synergy," "next-level," etc.)
- No "we are passionate about" anything
- No fake stats or made-up testimonials
- Keep each section short — this is a landing page, not an essay
- Use my tone, not yours
Before you finish, ask me any clarifying questions that would
materially improve the result.The last instruction matters: a good AI will come back with two or three clarifying questions instead of hallucinating an answer. Answer them. Then ask it to draft.
What you’ll get back
A first draft — usually 300 to 500 words across the six sections. Read it through once. Don’t fix anything yet.
It will be noticeably better than the “write me a landing page” version because it’s grounded in your actual business. But it won’t be finished. A few things to expect:
- The headline will be passable but not great. Headlines are the hardest part — AI gets you a starting point, not the final.
- A couple of phrases will be slightly off-tone. AI tends to drift toward “professional” even when you asked for “direct.”
- It might have hedged on a specific claim (“many of our customers”). Replace hedges with the real number, or cut them.
What to always change by hand
Three things AI gets wrong by default. Always edit these:
- Specifics. AI doesn’t know your real customer count, real testimonials, real prices. Wherever it’s invented one, replace it with a true one or cut it.
- The headline. Take three swings at the headline yourself. AI’s first pass is rarely the best. Try the format “[Outcome] — without [the thing they’re worried about].”
- The CTA. Make sure the call-to-action language matches your actual booking flow. If the form says “Get a free audit,” the page should say “Get a free audit,” not “Schedule a consultation today.”
Everything else — the structure, the sub-head, the body — leave it as the AI drafted if it sounds like you. Save the editing energy for the parts that matter.
A two-minute review before you publish
Five-second read of the page. Honest answers.
- Is it obvious what the business does, in the first sentence?
- Is the offer (the CTA) named clearly above the fold?
- Is there a single sentence anywhere that addresses the customer’s biggest worry?
- Could a competitor swap their name in and the page still make sense? (If yes — it’s still generic. Add more specifics.)
- Is there anywhere I’ve used a word my real customers wouldn’t use? (Strip those.)
Five questions. If you can answer yes to the first three and no to the last two, ship it.
Where to take this next
This is the smallest version of the workflow. The same five-input brief (services, customer, offer, tone, worry) can produce About-page copy, Google Ads headlines, a service-page rewrite, a follow-up email. Save the brief into your AI’s instructions or skill files; you’ll re-use it more often than you think.
The bigger version of this — set up properly inside Codex, with the business brief saved as a re-usable skill, run on your real site, with the website and copy review workflow that catches everything above — is what we cover in the Codex for Business Owners workshop. Four hours, live, fifteen seats. See the syllabus →