# Tom Clarke

Tom Clarke runs Reason8, a web design business that helps firms shape and improve their websites. Clarke's posts discuss typography, website compliance, choosing suitable projects, and lessons from running the business.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/tom-clarke/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-clarke-reason8
- LinkedIn followers: 22,181
- Based on 10 dated posts, latest 2026-10-08

## Summary

Tom Clarke is useful for professional-services website redesigns that connect typography, compliance, and business fit.

- Best for: A professional services firm redesigning its website and clarifying its client promise.
- Not for: A consumer or DTC brand buying a fixed sponsored-content placement.
- Check first: Confirm whether they offer a partnership or paid placement before proposing a campaign.

### Takeaways

- Typeface choice should start with how a business should feel to readers.
- They declined an £8,500 project because repeated agency changes suggested a deeper client gap.
- Compliance review includes registration numbers, SRA complaints procedures, FCA promotion rules, and accessibility.

## Main ideas

- **Choose typography for the impression the business should make**: Fonts carry personality, Clarke argues, so choosing them because they’re free, popular or familiar can make businesses look interchangeable. Start by deciding how the business should feel to a reader, then choose typography to support that impression.
- **Repeated project failures can point to a problem with the project requirements, not just the agency**: A clear brief and available budget don’t automatically make a project a good fit, Clarke argues. When several agencies have struggled with the same client, there may be a gap between what the business needs and what it’s asking for. Taking the job without addressing that gap may cost more in time and effort than it earns.
- **Say no to work that does not serve the business**: Reflecting on five and a half years running Reason8, Clarke says low pricing, poor-fit projects and trying too hard to keep clients happy all created costs. The lesson isn’t simply to charge more or refuse difficult work: test whether the project solves a real business problem, choose an appropriate scope and build trust rather than relying on being liked.
- **Treat compliance as part of a professional-services website review**: A website redesign needs more than visual and messaging changes, Clarke argues: firms should check the legal and regulatory requirements that apply to their sites. The post gives examples by type of firm and points to a short check. Ask for the linked article’s full guidance.

## Work to read

- [Fonts have a personality. Most agencies don't know theirs.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tom-clarke-reason8_websites-activity-7490755750177312768-h-op)
- [I turned down £8,500 last month.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tom-clarke-reason8_websites-activity-7485597250790952961-10L0)
- [5 and a half years running Reason8. Here's what I got wrong.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tom-clarke-reason8_websites-activity-7491404347885649920-2EGx)
- [Most professional services firms are breaking at least one website law without knowing it.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tom-clarke-reason8_most-professional-services-firms-are-breaking-activity-7491495077815537665-FfTp)

## Brand relationships

- **Reason8** (owned_business)

## Partnerships

The posts show no partnership offer from Tom Clarke. Across the four posts, Clarke writes as the owner of Reason8, a web design business serving professional services firms — discussing typography choices, website compliance rules, which client projects to turn down, and lessons from five and a half years of running the business. None of the posts presents a sponsorship package, media kit, rate card, editorial placement, affiliate arrangement, or any other brand-facing partnership format, and none states terms, deliverables, lead times, or operational requirements a buyer would need to plan around. The posts read as an agency owner speaking to prospective clients about website work, not as a creator offering placements to brands. This is a documented absence in these posts, not a statement that Clarke never accepts sponsorships or partnerships; the posts simply do not address the question. For a campaign planner, that means partnership terms cannot be planned from the posts here. The gap is actionable: a partnership assessment needs Clarke's own sponsor or collaboration disclosures, any published rate or format information, and a verified inquiry route, none of which appear in these posts.

## Alternatives

- Saikat Sarkar: Sarkar is the better choice when the firm's real problem is where prospects fall out of the journey rather than how the site looks. Both posts make the same argument: adding another tool (AI, automation, CRM, ads, SEO, another social platform) does not fix a marketing problem. Start by mapping the path from customer question to content to profile visit to website to enquiry to follow-up to sales call, then apply technology where people are getting stuck. The second post offers concrete diagnostics: if visitors do not understand the offer, more traffic will not help; if prospects keep asking the same questions, another post will not help; if follow-up takes two days, a new content strategy will not help. The first post makes a measurement point that matters to a firm buying leads: a dashboard showing 30 booked calls can still hide 20 poor-fit prospects, 6 no-shows and 4 people who never understood the offer. The metrics to watch are qualified conversations, show-up rate, customer fit and actual enquiries. If the firm's need shifts from repositioning and visual identity to lead handling and follow-up friction, Sarkar addresses the decision the firm actually faces; Tom Clarke's typography and compliance material does not.
- Burhan Arif: Arif is the better choice when the engagement is paid-social creative for a product business and the deliverable is ads, not a website. The posts describe building performance creative for direct-to-consumer brands after running personal e-commerce stores and losing money on them, and name the scale of that work: statics and emails at volume for brands spending heavily on paid social. The transferable part for the same buyer decision is method. Arif writes that the mistake was looking at an ad from a designer's perspective ('does this look good?') when the customer only asks whether it solves their problem. For paid-social creative assignments, they dig into reviews, comments, competitors, objections and buying triggers before opening design tools, because the best creative ideas sit in the customer's words rather than the assignment. If the professional services firm redirects budget from a redesign into demand generation through paid social, that customer-language-first approach is directly usable; Clarke's website typography work is not.
- James Wilkinson: Wilkinson is the better choice when the buyer is a membership venue — specifically, a golf club — that wants a bespoke-looking site on a budget that historically could not fund one, bundled with the systems around it. The first post explains why so many club websites look the same: bespoke builds were too expensive, staff costs were high and club budgets low, an in-house web team was closed, and only one site sold for more than £10,000. It sets out what changed: using AI coding tools to build bespoke sites in weeks, using the club's own imagery, SEO and answer-engine optimisation from the start, connecting to CRM and AI concierge tools, creating AI video from the club's photography, drafting blogs in the club's tone of voice, and providing a CMS the club can update without waiting on a developer. The second post covers the adoption side of a CRM rollout, where the blocker was the team's fear of change and the learning curve rather than the software; Wilkinson addressed it with training materials built alongside the client. For a golf or leisure club deciding between a bespoke site and another template, Wilkinson addresses the exact tradeoff. Clarke's material on typographic personality and regulatory pages targets a different sector and does not answer the budget-versus-bespoke question.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/