TL;DR
Client: Paro, makers of software and hardware for hydraulic engineers
The problem: Paro’s software is loved by its customers, but its copy didn’t say so.
What I did: Used the site rebuild to revisit their brand voice and messaging. Help the business to find their message and brand voice, and re-write their product website.
The result: Same word count, with tighter legal protection, more specificity, more connection and more world-building. Average Google position moved from 12.9 to 8.1.
Timeline: 24 weeks
Worked with: Dave Smyth
"Ann helped us sharpen our positioning and challenged us to be more precise about our products." Marc Paro, CEO, Paro.
The brief
Messaging | Brand voice | Copywriting
Paro wondered if they did. Their company has been supporting hydraulic engineers since 1974. It’s a niche and complex skill-set. Their software products are beloved*, but communicating pride isn’t part of Dutch culture.
Taking the opportunity to revisit the brand during a site re-build, CEO Marc Paro was looking for a freelancer who could understand his product, how to communicate with engineers, and articulate pride without grandstanding.
The challenges were how to share this message with a larger audience? How can Paro defend their position in an increasingly noisy marketplace? And how can their brand and voice communicate pride of their work and Dutch sensibility, without losing their real, understated, engineering voice?
*I spoke with their customers. They are beloved.
Results
+37%
Increase in search position in Google rankings.
Friction
Paro was built in the Netherlands by engineers, for engineers: any new brand needed to communicate efficacy, simplicity, and skill.
I’m an English speaker, and my relationship to mechanical and hydraulic engineering is tangential at best. But throughout my career I’ve worked with technical experts, so I knew we needed to take a little time to find the right analogy.
We realised that designing a kitchen was perfect: it has one job (“be a kitchen”) with many, many variables (“which lightbulbs go in the ceiling, and which ones under the extractor fan?”). With this device in hand, the complexities of engineering melted away.
Now we could uncover the elements of Paro’s brand that are defensible: Jos Paro’s founding mission, the innovations of Marc, Frank, and CTO Wouter van der Zwan.
Accuracy matters
Paro's commitment to excellence, their product, and their customer service deserved to be communicated clearly. But lines such as, "Flawless hydraulic design. Guaranteed." and, "We don't stop until you are 100% satisfied" left them exposed.
One single dissatisfied customer, or a bad-faith competitor, only needs one unmet "100%" to turn a brand's own words against it. Ahead of a push into wider markets, Paro's leadership eventually agreed it was better to make claims that were smaller, but claims that were defensible and true.
Resolution
During my time in their Heemskerk office, Marc would interrupt our meetings because a customer had a question, or he’d triple-checked that I’d started the customer interview. In our copy meetings, he’d ask for a pause because a customer was phoning. During team lunches, team members would duck out to answer pressing customer calls.
In customer interviews, people told me that they know they can call Marc, Frank, Wouter, or any of the team. Over six, 1:1 qualitative interviews with long-term and new customers, I was told that problems are taken seriously, and someone will take accountability to fix a bug or add a component to the library, until the job is done.
Changing the voice
Here's one example of how the new voice brought a warmth, allyship, and legal defensibility to Paro's copy.
Results
+19%
As a consequence of Paro’s improved position, impressions grew from 451K in 2025 to 536K in 2026.
Want the whole story?
This page is an abbreviated version. This full PDF has the rest: what the project covered, how I work, how we found Paro’s voice, and the results. You'll need about a minute to scan it, or five minutes to take your time and understand the project, methods, and outcomes.
The review
“Before working with Ann, we knew what we did, but we weren’t always explaining clearly why it mattered to our customers.
Ann helped us sharpen our positioning and challenged us to be more precise about our products and the value they provide. That process helped us create a brand voice that feels more like us and makes it easier for customers to understand what we do.
The project required quite a bit of work and discussion, but Ann guided us through the process and kept us focused on getting the message right.
We now have a much clearer way of communicating what PARO offers and why it matters.”
Marc Paro
CEO, Paro
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