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What Is a Sales Funnel? Why Every Business Needs One.

If you’ve ever wondered why some businesses seem to effortlessly attract new customers while others struggle to get attention, the answer usually comes down to one thing: their sales funnel.

Don’t let the marketing jargon scare you. A sales funnel is simply the path people take from first hearing about your business to becoming loyal customers. Think of it like guiding someone from your front porch into your living room — step by step.

The 3 Stages of a Sales Funnel

1. TOFU: Top of Funnel (Awareness)

This is where people first discover you exist. Maybe they saw your sign, stumbled across your website, or heard your name at a community event. At this stage, your goal isn’t to sell — it’s to say “Hey, we’re here!”

Examples: Social media posts, community events, blog articles, podcast mentions, local ads.

2. MOFU: Middle of Funnel (Consideration)

Now that they know you, people want to learn more. They may check reviews, browse your website, or ask a friend for their opinion. This is where you build trust and show what makes you special.

Examples: Email newsletters, helpful guides, testimonials, free workshops, product demos.

3. BOFU: Bottom of Funnel (Decision)

This is where the rubber meets the road — someone is ready to buy, book, or sign up. Your job is to make it easy, clear, and compelling to say yes.

Examples: Special offers, consultations, free trials, clear pricing pages, easy checkout.

Why This Matters

Without a funnel, people who discover your business may lose interest before they buy. With a funnel, you create a guided journey that builds awareness, trust, and loyalty over time.

The best part? Funnels aren’t just for big companies. Even the smallest local business — from a bakery to a contractor — already has one. The question is: are you making the most of it?

Coming Up in This Series

Over the next few weeks, we’ll break down each stage of the funnel with practical tactics you can use in your own business:

  1. TOFU (Top of Funnel): How to get noticed.

  2. MOFU (Middle of Funnel): How to build trust.

  3. BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): How to close the deal.

👉 Takeaway: A sales funnel isn’t some mysterious marketing trick. It’s simply the journey your customers take with you. If you understand the stages, you can guide more people from “Who are you?” to “I’m so glad I found you.”

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Overview: An integrated approach to improve search visibility

 

This training presentations covers Digital Visibility and Business Growth Strategy, outlining key components necessary for businesses to succeed online.

Key takeaways

  • Your website serves as the central digital headquarters, where trust is established and decisions are made, so website health and maintenance are critical for avoiding lost opportunities and poor credibility.
  • Content must be strategically structured for SEO and local GEO targeting to appear in results generated by both traditional algorithms and Generative AI.
  • Publishing content across multiple platforms, such as Google Business Profiles and social media, is critical for expanding your brand’s digital footprint and driving traffic back to the primary website.
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Why Digital Presence and SEO Are Critical to Your Business Valuation

Article Overview:

A strong digital presence is a crucial, often overlooked, asset significantly impacting a business’s valuation in today’s economy. Beyond traditional metrics like revenue and physical assets, search engine optimization (SEO) and a comprehensive online footprint act as a modern asset that attracts buyers and investors by signaling credibility and market leadership. This article illustrates how a robust digital strategy, leading to lower customer acquisition costs and predictable growth, creates a defensible competitive advantage that inherently multiplies a company’s value.  I’ve included practical steps businesses can take to enhance their digital presence, ultimately transforming online visibility into a core balance sheet item that directly influences a premium valuation during a sale or investment.

The Digital Presence as a Modern Asset

When it comes to valuing a business, most leaders instinctively look to revenue, profit margins, physical assets, and intellectual property. But in today’s economy, there’s another factor quietly shaping your valuation: your digital presence.

In an era where buyers, investors, and customers alike begin their journey online, the strength of your search rankings, SEO strategy, and overall digital footprint has become a real asset — one that can increase (or decrease) the price a buyer is willing to pay for your company.

A strong online presence is more than just a marketing function; it’s a core business asset. Consider what happens when someone Googles your brand name or service category:

  • If you dominate the first page of results with your website, service pages, and positive reviews, it signals credibility, authority, and market leadership.

  • If you’re invisible or buried beneath competitors, it raises doubts: Does this company really have traction? Can it scale?

In today’s world, first impressions happen digitally. Buyers and investors may never visit your office, but they will absolutely run a search to understand your reach and relevance.

Better still, digital presence is measurable. Metrics like keyword rankings, website traffic, content performance, and conversion data can all be tracked and presented during due diligence — and they carry real weight in the eyes of investors.

Why SEO and Search Rank Multiply Value

SEO is one of the few business strategies that creates compounding returns over time. Unlike paid advertising, which stops the moment you pause spend, SEO builds a foundation of visibility and credibility that keeps delivering.

A company with a strong SEO footprint offers:

  • Lower customer acquisition costs (CAC): Organic leads are “free” compared to paid clicks.

  • Predictable growth: High-ranking service pages generate recurring leads month after month.

  • Competitive insulation: It’s far harder for a rival to unseat a business that owns local and regional search results.

For buyers, this represents a defensible advantage. It means they don’t have to start from scratch, pouring money into ads or rebuilding authority. Instead, they inherit a system that already attracts, engages, and converts customers.

Examples: HVAC, Plumbing, and Landscaping

To make this tangible, let’s look at three industries where digital presence heavily influences valuation:

HVAC Company

Two HVAC companies in the same city both generate $8M in annual revenue. One has invested in a strong SEO and content strategy:

  • Their service pages rank top 3 for “AC repair near me,” “furnace installation [city],” and dozens of other local keywords.

  • They’ve built hundreds of five-star reviews across Google and Yelp.

  • Their site generates 2,500 organic leads per month without ad spend.

The second company relies primarily on word of mouth and paid ads. Their online presence is thin.

From a buyer’s perspective, the first HVAC company is far more attractive because it has a scalable, low-cost lead pipeline. It could easily expand into neighboring markets by replicating its digital playbook, while the second business would require significant new investment to grow.

Plumbing Contractor

A plumbing contractor is looking to sell after 25 years in business. Revenue is strong, but what sets them apart is digital presence:

  • Their website ranks across multiple counties for “emergency plumber,” “water heater replacement,” and “drain cleaning.”

  • They’ve developed blogs and FAQs that answer thousands of plumbing-related searches each month.

  • Their brand shows up on regional home service directories and social platforms, extending their breadth of presence.

To a buyer, this isn’t just a plumbing company — it’s a regional digital asset. Adding new locations would be as simple as creating geo-targeted landing pages under a domain that already has search authority.

Compare this to a competitor of equal size with little digital infrastructure. The first company will almost certainly command a higher multiple.

Landscape Company

A landscaping company brings in $5M annually. What makes it attractive isn’t just its equipment or contracts — it’s the brand clout online.

  • Their photo galleries dominate local Google Image searches.

  • Their blog ranks for terms like “best drought-resistant plants in Texas” and “backyard design ideas.”

  • They’ve partnered with local news outlets and regional lifestyle blogs, building backlinks that cement their authority.

When it comes time to scale, this landscaping business can branch into new service lines (irrigation, hardscaping, lawn care) with minimal effort because the digital trust is already built.

To a buyer, this represents a plug-and-play growth opportunity.

Depth and Breadth: Why Scaling Businesses Should Care

For scaling businesses, digital presence matters in two dimensions:

  1. Depth: Optimized content — service pages, case studies, FAQs — builds expertise and trust with both humans and search algorithms.

  2. Breadth: Being visible not only on your own site but across external platforms (Google Maps, social channels, local directories, industry media) proves relevance beyond your website.

Together, depth and breadth show buyers that your brand isn’t just running operations — it has reach, resilience, and scalability.

The Valuation Lens: Why Buyers Care

When it’s time to attract investors or sell, digital presence becomes part of the value equation. Here’s why:

  • Risk Reduction: Buyers see assurance that customer acquisition won’t dry up overnight.

  • Proof of Demand: High search rankings and steady traffic validate market demand.

  • Competitive Moat: SEO and digital authority protect your position against rivals.

  • Future-Proofing: Companies visible in AI-driven search (Google AI overviews, ChatGPT results, etc.) are better positioned for what’s next.

Put simply: two businesses with the same revenue can have vastly different valuations depending on digital presence.

Practical Steps to Boost Your Digital Valuation

If you want your online presence to increase your valuation:

  1. Audit SEO performance — know your rankings, backlinks, and technical site health.

  2. Strengthen your content strategy — create high-quality, structured content aligned with user intent.

  3. Expand across platforms — ensure visibility in local directories, news media, and thought leadership spaces.

  4. Leverage structured data & schema markup — so search engines (and AI) understand your content.

  5. Track growth metrics — show investors organic traffic, conversion rates, and engagement.

The Bottom Line: Digital Presence Is Part of Your Balance Sheet

Revenue and profit still matter, but buyers now view digital credibility, visibility, and resilience as core assets.

For HVAC, plumbing, and landscaping companies — or any service-based business with potential to expand regionally — digital presence can be the difference between a baseline valuation and a premium multiple.

When it’s time to sell, merge, or scale, the businesses that show up first online will also show up first on a buyer’s shortlist.

In short: your digital presence isn’t just marketing. It’s market value.

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Michelle Peterson, CMO at Kendra Scott Jewelry Discusses Retail Growth

Michelle Peterson, CMO of Kendra Scott Jewelry explains that relationship building is key to organic retail growth.

In this podcast, “Prioritizing people with your performance,”  Will Whitham, founder and host of CMO Convo, interviews Michelle Peterson, the Chief Marketing Officer of Kendra Scott Jewelry. Michelle explains how she leverages retail brand strategy, story brand marketing, and user-focused buying experiences to help her team meet key performance metrics and enhance overall retail growth.

Kendra Scott Jewelry uses a mix of engagement platforms.

Kendra Scott Jewelry is based in Austin, Texas, and currently operates over 130 stores nationwide. To enhance retail growth, they use a hybrid of brick-and-mortar, e-commerce, and social selling platforms to meet corporate vision and key objective goals.

About Michelle Peterson.

Michelle holds a Master of Engineering/Industrial Management from Kellogg University, an MBA in Marketing & Finance from Kellogg School of Management,  and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.

Key takeaways from Michelle Peterson’s interview with Will Witham.

✅  Some people within Michelle’s inner circle did not see the alignment between her choice to study psychology in conjunction with industrial engineering.

✅ She unpacks the relationships and dependencies between process performance, product development, and human buying behavior and explains how each study area is important in the product development and sales lifecycle.

✅ By combining psychology and process engineering, Michelle says she can better understand the drivers behind human behavior and provide critical insights to help teams align sales, marketing, and production activities.

✅ The Kendra Scott team created a brand community through “experience marketing.” One example of expanding their brand story includes their mobile  NFL popup trailers where they sell a bespoke NFL line of jewelry to those attending a game.

✅ Another example of enhancing the brand experience is offering their brick and mortar facilities to host in-store baby showers, birthday parties, engagement parties, and VIP special events.

✅ The Kendra Scott brand expanded its immersive experience by creating unique online shopping experiences for targeted demographics and offered a specific jewelry line. For example, they created a unique landing page and ad campaign highlighting “the yellow rose of Texas pendant” available to an engaged Texas audience.

✅ The Kendra Scott brand incorporates its brand story throughout every customer touchpoint by meeting the customer’s where they are and offering products most likely to align to their interests.

✅ The Kendra Scott team treats their guests as royal VIPs, and they see the return in brand loyalty.

✅ Retailers can feel siloed and wonder if an idea is valid. Michelle’s insights inspire small business owners to lean-in and engage with customers throughout multiple touchpoints.

✅  Michelle reminds us that people seek community, a place to belong, and are searching for brands to align and engage with.

✅ The Kendra Scott community engagement teams gain critical and timely feedback by communicating with customers through social media platforms.

✅ At Kendra Scott, they don’t relegate social media to the lowest person on the org chart. Instead, seasoned customer service representatives, brand ambassadors, and sales professionals answer and engage on social platforms and provide important insights useful for stakeholders and decision makers.

✅ This podcast reminds us that our end-users are real people and that people love to interact, feel valued, and be inspired to create.

✅ Michelle described how the Kendra Scott brand actively creates opportunities to engage with their community and drive revenue through authentic relationship development.

✅ At the end of the day, we are relationship builders not commodity pushers.

Thanks, Michelle Peterson and Will Whitham; this conversation gave our team tactical strategies for retail growth.

Click this link to listen to the podcast now: Prioritizing people with your performance.

 

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