E26: How to Dominate Your Industry with a Sales Funnel
Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level?
In this episode, I talk about the three steps to dominate your market: building a high-performing sales funnel, filling it with targeted leads, and continuously optimizing for success.
Whether you’re a local business or an online entrepreneur, you’ll walk away with practical tips to elevate your marketing game.
Listen now to learn how to outshine your competition and grow your business with excellence!
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P.S. When you are ready, here are a few ways I can help…
Get Your FREE Marketing Domination Checklist: https://www.seangarner.co/
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Schedule A Call to Build, Fill and Optimize Your Sales Funnel For More Leads: https://www.seangarner.co/
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Sean Garner
Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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EPISODE 26 TRANSCRIPTION
Laying The Ground
Sean Garner [00:00]: I'm pumped to be here today, guys. Scott Reed, I want to honor Scott for just a second here. Scott has been very good—started out as my attorney, like probably everybody here—and still is. He has helped my wife and me with all the different businesses that we own. Over the last 12-plus years that I’ve known him, he has become a very good, close friend of mine now too. So I am honored for this opportunity.
I’ve never personally gotten to do something like this before, so I’m super excited about it. I want to share my passion for what I do. I’m super thankful for Scott, for his family—both his boys have become friends as well. I’m very excited to share with you guys today.
And saying that, get a notepad out because I talk really fast. I’m super excited about what I do, and I am going to flood you guys with information today. Hopefully, it’s all practical things. I have the opportunity to do a couple of other sessions today, so as we’re talking, we might not get through all of the questions that you have. But I promise you, before we leave this conference, if you have any questions at all, please let me know because I am 100% here to serve you guys.
I love small business owners. My wife and I, we own several companies. My wife and I got married at 19 years old, and we just celebrated last month our 19th wedding anniversary. So we’ve been together, been married over half our lives. We have three children. We’ve got two daughters who are 11 and nine, and a son that’s four.
We own four businesses. We’ve got the marketing agency that I primarily run. She has a functional medicine practice that she runs. Together, we have an IV therapy business where we do vitamin bags, B12 shots, and some short-term real estate like Airbnb and Vrbo. So we’re very, very busy. Because of that, we have a lot of systems in place. I love systems, templates, frameworks.
And so what I want to do today is give you guys a framework that I have found works really great for any small business to dominate their industry. I’m a big believer—I loved Darren’s talk that he just gave. We’re not dominating to crush. I believe as kingdom-based entrepreneurs, we’re dominating because, like we’ve heard so much, work is our worship. If we’re doing anything, we do things with excellence, and we are called to do all things as unto the Lord.
Excellence in Business
Sean Garner [02:18]: So as we’re dominating... It’s not because we’re trying to crush our competition, but because we have a spirit of excellence in all that we do. As we go through this framework today, I want you to keep that in mind. It’s not about putting our competition down—it’s about doing what we do with excellence.
I love frameworks. I’m going to give you the cheat codes right now. These are the three steps you need for small business marketing domination. The first thing you need is to build a sales funnel. The second thing you need is to fill that sales funnel. And the third thing you need is to optimize your sales funnel.
The foundation of your marketing is the concept of a sales funnel. Have you guys ever heard of sales funnels or funnels before? Anybody? Okay, perfect. I have a different definition of what I believe that is.
A lot of times, if you’ve heard the phrase "sales funnel," you’re probably thinking about a software tool like ClickFunnels or tools like HighLevel. Those are tools. Or maybe it’s a website type where someone goes to a landing page and only has one action to take. That term is often used for funnels.
But when I tell small business owners they need a sales funnel, what I mean is that it’s more of a systematic relationship-building process. It takes someone from not knowing who you are to buying from you and eventually becoming a dream superfan customer for life.
It can be done through tools and technology, but it’s primarily a marketing strategy for taking someone who doesn’t know you exist and turning them into a superfan customer for life.
For your sales funnel, I want to first give you all the parts of what I think makes a really good sales funnel. The first thing, and the foundation for everything you do—and we’ve talked about this here so far—is branding.
We had an amazing talk with Scott yesterday about what your brand is. From a marketing standpoint, I believe branding really comes down to two aspects. One is the visual aspect. That’s things like brand colors, fonts, logos—the things you can visually see.
But the second, and I think the most misunderstood part of branding for small business owners, is the words we use: our messaging.
The Three Steps to Marketing Domination
Sean Garner [04:35]: So with my marketing background, I come from a world called StoryBrand. I’m a certified StoryBrand guide. We use storytelling to invite customers into a story that positions our product and service as a proper guide for these customers, making the story about them.
A lot of people misconstrue what storytelling marketing is and think it’s about telling their story. If you were to boil it down, what StoryBrand and story-based marketing really are is service-based marketing. It’s about making it about your customer and positioning your products and services as the proper solution to guide them to the results they’re looking for.
It’s not about the Ron Burgundy, “Hey everyone, come see how good I look.” It’s not about you—it’s about your customers and your role as their guide.
So with the messaging aspect, we like to follow the StoryBrand framework. There are seven different parts of this framework. I’m going to share my slide over here. If you’re unfamiliar with the StoryBrand concept...
Wait, why can’t I share it?
Importance of Branding and Messaging
Sean Garner [05:45]: Perfect. There we go. So the StoryBrand framework has seven different parts to it. The first is the character. The character is not you, and it’s not even the demographics of the people you want to work with. The character section is about the feelings and the things your customers want.
I was in the fitness industry for about 12 years. We owned a lot of gyms, I was a writer and fitness advisor for Men’s Health Magazine, and I did a lot in the online fitness space. Guess what? Nobody wants a personal trainer. Sorry. Nobody wants a gym. They want to look better. They want confidence. They want to like what they see in the mirror. That’s what customers actually want.
But too often in our marketing and messaging, businesses focus on their products and services, trying to force those down people’s throats instead of focusing on what the customer actually wants. Nobody wants a lawyer either—they want confidence that their business is legally protected.
In the messaging we create for our customers, we need to make sure we’re talking about the things they actually want.
The second part of the framework is the problem that’s keeping them from getting what they want. That problem is broken down into three levels: external, internal, and philosophical.
The external problem is the main thing the customer is dealing with—what’s keeping them from getting what they want. The second part, the internal problem, goes deeper. It’s about how dealing with that external problem makes them feel. The more you tap into those emotional words, the more you attract your dream customers.
When they read your messaging, they’ll think, "Wow, why does it sound like Scott is speaking directly to me?" It’s because we’re using emotional words that reflect their fear and anxiety—like wondering if their business is legally protected. These words attract the right customers.
The third layer is the philosophical problem. When you nail this section, that’s when the customer is shouting, "That’s my guy! That’s my girl! They get me!" The philosophical problem addresses why it’s inherently, morally wrong that your customers have to deal with this issue.
When you articulate that in your customers’ words and reflect the conversations they’re already having in their heads, you transform someone from being interested in your product or service to becoming a superfan customer for life.
Building a High-Converting Sales Funnel
Sean Garner [08:13]: So after we’ve done that, do you notice how in our marketing messaging, we haven’t even talked about ourselves yet? It’s all about the customer. But now we finally get to talk about ourselves a little bit. This is where we position ourselves as the proper guide for our customer.
We do that with two things: empathy and authority. Empathy is saying, "I understand you. I know what it’s like to be in your shoes." Authority is saying, "Hey, I’ve actually solved this problem for other people just like you."
A good example—again, I come from the fitness industry, so I use a lot of fitness examples. Imagine a personal trainer who completely lacks authority but has a lot of empathy. You’re sitting down doing the assessment, talking about your goals, and you say, "Man, I’m really struggling because every night I get these cravings for ice cream, and it’s holding me back from reaching my goals." The personal trainer responds, "You know, I actually feel the same way. There’s a really good ice cream place right next door—do you want to go get some right now?"
Amazing empathy—they understand what it’s like. But zero authority—they can’t solve the problem.
On the flip side, imagine a trainer who overdoes the authority and has no empathy. You tell them the same struggle, and they say, "You just have to suck it up. Eat chicken, broccoli, and rice out of Tupperware. You’ve got to crush it—you’re just mentally weak."
Tons of authority—they probably look amazing—but zero empathy.
What we want is a good balance of empathy and authority. We want to show our customers, "You know what? I used to struggle with that exact same thing. It wasn’t until I found a system that helped me curb those sugar cravings that I was able to get results for myself. Not only did it work for me, but it’s also worked for dozens of other clients I’ve worked with."
That’s how we want to position ourselves as the guide—balancing empathy and authority in everything we do.
Sean Garner [10:36]: Well, after we’ve done that with our customers, now we have the opportunity to give them a plan. Customers want to be clearly guided on exactly what they need to do to do business with you. The more confusing we make our marketing and messaging, the more we’re going to lose. In StoryBrand, they have a saying: "If you confuse, you lose." Clarity is key in everything we do.
We want to give our customers a simple three-step plan of what they need to do to do business with us so they know the next phase of the process. It needs to be:
Step one, book your appointment.
Step two, we create a custom plan for you.
Step three, experience success or results—whatever that may be.
We want to be very clear with it. It’s not that our customers are stupid—they’re ignorant. They don’t know your business, right? This is your baby. This is the thing you created. So we want to make it really, really clear for them what they need to do to get this amazing result and solve the problem we’ve talked about.
Well, after we give them a plan, we need to call them to action. Most people are not going to do something unless they are called to action.
With our calls to action, this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make: it needs to be clear and direct. Tell customers exactly what they need to do to get their problem solved. Schedule your call, book your appointment, book your service, call now.
We don’t want to use vague, elusive language like "discover how we can help" or "learn more." Nobody wants to learn more—they want the problem solved. Especially if we’ve already positioned ourselves as the proper guide for them.
Now, with calls to action, there’s a sub-point here: we can also have what’s called a transitional call to action. Not everybody who comes to your website will be ready to buy your product or service.
A transitional call to action is a lead generator. It’s something for people who may not be ready to fully commit to your product or service, like scheduling an appointment. It’s a kind of "half step" that lets them engage with you and discover how you can help them. This could be a guide, a mini-course, or something similar.
We do all of this to accomplish two things: help them avoid failure and experience success.
We want to remind our customers—not by fear-mongering, but by gently pointing out—the problems we’re helping them avoid. A lot of people live in a state of mediocrity. They think, "It really can’t get that much worse, but it also can’t get that much better."
So we remind them of the failure they may continue to experience if they don’t do business with us. Then, on the flip side, we paint the picture of success. They might not believe their situation could get much better, but we show them all the amazing things that could happen if they buy our product or service.
When we’re creating this kind of messaging, we want to think of it like baking a loaf of bread.
Sean Garner [13:00]: We’ve got tons of flour in a loaf of bread and a little bit of salt. The flour is the success—we want lots of that. We want to overdo the success. We want to tell them, short term and long term, all the amazing things that are going to happen if they work with us. But we want just a sprinkle of failure, a sprinkle of the salt.
We don’t want crazy fear-mongering like, "If you don’t buy our online personal training service, you’re going to gain 100 pounds, your wife’s going to leave you, and you’ll die of a heart attack alone." That’s so extreme and so fear-based, it’s just going to turn people off.
We want just a little sprinkle to remind them of the current pain they’re dealing with. That right there is the messaging part of our brand. Too often, small businesses neglect this. They hire an amazing graphic designer to create beautiful branding, but they completely neglect the words on their website.
After we have all of this, we have the foundation of all our marketing material. We have our brand, our visual identity—colors, fonts, and all of that, which are super important. Now we also have the words we’re going to use.
Just like we want all our visual branding to look the same, we want all the words to be the same too. We don’t want our marketing messaging, website, and social profiles using the right words while our sales team, staff members, or front desk people are using different ones. The point is to create a cohesive brand message so everybody in the company is using the exact same language.
The way the owner answers the phone call should be the same way the service guy answers the call and responds. This ensures there’s no disconnect in branding through the words you use.
After we have that, we’re ready to build our website. That’s the most common thing people think of when they think of their sales funnel—the visual part of the website.
There are 10 parts to what I think makes a really good homepage or landing page on your website. I’m only going to go over one because of time, but it’s the most important one: your header section.
Your header section is the top part of your website. Think about when you visit a site. I’m actually going to share all of this, and let’s just be real here. I’ll show you everything, and this will be my goal for what’s going to happen today if I’m being super honest.
Crafting an Effective Website Header Section
Sean Garner [15:20]: I’m like the magician’s assistant, and I’m going to show you how all the magic tricks are done. It looks overwhelming with all these parts, but once you see how the magic show actually works, you’ll realize it’s manageable. That’s kind of what I’m going to do with a lot of stuff today.
With your website, the header section is the most important part. It’s the section people first see when they land on your site, and it needs to do three things. If it doesn’t, you’re losing and wasting a lot of money.
The first thing your header needs to do is clearly answer the question, "What do you do?"
The second is, "How do you help people and make their life better?"
The third is, "What do they need to do to get it?"
I promise your website is probably not as clear as you think it is. If you have a vague call to action like "learn more," "discover more," or "contact us," you’re losing money and opportunities. It needs to be very clear about what you want customers to do. Book a call, schedule your appointment, book your assessment—be specific.
There is a structure I think works best for this. If you’re a visual person, like me, I’ll click through and show you a few examples.
Here’s one:
What do they do? They help you grow your business and dominate your industry.
How do they do it? They’re a marketing agency that builds, fills, and optimizes sales funnels to get you more leads and sales.
What do I need to do to do business with them? Schedule a call.
Okay, let’s look at another example. Here’s one from our medical practice:
How do they help you? They help you get back to feeling and performing your best.
What do they do? They’re a telemedicine practice specializing in hormone replacement and functional medicine.
What do you need to do? Get started.
Sean Garner [17:37]: Data always wins. We don’t make decisions based on personal preference or emotion. While the things I’m sharing are great strategies, they’re not the ultimate truth—you need to test them. For instance, we split-tested "Book your appointment" versus "Get started" as a call to action for our medical practice. "Get started" crushed it for this business.
That practice now has a three-month waiting list—it’s amazing. This shows why you always test.
Here’s another example:
How do they help you? You’ll know exactly how much your home is worth.
What do they do? They’re Tulsa real estate appraisers and home inspectors, giving you peace of mind that you’re getting the best deal.
What do you need to do? Schedule your service.
You’ll notice a theme: there’s a certain layout we want for all websites. People view websites in a Z-pattern. They start at the top left (where your logo typically goes), scan to the top right, move diagonally to the center, and then across the bottom.
The most valuable section is the top right. If you can do anything right now to improve your site, make your call to action very clear and direct. Place one in the top right and one in the center of your page.
Just that one simple change will help you start getting more calls and appointments booked with the traffic you already have.
Sean Garner [19:18]: So this takes them to, again, a very unique business. This helps them start their patient portal because we have a lot of HIPAA compliance requirements we need to meet. Every business is nuanced—we’ve got all this structure for a reason. Here’s an example: how do they help you? They give you a new level of wellness with Wasills IV Therapy and Wellness Spa. What do we want them to do? Book your appointment. Here’s another example: Syndicated investments. How do they help you? They help you build a legacy of wealth through syndicated investments and create financial impact through passive income opportunities. What do we want them to do? Invest with us. From the fitness industry, Magnus has a fitness app. How does he help you? He helps you look better, shred fat, and build lean muscle. What do we want them to do? Start the seven-day free trial.
Another business coach we work with: how do they help you? Build a stronger, more profitable business with expert coaching to gain control, free up your time, and create lasting wealth. What do we want them to do? Take a free business assessment. For a fitness facility: you’ll notice that these websites look similar—not because they’re copy-paste templates but because they follow frameworks. If you know a great floor plan works, why change it? Here’s another example for syndicated investments: how do they help you? Reboot your wellness with one-on-one online fitness and nutrition coaching to help you look and feel your best. How clear is your website? All of these examples show clarity: what do you do, how do you help my life and make it better, and what do I need to do to get it?
Sean Garner [21:23]: Most people think their website is clearer than it really is. Here’s what we tell people to do: run a coffee shop test. Show your website to someone who doesn’t know you, let them look at it for five seconds, and then ask these three questions. What do you think I do? How would I help you? What would you need to do to get it? If they can’t answer those questions, you’re losing money. If your website is unclear and you’re trying to send traffic to it through paid ads, SEO, or content strategy, it’s like pouring water into a bucket full of holes. Fix the holes in your bucket before you waste money trying to fill it.
Here’s another unique example: a men’s breakup coach. How do they help you? Navigate the turbulence of a breakup. The Wingman Coaching Program helps you rediscover confidence and land your dream life. What do we want them to do? It’s very clear—sign up for the program. When it comes to visual branding, consistency is key: logos, colors, fonts—everything should align with your message.
On the header sections of websites, there are really only three ways to design them. Text on the left, image on the right. Centered text with a video background. Image on the left, text on the right. That’s it. Don’t overthink it. Keep it simple. Yes, simplicity wins.
Visual Consistency and Frameworks for Websites
Sean Garner [23:25]: Shoot, that's what we were talking about earlier—this header section. If there are 10 sections of a website, this part right here, out of the 10, is 80% of your time, effort, money—everything. Make this section gold. You have to do what I call "earn the scroll." When somebody opens up your website, if they don’t want to scroll down and learn more, you’re losing money. That’s why the majority of your focus when designing your website should be making this section awesome.
People always want to flood their websites with headshots and company stories—"This was founded by my great-great-grandfather." Customers don’t really care about that stuff. Be really clear on what you do, how you help them win, and what they need to do to get it. Spend your time right there, and you’ll make a lot more money.
Sean Garner [24:16]: Yes.
So when it’s mobile, we still want to make it mobile-responsive. Typically, I’ll use what’s called a hamburger icon. That way, there isn’t a huge menu bar. On a mobile site, it would look like this: you’d have the logo and the little hamburger icon. When they click on it, it shows the menu, and we’d set it up so the call to action is colorful and doesn’t look like all the other menu links. The same principles apply: what do you do, how do you make my life better, and the main call to action should be on the center screen. You should see that before you have to scroll on mobile. Does that make sense?
Good, cool. All right, questions over that so far, guys? I told you, I don’t want to lie to you.
Okay, here are the 10 sections really quick. Are you ready to snap some pictures? The second section is the value stack. This is just going to be three benefits of what you guys actually do to help the customer. The next section we’re going to have is the stakes section. We talked about the failure with our messaging on our website. The reason why it’s set up this way is because, just like the words we use guide customers on a journey that positions our products and services as the proper guide, the website should do the exact same thing with these 10 sections.
They’re Lego blocks. The header has to be at the top, and the footer has to be at the bottom, but you can mix and match these other sections in any order that makes sense. Don’t feel like you have to follow this order. We typically do, but for the most part, you’ve got your header, you’ve got your footer, and everything else can be mixed and matched as it fits.
The stakes section—remember, we want to remind them of the problem they’re dealing with. The next thing we want to have on our website is a section that shows our value proposition. The whole point of this section is to show the value you can provide for them. This is typically where you’d list the main services you offer customers.
Sean Garner [26:09]: Then we want to have one part on the website, which is our guide section. Remember, as a guide, we want to demonstrate empathy and authority. This is where we’ll have a little blurb like, "Hey, we understand what it’s like to deal with X," and then show three testimonial stories of people we’ve helped.
Side note on testimonial stories: you want the testimonial to be as specific as possible. You don’t want it to just say, "Scott’s a really nice guy." You want it to say, "I was going through this lawsuit, and Scott helped me protect my business," or, "I was dealing with this contract where I was getting taken advantage of, and Scott gave me the clarity I needed to make sure my business was protected." You want a specific result that person helped you achieve, not just, "Hey, they’re really nice."
The next section on our website, if it makes sense, is where we would have our pricing and packages. Show the different ways you can help them. Using the gym example, it could be group fitness, personal training, or a regular gym membership. Show the different options.
Then remember, we want to have our plan. We love a good three-step plan. Show them the three steps they need to take to join the gym, get their taxes done, or get legally protected. Make it clear what they need to do.
I’m a big SEO guy, and we’re going to talk more about SEO in the afternoon session today. On these websites, particularly following the StoryBrand framework, there’s typically minimal text on landing pages. To address SEO needs like hitting keyword counts, we include a section called the explanatory paragraph. If you want to share your story, talk more about yourself, and include keywords, we usually put this section at the bottom of the page.
The next section of the homepage is the lead magnet section. That’s the transitional call to action we talked about. We want to have something on the homepage that positions us as an expert, has a clear and catchy title, and gives potential customers a quick win in exchange for their contact information. Typically, we’re collecting an email address or phone number so we can follow up with them as potential leads.
There are a couple of additional sections that are nice to add if possible. One would be a video. Especially in today’s world, where everything is video-based, having a video is great. If you have a service-based business, people want to connect with the person they’re doing business with.
Sean Garner [28:34]: So we want to make sure that we’re showcasing ourselves, what it’s like to work with us, who we are, and again, how we help them win. Adding that FAQ section is really helpful, especially for search engine optimization. With how Google’s AI is working now, you may have noticed that when you search for something, you don’t always see the results first. Instead, you see a Google Gemini-style answer. A lot of that information is pulled from FAQ sections on homepages.
If your FAQ section answers key questions, Google Gemini will often show the answer and include the source link to your site. That’s where traffic is funneled to. Adding an FAQ section can be very impactful, especially with how things are evolving lately.
If you have a blog, podcast, or similar content, we always recommend putting that on the homepage as well. It helps you connect with people and show them how you do what you do. At the bottom, you’ve got your footer, which we call the junk drawer. This is where you put all the extra stuff—links to the "About Us" section, additional pages, all of that. We want to keep the top of the page, especially the header section, very simple.
We make decisions based on data, not personal preference or emotion. If you look at most of the top-performing websites, you’ll notice their headers are clear and direct. There aren’t a thousand calls to action like "About Us," "Our Services," "Blog," or "Podcast" crowding the top. The header focuses on guiding the customer with clarity and showing them exactly what they need to do to get results.
Sean Garner [30:22]: I showed you the sections, so now you can see what it looks like. We went through all the different headers already. The next section is the value stack: "We created a sales funnel, filled it with your dream customers, and now you can watch your business grow." Then we have the stakes section: "How much is bad marketing costing your small business?"
We want to create empathy. For example, "Do you feel frustrated that competitors in your industry appear to be growing and gaining recognition, even though you have more knowledge and experience than they do?" Probably.
Next, we have the value proposition section. These are the different services we offer: StoryBrand messaging, website design, sales funnel creation, email marketing, SEO, fractional CMO, and marketing consulting.
Then we have the empathy and authority section. This is where I share a bit of my story. I was in the fitness industry for a long time, working 40 to 50 one-hour personal training sessions a week. Then a friend of mine had a girlfriend who was great at taking bikini pictures and posting them online. She took a weekend certification and, the next month, was making $30,000 a month with online training—zero experience.
That pissed me off. I’m sorry, but it did. I had been doing this for over a decade. I trained professional athletes and sports teams and got incredible results, but because she was better at marketing herself, she was outperforming me online. That frustration is what pushed me to start focusing on this stuff and led me to where I am now.
You’ve probably seen this in your own business. There’s someone in your industry making silly TikTok dance videos and getting more recognition than you, even though you’ve got decades of experience. That’s the philosophical problem I talked about earlier. I believe the real business owners, the ones who actually provide value, should be dominating their industries.
That’s why we created this program—to make sure the right people are leading their markets.
Sean Garner [32:37]: Then, right here, you're the expert you want to be seen as. We have our testimonial section—man, look at this guy, he looks like a model! We've got that, some trust symbols showing we're a Semrush SEO agency, and some of the work we do as a StoryBrand guide. Now we get into a really simple three-step process. If customers are on this site and the content seems interesting to them, what do they need to do? They need to schedule a call. They're going to get their marketing game plan, execute it, and dominate.
Then we’ve got a video section right here on what they need to do to grow their business with a marketing plan that works. Next is the packaging and plan section, and then we’ve got a lead generator. Right here, we have our explanatory paragraph for SEO—this section gets that copy in there. The last section is the lead generator. We have lots of lead generators on our website. The main one we're advertising right now is the marketing domination checklist.
People enter their email, and they get a list of seven things they need to do to dominate their industry with their marketing. All the other stuff, we put in the junk drawer—our footer section down here, with all those extra links. Cool? Okay.
That was just the second thing we need for a sales funnel. We’re still on step one here. Real quick, any questions about anything—branding, visual messaging, or the website?
Sean Garner [34:08]: Yes.
Sean Garner [34:15]: Mm-hmm.
Sean Garner [34:22]: On Google, we’ll talk more about that this afternoon. You want all of them. For local SEO, getting as many Google reviews as possible is what it takes to dominate. For your actual website, I always tell clients we want at least three specific ones. You can have a ton on there, but I typically keep the sweet spot between three and nine. You don’t want so many that they’re not valuable or people just scroll past without engaging.
Have three specific, awesome ones that you feature first, and you can put the rest in a scrolling carousel. But if you’re just trying to fluff up the numbers, customers don’t need that. They need to see at least two to three solid, specific testimonials. Remember, we don’t want the testimonials to just say, "They were really nice to me." We want them to highlight specific results achieved in a specific amount of time. That’s what we want. Be as specific as possible with those. Anything else?
Okay. The next part of our sales funnel is the lead generator.
Lead Generators and Their Role in Sales Funnels
Sean Garner [35:30]: It means you need to have something on your website that positions you as an expert, gives people a quick win, and has a clear and catchy title. For example, "The Marketing Domination Checklist: Seven Things You Need in Your Marketing to Grow Your Business and Dominate Your Industry." That sounds like it’s packed with value—because hopefully, it is. And all people need to do is enter their email address.
On your website, not everyone coming to it will be ready to purchase. So, you need something that positions you as an expert, has a clear and catchy title, and gives them a quick win. For example, for a pest control company, it could be "Five Things Pest Control Companies Use That Could Be Harming Your Family" or "What to Avoid and Look For in a Pest Control Company." These kinds of lead generators position you as the expert, provide a quick win in the form of useful information, and capture their information.
This is where we pull back the curtain. Most people overthink what they put in their guides for two reasons. First, they try to make it absolutely perfect and waste too much time creating it instead of just getting it out there. Second, they fear giving away too much value—thinking that if they give away their best stuff, people won’t hire them. I’ve never seen that to be the case. When you over-deliver, customers think, "Wow, if they’re giving away this much for free, imagine how valuable the paid stuff must be."
The real magic isn’t in the thing—it’s in the follow-up. The whole reason we do this is to capture information, not just to build an email list, but to identify people who visit your website, raise their hand, and say, "I’m interested, but I’m not quite ready to book yet." That’s the point of these lead generators.
Sean Garner [37:56]: It won’t help your business just to have the lead generator. What helps your business is what you do after capturing the customer’s information. It doesn’t matter how amazing your lead generator is—if you don’t have a follow-up process, you’re not taking full advantage of it.
Some examples of lead generators you could use: the easiest way to get started is with a guide. You’re the expert, and you have industry knowledge that can be turned into a checklist, a "getting started" guide, or best practices. You could have a graphic designer create a pretty cover for it and add it to your website. Even without fancy tech, you could say, "Send me your email, and I’ll send you the guide," or "DM me, and I’ll send you the guide." You can still start collecting leads.
Another option, which is a bit more advanced, is creating quizzes. On one website we built, we included a hormone therapy quiz—one for males and one for females. Quizzes work well, and there are software tools to help you build them. In the fitness industry, "What’s Your Body Type?" quizzes are popular. Other examples include "What Type of Whiskey is Best for You?" Quizzes aren’t as complicated as you might think.
Here’s the secret: most quiz questions are designed to capture your information. There’s typically only one or two "trigger" questions that determine which path you send someone down. The rest of the questions are just for data collection. The entire purpose is to capture enough information to follow up effectively.
Sean Garner [40:00]: So they do take a little bit of extra work. It’s not super easy, but it is super simple. Another example, this is a SaaS company with a fitness app. For him, his lead generator includes a nutrition guide, but the main call to action is a free trial. It doesn’t even require a credit card; they just download the app. For businesses like that, they don’t need to worry as much about lead generators.
With other businesses, like an aesthetics company—think Botox, Juvederm, and similar services—we do something different. We offer discount codes. If someone isn’t ready to book their first appointment, we say, "Give us your email address, and you’ll get 10% off your first service." You’ve probably seen this with e-commerce brands all the time, right? For example, if you own a t-shirt company, your lead generator might be, "Enter your email address for 25% off your first order."
Now that you’re seeing how marketers think, you’ll start noticing this on websites you visit. You’ll catch on to these tactics and think, "Oh, I see what they’re doing to me now."
Another lead generator that works well and is easy to implement is a video or mini-course. You don’t even need a graphic designer for this. Everyone has an iPhone. You can create a video, upload it to YouTube as an unlisted video so only people with the link can view it, and then set it up so when someone provides their email address, they receive the link.
This is something you could do today. Share some helpful tips and give it a really cool, clear, and catchy title. No bait-and-switch tactics—be upfront. Your deliverable should do three things: Give them a quick win or the first step of the process, position yourself as a proper guide and expert for them, and Provide real value.
Once you have their information, the most important step—and the last part of this sales funnel—is to follow up with them. You’ve heard it before: "The fortune is in the follow-up." It doesn’t matter how great your lead generator is or how many contacts you collect if you let that information sit on a server somewhere. It won’t make a difference.
The Importance of Follow-Up in Marketing
Sean Garner [42:23]: Fortune is in the follow-up. So what we like to do is put people through, depending on the business, a five to six email sequence. These emails are paced based on the value of the service provided. If it’s something expensive, we slow the pace of those emails. If it’s something like a $15-a-month fitness app, we deliver them quickly because people are already in an active buying mindset. Yes.
Sean Garner [43:20]: That I could create something very similar.
Sean Garner [43:26]: Check.
Sean Garner [43:30]: Yes. So how I would do that is on our website, we cycle lead generators. For example, one might be in the footer of the website, while another might come up as a pop-up. Sometimes, we’ll place multiple lead generators in the footer section, so the links are always visible. For a situation like yours—if anyone here is from the nonprofit world—it’s similar. You’d want to think about having two different landing pages: one for client-facing content and another for donor-facing content.
Sean Garner [44:08]: Yeah, so it’d be different. Yes.
Sean Garner [44:19]: I would make your homepage primarily customer-focused, though. But the 10-section framework I showed you should be the structure for all your landing pages. That same format—header, value stakes, and so on—should apply to every page. Does that make sense?
The last thing I’ll say about follow-ups is that text messaging works amazingly well right now if you can capture that information. The big thing I’d emphasize here is that while automation is great, it shouldn’t replace your effort. Automation is a layer on top of your follow-up; it’s there to help scale your time, not take over. If you want to close more deals, don’t just rely on automation. You still need to manually follow up, especially if you’re hungry and want to grow your business.
There are a lot of unscalable things I do that I also have my clients do when leads come in. For example, when I get a lead notification, I qualify people based on their email address. If someone emails me from a custom domain, like scottatreblaw.com, I’ll Google their domain and run it through our SEO tools. Then, I’ll manually follow up with a two-minute Loom video. In the video, I’ll say, "Hey, I saw you downloaded our marketing domination checklist. I wanted to show you a few things on your website that you could optimize."
That’s a personal touch that takes me about three minutes, but it often makes a big difference. I’m not just relying on automation to do everything—that’s there to help, not take over.
Sean Garner [46:39]: We've talked about how we don't make decisions based on personal preference or emotion; we make decisions based on data. So we're going to be looking at all of this data—open rates, click-through rates, which emails are getting us booked, and where in the sequence we’re seeing results. That way, we can go back and tweak the follow-up process. If we're not doing manual actions and only relying on automation, we're not actually going to know what's working and resonating with our customer. Does that make sense? Okay, how am I doing on time? Perfect.
We've got three steps, like I said, to building the sales funnel. That was one. Sorry, three steps to marketing domination.
Sean Garner [47:27]: That's building the sales funnel. That was the longest step, and we talked a lot about it because, to me, it's the foundation. You don’t really have marketing until you have that. All of those things are foundational. If I could emphasize anything, it’s this: please do not spend money on paid ads, SEO, or creating a ton of content online until you have that. If you do, you're just filling up a bucket with holes. Make sure you've got a solid bucket to fill leads into before you start paying money to do it. Cool? That’s the biggest takeaway from this—have a sales funnel. You need a sales funnel to collect all these leads.
Now, we have all these things, but as Scott said earlier, we were joking—just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. Field of Dreams was an awesome movie, but not a great marketing strategy. Just because you built the thing doesn’t mean people will come. You’ve now created a process for yourself to guide people through different relationship stages, taking them from not knowing who you are to becoming a super fan customer.
We have to do things to fill the sales funnel. These last steps I'll go through a little bit quicker for you guys. Filling your sales funnel comes down to two things: you're either paying for it with money or paying for it with your time.
So there's paid ads and organic. Organic can be things like social media, networking events like this, or someone walking into your business or facility—you didn’t have to pay for someone to see that message. Then there are paid methods: paid traffic on social media like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, pay-per-click ads on Google, LSA ads on Google, billboards, or radio—things you're paying for to put your messaging in front of people.
I personally think too many businesses rush into paid ads before they have a solid sales funnel or organic strategy. Paid ads should be used as an addition or supplement.
There's a proper order for how I think small, service-based businesses should approach all of this. If I wanted to start filling this amazing sales funnel I’ve built, I would personally start with organic. I’d begin by building out my digital storefront.
Organic Strategies for Filling Your Sales Funnel
Sean Garner (49:51): Don't think of your website as an afterthought or a secondary location or just a sales funnel. This is your digital storefront, your digital presence. Your website and your digital profiles should represent you, the level of service you provide, and the professionalism you bring. Everyone in this room is an expert at what they do; they’re at the top of their field. But does your digital presence reflect that?
Because from a customer's standpoint, when they visit your website, they don't know what’s in your head. They don’t know your experience or the level of success you’ve had with other clients. They only know what you show them and allow them to see. Unfortunately, too many business owners, when they’re getting started, are bootstrapping. I love it—hustle, grind, all of that. They had a neighbor, cousin, or nephew who could build websites, so they made one for them. But now, your business has grown, and you didn’t catch up on the digital side.
So your business still looks like it's in its infant stages, like you really don’t have this expertise you’ve built over the years. Customers, even if you’re doing paid or organic ads, come to your website, and their perception becomes their reality. That’s how they perceive your business—through how you look in the digital world.
When we’re starting to fill our sales funnel, we need to think about the same thing from a social standpoint. There are two key things to focus on when building out this organic social presence. First, ensure consistency in branding. Make sure your social profiles reflect the branding of your website—colors, logos, fonts, messaging—everything should be consistent. If someone sees one branding style on your social profiles and something completely different on your website, they’ll feel something’s off, and it won’t resonate with them.
Sean Garner (51:52): If you think of your social profiles as your digital storefront, imagine a customer walking up to a physical location where the windows are dusty, it looks like no one’s been there for years, and the door is sometimes locked. That’s the same perception people have when they see inactive or incomplete social profiles.
If your profiles aren’t fully filled out or don’t represent the professionalism you bring, if you haven’t posted anything in two years, and before that it was another year, it comes across as inconsistent. Customers want to do business with someone reliable, someone they can count on. If you’re not actively showing up in the digital world, it can hurt the trust they’re trying to build with you in the real world.
Yeah, that’s awesome. The reason I have Sean here, not just because he’s my best friend, but because he’s a marketing guy with a successful business. Too many marketing people claim they can show you how to get leads but don’t have any leads themselves. They’ll tell you they can build you a million-dollar business while only making $200,000.
Sean Garner (53:02): Over the last year, I’ve actually done what I’m telling you to do. Let me give you specifics about how I drive traffic to the website I just walked you through.
I’ll show you the magic trick. Like I said, I’m not a fan of paid ads. We run zero paid ads for all of our businesses. We run a few for some clients, but there’s an order and structure to it. For me, I’m a big fan of organic content. I love communicating and connecting with people, creating content. That’s not for everybody, and that’s okay. You don’t have to put yourself out on social media all the time, but you do have to show up and let people know who you are.
For me, a big way I drive traffic organically is through SEO—search engine optimization.
Paid Advertising Strategies and Their Order
Sean Garner (54:16): The most common thing people think of with that is Google, but everything can be optimized through search. There's SEO for Instagram, your social profiles, your captions. When people are searching for things on social platforms—which has shown a huge increase in traffic over the past several years as more and more people engage with social media—the hashtags you use, the copy you put in your posts, all of that is indexable by the platform. Then there's YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and it's owned by Google.
I personally think... I'm gonna share something I think everybody should do. It might sound overwhelming, but let me explain why you should do it. I think one of the best things you could do is start a video podcast. Now, before you think, "I don’t want to do a podcast; that’s overwhelming," let me reframe it for you. When I say video podcast, don’t think of creating a Joe Rogan-level show or the world's largest podcast. Think of it as a content type.
Every single business—even a local plumber—could and should have a video podcast. This is why: it’s about leveraging your time and effort better. Think about it. If I asked you to create five short-form videos and maybe a YouTube video every week, it would take a lot of time. But with a video podcast, you can take 30 minutes of your week and rip that apart into tons of different content.
Sean Garner (56:10): You can have a long-form video for YouTube, optimized for the search terms you're ranking for. Then, take that long-form video and cut it into several shorts for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, Facebook Reels, and LinkedIn. You can also take the content you discussed in the podcast, turn it into a blog article, and use the transcript to create a podcast page. From there, you can repurpose it into three tips for your email newsletter. You distribute it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.
So you’ve spent 30 minutes creating a show, and now you’re blasting out content everywhere.
That’s good for the content's sake, but here’s why you should really do it. A video podcast helps you connect with potential dream customers and leverage other people's networks.
You have a podcast, and it’s much easier to get on someone else's podcast. Imagine being a commercial plumber working in multifamily residentials. You might find it hard to get a lunch or coffee meeting with a big contractor who could give you a lot of business. But if you call them and say, “Hey, I have a plumbing podcast where we highlight successful people in multifamily construction. We’d love to feature you and talk about your business,” they’re going to say yes.
Sean Garner (58:30): Everyone loves talking about themselves, as JR said earlier. You get people who wouldn’t get on a sales call with you to come on your podcast and talk about themselves. Now, you've leveraged their network. Once they’re on your podcast, and you share the content, their network starts seeing it. So, you’ve expanded your network by leveraging theirs.
You’ve also built a relationship with someone you want to do business with, and that could lead to more opportunities. It might sound overwhelming, but if you look at the return on investment for the time it takes, this is one of the best things you could do to scale your time, reach, and impact.
That’s why we’ve started doing video podcast production for our clients. They’re busy, and it sounds like a lot, but with the right structure, you can leverage your time much better. That’s what we’ve been able to do ourselves.
Sean Garner (59:25): Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I do. You want to know how I fuel myself? I create podcast content. I get on there, talk about different topics, and start to interview people so I can leverage their network. I also go on other people's podcasts. What's that? Yes, all organic. Lauren, you got a question?
Sean Garner (59:44): A mix. Because remember, think about why you're doing it. There's always a purpose behind it. We don't want to create content just for content's sake. We're doing it because we're trying to generate leads and grow the business. I don’t care about how big my social media following is. I care about connecting with the right leads and customers.
You said something really important: don’t create content just to create content. The only reason to create content is to serve a purpose. It’s not social media for you guys. If you’re in here, it’s business media. It’s a free platform, by the way, so we can complain about algorithms, but it’s free. You could waste a ton of time creating useless content. If you have all the money in the world and don’t care, then go do that. But if you’re trying to make money with content, it’s got to have a purpose.
Now, you want to mix in who you are so people get a sense of who you are because people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Then you want to show them that you care about them. The only way you can do that is by exposing them to who you are. You have to be real, talk about what’s going on in your life, but it’s got to have a purpose.
If you’re a plumbing company, you’re not going to get on there and talk about recipes you’re making every day. You might mention something occasionally, but it’s got to serve a purpose. That’s why, like the example I gave earlier about TikTok dance videos—there’s a big difference between going viral and attracting customers. I don’t care about how many likes or views a post gets. I care about speaking to customers and positioning myself as an expert to them.
Sean Garner (01:01:57): We may not be getting a lot of long views. For example, we have a guy who just launched five weeks ago, and we've already got 30,000.
Sean Garner (01:02:09): Yeah.
Sean Garner (01:02:23): Exactly. The short-form content—all the platforms are pushing it right now. That’s a great side benefit. It’s a really cool side benefit to doing the content because it can serve multiple purposes.
You’re not going to be great at this when you start, and that’s okay. Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first. So do it. Just get yourself out there, do the best you can, and you’ll get better with practice. Creating content the way I’m doing it works.
Sean Garner (01:03:09): That can help, and we’re talking about local SEO today, later this afternoon. It can be good and help with it, but it doesn’t significantly improve search engine optimization. People aren’t necessarily going to be viewing it. I think it’s good to post at least two to three times a week on your Google Business profile, whether it’s an image, a video, or a testimonial.
That’s more about showing Google that it’s an active profile and that you’re engaged. It’s more about helping Google than it is about helping customers because customers probably aren’t going to view that.
Okay, I interrupted you. So now we’re on the part about optimizing.
Sean Garner (01:03:44): We’ve done all this stuff here. Quick note on this: do organic first. If I were to tell you the order of doing things, start with organic. Make sure your social profiles are built out. Create organic content, whether it’s a video podcast, short-form videos, or something consistent where you show up regularly.
It doesn’t have to be every day. If you can at least post once a week, do that. Something is better than nothing. Consistency is more important than frequency, especially when you’re first starting out. Consistency is more important than frequency when you’re beginning with social media.
Think of your social media profiles as a TV show. If you turn on ESPN and it’s SportsCenter, but next time it’s ballet, and then after that, it’s music videos, who’s going to know what the channel is about? It’s all over the place. If you can post every Monday at 10 AM, that’s your post.
When you want to get into paid ads, first focus on SEO and content. Work on SEO for your website and local SEO, which we’ll discuss this afternoon.
Then, when you’re ready to explore paid ads, start with LSA ads—local service ads. These are only available to certain professions that are service-based.
Why are LSA ads amazing? You only pay for the lead. You don’t pay per view or per click. These ads are available for professions like plumbers, roofing companies, lawyers, and certain medical practitioners. If people are searching for that service in your area, they’ll see your listing.
You can Google something like "Dallas attorney" right now, and you’ll see listings that say “Google Guaranteed.” Those are LSA ads. They’re highly effective for service-based businesses.
Sean Garner (01:05:22): Those people are paying to be there. They're ranking above everything on the map pack and everything, but they're only paying if you click or call them. It’s not like a normal ad where you’re just paying for impressions. It’s the best way to start with paid ads because you’re only paying for the lead, and it’s for people who are specifically searching for the service you provide in your service area.
It does cost more per lead, but the conversions are crazy high.
The next type of ad you should start running is PPC or pay-per-click ads. These are SEO ads that people see on Google. When someone searches for a term, your business pops up. We won’t get too deep into that, but that’s the next step.
Then I would look at doing retargeting ads. You’ll have a pixel or something similar on your website, and you’ll only show social media ads to people who already know who you are and have been to your website.
After all of that is optimized and running, then you can start looking at cold traffic ads—targeting people in your local market who don’t already know you. By this point, you’ll have enough leads coming in, so you don’t have to worry as much about testing or burning through money on cold traffic ads.
You’ve also probably gotten pretty good at organic strategies by now, so the cold ads will convert much higher.
That’s how I would approach that.
Last thing. We’ve built the sales funnel, started to fill the sales funnel, and now we need to optimize it.
So this last part, guys, I’ll go a lot quicker with. I keep saying this over and over: we don’t make marketing decisions based on personal preference or emotion. We make marketing and business decisions based on data.
There are so many tools available now—social stats, website traffic analytics, heat maps that show where people are spending their time on your website. If we’re not leveraging those, we’re just guessing, and guessing costs money.
We want to base our decisions on data.
When it comes time to optimizing your sales funnel, we typically use data, automation, and AI. A mistake I see small business owners make here is trying to automate too many things too early in the process. They don’t yet know what needs to be automated.
What I typically tell businesses is to focus on identifying repetitive tasks—things they’re doing inconsistently or missing entirely—and optimize those first.
Continuous Optimization of Your Sales Funnel
Sean Garner (01:07:43): So one of the first things we would want to automate is the follow-up process when a lead comes onto the website. What does that sequence look like for them? If someone books an appointment, what sequence are they going to be plugged into based on their appointment type?
As I said, we’re making all these decisions based on data. When it comes time to optimize, we typically want to work with a traffic number or a time number.
I don’t want to just start changing things to change things. I want to give it at least 90 days—or it could be sooner depending on the website's traffic volume and the number of leads coming in. Typically, though, I don’t touch anything for at least 90 days. I just want to see how the numbers come in.
Some clients are getting tens of thousands of website hits a month. For them, we can test and make changes much quicker. But if you’re getting, say, 20 people visiting your site each day, it’s harder to gather enough data for meaningful split testing.
As we optimize after 90 days—or after a significant number of page views—we’ll start analyzing email sequence data like open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and whether we’re capturing information properly. Using this data, we tweak subject lines, calls to action on the website, and other elements.
I also look at where leads are slipping through the cracks. For example, someone might come to the website as a new lead, download the lead generator, book a call, but not show up for the call. Or they book an appointment, but the service team shows up and the client forgot they had scheduled it.
If I notice a repetitive issue like that, I’ll automate a solution. That’s where leads are falling through the cracks, and I’m missing opportunities.
The next step is leveraging AI. For example, we’ve started training AI chatbots for our clients to handle questions about their business.
A lot of people ask the same questions: “What’s the cost?” “What packages do you offer?” “What’s your schedule?” With AI, you can train it to answer those questions effectively.
Sean Garner (01:09:58): Based on your business, the AI can read your website, you can feed it information, or even shoot a YouTube video and provide the transcript so it knows all about your business—how you speak and answer questions. You can train that AI bot to answer a lot of the common FAQ questions that are taking up your time.
When we get to this automation phase, we’re really trying to think about how we can do things at scale. From content creation to CRM systems, we always want to evaluate everything we do.
Once we’ve done this step, we repeat everything again. We're always going back to the sales funnel, reviewing how it’s performing, optimizing our words, logos, colors, fonts, and branding to see if they’re resonating with people. Are we using the right calls to action? How’s the header section performing? What are the conversion rates on the website? We test different lead generators and content strategies.
It’s a continuous process.
Having a sales funnel is essential, but just building one isn’t enough. Once it’s built, you need to fill it. Even then, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it thing. You should always be revisiting and optimizing it.
Think of your sales funnel like a physical storefront. You’d never build a storefront and neglect routine maintenance, like touch-up paint or replacing a worn-out sign. You’d regularly evaluate how to make the space more inviting, like moving the front desk for better customer flow.
It’s the same with your digital presence. Unfortunately, many treat it as an afterthought—“I’ve got a website; I’m good.” No, you’re not good.
If you take anything away from this, remember: Build a sales funnel. Realize people won’t come just because it’s built—you need to actively fill it. I’ve shared my strategies for using organic and paid methods to do this. Use data to guide your business decisions. Don’t rely on what feels good—let the numbers tell you what works. If you do these things, it leads to marketing domination.
Everyone here, we want to see you win. You’re kingdom-based entrepreneurs—men and women of God—and we want to see you thrive and dominate. Remember, we’re not dominating to crush our competition. We’re dominating because we work with a spirit of excellence, and God has called us to do bigger things.
Let’s be wise with our resources and good stewards, making the most of the opportunities He’s given us.
Sean Garner (01:12:22): Good stuff? Yeah.
Sean Garner (01:12:50): Scan that QR code, guys. It just takes you to the website. The easiest way to reach me personally is Instagram. Shoot me a DM; I’m very responsive there. We’ve also got the Marketing Domination Podcast for more content.
