Meet Yvonne Gaudette, Founder of Message & Funnel: Helping Business Owners Build Visibility and Trust Online
Jun 09, 2026
Yvonne Gaudette is a fractional CMO, marketing strategist, and founder of Message & Funnel.
With more than 20 years of experience helping businesses clarify their message, strengthen their marketing, and reach the right people, Yvonne’s work centers around one core idea: making a business easier to understand, trust, and choose.
Through Message & Funnel, she helps expert-led businesses turn one strategic topic into multiple authority-building assets that can be distributed across more places buyers are already looking.
Interview with Yvonne Gaudette
Please tell us about yourself.
I’m Yvonne Gaudette, founder of Message & Funnel and Fractional Marketing Solutions.
At the simplest level, I help businesses make their value easier to understand, trust, and act on.
Sometimes that happens through fractional CMO work, where I help companies with messaging, positioning, marketing strategy, launches, lead generation, and growth.
Message & Funnel is focused on visibility and authority-building. We help business owners take one strong topic and turn it into multiple content assets, so their expertise shows up in more of the places people are already looking.
What kind of work do you do?
My fractional work is more strategic and leadership-focused. I help companies clarify their positioning, strengthen their message, create smarter marketing plans, support launches, improve lead generation, and build the kind of marketing direction they need without hiring a full-time CMO.
Message & Funnel is more productized and visibility-focused.
Through Message & Funnel, we help expert-led businesses create more public proof around the topics they want to be known for. We take one strategic topic and turn it into multiple authority-building assets that can be distributed across more places online.
That gives the business more surface area, more credibility signals, and more ways for buyers to find and understand them.
What inspired you to start Message & Funnel?
Message & Funnel came out of something I kept seeing in my marketing work.
I kept meeting business owners who were much stronger than their online presence made them look.
They could explain their work beautifully in a conversation. They had strong ideas, client results, and a real point of view. But when you looked online, the proof was often too thin, too scattered, or too buried.
That matters because people are doing so much research before they ever reach out.
Before someone books a call, they may have already looked at your website, scanned your LinkedIn profile, searched your name, read an article, compared you to someone else, or asked an AI tool for recommendations.
If there is not enough clear, current proof around what you do, you may not show up the way you should.
Message & Funnel was created to help solve that.
It is not just about creating more content. It is about helping business owners take the expertise they already have and turn it into visibility that works harder for them.
What makes visibility so important right now?
Visibility matters because it is no longer just about whether people know you exist.
It is shaping whether they trust you before they ever talk to you.
A buyer may hear your name in a referral, then check your website, skim your LinkedIn profile, read a piece of content, or ask an AI tool for context. By the time they book a call, they may already have an opinion about whether you seem credible.
That is why content has to do more than exist.
It needs to help people understand what you do, what you know, why it matters, and why they should trust you.
The businesses that do well in this next phase will not necessarily be the loudest. They will be the clearest. They will have stronger proof, better explanations, and more useful content around the topics they want to be known for.
What do you wish more business owners understood about AI search?
I wish more business owners understood that AI search is not just a tech trend.
It is changing how people discover, compare, and make decisions.
People are already asking tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity for recommendations, summaries, comparisons, and shortcuts. That means your business needs to be understandable not only to humans, but also to the systems summarizing information for them.
Plain English version?
If your positioning is vague, your content is outdated, or your expertise is not clearly showing up online, AI tools may not have enough to work with.
That does not mean every business owner needs to panic or become an AI expert.
But it does mean clarity matters more than ever.
Your website, content, authority signals, and public proof all need to make it easier for people and platforms to understand what you do.
What is one thing readers can try for themselves?
Here is a simple one.
Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whichever AI tool you use and ask:
“Based on my website, what does this business do, who does it help, and what topics does it appear to have authority around?”
Then paste in your website URL or your homepage copy.
The answer may be very revealing. You may find that your business sounds clear, or you may discover that the tool misses important parts of your expertise, describes you too generally, or cannot identify what you should be known for.
That is useful information because if AI cannot quickly understand your business, there is a good chance some buyers are struggling with the same thing.
I also created a free 5-Day AI Search Visibility Challenge for business owners who want a simple way to look at their visibility, spot gaps, and start strengthening the proof around what they want to be known for.
You can join the free challenge here: [insert link]
What mistakes do you see business owners making with content?
The biggest mistake is creating content without a clear visibility strategy behind it.
A lot of business owners are posting because they feel like they should. They write a blog here, share a social post there, update their website once in a while, and hope it adds up.
But visibility compounds faster when your content is connected to the topics you want to own.
Before you create more content, ask what you want to be known for, what your buyers need to understand before they trust you, what you keep explaining on calls, and what proof would help someone feel confident taking the next step.
Those answers usually lead to much stronger content than simply asking, “What should I post this week?”
What has entrepreneurship taught you?
Entrepreneurship has taught me that clarity usually comes from movement.
You can think your way in circles trying to get the perfect message, the perfect offer, or the perfect plan. I know because I am a deep thinker, and I can absolutely do that.
But at some point, you have to put something into the world, pay attention to what comes back, and keep refining.
That has been a big lesson for me.
The market gives you information, but so do conversations, timing, and your own energy.
You do not always need to have the entire staircase figured out. Sometimes you need the next honest step.
What is something personal that shapes the way you work?
I care a lot about helping people feel seen for the real depth of what they bring.
That is probably why messaging and visibility have always mattered to me. I know what it is like to have strong ideas, experience, instincts, and pattern recognition that are not always easy for other people to see right away.
A lot of business owners are in that position too.
Their clients understand their value, but their public presence does not always show the full picture.
I like helping close that gap.
What is next for you and Message & Funnel?
I am focused on helping more business owners understand visibility in a more modern way.
AI search is part of that, but it is not the whole story. Even without AI, businesses need more public proof around the topics they want to be known for.
With Message & Funnel, I am continuing to build resources, newsletter content, and visibility campaigns that help business owners make their expertise easier to find, understand, and trust.
How can readers connect with you?
The best way to connect with me directly is on LinkedIn or by email.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonnegaudette/
Email: yvonne@messageandfunnel.com
If you’d like to stay close to what I’m sharing around visibility, authority-building, AI search, and how buyers are finding businesses differently, I’d also love to have you join the Message & Funnel newsletter.
Join the Message & Funnel newsletter here: https://messageandfunnel.com/
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