Sam Page
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Visibility wins

The Friday Takeaway6 min readSam Page

I'm back at work this week after two beautiful weeks away, recharging and catching up with the family. So it's no surprise that the first thing on my mind is going back to work with a bump.

One quick thing before I get into it. I've signed up to a 5k a day challenge, walk or run, organised by my friend Chris Wimshurst . I joined mainly to get myself back into a disciplined morning routine after the break, and so far it's doing the job. Worth giving it a go if you're after the same thing - it's a supportive group of a mix of people (I only know Chris). Link here: Open this link to join my WhatsApp Group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DowqAY3R0PT1rKE4AX57ek?mode=gi_t

Back to work with a bump

Like everyone else coming back off a break, the shift from holiday and relaxation to work and a long list of things to get stuck into felt like a bump.

I should say the team had done an amazing job while I was away. I didn't come back to anything on fire. It was simply that shift from one thing to the other.

I felt a bit better about it this time because I listened to Spare, by Prince Harry, while I was away. He talks about being on holiday with Elton John for a week, and how they all still had that same sense of going back to reality, and what a shame it is that life can't be one big holiday. If even Harry and Elton John feel it, I find it quite reassuring that it's only normal I feel it too.

So I built a dashboard

As the week went on I kept coming back to the same thing. There's so much to do across so many of the businesses I'm involved in, 7DOTS predominantly, and it's hard just dealing with that volume. It's also very easy to get stuck in the day-to-day minute stuff.

So I built an AI dashboard.

It's a little bit different to a list of things to do. It's split by the various businesses I work with, 7DOTS and then across all the advisory roles I have. It goes into my email, my calendar, Hubspot and Slack on a daily basis, and looks at what's being requested of me.

Then, for each of those organisations, I've set the aim or objective I'm ultimately trying to achieve in that role. I ask it to surface what's important to me from the to-do list, and then build out a smaller list of other actions that might need doing.

It's working really well. It gives me quite clear guidance on the things I probably should be focusing my time on, and the things that just need doing that perhaps I shouldn't, which I can then work out how to deal with. I've built in self-learning loops too, so as I feed back on what it's surfacing or has missed, it gets better.

There's a personal tab on there, and a network tab for the people who sit outside the organisations I'm involved in but are really important contacts to me, so I make sure I get back to them and support them.

More on this in a future edition. It's all quite sensitive, but I'll try and share a screenshot if I can.

Why Screwfix is beating Toolstation

I was talking to a client about Screwfix versus Toolstation the other day, and it led me to do a bit of digging.

Screwfix is nearly three times the size of Toolstation and growing almost twice as fast. When you look at the two businesses, they have pretty much the same product set, the same pricing, and the brands aren't that dissimilar. Although you could argue Screwfix has been around longer and has the backing of Kingfisher. And both of them have quite a good digital experience.

When I broke it down though, that's not really where the difference comes from.

The difference is visibility.

Screwfix rank for nearly three times as many search terms in the UK. They're cited in AI answers more than three times as often. And they have four times as many pages surfaced in those indexes. So the moment you start looking for one of the products they sell, they're more visible, and you're more likely to go through to them.

Worth remembering that 41% of searches now start through AI.

  • Organic keywords (UK): 222,746 vs 77,552
  • Monthly organic traffic: 5.3m vs 2.5m
  • AI citations across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot: 77,523 vs 23,796
  • Distinct pages cited by AI: 28,827 vs 6,734

The digital experiences are comparable, although I do think Screwfix's is better for the audience. A bit more robust and simple to use. And what's really magical is that Screwfix also have more physical stores. So when you go from that digital experience to being able to collect, they win on those numbers by quite some way.

We see this time and time again. When you own that digital space you're that much more visible at the start of the journey, and you're there in the moment of need.

Most considered purchase brands have an element of the physical or the human that's very important alongside the digital. But if you don't own the digital space, which is the starting point for so many of these journeys, whether you're buying financial services or a hammer, you're just not going to get that advantage over your competitors.

Let us know if we can help Toolstation ;)

Three reasons growth stalls

I've already had four or five conversations this week with people frustrated they're not able to drive growth through digital. They don't know what they should be doing with it, and they've tried loads of things.

Three challenges come up over and over.

  1. One tactic, one moment. They've tried to fix one moment in time, or used one tactic, spent a load of money on it, and it hasn't worked. You really do have to look across the whole of digital, make sure you're owning all of the right moments in the right way, and build an experience that creates value for your user. Once you do that, you can get the engine rolling. All too often we see brands over-invest in paid and do nothing else, and it just becomes economically unviable.
  2. The data is a mess. Most companies' data is a mess. You can't measure everything and nor should you, but there's a hell of a lot you can measure. Measure the right stuff, know what's working, and it changes everything you're doing. The type of marketing we do is performance-led, and it should be driven by data and optimised around data.
  3. The website gets underestimated. Do not underestimate the power of the website. It's still the most important touchpoint in a considered purchase by a long way. Everything leads to and around it.

I hope you're all getting settled back into work after the holidays if you've been away, or looking forward to yours if it's still to come.

One thing I'd like to hear. If you've built something to help you deal with the volume, whether that's a dashboard, a ritual or a rule, tell me what it is. I read all of them.

Until next week.

First published on LinkedIn.

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GEThttps://sam-page.com/thinking/visibility-wins.mdtext/markdown; charset=utf-8

---
title: "Visibility wins"
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/visibility-wins
date: 2026-09-04
author: Sam Page
type: The Friday Takeaway edition
categories: [The Friday Takeaway]
reading_time: 6 min
summary: "I'm back at work this week after two beautiful weeks away, recharging and catching up with the family. So it's no surprise that the first thing on my mind is going back to work with a bump."
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/visibility-wins-sam-page-tqcee
---

# Visibility wins

I'm back at work this week after two beautiful weeks away, recharging and catching up with the family. So it's no surprise that the first thing on my mind is going back to work with a bump.

One quick thing before I get into it. I've signed up to a 5k a day challenge, walk or run, organised by my friend Chris Wimshurst . I joined mainly to get myself back into a disciplined morning routine after the break, and so far it's doing the job. Worth giving it a go if you're after the same thing - it's a supportive group of a mix of people (I only know Chris). Link here: Open this link to join my WhatsApp Group: <https://chat.whatsapp.com/DowqAY3R0PT1rKE4AX57ek?mode=gi_t>

### Back to work with a bump

Like everyone else coming back off a break, the shift from holiday and relaxation to work and a long list of things to get stuck into felt like a bump.

I should say the team had done an amazing job while I was away. I didn't come back to anything on fire. It was simply that shift from one thing to the other.

I felt a bit better about it this time because I listened to Spare, by Prince Harry, while I was away. He talks about being on holiday with Elton John for a week, and how they all still had that same sense of going back to reality, and what a shame it is that life can't be one big holiday. If even Harry and Elton John feel it, I find it quite reassuring that it's only normal I feel it too.

### So I built a dashboard

As the week went on I kept coming back to the same thing. There's so much to do across so many of the businesses I'm involved in, 7DOTS predominantly, and it's hard just dealing with that volume. It's also very easy to get stuck in the day-to-day minute stuff.

So I built an AI dashboard.

It's a little bit different to a list of things to do. It's split by the various businesses I work with, 7DOTS and then across all the advisory roles I have. It goes into my email, my calendar, Hubspot and Slack on a daily basis, and looks at what's being requested of me.

Then, for each of those organisations, I've set the aim or objective I'm ultimately trying to achieve in that role. I ask it to surface what's important to me from the to-do list, and then build out a smaller list of other actions that might need doing.

It's working really well. It gives me quite clear guidance on the things I probably should be focusing my time on, and the things that just need doing that perhaps I shouldn't, which I can then work out how to deal with. I've built in self-learning loops too, so as I feed back on what it's surfacing or has missed, it gets better.

There's a personal tab on there, and a network tab for the people who sit outside the organisations I'm involved in but are really important contacts to me, so I make sure I get back to them and support them.

More on this in a future edition. It's all quite sensitive, but I'll try and share a screenshot if I can.

### Why Screwfix is beating Toolstation

I was talking to a client about Screwfix versus Toolstation the other day, and it led me to do a bit of digging.

Screwfix is nearly three times the size of Toolstation and growing almost twice as fast. When you look at the two businesses, they have pretty much the same product set, the same pricing, and the brands aren't that dissimilar. Although you could argue Screwfix has been around longer and has the backing of Kingfisher. And both of them have quite a good digital experience.

When I broke it down though, that's not really where the difference comes from.

The difference is **visibility**.

Screwfix rank for nearly three times as many search terms in the UK. They're cited in AI answers more than three times as often. And they have four times as many pages surfaced in those indexes. So the moment you start looking for one of the products they sell, they're more visible, and you're more likely to go through to them.

Worth remembering that 41% of searches now start through AI.

- Organic keywords (UK): 222,746 vs 77,552
- Monthly organic traffic: 5.3m vs 2.5m
- AI citations across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot: 77,523 vs 23,796
- Distinct pages cited by AI: 28,827 vs 6,734

The digital experiences are comparable, although I do think Screwfix's is better for the audience. A bit more robust and simple to use. And what's really magical is that Screwfix also have more physical stores. So when you go from that digital experience to being able to collect, they win on those numbers by quite some way.

We see this time and time again. When you own that digital space you're that much more visible at the start of the journey, and you're there in the moment of need.

Most considered purchase brands have an element of the physical or the human that's very important alongside the digital. But if you don't own the digital space, which is the starting point for so many of these journeys, whether you're buying financial services or a hammer, you're just not going to get that advantage over your competitors.

Let us know if we can help Toolstation ;)

### Three reasons growth stalls

I've already had four or five conversations this week with people frustrated they're not able to drive growth through digital. They don't know what they should be doing with it, and they've tried loads of things.

Three challenges come up over and over.

1. One tactic, one moment. They've tried to fix one moment in time, or used one tactic, spent a load of money on it, and it hasn't worked. You really do have to look across the whole of digital, make sure you're owning all of the right moments in the right way, and build an experience that creates value for your user. Once you do that, you can get the engine rolling. All too often we see brands over-invest in paid and do nothing else, and it just becomes economically unviable.
2. The data is a mess. Most companies' data is a mess. You can't measure everything and nor should you, but there's a hell of a lot you can measure. Measure the right stuff, know what's working, and it changes everything you're doing. The type of marketing we do is performance-led, and it should be driven by data and optimised around data.
3. The website gets underestimated. Do not underestimate the power of the website. It's still the most important touchpoint in a considered purchase by a long way. Everything leads to and around it.

I hope you're all getting settled back into work after the holidays if you've been away, or looking forward to yours if it's still to come.

One thing I'd like to hear. If you've built something to help you deal with the volume, whether that's a dashboard, a ritual or a rule, tell me what it is. I read all of them.

Until next week.