Can Customers Find Your Brand? Marketing Strategies for AI-Driven Search
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
Traditional search marketing strategies need a refresh as AI platforms transform how consumers search online. Even market-leading brands risk becoming invisible if they stick with familiar SEO practices. Today, zero-click searches offer fewer consumer touch points, and AI algorithms prioritize results differently than traditional search engines. Companies can adapt by applying the Information Search Marketing framework and reconsidering how they prioritize and allocate resources.
AI platforms have already upended online search in the first few years they’ve been available, and businesses were woefully unprepared for them. Depending on your company’s strategy, AI-driven search can bring significant opportunity or grave risk to its online visibility. Big brands can gain even more market share if they act shrewdly and with haste, while small brands now have a new marketing channel that can help level the playing field.
For example, one of the largest U.S. fitness brands with one of the larger search investments conducted AI platform searches as a test. “That was a wake-up call. We were shocked when a small, local company in Houston was landing better in AI searches,” said Kate Klein, executive vice president of marketing for Houston Fitness Partners, a major Planet Fitness franchisee.
Similarly, a financial services executive was surprised twice over while observing a consumer searching for industry information. First, the consumer pulled up ChatGPT rather than Google to search for top-rated options. Second, and more dismaying, the executive’s firm was not one of the AI platform’s recommendations — a much smaller player in the industry was. This was despite the exec’s better-known company having the largest market share among its competitors and investing the most money on traditional media, digital marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
How many dollars that your company invested to cement market leadership in the past will translate into success in next-generation search? The answer is not yet clear. The ways consumers look for information are changing at breakneck speed, with many shifting from traditional search engines to generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
The fundamental issue: Customers must be able to find your brand in order to consider, desire, or buy your offerings. For top-of-funnel consumers to find your company, AI’s opaque and evolving algorithms must be able to find your brand first and then prioritize it in a preferred position in search results. Invisibility on AI platforms risks dire consequences, even for brands that lead in market share.
One striking AI-driven consumer behavior change that will only accelerate is zero-click search. The consumer often doesn’t need to click through to anything in order to get the information they want, never mind explore numerous links.
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