Is your Marketing Strategy Obsolete? The Search Evolution
I discovered something that's going to significantly impact your marketing strategy. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't even on my radar. But here we are.
We recently implemented a simple web search feature at LaunchLemonade. This means our customer's AI copilots and assistants can now "call the web" to support them with answering their queries. Take for example when you are asking an AI application for the best activity recommendations in London, now you can get an up-to-date recommendation as it's able to call the web. Standard stuff, right? Not quite. It exposed an emerging shift in consumer behaviour that's poised to change how we think about marketing: Conversation-driven marketing.
To understand this better, I conducted a personal experiment. I opened ChatGPT to help me plan my Italian holiday. Not with keywords, but with a full-blown request as if I was talking to a travel agent or personal assistant.
The Experiment.
"I want to go to Italy in August but I’m on a budget of 1200. Which cities do you suggest? Which hotels, activities and restaurants. Provide links and itinerary.”
The result? A comprehensive, clickable itinerary. No scrolling. No ads. Just pure, tailored content.
Intrigued, I took this query across platforms. In my experience, Claude offered generic advice. Perplexity gave detailed explanations.
But when I used Chrome, I found myself reverting to keyword searches… and the results were a familiar ranking of ads and generic content. Even with Gemini results, it didn't give me an itinerary and was more generic than Claude's results.
Now, it's important to note that these are my personal observations and may not be universally applicable. Traditional search is still widely used and effective for many queries. However, this experience made me realise that there's a growing space for conversational AI in how people find products and services.
Industry Observations
I looked around the internet and found limited discussion about this potential shift in marketing - I then looked at ChatGPT marketplace to see if there's brand presence there - and there are some, but there are now chat interfaces particularly designed for conversation. How are brands taking advantage?
While concrete statistics on this shift are still emerging, industry observations are telling. IBM's advancements in AI-driven virtual agents have consistently shown improvements in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
This isn't just a tech trend; it's a potential change in how customers interact with brands.
SO What Do We Do?
We should consider evolving our content strategy. We need to create content that can engage in dialogue, not just monologue. This means writing in a format that is more amenable to interpretation by AI applications. Think about developing interactive, question-answering content that anticipates user queries and provides contextual responses.
Natural Language Processing is becoming increasingly important. It could be a key component of your future marketing strategy. Consider investing in NLP tools and expertise to understand and respond to nuanced customer queries effectively.
Text is just the beginning. Voice and image recognition are growing in importance. Is your brand ready to be heard and seen, not just read? Develop multi-modal content strategies that incorporate voice SEO and visual search optimisation.
We need to think about augmenting how we work and maximising the accessibility and availability of AI applications. Building our own copilots could hyperscale productivity. This means integrating AI assistants into your workflow and training your team to collaborate effectively with these tools.
Our current KPIs may need to evolve. We should consider new metrics for this emerging paradigm. Think conversation quality scores, AI-assisted conversion rates, and semantic search rankings. Aligning your business metrics with these new capabilities could influence customer retention and satisfaction, as noted by various industry observations.
The truth is, we're in a period of transition. The metrics and case studies for this new era are still developing. But that's not a problem, it's an opportunity to experiment and innovate.
Consider diving in. Start exploring how conversational AI might fit into your marketing strategy. Track everything. You could be the case study that others quote in 2025.
This isn't necessarily a sudden shift, but it's an evolution happening in real-time. I am personally diving in and taking part in how engagement is being rewritten.
The question isn't if you'll adapt. It's whether you'll lead the exploration or be left explaining to the board why you're losing market share to companies that seem to "get" your customers better.
The clock's ticking. Will you be the innovator or the follower in this evolving era of marketing?
Need help with transforming your business with AI-driven strategies and solutions? Email me at cien@ciensolon.co.uk.