A new age of discovery beyond SEO

The world of digital marketing is no longer just about humans. AI with its unmatched information processing capabilities is changing the way we research and make decisions. Brands need to up their game, ensuring that the quality of their content and the consistency of their messaging can meet the high bar set by these digital intellects. 

Most of the time, research is boring and time-consuming. I think we all agree on that. So, we were pretty happy when ChatGPT came along, even happier now that it integrates web browsing, and you can use it with data beyond what it was trained with (until 2021). Instead of doing just a Google search where most of the information is just based on “top 10 articles” created for SEO positioning by the very same brands it promotes (i.e. the top 10 PM tools, written by ClickUp, or the top 10 chat widgets written by Intercom), I can just ask ChatGPT to do a deeper and more quantified research.

Even more game changing, I can ask ChatGPT to judge the information it looked up for me with a specific user persona and use case in mind: for example, “You are a CMO in a Series B startup looking for new CRM tools that have great form integrations”. And from there, ask questions like: What makes this brand and tool better than the other ones? What do customer reviews say? Which ones are better fitting our processes? And just like that, you can not only research for tools to integrate on your company, but also as a marketer, strategist or designer, you can evaluate the impact of your own website copy and messaging. 

As a company, this means that your website now has a whole new traffic channel, potentially with higher conversion rates than organic search engine traffic, and that’s why Google is so freaking scared. So, great user experience on a website becomes more crucial on every level, from quality of content to emotional design.

AI, either ChatGPT, its integration in Bing search, Bard from Google, or any other LLM or integration that helps with research and discovery,  will judge the content on your site in context to competitors, so the structure of when and how information is presented is now more important than ever before. Besides the content as a source of user value and experience, there are a few things to have in mind to play nice with AI systems: 

• No more SEO-driven-content

• No-more robotic articles that beat around the bush to fool Google into ranking the article as more relevant.
• Give straight answers to the questions your brand, product or service answers.

• It’s all about code

• AI bots will be able to act on behalf of your customers. So the code on the site needs to be impeccable in order to allow the bots to fill out forms, make orders or simply discover content.

• Consistency 

• AI bots will not only use your own content to judge you, but also 3rd party content from the web. So don’t try to fool AI to make you something you are not. You cannot pretend to be a premium brand on your website while simultaneously acting like a discount brand somewhere else. Pick your messaging, be consistent.

And equally important, since now AI will be referring potential customers to you with high clarity and intent, you have to deliver on those expectations. If you fail, you will have a massive bounce rate and miss on the opportunity that appears once in a decade. If you nail it…well, you maximized discoverability on a platform that in only 3 months (from February 2023 to April 2023) reached 100 million users and 1.8b billion visitors per month. To put it in perspective, Instagram has 2.5 billion visitors per month, and it took them years to be there!

It’s a new age of lead generation and conversion, led by a platform with unprecedented growth and accompanied by design driven web experiences. It’s time to innovate and win.