Google Isn’t Enough Anymore: How AI Is Changing How Customers Find Your Business

The rules of marketing are changing. And I don't mean five years from now, I mean right now. Your customers are starting to search differently. They're discovering businesses differently. They're researching products differently. And increasingly, there's something sitting between your company and the customer, artificial intelligence. For decades, marketers have asked one question, "How do I get the customer to choose me?" But I think we now have to ask a second question, "How do I make sure AI puts my business in the consideration set in the very first place?"

Because you can have the greatest product in the world, you can provide incredible service, you can have a beautiful website, but if the technology your customers are increasingly using doesn't understand who you are, what you do, or why you should be recommended, you may not even get considered. That changes the rules, and that's what I wanna talk about today. Every result has a price. Every goal requires a choice. Comfort keeps you where you are. Discipline takes you where you want to go. Welcome to Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Terrio.

Real world conversations on leadership, business, marketing, and execution. Welcome back to Discipline Over Comfort. This is episode 10, and I wanna start with something I came across that I think every business owner, marketing professional, and leader needs to pay attention to. Microsoft Advertising published an article called How Businesses Win When AI Does the Shopping, and that headline stopped me. Not because we haven't been talking about AI and shopping, we have. In fact, we touched on this in the very last episode.

But Mi- Microsoft made a pretty bold statement. They described the rise of AI, AI-powered shopping as the biggest change in digital commerce since mobile. Think about that for a second. The biggest change since mobile. Remember what smartphones did? They changed when people searched, where people searched, how people compared businesses, how they consumed content, how they communicated with companies, how they purchased. Mobile didn't simply give marketers another screen, it changed customer behavior.

And Microsoft's argument is that AI is beginning to do the same thing. Micro- Microsoft says that during the last holiday season, AI was the fastest-growing source of retail traffic, up six hundred and ninety-three percent year over year. They also cite research showing that seventy-two percent of consumers expect AI-assisted shopping experiences from retailers within the next year. And according to Adobe data cited by Microsoft, AI-referred visitors are converting forty-two percent better than non-AI traffic.

Those are not small numbers. But here's what interests me more than any statistic. Microsoft says that the new AI shopping environment comes down to three things. Get discovered, get chosen, and understand what's working. I think those three ideas tell us a lot about where marketing is going because for years we've built marketing around people navigating the Internet. They search, they click, they browse, they compare, they visit websites, they read reviews, they make a decision. But now imagine a customer saying, "I need a laptop for my daughter who is starting college.

She needs something lightweight, under twelve hundred dollars, a good battery life as she's studying graphic design." Instead of opening fifteen browser tabs, AI can narrow the field, compare specifications, read reviews, compare prices, identify trade-offs, and potentially hand the customer three or four choices. Now ask yourself, what happened to all the other brands? They may never have made it into the conversation. That's the shift. AI doesn't necessarily have to convince somebody not to buy from you.

It may simply never mention you. And I think that creates the first new rule of marketing in the age of AI. You're no longer marketing only to humans. Now, before somebody starts misunderstanding me, I'm not suggesting we start creating robotic marketing redesigned for machines instead of people. People still buy. People still experience the product. People still decide whether they trust you. People still decide whether to come back. But increasingly, machines may influence which businesses those people encounter, and that means your business needs to be understandable in two different ways.

Emotionally understandable to the human being, and structurally understandable to technology. That's new. Microsoft makes a very interesting point in this article. Human shoppers respond to things like imagery, storytelling, and brand. AI systems depend heavily on structured information and facts. What exactly is the product? What does it cost? Is it available? What are the specifications? What problems does it solve? What do customers say about it? Is the information consistent? Is it current? Can the AI understand it confident- confidently enough to recommend it?

That means something businesses have sometimes treated as boring back office work. Product descriptions, website information, FAQs, customer reviews, location data, service descriptions, pricing, structured product information may suddenly become some of your most valuable marketing assets because AI cannot confidently recommend what it cannot confidently understand. That line is worth remembering. AI cannot confidently recommend what it cannot confidently understand. And this doesn't only apply to e-commerce.

Think about a restaurant. What kind of f- food do you serve? What are your hours? What neighborhood are you in? Do you take reservations? Do you have vegetarian options? What do customers consistently say about you? Think about an attorney. What kind of law do you practice? Where are your l- where are you licensed? What type of cases do you handle? What expertise can be verified? Think about a home builder. What markets do you serve? What price ranges? What neighborhoods? What floor plans? What makes the homes different?

Think about an auto repair shop. What services do you, you perform? What vehicles do you work on? Where are you located? What certifications do you have? What does your reputation say? That information was always important. Now it became even more important because your next customer may be asking an AI assistant to do some of the research for them. Which brings me to rule number two: being found is not the same as being chosen. Marketers have spent years obsessing over visibility. Search rankings, impressions, reach, followers, traffic, all of those things matter.

But visibility was never the ultimate objective. Choice was. You don't want someone to simply see your business, you want them to choose it. And AI ma-make that distinction even sharper. Because if an AI assistant gives somebody five choices instead of 50, you don't just need to be visible, you need to be recommendable. There's a difference. And we're already seeing evidence that recommendations can change behavior. eMarketer recently reported that 50.1% of US consumers said they had switched from a brand they normally buy because of an AI recommendation at least sometimes.

Half. Think about the implications of that. Brand loyalty used to protect companies from a lot of competitors. People bought what they knew. They stayed with familiar brands. They relied on habits. But now an AI assistant can effectively say, "You normally buy this, but based on what you told me, you may wanna consider this instead." Suddenly the competitor the customer had never heard of gets invited into the conversation. That creates opportunity for smaller brands, but it creates risk for established brands.

And it means marketing leaders will have to start thinking about beyond awareness. What would cause an AI system to confidently include us in the recommendation? Reputation, reviews, clear product information, price, availability, expertise, authority, customer satisfaction, consistent information across the web. Probably some co-combination of all of them. And notice what just happened. Marketing expanded again. This isn't just an advertising problem, it's a reputation problem, a data problem, a customer experience problem, a content problem, a technology problem, and ultimately, a leadership problem.

Because somebody has to connect all of those things. That's rule number three. Your marketing data can no longer be treated like housekeeping. I think a lot of businesses have information scattered everywhere. One price on the website, another price somewhere else. Old hours on Google. Outdated product descriptions. Different business descriptions across directories. Incomplete FAQs. Old images. Reviews nobody responds to. Products missing important information. Customer questions sitting inside of inboxes.

Salespeople answering the same question 20 times without anyone turning that into useful content. For years, businesses could get away with a certain amount of what that messiness looked like. I think AI is gonna make that harder because artificial intelligence works by connecting information, and if the information about your business is inconsistent, incomplete, outdated, or unclear, why should an AI system confidently recommend you? This is where something I've been saying about AI becomes even more important.

AI doesn't eliminate the need for strategy. It raises the cost of not having one. Because AI moves very fast. Really fast. And if your information is wrong, technology can spread that confusion faster. If your positioning is unclear, it has less clarity about where you belong. If you don't know who your ideal customer is, you're gonna struggle to create the information that helps either humans or machines understand why your business matters. AI is an accelerator, but direction still matters. And this brings us to rule number four: trust becomes more va-valuable, not less.

There's a temptation to think that because AI can do more research and make more recommendations, brand relationships are gonna become less important. I think the opposite may happen. The more technology sits between businesses and consumers, the more valuable trust becomes. We talked about this in episode nine. If I already know you, if I've already purchased from you, if I've already had a great experience, if I already trust your business, AI has a harder job convincing me that I should abandon that relationship.

That's why retention becomes even more important. That's why customer experience becomes even more important. That's why email lists, communities, loyalty programs, and direct relationships become more valuable. Because you don't wanna reacquire your existing customer every time they need something. You want the relationship to matter. This is one of the reasons I believe marketers who only think about acquisition are gonna miss a huge part of what's happening. The customer journey doesn't end when somebody buys.

It changes. You've moved from, "Can we get their attention?" to, "Can we keep their trust?" And that may become one of the most important competitive advantages in an AI-driven marketplace. Because ultimately, customers still have preferences. They still have memories. They still remember how you made them feel. Still remember whether you kept your promise. They still remember whether you solved the problem. They still remember whether you treated them like a number. AI can recommend another option.

But a great relationship gives a customer a reason to say, "No, thanks. I already know who I trust." And that's powerful. And that brings me to rule number five. Marketing leadership becomes more important in the age of AI, not less. There are people who believe AI is gonna eliminate huge parts of marketing, and some tasks absolutely will change. Some roles will change. Some processes should change. We should automate repetitive work. We should use AI to analyze information faster. We should use it to identify patterns.

We should use it to personalize intelligently. We should use it to create efficiencies. We should absolutely take advantage of the technology. But somebody still has to ask, "Who are we trying to reach? What problem are we solving? Why should somebody choose us? What promise are we making? What information does the customer need? What experience are we trying to create? What does success look like?" And now we have another question. What information does AI need in order to accurately understand and recommend your business?

Those are leadership questions. A tool cannot decide what your company should stand for. A tool cannot determine your values. AI cannot decide the experience you want a customer to have. A tool cannot replace judgment. And I think judgment is about to become incredibly valuable because when everyone can create, creation itself becomes less scarce. When everyone can produce a video, the video isn't automatically valuable. When everyone can generate an email, the email isn't automatically useful. When everyone can make an advertisement, the advertisement isn't automatically effe-effective.

When everyone has access to the same powerful tools, the competitive advantage moves somewhere else. It moves to thinking. It moves to strategy. It moves to judgment. It moves to customer understanding. It moves to execution. That's why I don't believe the future belongs to the company with the most AI tools. I think it belongs to the company that knows what deserves to be accelerated. That's a very different thing. And here's another new rule I think businesses need to understand. Your website is no longer the beginning of every customer journey.

For years, we built everything around getting people to the website. Run the ad, get the click, send them to the landing page, get them to the site. But what if the website becomes step five? The customer asks AI. AI summarizes the choices. AI compares them. AI answers questions. AI narrows the options. Then maybe the customer visits your website. By the time they arrive, a huge portion of the buying decision may have already been formed. That changes what your website needs to do. The website no longer has to educate from zero every time.

Sometimes it may need to validate, reassure, confirm, build confidence, make the next step easy. And that means marketers need to think about what happens before the click, not just after it. What does AI know about us? What information is it using? What do third-party sources say? What do reviews say? Are there contradictions? Are we visible in the conversations happening before someone reaches our website? Microsoft is already building tools around something they call AI visibility. That tells you where this is headed.

Businesses are gonna start asking, "How visible are we inside AI-generated answers? Which topics are associated with us? Are we being cited? Are competitors being recommended instead? What questions lead people to us?" That's gonna become another layer of marketing analytics. We spent years talking about SEO. Now you're gonna hear more about GEO, Generative Engine Optimization. And whatever acronym ultimately wins, the principle matters more than the terminology. You need to make it easy for both customers and technology to understand why your business belongs in the conversation.

But there's a danger here. I don't want people leaving this episode thinking, "Bob says we need to start gaming AI." No, please don't do that. Because I think that will become the next version of bad SEO. Businesses will start stuffing websites with AI-generated garbage, hoping a chatbot mentions them. They create thousands of pages nobody wants. They chase shortcuts. They look for hacks. And for a little while, some of those tactics may even work. But the fundamentals still matter. Useful information, accurate information, real expertise, customer reviews, a strong reputation, great experiences, clear positioning, a product worth recommending, a company worth trusting.

Marketing technology changes. Human expectations don't change nearly as quickly. People still want value. They still want clarity. They still want honesty. They still want businesses to keep their promises. So maybe one of the most important rules of marketing in the age of artificial intelligence is it actually one of the oldest. Be worth recommending, not just optimized for recommendations. Worth recommending. There's a huge difference. And if you're a small business owner listening to this, I don't want you overwhelmed.

You don't need a massive AI department. You don't need fifty new tools. You don't need to panic and rebuild your entire marketing operation this weekend. Start simple. Ask yourself five questions. First, if someone asks an AI assistant what my business does, would the answer be accurate? Try it. Ask ChatGPT. Ask Gemini. Ask Copilot. Ask the different systems. See what comes back. Second, is the information about my business consistent across the internet? Your website, Google Business profile, social channels, directories, product information, the hours, locations, services.

Make sure the basics are correct. Third, have we clearly explained the problems we solve? Not just what we sell. What problem do you actually solve? Fourth, what evidence exists that we keep our promises? Reviews, the testimonials, case studies, customer stories, reputation. And fifth, are we building direct relationships with customers, or are we completely dependent on platforms to bring them back to us every single time? Email, SMS, community, loyalty, relationships. Those things matter. And that's your execution challenge for this episode.

Take 30 minutes, open an AI assistant, and pretend you're a customer. Don't ask, "Tell me about my company." Ask the questions your customer would actually ask. "Who are the best companies for this? What should I look for when choosing one? Who serves my city? What brand should I consider? What are the pros and the cons? What do the customers say?" Then look at the answers. Does your company appear? Should it? Is the information accurate? What is missing? What competitor keeps appearing? What might that be?

Don't get defensive about what you find. Be curious, because this is new terri- territory for almost everybody. The businesses that learn faster are gonna have an advantage, not because they discovered some magic AI hack, because they paid attention to how customer behavior was changing and adapted. That's what good marketing leadership has always done. We study the customer, we watch the market, we understand the technology, and then we make decisions. The tools change, the responsibility doesn't.

So let me leave you with this. The rules of marketing are changing. Discovery is changing. Search is changing. Shopping is changing. Content is changing. Measurement is changing. Artifil- artificial intelligence will create enormous opportunities. But don't confuse new technology with new fundamentals. You still have to understand the customer. You still have to solve a real problem. You still have to communicate value. You still have to earn trust. You still have to deliver a great experience, and you still have to execute.

AI may help decide who gets discovered. AI may help narrow the consideration set. AI may even help complete the transaction. But before AI can recommend your business, your business has to be worth recommending. That's the part no algorithm can do for you. And if you wanna go deeper into conversations like this, make sure you subscribe to the Discipline Over Comfort YouTube channel. We're talking every week about marketing, leadership, business, AI, and execution. Not from the perspective of chasing the newest shiny object, but from the perspective of asking, "How do we actually use these things to build better businesses?"

And make sure you also subscribe to the free Discipline Over Comfort weekly brief. The podcast is a conversation. The newsletter is the playbook. Every week, I take one of these ideas and turn it into something practical you can take back into your business and use. You'll find the link in the description. And if you're a business owner, marketer, or leader who knows somebody who is still treating AI like some experiment they can worry about a few years from now, send them this episode, because the future of marketing isn't coming.

Parts of it are already here. The question isn't whether the rules are changing, because they are. The question is, are you paying attention? I'm Bob Therriault. And remember, discipline over comfort.

Google Isn’t Enough Anymore: How AI Is Changing How Customers Find Your Business | Ep. 10

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