While there’s a lot of hype around the chatbots changing how people are searching, I tend to take those warnings with a grain of salt.
Are there people looking for information on Claude and ChatGPT?
Of course.
But that’s not as different as you might think.
Google created “zero-click results” long before ChatGPT came along. That meant it would pull an answer from a page on a top-ranking site and display that answer alongside the link leading to that page. People could get the answer they were looking for without ever clicking through to the website, and most of the time, that’s exactly what they did.
It started with short answers to short, simple questions, like “how many teaspoons in a tablespoon?” But now it’s happening with longer answers to more complicated questions, like “what does a marketing funnel for a B2B Saas company look like?” Suddenly users can get a full answer to that question without clicking through to any websites.
How useful that answer will be is another question, but we could probably devote a whole blog post to that question, so we won’t bother with it here.
The question we’re looking to answer here is, “How is AI changing your marketing funnel?”
As always, the answer is, “It depends.”
Table of Contents
- What Is a Marketing Funnel?
- The Old Marketing Funnels
- Traditional Marketing Funnels
- How AI Is Changing the Funnel
- The Hype Around Getting AI to Mention Your Brand
- How to Get AI to Mention Your Brand
What Is a Marketing Funnel?
First, we need to define “marketing funnel”, also sometimes referred to as the “buyer journey.”
The difference between a buyer journey and a marketing funnel is who is in control.
You control your marketing funnel. For example, your funnel might look something like this:
- You put content out on social media
- Someone expresses interest and you send them to your website for more information
- Once on your website, you nudge them to subscribe to your newsletter in exchange for a free download
- Once on your email list, you can keep sending them valuable, high-quality information related to their interests: articles, videos, podcast episodes, etc.
- You send them information on your upcoming webinar
- They attend the webinar, at the end of which you prompt them to sign up for your new service or buy your new widget.
The buyer journey is the entire journey the customer goes through before making a purchasing decision. Depending on your industry and the customer, it might be a case of stumbling upon your company, liking what they see, and becoming a customer. But for companies with a higher price point, people are more circumspect and take more time doing their research. That means they’re much more likely to explore their options and spend some time researching and talking to other companies, all of which is part of the buyer journey, but not your marketing funnel.
The Old Marketing Funnels
Even saying “the old marketing funnels” feels weird because they’re not that old. They’re just the funnels we were using prior to the rise of chatbots like Claude and Perplexity. And even the “old” funnels are only as old as social media, which changed the world of digital marketing in much the same way AI is doing now.
What your marketing funnel looked like before the rise of AI chatbots depends on your industry. For example, a company selling cheap jewelry can get a customer off an Instagram ad, but if you’re selling financial services, it’s a different story.
Traditional Marketing Funnels
As a B2B service provider who works primarily with B2B service providers, I’ll use my own marketing funnel as an example.
A few years ago, my marketing funnel looked like this:
Awareness: Someone hears about blogging, either through a friend or colleague, seeing something online, etc. They decide to do some research, so they go to their old friend, Google, and put in a search like “what is blogging?” or “what are the benefits of blogging?”
I created content around those topics to form the basis of my library on blogging, and because those posts generate interest from people who are just dipping their toes in the water.
Once they get to my website and read my blog post on the topic, I can invite them to subscribe to my newsletter so they can get more updates on the world of blogging. If they’re interested, they’ll subscribe and I can keep sending them content that educates and nurtures them until they’re ready to buy.
Consideration/Research: Someone in the consideration stage of your funnel is considering whether this product/service is something they need to invest in. Can they go the DIY route or go without entirely? The content you create for people in this stage of the buyer journey needs to convince them of the value of what you provide.
In this stage of my funnel, people are reading my blog posts, my newsletters, my social media posts, etc. These are the people who come back again and again to see what I have to say on the latest challenges facing digital marketing and SEO.
Comparison: Someone in this stage of the buyer journey has decided they need this product/service and they’re researching their options to see which company they should hire. The content you create for people in this stage of the buyer journey needs to explain what it’s like to work with you and the types of clients you serve.
People in this stage are checking out your sales pages, testimonials and reviews, and maybe some of your articles and videos related to questions people have in the later stages of the buyer journey, like “what do I need to know before I hire a digital marketer?”
Ready to Buy/Hire: Finally, they know they need to buy/hire and they know you’re the one they want to work with, so they reach out to talk to you about your produce/service! This is where your sales page has to seal the deal and convince the prospect to take that final step in reaching out to become a client.
There used to be a lot of value in creating content for the early stages of the buyer journey. It was a great way to cast a wide net. Sure, you’d get fair number of people clicking through to read your article who were never going to become clients, but you’d also get people who were interested and ready and willing to be educated.
It’s like a baby chick imprinting on the first thing it sees and following it everywhere. If you’re the first person/company positioning yourself as an expert when they’ve first opened their eyes to the world of financial planning, suddenly you’re the expert in their eyes and they’ll follow you anywhere. All you have to do is lead them through your funnel until they’re ready to become a client.
But then ChatGPT comes along and rearranges our whole funnel.
How AI Is Changing the Funnel
Once ChatGPT was introduced to the world, people quickly realized they could use it as a search engine and research assistant.
Rather than putting a search term into Google and clicking through any number of links to get the answer they’re looking for, they could ask a longer, more complicated question, and have the answer appear before their eyes.
As mentioned above, there are serious drawbacks to people taking the information chatbots give them at face value because it’s often wrong, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it.
That means you’re losing the opportunity to capture all those leads in the early stages of their buyer journey because they never leave the chatbot.
The Hype Around Getting AI to Mention Your Brand
Since the rise of chatbots as search engines, there’s been a lot of talk in the marketing world about “how to get AI to mention your brand,” but I think that’s asking the wrong question.
Let’s say someone asks a chatbot a question about what a CFP is, pros and cons of financial planning, etc. They’ll most likely skim whatever answer the chatbot provides and go on with their day.
They won’t ask for sources, and if the chatbot mentions your brand, they’re certainly not going to remember it. So why would you waste precious time and energy trying to get AI to mention you when people ask those questions?
I think the more valuable puzzle to solve is “when to get AI to mention your brand.”
According to Semrush, website clicks from LLMs are up to 4 times more likely to convert than clicks from a traditional Google search. That’s because when people do click through to a website from a chatbot, they’ve already done their research and now they’re ready to buy.
That means there can be value in getting AI to mention your brand, but not for just any search/prompt. The value is in getting AI to mention your brand in the later stages of the buyer journey, once people are either mostly convinced they need your services, or they’ve decided to buy/hire and all that’s left is to decide which firm they’ll hire.
How to Get AI to Mention Your Brand
Now that we know there can be value in getting AI to mention your brand for certain prompts, the question becomes, “How do you get AI to mention your brand for certain prompts?”
The good news is that, just like Google, the chatbots are constantly scraping content from the internet and using it to feed the answers it gives its users. That means a lot of traditional SEO still works, like owning your online real estate and building a library of relevant, high-quality content that answers the questions your audience is asking.
The biggest difference I’ve seen so far is that, while Google has long paid attention to whether other websites and content creators are using you as a reference to influence your search rankings, the chatbots seem to weigh that much more heavily than Google ever did.
That means the key to relevant, high-quality search rankings (or answer appearances, as the case may be) is to make friends in your industry and related industries and create stuff with those friends.
Use them as resources in your articles. Ask them to use you as a resource in their articles.
Guest on their podcasts and ask them to guest on your podcast.
Write guest blog posts for them and ask them to write guest blog posts for you.
Yes, you still need to own and control your online real estate (i.e. your website.) But SEO is now about so much more than what you have to say. It’s about what you have to say, but it’s also about what other people have to say about you and whether they find what you have to say valuable and relevant. Because the chatbots are taking their cue from them.
Whether you’re rethinking your entire marketing strategy, or just wondering if there are tweaks you can make to improve your existing marketing efforts, I offer a variety of marketing strategy services to help.
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