Your Customers Are Asking AI About You Before They Buy

The traditional online buying journey used to look something like:

Ad/Search → Website → Reviews → Purchase

Increasingly, there's another participant in that process:

Ad/Search → Website → AI → Reviews → Purchase

Before buying, people are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, and other AI tools questions like:

• Is this company legitimate?
• Does this product actually work?
• Is it worth the money?
• What are the downsides?
• What are the alternatives?
• What do other customers think?
• Are the company's claims actually supported?

That matters because AI doesn't necessarily accept your marketing premise.

AI can introduce objections you didn't put in your funnel

Your website is designed to make the strongest possible case for your product. AI isn't. Ask an AI about a product and it might:

• Question the company's claims
• Point out conflicting research
• Recommend cheaper alternatives
• Surface negative reviews or Reddit discussions
• Compare the product against competitors
• Tell the customer they may not need it
• Simply recommend being skeptical

This is especially important for businesses selling something expensive, unfamiliar, complicated, controversial, or difficult for consumers to evaluate themselves. A customer considering a $5,000 purchase can now simply ask:

"I'm thinking about spending $5,000 on this. Is it actually worth it?"

That's a powerful new influence on the buying decision.

SEO isn't the whole picture anymore

Businesses have spent decades asking:

"What does Google show when someone searches for us?"

Now they also need to ask:

"What does AI say when someone asks about us?"

And that's a different optimization problem. AI may form its answer using information from:

• Your website
• Customer reviews
• News coverage
• Reddit and forums
• Industry websites
• Research and authoritative sources
• Competitors
• Other publicly available information

You aren't just optimizing webpages anymore.

You're optimizing your entire digital reputation.

Real customer experiences matter even more

A company saying that its own product is fantastic isn't particularly convincing evidence. Hundreds of real customers independently saying it is? That's much stronger. That makes authentic third-party reputation increasingly valuable:

• Google reviews
• Yelp and other review platforms
• Reddit discussions
• Industry-specific reviews
• Press coverage
• Customer testimonials
• Independent recommendations

Don't manufacture this stuff. Create happy customers and actively encourage them to share their experiences. Those experiences influence prospective customers directly and may increasingly influence the AI systems helping them make decisions.

Your marketing channels may matter, too

AI has the most influence when customers have time to research a purchase online. For businesses whose products don't survive AI scrutiny particularly well, that could make other channels increasingly valuable:

• Events and trade shows
• Retail
• Product demonstrations
• Referrals
• Professional relationships
• Direct sales
• Other offline experiences

Digital marketing isn't going away. But channel strategy may increasingly depend on how well your offering survives independent AI scrutiny.

Try this with your own business

Here's an exercise every business owner should perform. Open a few major AI assistants and pretend you're a skeptical prospective customer. Ask:

• "Tell me about this company."
• "Is this company legitimate?"
• "Is this product worth the money?"
• "What are the biggest complaints?"
• "What alternatives should I consider?"
• "Is there evidence supporting its claims?"
• "Would you recommend buying it?"

Then do something even more useful:

Try to talk yourself out of buying your own product.

Pay attention to the objections AI raises, the sources it relies upon, and the alternatives it recommends. That's valuable market research. Because somewhere, one of your potential customers may already be having exactly that conversation.

There's a new participant in your sales funnel

AI isn't merely another source of website traffic. It's increasingly becoming an advisor sitting between businesses and their customers. Sometimes it will reinforce your marketing. Sometimes it will undermine it. The solution isn't figuring out how to trick AI into recommending your company. It's building a business with enough evidence, reputation and genuinely satisfied customers that when someone asks AI whether they should buy from you, there's a compelling case for saying yes.