The buyer journey is no longer a tidy funnel, no sh*t! It's become more of a chaotic spaghetti, powered by AI chatbots that let customers research, compare, and decide without ever clicking your site. Tani Perry's recent talk nails how marketers must adapt or get left behind in this AI-native era.
Choose your mindset - passenger or driver. Passengers treat AI as a quick fix, blindly accepting outputs to prioritise speed over substance, often concealing their reliance to claim the credit. Drivers, however, engage thoughtfully—crafting precise prompts, rigorously validating results, iterating for excellence, upskilling teams, and staying ahead of AI's weekly evolution.
This mindset is the pivotal choice for marketing leaders. Drivers proactively uncover leverage points like answer engine optimisation (AEO, also known as generative engine optimisation or GEO), structuring content with FAQs, data-rich how-tos, and authoritative quotes to elevate visibility in AI responses. Studies confirm that higher factual density and sourced insights drive positive citations and preference by LLMs.
Passengers panic, drivers thrive by coaching AI like a junior teammate.
Forget linear funnels: awareness → search → webinars → decision. Buyers now blast into ChatGPT or Perplexity with "best sales enablement for mid-size biz" and get full breakdowns—pros, cons, decisions—in seconds.
They bounce less across Google, social, and reviews, now AI synthesises it all. B2B or B2C, regulated or not: same shift. Even complex industrial sales start in chatbots for specs and comparisons.
Adapt or vanish:
Structured content: Schemas, FAQs, how-tos - AI parses these effortlessly and optimises accordingly.
Authority built: Guest on NYT, Reddit, LinkedIn article - AI pulls from trusted third parties and fresh new content is preferred.
Measure smart: Track "answer coverage" (citations in AI responses) and not clicks. AI-specific metrics that reveal hidden influence in the "dark funnel"- the invisible buyer research phase where, for example, 70% of B2B decisions happen anonymously before site visits. This is the new measurement metric, and tools now exist for this dark funnel visibility.
| Traditional Metrics | AI-Native Metrics |
|---|---|
| Clicks, sessions | Citation frequency |
| Bounce rate | Answer inclusion rate |
| Conversion funnel | Brand sentiment in AI outputs |
Shift 2: Personalisation Explosion
Amazon, Netflix, TikTok have shown the way, consumers now expect psychic-level relevance. All brands must rise to the challenge.
AI delivers. Pull Salesforce signals into ChatGPT for instant custom landing pages per ABM target. DoorDash ditched 300 static carousels for gen AI storefronts: "Oven-baked pizzas for Italian lovers on Friday night." Result? Double-digit click/order lifts.
Short attention spans are now irrelevant. Solve unique pains granularly - short post or whitepaper, AI repurposes this effortlessly. No more segment slop, creating true 1:1 at scale.
Nonprofits/solopreneurs: No big team needed. Prompt Gemini with customer problems, build quizzes, and generate lead magnets via no-code. Driving curiosity can achieve outcomes when budgets are tight.
Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) has been quoted as saying, "AI won't replace jobs - it rewires them". The traditional approach has been a human-driven strategy: create/execute, with tools just scheduling posts.
Hybrid: Humans set intent, ethics, judgment. AI drafts, synthesises patterns, scales/tests. Humans curate, approve.
Role rewiring:
Content creators → Editors-in-Chief
Analysts → Insight translators
Campaign managers → Orchestrators
SEO → Discovery strategists
Ops → AI governance leads
New frameworks are being developed for marketing campaigns that involve this rewiring.
Audience Research
Human: Define segments, exclusions.
AI: Research markets, competitors, draft personas.
Human: Validate with interviews and sales input.
Strategy Design
Human: Align to biz goals, set KPIs.
AI: Generate themes, messaging drafts; stress-test via synthetic audiences.
Human: Refine, approve; AI builds channel mix.
Content Creation
Human: Brand voice, direction.
AI: First drafts, repurpose across formats.
Human: Fix bias, add taste.
AI: Personalise at scale.
There are definitely perils of completely removing people from the process, as many have found out, so ensure that at every stage, validation is provided by experts who actually know what they are doing - the reason is, AI still hallucinates and/orstereotypes.
Picture Blockbuster in 2000, the unchallenged video rental kingpin raking in $800 million from infuriating late fees and endless store treks, laughing off Netflix's desperate $50 million buyout offer as they dismissed mail-order DVDs as a gimmick, until Netflix, hungry and adaptive, flipped the script from physical rentals to seamless streaming, quietly innovating ahead of customer dreams and burying Blockbuster by 2010, turning a painful journey into effortless binge magic that redefined entertainment forever.
Today’s AI era marketers face the same fork, to ditch sacred funnels for answer engine optimisation, human–AI hybrids, and hyper-personalisation. Experimenting small amid the overwhelm, making low-risk tests fast and fearless so you outpace the pack and achieve scaled impact in the long term.
It is this collision of human ingenuity and AI firepower that we believe will pull brands from chasing visible buyers into dominating the future AI marketplace, where decisions are made. So, if you are considering your next move and want help understanding how to incorporate AI into your marketing processes, drop us a line in the form below - and find out more about our Generative AI experience here.