[VIDEO] AI Search Engines – The New Frontier of Discovery

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Dave, President of Arc Intermedia, a digital marketing agency, and welcome back to what am I working on today.

Today’s backdrop is Moynihan Train Station. I just liked the grid work.

So today I’m putting the final touches on my presentation for Arc’s new service called organic visibility and AI program.

Let me share the deck real quick. Here’s a slide I created to represent the many choices customers will have to seek answers. Which platforms they use will be dictated by the type of information they seek. I’m not suggesting that people are going to stop googling, but in 2025, customers’ journeys could be far different than in the past and may even circumvent a company’s website. Since July, we’ve seen referral traffic from AI engines to websites double month over month. And while the numbers are still small, it’s signaling a change in behavior.

For this new offering we’re specifically talking about organic visibility which we define as any kind of content, link, and brand mention across any of the platforms I just showed you that you didn’t have to pay for to get. So tactically, think SEO, AIO, content publishing, social, and much more all combined to effectively extend your brand organically.

So here are three points I make in my presentation:

As for the AI engines this is very much a rapidly evolving landscape and the major players you’re seeing here will likely be very different a year from now. However it is not too early to begin to understand how your brand is being included and represented, how your competitors are appearing, and how common questions are being answered. Get your hands dirty with these now.

Next take a look at this slide. You will need to feed the AI beasts and extend your brand reach, but this is not going to be a case of just throwing up as much content as you can across the web. We have been tracking the relationships between platforms, the licensing deals, and what feeds what to effectively choose where to recommend effort, what content to be developed, which placements to seek, and where we should be involved in online conversations.

Lastly, tracking metrics and attribution will be a big challenge. The AI engines are currently giving us very little data. There likely will be multiple steps in a customer’s journey that will be difficult to fully track. Increased privacy and a cookieless world mean far less data to work with.Therefore, it’s time to step back and look at gross business metrics.

Overall, did revenue, leads, and interactions increase? Is there any helpful data coming through your CRM regarding types of inquiries, pain points, and referral sources, especially since they may have bypassed your website? You must have a seat at the business table to do effective marketing and that’s now especially even more true. (remove slide)

So, Arc Intermedia clients, that was just a sneak peek of what I’ll be discussing with you in the next couple of weeks and we’ve got a plan for each of you to get an early foothold. To my fellow agency owners, if you need help trying to figure out how to get something like this started, please reach out to me and I’m happy to advise you. For any marketers who just watched this, thank you, and if you’ve got questions about how this could be applied to your company, please contact me and I’d be happy to give you some free direction.