How LLM-powered Search is Bringing Marketing and Sales Together

Google’s AI Summaries Are the New Gatekeepers

The Free Press held a debate last week about whether the truth will survive artificial intelligence. Those arguing in favour believe the human desire for progress overcomes challenges, the way all previous advances tamed sceptics. Those against fear the big company business model of manipulating attention. Both sides agree that AI is going to be how we seek truth.

Google is responding to this by beefing up the AI summaries at the top of internet searches. 80% of B2B buyers make the first contact with suppliers and are 70% of the way through the purchase process when they do¹. If they start out asking Google, then they will be guided to the source that its AI considers most authoritative.

With a consumer’s hat on, this is great. I no longer have to scroll past several sponsored sites informing me about the ten best whatever, or the seven ways to more effective something. With a marketer’s hat on, this changes the way I create.

Why Traditional SEO is Failing

HubSpot is the champion of SEO – search engine optimisation. There is both science and art to this, but there is also a lot of stuffing keywords and popular search terms into articles. Those top ten lists have several paragraphs of fluff before they get to the point. HubSpot’s organic internet traffic is down 70% in two years².

Google uses the E-E-A-T framework to evaluate content. This stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It searches for deep knowledge in niche subjects, looking for unique insights such as case studies and product tutorials. Pithy phrases that promote capabilities, but lack evidence, will be overlooked.

Write for Humans, Optimise for Machines

This means no more top-of-the-funnel content designed to draw in a target audience. AI already excels at how-to guides, from recipes to webpage designing. If content is about what your product does, then your webpage is not going to be referenced.

What will garner attention are product comparisons, implementation guides, pricing breakdowns and customer success stories. Rather than explaining what managed software services are, tell the story of how a client cut costs by 20% using them.

This works because it is written for humans, especially those informed B2B buyers who know what they are after. SEO content is written for algorithms. The irony is that we will be writing longform content for humans, so that machines can summarise it for them.

Community is Your Competitive Moat

Staying one step ahead of AI means doubling down on your community. Content creators are migrating to Substack, where functions such as Notes are yet to be captured by corporate messaging and advertising. They value owning their own email lists and the ability to engage in debate around a topic. There is a reason a digital newspaper like The Free Press holds public debates and publishes them on podcasts. It creates a community of free and paying customers.

None of this is new. If marketing was about the widest reach, sales is about deepening the relationship. The Ebsta Pavilion B2B report highlights the importance of number and frequency of contact with the decision makers in the sales process. Tim Ferris’ insight for sales people in The 4-Hour Work Week was to spend all their time servicing the top clients. Depth beats breadth in sales.

Marketing and Sales Are Converging

What AI-powered search is doing is bringing marketing closer to sales. By starting further down the funnel, there is already an assumed level of knowledge gleaned from an AI engine. When a buyer arrives at your website they are no longer capability curious, but eager to see how they will benefit and the ways they can work with you.

Interactions such as quizzes and surveys, videos and infographics might be higher up a page as a consequence. They also need to be informative as the AI will view them. Machine intelligence is not human, but it is working on our behalf, asking what will I get out of viewing this.

Chain-of-associated-thought reasoning allows AI models to weigh different paths before deciding to proceed. This means sifting out keyword fluff in favour of value. Content that is clear, structured and well-written – content that would inform a human – is easiest to access.  

The enduring power of clear structure

I am reminded of the old consultancy advice to first tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you just told them. This is a basic structure. It leaves ample room for creative talent to attract people to the truth with relatable content.

Questions to Ask and Answer

1. Which parts of your business are about intuition and emotional intelligence?

2. How many relationships are built on trust as opposed to knowledge?

3. What experience do you have that is not possible to replicate?

Here are 3 ways I can help

1. Book a consultation to talk about AI.

2. Explore how to manage an AI project.

3. Explore use cases using NVIDIA accelerated computing.

1  Source: DemandGen

2  Source: Search Engine Land