How CMOs should think about discovery in an AI-first world | MarTech

"Many prospects now frame their pain to an AI system and expect synthesized guidance. They include constraints, budgets, compliance needs, team structure, and urgency in a single query. The system returns condensed recommendations and evaluation guidance. Your brand either earns inclusion in that guidance or fades from the buying moment. Buyers offload research to one interface and expect a narrative that frames the problem and highlights credible options."

"Those questions carry nuance that keyword tools rarely capture. SERP-first thinking loses relevance when the buyer never sees the results page. Content written solely to rank, without defining problems or trade-offs, seldom gets cited. This change in how prospects research creates a new problem for CMOs. Ranking no longer defines visibility. LLMs decide which brands appear in AI-generated answers, so marketing leaders need to understand how that selection process works."

Buyers increasingly begin research by asking large language models for synthesized guidance that bundles constraints, budgets, compliance, team structure, and urgency into a single query. AI systems return condensed recommendations and evaluation guidance that frame problems and highlight credible options, making inclusion in those outputs critical. Keyword-driven, SERP-first content that merely aims to rank often fails to capture nuanced buyer prompts or justify inclusion. Marketing leaders must treat ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and similar platforms as discovery channels, measure visibility inside LLMs, adjust content to define problems and trade-offs, and track KPIs that reveal early risk.

Read at MarTech