Google’s SVP Nick Fox told the press that AI Search features send billions of clicks to websites each week. Companies don’t volunteer that number when everything’s fine.
Meta launched Business Agents, AI agents that handle sales and service inside Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
McKinsey’s numbers, cited in HubSpot’s AEO tool comparison: 50% of consumers now use AI-powered search, and more than 70% rely on it to ask questions and gather information.
To ensure your website is working for you, first you need: structured data, machine-readable pricing, ungated proof pages. LLM Agents can’t recommend what they can’t read, and most B2B sites are still gated like it’s 2019. Second, if you sell anything a customer might message you about, pilot Meta’s Business Agents now, while your competitors wait for the case study. Some of the highest returns on marketing in my career have been jumping on new channels early so understanding this one is a potential BIG win. Third, remember that your email list and your community are the only channels where no platform sits between you and the buyer. Keep building and providing value to stay top of mind.
Some will say Google’s billions of clicks are real, and plenty of categories still run on organic traffic, but times they are a changing and the earlier you adapt the better off your marketing will be.
Worth Your Time
- Netflix CPTO on AI and the future of product and tech roles (Lenny’s Newsletter): Elizabeth Stone’s case for systems thinking as the AI-era operating skill applies straight to marketing: if your workflows only exist in people’s heads, no agent can run them and no new hire can either.
- The free tools SEO strategy (Ahrefs): Build a small calculator or generator instead of writing guide number forty. Tools earn links and survive AI answers in a way how-to text no longer does, and one afternoon with Claude gets you a working prototype.
- How to report SEO results executives actually care about (Search Engine Land): Rankings prove activity, not value. Re-anchor your reporting to pipeline and revenue before budget season does it for you.
- A VP is tired of justifying marketing’s existence (r/marketing): Twenty years in and still defending the function’s right to exist. Pair this thread with the reporting piece above: the teams that never have this fight report in revenue language, not marketing language.
- What to even do with LinkedIn these days? (r/marketing): A marketer watches their sales team flood the feed with generic AI-written posts. The slop wave is your opening: one specific, human post a week now outperforms five templated ones, because the baseline collapsed.
- A PMM leader’s first 100 days, done right (Product Marketing Alliance): The framing worth stealing is “don’t just inherit the role, define it.” Works at every level, not just leadership, and doubles as the answer to the scope-policing question from last week’s edition.
What’s on your site right now that an AI agent still can’t read?
Wondering where your growth engine is leaking? The Growth Gap Diagnostic is where I’d start. Or just hit reply and tell me what you’re stuck on.
P.S. Curious how AI search engines see your brand? That’s what Smird is for.