Is Your Business Ready for AI?

The 5 Marketing Pillars That Help AI (and Customers) Find You in 2026

As business owners, we need visibility for our brands to get traffic to our shops, whether online or in person. We then nurture those leads with a conversation and a demonstration of what we do, presenting them with a solution to meet their needs. Once we’ve converted that lead into a buyer, we want to build a relationship so they repeat buy and recommend us to others.

That is the simple sales cycle, often referred to as the AIDA funnel (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). But in 2026, the “how” has fundamentally shifted.

The New Buyer Journey

You are no longer just marketing to humans. You are marketing to Large Language Models (LLMs) that evaluate your business to decide if you are a credible recommendation.

Here’s what that means: before a customer ever speaks to you, they’ve already researched you. Google’s research found that customers now use twice as many sources to make purchase decisions, with 84% engaging with online searches, reviews, and social media before buying.

But it’s not just humans doing the research anymore. AI Search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are now acting as the first filter, scanning your digital footprint, evaluating your expertise, and deciding whether to recommend you.

Google’s Messy Middle research shows that buyer behaviour is a complex loop of exploration and evaluation. Consumers move back and forth between discovering options and assessing them, influenced by the quality of information available.

To win the customer today, you must provide:

• The right message

• In the right place

• At the right time

So the real question is: Is your business structured in a way that AI can understand and recommend? Do you have the information and reassurance your customers (and AI) need to make a decision to work with you?

The 5 Pillars of Marketing Authority

After three decades helping business owners, these foundations still matter: Brand, Product, Offer, Content, and System. If one of these five core marketing pillars is weak, sales will suffer.

1. BRAND

Why does brand power matter? Because if someone cannot describe what you do in one sentence, AI cannot either.

Your brand is more than colours; it is clarity, perception, and positioning. AI models evaluate how consistently you describe your expertise across your digital footprint.

Ask yourself: Is my messaging too broad, generic, or inconsistent across my platforms?

2. PRODUCT

Many businesses experience product clutter: too many offers and pathways. Humans find that confusing, and AI does too.

Your product pillar is strong when your product suite provides a clear customer journey that solves a specific transformation. It moves from a cluttered list of things you can do to a structure where every product has a distinct purpose.

AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity look for patterns. If you talk about a specific niche 80% of the time, AI labels you as the expert in that segment. When your content and offers do not align, AI (and your customer) gets confused and stops recommending you.

Ask yourself: Do I have a clear customer journey from initial contact to re-engagement, or is my product suite creating noise?

3. OFFERS: CONVERSION LIVES IN PRECISION

You can have a strong product or service yet slow sales. Often, this is because people sell the features (the plane ticket) rather than the benefits (the holiday).

Customers and AI models evaluate clarity, proof, and outcome language. If the transformation is not obvious, trust weakens.

Strong offers communicate:

• Who it is for

• What problem it solves

• What outcome it delivers

Precision converts. Vagueness creates hesitation. When you are starting out or pivoting, sometimes you need to launch before everything feels perfect. That is part of growth. But instead of assuming “no one wants this,” review each touchpoint.

Ask yourself: Is it easy for people to buy? How clear is my messaging around transformation and social proofing? (I cannot tell you how many times I talk to people who say they are launching something and it is not even on their homepage.) Refinement creates results.

4. CONTENT

Content is no longer about posting more; it is about building structured authority.

Last year, I stepped back from feeding the short-form content engine while building my AI Marketing Blueprint. Yet leads continued to come in. My YouTube content was still generating thousands of views because those videos answered specific, relevant questions my audience was asking. Learn my complete repurposing system here.​

AI models scan for patterns to see if you are reinforcing consistent themes that connect back to a core offer or niche expertise. Building a strategic content marketing approach helps AI understand what you’re an expert in and why you should be recommended.​

Ask yourself: Does my content connect back to a clear core offer?

5. SYSTEM

Without simple systems in place, you can’t scale.

Here’s what I know: when business demands increase, the first thing that gets ditched is marketing. Then we don’t create content, we don’t wave the visibility flag, and we don’t make sales.

So I had to create easy-to-use AI systems, tools, and templates that I could follow, my VA could use, and that removed as many roadblocks as possible.

I needed repeatable workflows for managing large client campaigns and to give to my Content Catalyst members. Because when you’re busy delivering for clients or running your business, marketing is the one thing we need to keep going.

My AI team gives me:

• Time saved automating tasks

• Increased productivity removing bottlenecks

• Better intelligence (AI-generated insights that improve decision-making)

• Messaging consistency (your brand sounds like you, everywhere)

Ask yourself: Do I have a system to capture leads, nurture prospects, and reduce manual workload?

What AI Readiness Actually Means

Being AI Ready means your authority is structured clearly so that AI (and your customers) understands your business. When AI understands your business, it can recommend it.

Too often, I see people tweaking tactics when they really need to zoom out and implement a marketing strategy that turns into a strategy-led marketing machine.

Want to See Where You Stand?

I built a Marketing Scorecard to assess the strength of these five pillars. This week, I am hosting a free live session where you can join me and take the Marketing Scorecard Quiz in real time.

You will uncover the gaps impacting your sales and your visibility across AI search, including ChatGPT. At the end, you will receive a personalised 30-Day AI Marketing Plan with the top three priorities to focus on next.

📅 Thursday, 19th February
🕒 Live Interactive Marketing Quiz
📍 Online

SAVE YOUR SEAT AND SCORE YOUR MARKETING

📊 Research References

Key Statistics:

• Customers use twice as many sources before buying
• 84% of consumers engage with online searches, reviews, and social media before purchasing
• Over 100 billion searches per month on Google = 7.5 million searches every few minutes

Sources:

• Google’s ZMOT research: business.google.com/think/marketing-strategies/zmot-why-it-matters-now-more-than-ever
• Customer behaviour analysis: flashhub.io/7-11-4-rule
• Google’s Messy Middle research