AI search may be changing how your potential customers look at your business and industry.
Imagine you run an SMS marketing software company that helps businesses promote their product or service through text messages.
In the era of WhatsApp and Telegram, SMS marketing is often considered a dying industry. Most business founders prefer these modern marketing tools over text messaging.
However, your business could still be flourishing. You run a successful search engine marketing campaign that targets keywords like “Is SMS marketing dead?” - you rank first for these keywords, and do a great job convincing visitors why SMS marketing is not just alive, but is the most effective marketing channel for small business owners.
Things changed in 2024 when Google introduced AI overviews. The new feature makes use of Generative AI to answer search queries directly on Google’s search results pages. With AI overviews (and AI mode), internet users no longer have to click on website results to learn the answers to their questions.
AI Search and the rise of zero clicks
Zero click searches is the new normal. Internet searches do not result in a click-through to a search results page. Google is no longer just the gatekeeper to the internet. It is the destination in itself.
Between 2020 and 2025, the global zero-click rate increased from 64.8% to a whopping 85%. In other words, less than 2 in 10 searches today yield a click through to any link on the search results pages.
What does this mean for you? Going back to the earlier example, if you were running an SMS marketing software company, you no longer have the ability to build the narrative. If AI search tells users that SMS marketing is dead, they are not going to look this up further. These potential customers may never land on your website or become a part of your content funnel.
This can impact your website traffic quite dramatically.
Impact of zero clicks on your content funnel
A lot of discussion over zero clicks has revolved around this consequent dip in organic traffic. However, one study also found that AI search visitors are 4.4 times worthier than regular search visitors. In other words, the conversion rate from AI search is 4.4 times higher compared to regular search.
These recent studies have found that the rise in zero clicks is having a positive impact on conversion rate.
Customer interaction with online content
One of the primary reasons for this is the way potential customers interact with content online. The average content funnel looks like this.
Traditionally, website visitors land on your website as a Top-of-the-Funnel lead (TOFU). At this stage, visitors are generally not expected to convert. A small fraction of these customers get successfully nurtured through your email newsletters or WhatsApp channels. Over time, these leads are adequately nurtured to convert.
It’s fair to assume that a miniscule percentage of TOFU leads become paying customers. One study pegs it at 0.19%.
However, with AI search taking over the TOFU part of the content funnel, most visitors who do end up on your website are likely to be part of an audience that is already nurtured in some way. As such, these visitors only land on your website when they research on more middle or bottom-of-the-funnel topics.
Given their stage in the buying cycle, it is evident why AI searches convert higher than regular search visitors.
The evolution of TOFU and MOFU with AI search
In a predominantly zero-click search world, customers no longer visit websites for TOFU and MOFU research. They are nurtured right over the search interfaces and only land on websites for BOFU related search terms.
This is why conversion rates on AI search platforms are higher than traditional search. People land on your website predominantly in the Bottom of the Funnel stage to convert. Your website is no longer in charge of driving the narrative like it was previously.
Navigating the AI search challenge
AI search is the future, and the use of AI tools to seek answers is only going up from here. However, that does not mean that businesses have lost control of narrative building.
Here’s an important caveat - Top of the Funnel content is not exclusive to organic search. There are dozens of marketing channels that businesses use to drive awareness to their business and industry.
Zero click searches and its impact on building a narrative can indeed have a defined impact on your content funnel. However, there are numerous ways to overcome this challenge. Here is a step by step guide to navigate this challenge.
Rethink the role of Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU) content
TOFU content primarily consists of educational, entertaining, and informative content designed to build awareness and attract a wide audience for your business. It is not necessarily meant to drive sales.
The objective of TOFU content is to capture the interest of your target audience, and drive them into your marketing funnel. Generally, a TOFU content strategy consists of the following marketing assets:
- Blog posts
- Research reports
- Webinars
- Infographics
- Podcasts
This content is designed to drive organic search traffic to your website. Visitors to your website are then channeled into a marketing funnel (like a mailing list) to be engaged and nurtured until they eventually convert into customers.
AI search renders a lot of these assets ineffective. This is because search users now get most of their top-level information directly from AI-search responses.
Invest in alternative TOFU channels
While the role of TOFU content may appear diminished in organic search, it is still a highly relevant element of your content strategy.
Here are some alternative TOFU channels that marketers could invest in:
- Social media
- Communities
- Newsletters
- Video-based content on YouTube channels
Some of these marketing channels may have their own algorithm and AI related challenges. However, these are consumption-focused channels and can help significantly with narrative-building.
There is another key difference AI is an enabler in these other channels. In other words, AI has made it difficult for marketers to build visibility in search. On the contrary, AI can help marketers build greater reach through these other channels.
Generative AI tools, for example, can help you create hundreds of image and video assets with just a few clicks. This means marketers can put together an entire month of content in minutes. It can also strengthen your TOFU strategy. So, allocating resources to develop these channels can be a smart move for your business.
Investing your resources in building these channels can be good for your business.
Hot tip: Derisk your marketing strategy by investing in multiple distribution channels to build your pipeline. This way, even if one stops performing, you can continue to secure leads from the other channels.
Optimize content for AI retrieval; not just rankings
One recent study found that search results with AI overviews bring down clickthroughs on organic SERP listings by as much as 58%. Getting your pages ranked in the first page of Google is no longer enough to make SEO a worthwhile endeavor.
What you need to focus on is optimizing your content for AI retrieval. This involves defining clear content structure, using structured data, including authoritative sources, providing concise answers, and optimizing for knowledge graph and entity-based SEO.
In doing so, you make it easier for AI search engines to process your content and use it for generating their responses. Sure, search engines use your content in formulating their answers. But they also help with controlling the narrative. Many brands also work with specialized creative services like Superside to improve content structure and visual storytelling for AI-friendly experiences.
Strengthen brand authority across the web
LLM models like ChatGPT and Google AI overviews are modeled on several hundreds of billions of webpages. Two factors determine the source of their search responses - relevance, and authority.
While relevance is handled by optimizing your content for AI retrieval as discussed in the previous section, it is also important that your website demonstrates industry authority.
Invest in digital PR, expert authorship, brand mentions, and citations across different publications - doing this elevates the authority of your brand making it a likely choice to be cited when these engines publish a response to a query.
Turn your website into a BOFU conversion engine
AI search has predominantly taken over the TOFU and MOFU components of the content funnel. However, conversion still happens on your website.
Invest in BOFU-heavy content that can convert more of your website visitors. If you already have ongoing GTM campaigns, you can complement them with BOFU content deployed through retargeting. This approach not only helps improve conversion rates but also supports lead generation by attracting prospects who are actively evaluating solutions.
BOFU content typically includes pages like these:
- Exhaustive comparison pages
- Case studies
- Customized product pages
- Interactive demos
- Transparent pricing pages
Here is a good example of an effective BOFU page that compares StoryChief with CoSchedule:
Quick note - a BOFU customer seldom checks just one option. It is highly likely that they are also checking out a few of your competitors. Stand out from competition and make your offering seem like the most obvious choice. This is a vital part of your BOFU content strategy.
Create citation-worthy content
Traditional content marketing involved picking topics based on keyword search volume. While that may still be relevant today, invest in content that can be cited by AI search engines This includes original research, statistics, frameworks, and also unique insights and expert commentary on industry-focused topics.
For example, StoryChief created a bunch of email templates that content marketing agencies could use for outreach. AI search engines love citing such frameworks while generating their responses.
AI search responses are based on data-backed facts. Provide these engines with an easily curated list of facts to help them cite your research and content in their responses. While the click-through from these citations are much lower than traditional SERP listings, they are still strong brand signals that drive potential customers to trusting your brand.
In addition to this, certain content management systems (such as Drupal, Joomla, or basic PHP-based platforms) can also be less suitable for AI search since they make it difficult for AI bots to parse, interpret and generate direct answers. Consider using modern headless eCommerce platforms that are more AI search friendly.
Build a long-term AI search strategy
AI overviews and LLM-based search engines present the future of how internet search works. While TOFU and MOFU based content may no longer be driving traffic to your website with the new version of search, what matters is that AI search is not killing content marketing. What we see here is an evolution of how discovery works.
By identifying the needles that move AI search, and also diversifying your content distribution channels such that you are invested in other platforms like social media, email newsletters, and communities, it is possible to build stronger brand awareness and replace your existing pipeline with a stronger pipeline acquired from multiple sources.
This helps protect your marketing from future disruptions while also making sure that your business is built to take advantage of the new opportunities that AI presents with respect to customer acquisition.
