My own buying habits changed my mind about AI and marketing
Looking at my own behavior of how I buy, it's a lot more towards AI. I have AI doing a lot of research for me. That's what changed my mind: seeing the shift in my own buying habits. For independent service businesses, I think that makes explaining your work online increasingly important.
By Eric Yim, Protocol Text, a marketing services business based in Lincoln, Nebraska.
What my own research habits made me reconsider
When I think about marketing, I have to consider how people actually decide to buy. My own behavior gives me a reason to reconsider that process. If I'm asking AI to research something, some of the comparison can happen before I visit a business's website or contact anyone.
That changes the questions I'd ask about a service business's online information. Does it explain what the business does? Does it help someone work out if the service fits their situation? Can a person researching several options understand the differences?
I think the future of buying could look like having a personal concierge called AI, with context about what someone wants. That's my view of where things are going, not a claim that every customer buys that way now. My own use of AI is enough to make me take the possibility seriously.
Give people enough information to compare their options
If research happens partly through AI, your website still needs to help the person making the decision. Start with the questions that come up before someone is ready to call. Explain the services you provide, where you provide them, what the work includes, and what needs a conversation before you can give an answer.
Specific details give someone something to compare. Saying that you provide great service leaves a lot unanswered. Explaining how an estimate works, what information you need, or which requests fall outside your service helps a potential customer decide what to do next.
Values can matter in that decision, too. I think there's a future where people can describe what matters to them and get recommendations that account for it. But a business needs to explain its actual practices. A broad claim about trust gives a researcher less to work with than a clear explanation of how the business handles a particular concern.
A practical exercise: follow one buying question
Here's an illustrative example, not a client project. Imagine an independent cleaning business that gets questions about recurring office cleaning. A potential customer might ask AI, “How do I compare office cleaning companies if I need evening service and don't know how often the office needs cleaning?”
The owner could use that question to review the website. If evening service is available, does the site say so? Does it explain how cleaning frequency is discussed? Does it distinguish routine cleaning from additional work? Those answers should reflect the business's real services, without promising something it can't provide.
Try the same exercise with one question your own customers ask:
- Write the question in the customer's words, including the concern behind it.
- Find the page that should answer it. Mark anything missing, unclear, or out of date.
- Add a direct answer and explain what still needs an estimate or conversation.
- Ask someone unfamiliar with the business what they'd still need to know before contacting you.
You can also try the question in an AI tool and examine the answer and any sources it provides. Treat that as one sample of the research experience. Check its claims against the original pages, and don't assume a single response represents what every customer will see.
Find out what happened before the call
I'd also ask new customers about their research. “How did you hear about us?” is useful, but it can miss the steps between first hearing a name and deciding to call.
Try asking, “After you first heard about us, what did you look at before contacting us?” Then ask, “Was there anything you couldn't find an answer to?” Give people room to mention a referral, search, reviews, social posts, or AI without suggesting which answer you want.
Keep simple notes about the first introduction, the information they checked, and anything that helped them decide. A referral and online research can both matter. You don't need to force the whole decision into one source. Look for repeated questions you can answer more clearly.
Keep the response proportionate to what you know
I wouldn't treat this shift as a reason to abandon what already brings customers in. Start by improving useful information you already need. Your content doesn't have to go viral to answer a buying question.
It does need to be accessible and accurate. Crawlable content is content automated systems can access and read. That makes it available to some research systems, but doesn't guarantee that an AI tool will retrieve it, interpret it correctly, or recommend the business.
The decision I'd make now is to explain the work better and learn how customers research it. That helps people today while taking the change in buying habits seriously.
Frequently asked questions
Should I create a separate website just for AI?
I'd start with the website customers already use. Improve its service explanations and correct conflicting details elsewhere. A second site creates more information to maintain and can introduce inconsistencies. Consider it only if there's a clear reader need your existing site can't serve.
How should I choose which buying question to answer first?
Choose a question that regularly holds up an inquiry or causes a misunderstanding about fit. Check your recent conversations for examples. Start where you have a useful, accurate answer, rather than picking a broad topic just because AI is getting attention.
What if a customer can't remember how they found me?
Record what they do remember and leave the rest unknown. You can ask what helped them feel ready to call, but don't keep prompting until they pick a channel. Incomplete notes are more useful than confident attribution that the customer never actually gave you.