Why ChatGPT Isn't Talking About Your Business

I’m going to come out and say you’re obsessing over the wrong thing with AI. It still fascinates me to this day that marketers, business owners, we are all still caught up in asking ChatGPT to ask and write our next social post, or create our next email newsletter. There are so many online discussions even around headcount, for example, how AI automation is going to suddenly change various industries and reduce headcount across various industries because of all the automations that are now available. But everyone is entirely forgetting something much bigger that is happening in AI and in marketing, and I want to discuss it on today’s podcast.

If we haven’t met, hi, my name is Jordan. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is an avenue for me to kind of share the things that I learn as I learn it in this cluttered world of digital marketing. And what we’re trying to do on this podcast is try to encourage you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies that then move with industry evolutions.

And that’s a big thing of what we want to discuss today, because AI is changing how customers are discovering your business. And like I say, a lot of things you see online now is how we can automate this, or how we can make this much faster, or how easy it is to write your next blog post with ChatGPT or whatever. But everyone’s missing this entire massive thing that is disrupting digital marketing as we know it. And that’s how AI is changing how customers discover our businesses.

We’re already seeing this referral data with our clients’ analytics. Literally just last week, sitting in a client meeting at a coffee shop, and we’re actually now seeing ChatGPT come up on the referral report from Google Analytics 4. They’re actively sending traffic and conversions to some of these clients that we have. And while ChatGPT doesn’t function like a traditional search engine, we know that. It isn’t designed to directly send users to websites in the same way that Google search does.

But there is growing evidence that some AI-assisted search tools, like Bing Chat, for example, or even ChatGPT’s web browsing mode, they are beginning to generate referral traffic. And studies that we’ve been reading as well are showing that businesses with a real strong online visibility are now more likely to actually see AI-driven visits. However, we need to remember in many cases, ChatGPT answers questions within the chat itself. So this means that it reduces the need for a user to click onto an external link. So potentially you may see some of your click traffic go down. And we’ve discussed this before on the podcast. If you want to go back a few episodes, you can see about how zero-click marketing is really starting to take over.

Because consumers are now asking ChatGPT for recommendations, and then ChatGPT, as an example, or Claude or whatever LLM you’re using, it’s then deciding whether your business is worth mentioning. And this is happening right now. And probably, even if you think about your own discoverability and how you use ChatGPT, and whether there’s a question you’re now asking ChatGPT that back in the day you might have asked Google. We’re seeing that a lot.

And this isn’t just another digital marketing trend that you need to be aware of. This is a complete shift in how business discovery works. And I believe it’s not being talked about enough. So we’re going to change that today, because we’re going to talk about it. And while you’re sitting there using AI to do things like streamline that workflow or assist your content or anything like that, your competitors, they may already be positioning themselves as the business that ChatGPT will recommend.

So the question then becomes, how do tools like ChatGPT even know that your business exists? Is it luck? Is it strategy behind it? Is it even based on the length of time that you’ve been in business? So today, I want to first take a bit of a step back. And I want to try connect just a few of the dots. And I think for us to be able to do that, you and I, we need to have a better understanding about how ChatGPT and AI and LLMs even work in the first place.

Don’t start to glaze over just yet. Because I’m not an AI scientist or anything like that. So I’m not going to bore you with knowledge that you don’t actually need to understand right now. Instead, what I want to do is I want to try to give you a high-level look at how AI is actually working, so that together we can actually build a better understanding of how to ensure that we’ve got a better shot at appearing in a ChatGPT search. I’ve been doing a lot of research on this in the past few months. So I’ve pieced together a lot of this different research to try and give my best interpretation of how ChatGPT is actually working, and how it can work better for you and your business.

So how does it work? You can think of ChatGPT kind of like your phone’s autocomplete, but it’s autocomplete that’s then supercharged. So obviously when you go to your phone, it’s going to predict your next word based on typical usage that your phone kind of understands about you. And at a fundamental level, ChatGPT is actually doing something really similar. The only difference is that it is actually being trained on huge amounts of text from across the internet. So this is websites and articles, social media, for example.

However, it’s crucial then to understand that ChatGPT does not search the internet in real time. It was instead trained on a data set that includes publicly available and licensed text up to a certain cutoff date. So it’s not retrieving live data from websites like Google does, but instead it’s generating responses based on patterns that it learned during training. Now, this obviously has been confirmed by OpenAI. So when someone types a question or a prompt, ChatGPT reviews its knowledge of the text patterns, and then it tries to figure out the most likely sequence of words that form a helpful, coherent answer.

Okay? You still with me? Good. Because this is where I think it gets really interesting. Because ChatGPT isn’t storing entire web pages or articles that it’s simply memorised. Instead, it’s actually extracting patterns. So, which topics tend to appear together? What phrases do people typically use? How is language even structured? And this means that it can provide highly relevant and seemingly accurate responses.

But this is also where ChatGPT can kind of hallucinate sometimes, when you get those really random answers. It generates answers that are plausible sounding, I guess, but incorrect, or potentially outdated information as well. And that’s the reason that sometimes you are getting that hallucination with some of the responses that you get out of ChatGPT. So really, ChatGPT has a feel for language. Large language model. It’s kind of in the name really itself. So it has a feel for language rather than just storing a massive database of different facts. And the result of this is obviously it’s an AI agent that sounds human-like when we chat with it, when we talk with it, when we type with it.

So as an example, let’s just think about this. Let’s say that you’re a super avid reader, for example. You’ve scanned thousands of business books, heaps of articles, online blog posts. You’ve done the traps. You would then be really good at being able to summarise or write in an average or a really common way, as you would have a great deal of really broad knowledge. But if specific facts that you’d read or you’d learnt were out of date or missing, you may then create, let’s say again, plausible sounding content that’s actually inaccurate, but it doesn’t appear in the text patterns.

So another example, if you’re a gym owner and you went to ChatGPT and you asked it for a social media strategy, a few ideas of how to promote a local gym, a tool like ChatGPT, what it’s going to do is it’s going to recall typical patterns from the millions of words of relevant text that it’s seen other people use, like, I don’t know, focus on your SEO, your membership drives, your partnerships with other businesses. It’s going to use all of that information to be able to piece together your answer, and give you that idea on your social media strategy, ideas for a local gym. And this is where you need to get a little bit of that creativity in there as well.

So the question then becomes why some businesses are getting AI attention and some don’t. Because we’ve got that basic overview. We understand how ChatGPT and other LLMs work. We now need to combine this insight, and what we’ve learned so far, with how businesses are actually getting visibility via ChatGPT and Claude and other LLMs. So from the research I’ve seen so far, this breaks down to a few crucial factors that you need to be thinking about. And these are always changing, always in adapting.

But what we know right now is ChatGPT knows about a business if that business appears frequently or prominently in the text it reads during its training. So if your business is rarely mentioned on authoritative websites, AI may not recognise your business.

The other thing to think about: ChatGPT is also trained on data up to a certain point in time. This is what we spoke about before, remember, that it’s not storing all these websites. So if your business or brand grew and exploded after those cutoffs, it may not appear in those responses. However, I should point out here as well, and should have pointed out earlier as well, that newer versions of ChatGPT, like 4o, it can and it will fetch live data through the Bing search integration. So there is a little bit in there that we need to remind ourselves. So depending on the model type that you’ve done the search with, for example, ChatGPT 4o, you may be able to fetch some live data in there.

So the third thing to think about: businesses featured in well-known publications. Let’s say you were in Forbes, or you’re in the Australian Financial Review, or even, basically, Wikipedia. Those businesses are more likely to be included in AI-generated answers, because AI models are going to prioritise widely cited sources. And it’s very similar to how Google works with SEO, with authority ranking as well.

And then the final one is contextual relevance. And this is going back to what I was saying before. This is where your marketing strategy, I think, really does matter quite a bit right now. If your brand is consistently associated with key topics in widely referenced media, or in your own media, or the way that you present yourself on your website, AI will recognise those connections.

So let’s say you’re a bakery. You are repeatedly featured in articles around one of your USPs, which is gluten-free pastries, for example. ChatGPT is more likely to mention you and your business in a relevant search query around gluten-free pastries. Let’s say someone searched on ChatGPT for gluten-free pastry recipes, and it’s more likely to connect that search with your business, to be able to produce your content and get your brand in front of that potential person. And that goes back to what we said before about how ChatGPT actually works in the first place. Contextual relevance. It’s looking for search text patterns.

So the question then is, from that knowledge, how do we then increase your chances of even being mentioned in AI answers? How do we put all of that we’ve just discussed into actual practice? So the first one is to go back to what we said. Use consistent branding and consistent keywords. So if appearing in ChatGPT is going to be important to you, what we know so far is that you need to ensure your brand is consistently described in the right context.

So let’s say you want to be known for luxury desserts. Use that phrasing across all of your channels. Use that USP, that real niche USP that you have around your product and your service, across your website. Put it across your social media. Any guest articles you have. If you got featured in the local media, introduce yourself as the owner of the luxury dessert bakery, or whatever it is. Make sure you’re connecting those terms to your product, your service, and your business, and your brand.

The next thing is continue to create high-quality content. High-quality content. It’s not enough just to create random slop for your website anymore. Right now, it is far more valuable to be featured in trusted industry sources, for example. Because, again, if we go back to what we learned before, AI tools are going to prioritise information from potentially established publishers and partners.

And look, this is very similar to traditional SEO, except instead of things like backlinks, as we would usually look at for SEO, AI, what we know is that it learns from repeated mentions in trusted sources. This is going back to what I said before, around is your brand being featured in Forbes, or in your local online directories, or things like that. And is it using that contextual relevance, that consistent branding, those consistent keywords, so that it connects it all together about what your brand is, and what it actually does, and what that USP actually is.

And the third thing you can do as well is build that long-term digital footprint. There is no quick hack with this. Because AI models, they’re going to rely on mentions over time. Lots of mentions. Let’s say a consulting firm with years of high-profile interviews. They’ve been published with thought leadership pieces. It’s much more likely to be surfaced in ChatGPT answers than a brand new consulting firm with very little online presence. And that just makes sense.

So those are the three things you need to be thinking about. Consistency with your branding, with your keywords, with your USP, connecting that to your brand, and making sure it is consistent over time. Creating high-value quality content that’s more likely to get picked up by trusted industry sources. That’s more likely to actually get you work as well. And this is this type of content stuff that you would be happy to put on your LinkedIn, and actually help to generate more work and to build your brand, your personal brand as well. And then build a long-term digital footprint as well. So not going for any quick hacks. There are no quick hacks with this. We need to build this up over time.

Because the way that AI models like ChatGPT are changing business discovery isn’t just about things like your content generation. It’s not just about getting ChatGPT to write your latest blog post. It’s actually about positioning your brand for AI-driven search. And this is where the shallow, keyword-stuffed content is just not going to work anymore. Instead, businesses, you need to be thinking about building a sustained and reputable online presence, and trying to do that across multiple channels where your audience is hanging out.

So from here, I want to make a deal with you. Instead of just thinking about AI as a content tool, a content production tool, or a way to reduce headcount in your business, remind yourself, it’s also changing how customers are finding and interacting with your business. And it’s happening right now. So hopefully, this podcast has given you a couple of things that you need to be thinking about. Building into your strategy. Refining. Having a look at that branding, that USP, and kind of pulling that all together as well.

And look, if that’s something you want our help with as well, it’s what Done By Nine does best. As I said, Done By Nine, the agency that I run and that this podcast is produced from, it is what we love helping our customers do. It’s working out strategies that are going to move with industry evolutions. Taking everything we learn from these podcasts and all the writing and all the things that we share with you online, and how do we actually incorporate and build this into your business, to make sure that your business is going to thrive over time as these industry evolutions and this AI boom just gets bigger and bigger.

And look, if you have found some value out of this, I really would appreciate if you could share this with someone in your network. Share this across your networks, would be great. Even just giving us a quick review, a little five-star rating or whatever, on the podcast platform that you’re listening to, that would honestly mean the world to us. And if you want to get any of our other content, you can go to our website, donebynine.com. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast.