America’s marketing leaders operate in a hypercompetitive business ecosystem that demands growth targets be met yesterday. It is in this space where skilled CMOs thrive, delivering strategic value to their company’s bottom line. Traditionally, marketers have used organic search engine optimization (SEO) to deliver clicks, drive traffic, and increase conversions, but with the lightning-speed adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) search, marketing departments of every size are seeing the highly successful channel start to slow its performance. And they’re scared.
What Marketers Fear Most About AI Search
The internet has been around for a few decades now, and just as it has matured, so too have its users. Gone are the days of formulaic search queries; instead, people begin asking questions and search engines autofill to complete the query. Accustomed to this information exchange, marketers have historically relied on ad data to inform their spending gobs of money annually to make sure their company is in the top 10 search results. However, now AI search results either push those blue links further down the page or don’t even include the primary source at all.
According to Artios data mined from online communities, CMOs are concerned about data privacy being compromised (32%), the diminishing returns from organic SEO (15%), their most beneficial marketing channel, but only second to their biggest fear of AI delivering hallucinated—or incorrect—search results (20%).
While AI search is great, it’s not perfect—at least not yet. It’s about 95% accurate, and seemingly good enough for people to rely on to make decisions. Who wants to go searching around on various webpages when you just want an answer?
The problem with this, however, is that with zero clicks to check the primary source, there is no interaction with the brand. Therefore, the 46% of CMOs in the U.S. who are mainly focused on building brand loyalty to build and protect their market share are now spiraling, unsure how to deliver results.
AI Is Actually an Opportunity to Get Ahead and Stay Ahead if Marketers Know How
This is where Artios insists marketers shouldn’t run from AI; rather, they should embrace it, and use it smartly and strategically to strengthen brand loyalty because there will be a point in the not-so-distant future when customers will not only appreciate the AI search results, they will also want to see the source. And, in order to be that source, companies need to create authentic content for AI search engines.
For example, Artios’s proprietary AI technology, some of which is described in the founder’s book Data Driven SEO, does in fact help companies get their links featured in the AI overview. Unlike conventional SEO that forms content strategies based on numbers from Google Ads, Artios’s tech is audience driven and uses representative sample sizes with a high confidence level and a low margin of error. The secret is using AI for AI.
Artios uses AI to mine online communities such as Reddit, Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, Quora, TikTok, Threads, and others, to build synthetic audiences based on authentic conversations around brands and their products and services. Then, it builds a mini audience chatbot and asks it loads of questions, just like a market research company would talk to consumers in surveys or focus groups. From there, Artios then formulates content strategies based on topics the modeled target audience really cares about and produces primary research data that satisfies the information criteria that AI and search engines crave.
AI Tech SEO is a Win-Win for Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs)
Companies of all sizes can benefit from AI tech SEO, but it’s perfect for SMBs that don’t have huge marketing budgets. With Artios’s AI tech SEO, marketers are able to gain the insights from conducting primary research without the incredibly high budget spend. SMBs can then use those unique perspectives and proprietary data to strengthen their messaging and positioning while creating authentic content on their websites, which can then be leveraged for social media, PR, newsletters and other marketing efforts.
For CMOs wondering how to protect their market share in 2025, there should be no dilemma when it comes to AI search. It’s cost-effective, reliable and authentic. Lean into using it and leverage it to build and protect your brand.
If you’re reading this, it’s because you already realize your SEO strategy isn’t working like it used to. Artios AI SEO can help you use community data—not ad data—to strengthen your brand. Artios uses data science to deliver two times the ROI. Guaranteed. Contact Artios today.