Consumers already had myriad options to learn and seek solutions on the web, but generative AI has introduced dozens more. This has created a surge in consumer choice and decentralized the customer journey. Audiences are now seeking authenticity, purpose, and trusted guides more than ever.
GenAI has also shifted the balance away from brands when it comes to establishing and maintaining a preferred narrative — a fact that should scare any marketer, thanks to today’s tenuous brand trust levels.
To effectively and authentically connect in the AI search space, brands must first understand their digital footprint, then evolve their marketing strategy with a hyperfocus on brand narrative, brand perception, and consistent experience. This is key to remaining relevant, trusted, and human-centered throughout the AI revolution.
The Challenge GenAI Presents to Brand Perception
Traditional brand marketing relied on consistent messaging and centralized campaigns. This approach worked when the engagement spaces were controllable and predictable — not in the midst of an AI-driven upheaval. Brands could reliably and easily manage the connection space and their brand perception with a marketing team and a budget.
Generative AI and the emerging AI search platforms are both wild cards and transformative forces that have changed this dynamic.
How does AI change things? It takes brand control away and replaces it with a new, competing voice telling your brand story for you — in ways that might not be accurate. As more consumers use generative AI for daily interactions and conversational searching, the narratives the models tell about your brand become more and more important. A lack of control in this area could run the risk of inaccuracies or narratives run by competitors. They can even impact brand perception and reputation.
Brands can’t adopt a laissez-faire attitude — they need an intentional, AI-focused brand perception strategy. It’s the only way to engage audiences amid the novel micro-moments and AI experiences that now hold sway.
AI Sourcing
You can think of AI as a tool that uses data to learn. In the search engine context, it relies on URLs as “sources” (roughly speaking). When Google’s AI Overviews gives an answer, it also provides a list of links that informed the answer. Tools like Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews have an entire internet of crawled pages to use for this purpose.
Consider your owned web assets as training tools. They’re the secret to informing your brand’s narrative in AI tools with massive user bases. Does that change your perception or strategy when it comes to offering up the best possible experience?
How to Capture the GenAI Opportunity
Any work you do in a digital space can not only connect with a human audience but also influence the AI narrative. Online brand enablement provides a strategy to achieve both for the better. That’s why brands can’t just work with partners and feed stories to friendly outlets — addressing the AI challenge requires a holistic online brand enablement approach. One that targets search, generative AI, and other brand-relevant channels.
Start here
Assess generative AI sentiment: Take the search terms that matter most to your brand and run them through AI platforms to assess the sentiment. What’s AI saying about you? Is it positive, negative, neutral, or are you missing from the discussion altogether? In an ever-evolving landscape, efficiency is key. For example, at Terakeet, we’ve built scalability into our approach — our proprietary technology can assess brand sentiment broadly and related to certain topics that are of high importance to the brand.
Leverage consumer search data: Next, collect consumer search data and insights derived from audience behavior and consumer intent. Understanding what people are saying and searching for reveals the brand narrative and perception gaps you may be facing. When you know where you stand, you can close the gaps with targeted content.
Develop brand narrative consistency: Across your owned assets (online content you control), your brand must present a unified front with fully aligned brand messaging, consistent experience, and content that reinforces a cohesive, authentic story for AI to draw from. That’s how to become a source for the AI tools, asserting influence on the narrative.
Activate brand stewards: Incentivize the brand leaders and employees from across your organization to be public-facing brand evangelists, discussing, posting about, and representing your brand where your audience lives online. This will give your owned assets the human touch and unique voice needed to engage your audience. The bonus is that content created and distributed in this way feeds AI search tools a more accurate and compelling story to draw from.
A compelling brand narrative isn’t just the content and positioning you put out there. It’s the overall experience you offer your audience. It’s about creating an engaging environment at each consumer connection and each touchpoint your audience interacts with. The richer the journey, the better AI will reflect it.
Breaks in that experience, whether on social, in search, or in AI tools, ripple across your brand, damaging your brand narrative and perception. AI happens to be one space where the stakes are higher — where brands must proactively shape the narrative or cede the narrative to AI.
