Over the years, how consumers have discovered brands has changed significantly. Historically, department store counters, word of mouth and magazines were the go-to sources for discovering brands and products. Over the years, we’ve seen the shift to digital and the importance that search, social media and influencers play in brand discovery and new customer acquisition.
YouTube and TikTok, in particular, changed the way customers consume content and find new products. Replacing more traditional intent-based searches with highly personalised and entertainment-driven algorithms that turn scrollers into buyers. The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has had over 74 billion views, and with 89% of TikTok users having bought a beauty product after seeing it in the app, this shows a major shift in consumer behaviour.
More recently, with the rise of AI, we’re seeing another big shift. AI is impacting every touch point of the consumer journey, determining which brands are being seen, who gets trusted and who wins the sale.
AI is now influencing where and how brands are being discovered
Before AI, brand awareness came from ads, organic social or SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Consumers would search using short form specific queries, about a brand, a specific ingredient or a skincare concern, but nowadays, searches are becoming more conversational. Long tail phrases and questions are consumers’ preferred way to use search engines.
These results show up in the form of AI summaries, through ChatGPT answers and through visual search too (Google Lens usage is +400% since 2021), and while this represents a big opportunity for brand discovery, we are seeing a negative impact on the number of visitors to websites, through traffic.
Bain research shows that 80% of consumers rely on these summaries, and these result in what’s known as “zero clicks”, at least 40% of the time. Something that brands need to be mindful of- while it’s not necessarily bad, in fact, your content might be doing better than your analytics suggests, brands do need to adapt their search strategies to match this shift in behaviour.
How to get your brand showing up in AI
We have a dedicated blog on how to get your brand showing up in AI overviews, but with AI, getting your brand discovered has actually never been easier. You don’t need big budgets, big websites with big inventories, or a big brand name to get featured.
AI serves up results based on educational and authoritative content. This represents a huge opportunity for smaller, emerging brands that will naturally have all the credibility and authenticity on their site already. With a little content optimisation and Digital PR support, small brands are just as likely to appear as big high street names.
The new customer journey
The customer journey today is far from linear; the journey is messier, with customers often going back and forth between phases. Customers are more likely to discover a brand based on an AI recommendation, and they’ll then use social platforms like TikTok and Instagram to research the brand and validate it through social proof, like UGC and reviews.
Following that, consumers typically go on to Google to do a deep dive on the ingredients and their associated benefits and price comparisons. Once they’re ready to start thinking about purchasing, that’s when your brands credibilty matter the most. Ways that support that final conversion include having an expert voice or founder credibility to tip the scale towards conversion.
But even then, when and where the customer converts is not definitive or clean cut.
Beauty brands need to show up consistently across all these touchpoints in the journey to be in with a chance of closing a new customer acquisition sale, or risk being filtered out of the race entirely.
The messy middle just got messier
This new customer journey was coined as Google’s messy middle. We have a blog deep diving into the topic, but basically, it is a new adaptation of the consumer funnel. Instead of a neat, linear funnel, people loop- researching, comparing, validating, and reconsidering multiple times before committing to a purchase. Especially in beauty.
That middle has always been messy, but AI has made it even messier. AI now acts as a really strong influencer, doing so by recommending brands early in the discovery phase, answering questions effectively, reinforcing bias (social proof and authority) and reducing consumer effort when it comes to researching – all of which are pertinent when it comes to beauty brand discovery.
What should beauty brands do to make sure they’re visible
For beauty brands, this means that to succeed, they need to be consistently visible across all touchpoints. Nowadays, it’s not about shouting the loudest but more about being the most credible. Because of this, investing in your content that builds authority and digital PR to reference your content and link to your site has never been more important.
Securing features in relevant publications to your brand through digital PR best practices and creating expert-led content that answers real customer questions is the best way to help your brand show up in AI recommendations and make your brand discoverable.
As a leading beauty and wellness marketing agency, we’ve helped our clients secure features in the likes of Vogue, Elle and Refinery29 in just a matter of weeks. We’d love to do the same for your brand. If you’d like to speak to a member of our team to discuss how you can improve and optimise your content for AI, or need help securing top-tier beauty publications, we’d love to hear from you.
