Right now, the rules of search, discovery, and influence are being rewritten (and it’s not by the robots, it’s by humans). We’re moving fast from a world where search engines just index content, to one where generative models synthesise, prioritise, and increasingly influence.
The search game isn’t just about being found anymore, it’s about being chosen by the algorithm that’s advising your next customer.
And, what fuels those choices? Increasingly, it’s not brand-owned assets or polished landing pages. It’s real voices. It’s UGC (user-generated content). It’s forums, TikToks, Reddit threads, Shorts, and five-second influencer reviews that feel like they came from a friend.
So, in my opinion AI could become an “Artificial Influencer” as much as artificial intelligence, and user-generated content is its new currency (or food, I’ve not decided on the metaphor yet, but you get the idea).
But this isn’t just about AI and its impact on search journeys – customers have been increasingly relying on social influence and word of mouth advocacy for their decision making, in both B2C and B2B, for decades now. The behaviour isn’t new, it’s just amplifying.
In this article, I’ll explore what this could mean for brands aspiring to be found as the new normal settles in.
Generative search and LLMs aren’t just giving answers, they’re shaping preferences. As I explored in this piece on Google’s AI Mode, the moment you type into an AI-powered search bar, you’re no longer getting a static list of results, you’re entering a highly curated experience, optimised to reduce friction, ambiguity, and time to action.
However, there is a catch. AI doesn’t create truth, it amplifies signals. And increasingly, those signals are coming from platforms overflowing with user experiences like Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, forums, reviews, comments.
As this piece from VideoTok notes, generative platforms are training on UGC and increasingly serving it back to users, because it’s what feels real, relatable, and relevant.
The shape of the traditional marketing & sales funnel is morphing too. Traditional TOFU (top-of-funnel) activity like SEO blogs, paid ads and awareness plays are losing their monopoly on early discovery. What we’re seeing now is even more messy, exploratory customer behaviour.
In this article on the travel search shift, I described how the modern customer doesn’t go from ad to site to buy. Instead, they:
Fewer clicks. More influence. Much higher intent.
By the time a user lands on your product page or hits “Enquire,” they’ve passed through a decentralised validation gauntlet, and they’re probably more qualified than any cold lead ever was. Which is why tracking last-click attribution just doesn’t cut it anymore, and why brands need to map their strategy across influence points, not just owned channels.
This shift also demands a rethink of how we visualise the customer journey.
Traditionally, we’ve obsessed over filling the top of the funnel – awareness, traffic, impressions. But now, your bottom-of-funnel customers, especially your vocal advocates, are increasingly becoming your top-of-funnel fuel.
This is where the Bow Tie Funnel and Flywheel models gain importance. Instead of treating advocacy as a post-conversion bonus, we need to treat it as a core driver of future discovery.
As explored in Assisted’s “Google’s Gone Wild” piece, and echoed in Blue Soup’s take on UGC and SGE, brands that activate real people to talk, share, rate, and post will find themselves rising in generative rankings, not just SERPs.
If UGC is becoming your most valuable content, and a growing influence on AI results, how do you actively encourage it?
Here are several practical strategies:
As I explore in this piece on discoverability for insurance brands, it’s not just about having customers, it’s about turning them into discoverable signals across the web.
This is the power of Artificial Influence. AI will make decisions about what’s worth surfacing – and more and more, it’ll be guided by collective human input, not brand copy. That means:
In fact, my piece on AI and the future of SEO argues that the most valuable audience might be your recent customers – not because of LTV, but because of the influence they now wield through content, reviews, and generative search representation.
Ok, so James, what’s the takeaway? As generative AI might say: “We’ve entered a new phase in marketing”. One where your best-performing content might not be yours. One where your most persuasive voice might be someone else’s, surfaced by AI, trusted by the searcher, and completely outside your control.
Unless, of course, you invest in influence, not just impressions.
If AI is the new influencer, then:
So, what are you doing to inspire your customers to talk about you?
Are you giving them moments worth sharing, experiences worth reviewing, and platforms where their voices matter?
If the answer is “not enough”, now is the time to change that.
Get in touch with the team at Remarkable to explore how you can turn your happiest customers into your strongest acquisition channel. We’ll help you unpack how to drive more advocacy through omnichannel marketing, CRM, data-driven content, and personalisation strategies that don’t just convert – they resonate, repeat, and ripple.
Because in a world where AI decides what matters, your future visibility depends on the human voices you inspire today.
Remarkable are one of the world’s leading digital experience agencies. As a double Platinum Sitecore and Optimizely partner, we offer technology solutions to help brands build experiences that convert.
