Everything Everywhere All at Once: Your Marketing Strategy for the AI Era | Part 1
Thoughts by Ronen Shetelboim, #11・July 29, 2025
Picture this scenario:
Manager: "Find me the best software to solve for xyz problem."
Employee: "Sure thing. I'll just ask ChatGPT."
No, that wasn't a scene from a futuristic movie. That's a Monday morning in 2025.
Fundamentally, the way buyers are looking for information, solving problems, and discovering solutions online has completely changed.
It reminds me of a friend telling his kid he was going to 'cab' home, and the kid, genuinely puzzled, asked, "What's a cab?" Just as Uber reshaped transportation, I can see in a few years our own kids making fun of the very idea that before the AI era we had to "Google" everything.
For marketers, this isn’t just a tweak; it’s a complete reimagining of brand discoverability. The game hasn’t just changed; it's been entirely rewritten. And if you don't grasp the new rules, you're not just behind—you're invisible.
Your New Marketing Reality in the AI Era
We already know that 90% of buyers' research happens before they even talk to vendors. But here is the thing: They’re now doing that research faster, and they are leveraging AI for it.
AI guides how your potential customers find solutions, research problems, and ultimately, discover your brand.
Whether they're relying on Google's AI Overviews (aka AIO), or directly engaging with generative AI engines like ChatGPT or Gemini (aka GEO), the reality is this: if you're not optimizing your brand discoverability for AI results, your buyers won’t be able to find you.
To grasp the scale:
ChatGPT now handles approximately 2.5 billion user prompts every day. This isn’t just a trend, it’s a monumental shift in user behaviour. Although Google still processes significantly more queries, estimated between 13.6 billion to 16.4 billion daily searches, some predict that ChatGPT is on pace to have the same number of daily searches as Google by the end of next year! Whether it eventually matches Google's daily query volume or not, the critical point is this: ChatGPT is rapidly embedding itself as a daily routine habit for millions, fundamentally changing how people search for information.
Inside the AI Brain: How Do LLMs Really ‘Think’
For your brand to truly be discoverable by AI, you need to understand how these AI search engines actually work. More importantly, how do Large Language Models (LLMs, what we call AI) really 'think' when they're digging for answers or recommending a solution?
When LLMs are hunting for answers, they're doing what good researchers do: cross-referencing and validating information. While they've got massive internal knowledge bases, they lean heavily on reliable, authoritative external sources and deep-dive research.
Interestingly, if you ask these LLMs themselves what sources they prioritize, you get a fascinating look into their 'thinking':
ChatGPT's Approach: Places highest priority on software/review sites (like G2 and Capterra). Analyst/industry reports and academic/government sources also rank high. User and community sites (like Reddit) are also considered, though with a slightly lower trust level.
Gemini's Approach: Relies heavily on official documentation and developer communities (like Stack Overflow and GitHub). Software review and comparison sites, along with news and industry publications, are also key for its information gathering.
Claude’s Approach: Employs a highly formalized system. For "timeless or stable facts," it answers directly from its internal knowledge with no external links. But for "quick facts with high topicality," it performs targeted web searches, indicating a need for current, external validation.
What's the big takeaway here? Every LLM 'thinks’ differently, their immediate go-to sources can differ significantly, usually depending on their original knowledge base and the kind of info they were built to handle.
For your brand to be discoverable by AI, your content needs to exist and be across the very sources that LLMs trust and prioritize.
Omnipresence or Everything Everywhere All At Once
Optimizing for AI discoverability means strategically placing your brand's presence and marketing efforts across many different channels (e.g. G2, Capterra, Reddit, YouTube, PR) that AI Search Engines (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini) rely on when searching for information.
Your marketing strategy might feel like you are doing Everything Everywhere All At Once.
And the worst part? You'll need to invest in channels where you might not see a direct, traditional ROI.
But this is precisely the fundamental shift in the AI era. Instead of asking "What direct ROI did I get from this specific channel?", the critical question becomes: "Does my content and brand appear in the sources AI prioritizes, making my brand discoverable by AI?" This redefines marketing measurement and leads us directly to a fascinating, yet challenging, aspect of marketing measurement in the AI era...
The ROI Paradox: When AI Makes 'Unmeasurable' Channels Non-Negotiable
Here's the paradox of the AI-era: the channels that are absolutely essential for your brand's discoverability via AI are precisely the ones where direct ROI is hardest to track. (e.g. PR, Youtube, Reddit).
AI didn't just tweak your marketing measurement playbook; it shredded it.
Think about it: Your potential customer gets their core answers from an AI overview, never clicking your site. They see your brand, it sticks in their head, and later, they just type your website directly into Google. So what looks like "direct" traffic in your analytics? It's the unseen impact of your content creation and AI optimization work – your brand showed up in an AI answer they never clicked.
You can also think about AI results as a “friend” referral: your AI buddy mentions that new cool website, so you just Google it directly. You'll never get proper attribution for that 'friend referral' touchpoint, right? AI is becoming that friend – helping with decisions throughout the day, often leaving no direct digital footprint for your analytics to pick up. This makes pinning down specific channel ROI in many cases simply infeasible.
In this new zero-click world of AI Overviews and generative search, trying to pin down direct ROI to one specific channel is nearly impossible.
So you have no choice but to start thinking about Omnipresence Marketing, rather than channel specific marketing.
More on that in Part 2.
Keep Learning. Keep Growing.
Phew! We've just navigated some seriously crucial territory in Part 1 of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once: Your Marketing Strategy for the AI Era. Look, I know this isn't light reading – I've tried to simplify as much as possible – but this truly is the new reality that all leaders across marketing, sales, product, GTM, and finance need to understand.
Don’t Miss Part 2!
In Part 2, we'll dive into specific next steps, where to focus on, how to start, KPIs, and more.
If anything in Part 1 sparked a question or a new thought, please don't hesitate to reach out or drop a comment below. I'm always excited to connect and discuss!
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