How AI is Reshaping the Modern Marketing Funnel – And What That Means for SEO 

Generative AI (GAI) platforms are completely redefining the buyer’s journey, and your marketing funnel needs to follow in its footsteps.  That is, unless you want your brand to fall behind.  While the basic stages of the funnel still exist, they’ve taken on a new shape. Also, some stages occur out of order or get skipped altogether.  Before GAI entered the mix, the SEO marketing funnel looked something like this:

• Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU/awareness). Generate leads and awareness through informative content that ranks in the top 3 organic results.

• Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU/consideration). Convince prospects that your brand is the best with case studies, reviews, pricing guides, and product roundups (where you top the list). 

• Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU/purchase). Seal the deal with strong landing pages containing clear CTA (call-to-action) buttons. 

After GAI, TOFU traffic fell significantly due to the prevalence of AI Overviews.  At the same time, the entire funnel has become streamlined and potentially faster because of AI citations and recommendations.  In this guide, we’ll teach you:

1. How the AI marketing funnel differs from the classic SEO funnel 
2. Ways to leverage ‘invisible consideration’ 
3. How to adapt your content to the modern, reshaped marketing funnel 

Read on to learn how to keep generating leads and sales through your online content! 

From Funnels to Feedback Loops: How AI Changes Buyer Behavior 

In the AI marketing funnel, users may skip stages due to the way LLM-powered assistants work.  For example, instead of spending an evening watching YouTube reviews to determine the best project management software (a traditional MOFU activity), a user may ask a tool like ChatGPT to compare the top 10 project management applications for them.  In an instant, ChatGPT will conduct research on their behalf, negating their need to view any MOFU content like buyer’s guides or price comparison videos. After that, they may decide to make a purchase right then and there.  That means they went from the awareness stage straight to the purchase stage. Does this mean you should stop producing MOFU content? No!  However, the reason presents a bit of a paradox.  LLM-powered search assistants like ChatGPT may conduct buyer research on a user’s behalf, but they still need something to summarize. If you don’t have any MOFU content on your website, you’re eliminating your brand’s content from the equation.  That’s why you still need to produce buyer’s guides, feature breakdowns, and price comparisons. Even if fewer audience members see it (some definitely still will), it exists to:

1. Fuel AI citations and responses 
2. Build topical authority 
3. Convince users who visit your website to validate their purchase decision 

Because of this, it’s still necessary to create content for every stage of the sales funnel, even if some stages are bypassed by most users. 

Understanding the AI funnel as a feedback loop 

Also, the AI marketing ‘funnel’ needs a bit of a rebrand. Instead of progressing users down a linear funnel, the AI-driven buyer’s journey more resembles a feedback ‘loop.’  Here’s what we mean by that.  As we’ve already mentioned, prospects are able to bounce around the stages of the sales funnel because of how LLMs (large language models) compress the research process.  What we haven’t explored yet is the way they loop users back to the awareness stage.  With an AI-powered platform like ChatGPT, each buyer’s journey never technically ends, because the AI assistant will nudge them into what’s next.  This can take on various forms, such as:

1. Recommending accessory or add-on products, like lenses for a camera or pickups for an electric guitar. 
2. Advocating other solutions for products that don’t work as advertised (“other users found more success with product Y instead of product X”).
3. Advising future shopping purchases (most LLMs will remember your past behavior and recommend similar products and services). 
4. Leaving positive reviews for products impacts AI visibility, so if a user leaves your product a glowing review, it can feed into another prospect’s decision phase. 

So, one buyer’s journey ends, and it can loop straight into another. If you optimize your web presence so that your brand appears in more AI summaries, you can capitalize on these feedback loops. 

New Entry Points: Where SEO Fits Into Generative Search 

The modern marketing funnel is no longer as linear or predictable as it once was, meaning you’ll need a fresh set of entry points to capture your audience’s attention (and loyalty). 

TOFU: AI Overviews and educational video content

The top of the AI-driven funnel looks vastly different from the linear SEO funnel. Instead of creating educational blogs to drive traffic to your website, your new goal should be to improve your brand’s visibility in AI Overviews and summaries.  While this may not lead to an immediate uptick in clicks, visibility in AI summaries is now incredibly important.  Remember, TOFU is no longer just a lead generation phase. In the AI era, TOFU content can lead to direct purchases.  As we’ll mention in the BOFU section, you should add CTAs and product videos to your informational blogs and videos.  Speaking of videos, Google’s Gemini loves to include educational videos in its AI Overviews. As such, you should produce more videos that answer common ‘how’ and ‘why’ queries in your niche.  Here’s an example of a short video we did to capitalize on users wanting to know what an SEO audit is: What is An SEO Audit? #shorts This is the type of video Google likes to include in AI Overviews, which is why you should add CTAs and links to product demos. That will give you the chance to immediately seal the deal with interested AI TOFU prospects. 

MOFU: Data-driven, structured comparison content 

MOFU content still matters in AI search, as we’ve already discussed.  It’s the ‘invisible consideration’ stage where prospects are comparing brands, but marketers lack the metrics to notice (yet).  To increase the chances that AI tools cite your MOFU content, you should produce:

1. Data-driven comparison articles that get straight to the point (and add valuable insights and first-hand experiences)
2. Content that contains semantic HTML and schema markup (Product, Offer, ItemList, etc.) 
3. Buyer’s guides and authoritative roundup articles (counting down the top tools or products in a particular field) 
4. Product ‘vs’ articles (pitting your product against a competitor) 
5. Concise pros and cons lists (with bullet points and checkmarks) 

Even if users don’t view this content, you still want LLMs to notice and reference it.  

BOFU: CTAs on informational pages, scenario-specific buyer’s guides, honest pricing pages 

Lastly, BOFU content is a bit all over the place since AI users can reach it at any stage of the funnel.  We strongly recommend adding CTAs, product demos, and case studies to your informational content. This will help you capitalize on prospects who jump immediately from the top of the funnel to the bottom.   LLM users don’t search for keywords the same way they do on search engines like Google. Instead of using brief snippets to describe what they want (search engine speak), they ask detailed, long-form questions to LLMs.  Produce BOFU buyer’s guides that reinforce the quality and value of your offerings, and use long-form prompts instead of SEO keywords.   Also, you should add schema markup to all your landing pages. For pricing pages, ensure that they’re transparent and concise. 

Brand Mentions, Citations, and Structured Content – Your New Funnel Tools 

Before we wrap up, let’s explore the top ways you can optimize your content for the AI marketing funnel.  LLMs have different quality measures than search algorithms, and you need to know what they value (i.e., AI ‘ranking factors’) to improve your brand’s visibility.  Here are the most effective techniques for tightening your AI funnel and feedback loop. 

Use digital PR to earn more brand mentions 

According to recent research, LLMs place a tremendous amount of importance on brand mentions, brand anchor text, and branded search volume.  In particular, LLMs want to see that your brand gets cited and referenced a lot by trusted websites and online publications.  That means brand mentions are the hottest AI optimization ticket in town.  Here’s one of our brand mentions on Semrush’s blog, a major player in the SEO industry: They mention us in a positive light and frame us as an industry-leading white-label SEO provider.  This is the type of brand mention that will improve your AI visibility and authority.  How can you generate them?  Digital PR tactics are the best for earning more brand mentions, like networking with journalists, newsjacking trending stories, and publishing original research. 

Want to earn more brand mentions the easy way? Sign up for our Digital PR service and our experts will earn them for you!

Strengthen entity authority and trust 

LLMs use a process called NER (named entity recognition) to correctly identify people, places, and things. The more you appear in online content, the more LLMs will recognize you as a distinct, authoritative entity.  If your content is high-quality and you have strong reviews, AI search tools will also start recommending you to their users.  Here are some ways you can strengthen your entity authority:

1. Add detailed author biographies to your blog posts and About Us page. Link out to each author’s LinkedIn profile, and mention their expertise, experience, credentials, and any awards. 
2. Include structured data for your blogs and author bios (especially the author schema) 

These tweaks will let LLMs know that your content is produced by industry-leading experts. 

Add structured data to all web pages 

We keep mentioning structured data because of how important it is for the age of AI search.  The two types of structured data that matter most for AI search are semantic HTML and schema markup. These formats will label aspects of your content (like author bios, reviews, and recipes) so that they’re machine-readable.  This is so important because structured data eliminates all inferences and guesswork involved with web scraping.  You can read more about semantic HTML and schema in this article. 

Final Thoughts: Aligning SEO with AI-Era Demand Signals 

To summarize, the AI marketing funnel isn’t linear and can sometimes resemble a loop.  LLM-powered search platforms will continue to assist users with their buyer journeys, and the trick is to get them to consistently recommend your brand.  Do you need help optimizing your content for AI search? Check out HOTH X, our fully managed SEO service, to take the entire process off your hands and achieve great results!