Is AI Surfacing Your Brand?

In the first blog of our three-part series, we touched on how AI is reshaping the shopping process from the searching for products up to completing the purchase in the customer’s behalf, and what Large Language Models (LLM) equity means for brand health.  To illustrate, when a consumer asks an AI agent like ChatGPT for recommendations on clothing brands, does your clothing line show up?  And if it does, how what image is being surfaced for your brand?  

By tracking brand health, brands are able to learn not only whether their marketing strategies and creative directions are converting into market share, but also determine performance drivers per platform and digital metric, understand which themes or aspects of their brand resonate with consumers, and assess their “piece” of the LLM pie- or how often LLMs surface or recommend their brand.  

Image: Julio Lopez

How Is AI Surfacing Your Brand?

There are several dimensions to brand health which includes the strength of your brand to be picked up and recommended by algorithms, the main themes and imagery associated with your brand by consumers and AI, how often consumers and AI share your content or recommend your brand, how likely your consumers would convert into advocates for your brand, and the perceived value of your brand in terms of pricing, quality and worthiness across different media.  These can be boiled down into three main dimensions: brand awareness, brand associations, and brand loyalty.  From these three main dimensions, a company can form and anchor their LLM equity strategies for visibility, communication, differentiation or positioning, engagement, attracting potential customers, optimizing marketing spend, as well as pivoting or responding to the competition or other emerging challenges.  

The effectivity of brand strategies can be measured in three metrics: alignment, engagement, and intent.  Alignment refers to how clearly and consistently your brand messaging, themes and values are being represented and communicated to and by your consumers, engagement is concerned with how customers are interacting with your brand in different media and platforms, while intent looks at how your brand moves audiences to search and look up your products and services.  All three consider the strength of your brand messaging and values as reflected through consumer-earned content and digital footprints.  

With these sets of brand health dimension and key metrics forming the backbone of brand marketing strategies, brands are not only able to catch attention but also earn consumer trust; not just reach audiences but also influence customer decisions; become not only “first to mind” to consumers but also strongly and coherently presented by LLM platforms as we gradually move into an AI-driven shopping landscape.  

Image: Atlantic Ambience

Featured Image: TungArt7

Top Image: Anna Shvets

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