AI is talking about you behind your back

Forget everything you’ve heard about AI writing marketing content, helping you research customer personas, or whatever else. If you’re a CMO or Head of Marketing, particularly for a B2B SaaS company, AI is creating a much bigger change and you’re probably not going to like it. Because whether or not you use chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini, your potential customers are using them to get information about your product. And unlike your ads, your website and your sales team, you can’t control what AI says… or at least not the way you’re used to.

AI chatbots are increasingly replacing Google as the place to start looking for information such as what software to buy. And sure, we all know to double check everything we learn from these magically hallucinating savants with inconsistent reasoning skills. But we don’t double check everything, and every time the information we do check proves true, we trust the AI a little more.

As you read this, potential customers who would be ideal for your software are using chatbots to discover their options. Then, if you’re lucky enough to be among the recommendations, these decision makers asking detailed questions to determine if it’s worth going to your website, filling out an interest form, booking a demo, etc.

If the chatbot undersells your product, they might not bother. If it oversells your product, they’ll be disappointed later. It’s not your fault if the chatbots are wrong, but it will cost you sales.

So, do you know what these AI chatbots saying about you?

I started this newsletter back in September because I wanted to help B2B SaaS companies in emerging technical niches reach the stakeholders who need them. My original focus was on traditional marketing content. But as I’ve realized how central a role AI will play in this - whether or not you and I want it to - I’ve decided that’s where I need to focus.

So in upcoming posts, I’m planning to explore how decision makers are likely to use AI to discover software, how these AI chatbots use the information on the internet to answer their questions, and what you can do to make sure those answers are accurate and aligned with your target narrative.

If you care about what AI says about your B2B SaaS product behind your back, subscribe below. And if you know someone else who might care, forward this email so they can follow along too.

---

Thanks for reading Viral Esoterica! If you want a free Report Card evaluating how AI chatbots answer questions about B2B SaaS, fill out this form.