Is Your Brand "AI Friendly"?

Your weekly dose of growth marketing news & tactics for DTC brands.

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

We strive to deliver the latest growth marketing news and trends in the DTC space straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

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Let's dive in!

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 The Near Future of Commerce
💠 Is Your Brand "AI Friendly"?
💠 From Health Struggles to Product Breakthroughs

The Near Future of Commerce

Very soon, commerce won't happen through your web as much as it used to.

Consumers will use tools like ChatGPT to discover AND buy your products, with built-in checkout.

As Shopify President Harley Finkelstein has recently said:

"You should expect Shopify merchants selling wherever their customers are. If their customers are spending time on AI tools and LLM models, you should expect that [Shopify] will be there as well."

Shopify already powers seamless buying experiences for major artists like Beyoncé on Spotify and creators like MrBeast on YouTube.

Now, it's clear where we're heading next: distributed commerce

What most brands currently do:
⤷ Spend resources to bring traffic to their website.
⤷ Optimize to push people through their funnel.
⤷ Use CRO to get more conversions.

But here's what brands will need to do ASAP:
⤷ Letting discovery and checkout happen directly inside these third-party experiences.
⤷ Showing up exactly where customers already spend their time.
⤷ Turning their online stores into proxies, not just destinations.

As you can see, this is a big change for commerce in general.

And brands today need to think platform-first, not website-dependent. 

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Is Your Brand "AI Friendly"?

Would you like your brand to appear in ChatGPT (or similar) responses? 

Then, you're in the right place!

I've recently been educating myself on this topic, and while I'm no expert, I'd love to share what I've learned so far with you.

Let's dive in!

First off, we need to introduce 2 concepts:
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) 

Here's a chart with more info on each:

Aspect

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Primary Goal

Optimize for direct answers in search results

Optimize for AI-generated summaries and citations across AI platforms

Platform Focus

Primarily Google search (featured snippets, knowledge panels)

Covers Google SGE, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and more

Tactics

FAQ schema, concise answers, keyword matching

Entity optimization, credibility building, AI-friendly formatting

Focus on Clicks?

Designed to drive traffic through featured snippets

May or may not drive traffic — citations often appear without a click opportunity

Timeframe

Originally coined pre-AI search era

Developed specifically for AI-enhanced search

How do you get your products to show up in AI search?

1️⃣ Include schema fields 

Before you do anything else, your product pages need to include schema fields (price, availability, description, images, rating).

To check if they do, run the Google Rich Results Test on a product page. If the result is a green check, it's good.

If you're on Shopify, you can install JSON-LD for SEO or Schema Plus for SEO & JSON-LD. Both auto-push rich schema (product, reviews, FAQ, etc.) without code.

2️⃣ Optimize like you're answering a question

ChatGPT is not Google.

This means it doesn't want keywords. It wants information to use in answers. 

So, what you need to do is write your product titles and descriptions like you're explaining them to someone else.

3️⃣ FAQs and reviews

AI needs information, as I mentioned above. The more, the merrier.

So, by including FAQs and reviews, you're feeding tools like ChatGPT with rich information about your products, the top-asked questions, and what people think about them.

 

4️⃣ Stay in Stock Or Get Skipped

ChatGPT shows live prices and availability. If your metadata says “$70” but your site says “$80”, you'll get skipped.

If you're on Shopify, this should be automated, though.

 

5️⃣ SEO is still important

Tools like ChatGPT will split complex prompts into multiple simpler ones.

Here's an example:

 This means, the core SEO principles are still important:
→ Try getting into relevant industry lists
→ Online reviews (G2, TrustPilot)
→ Brand search and mentions
→ Website authority

 

6️⃣ Test it

Ask ChatGPT what it knows about your brand and then optimize.

 

I hope it was useful!

I'll share more as I keep learning about this fascinating new era of commerce. 

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

From Health Struggles to Product Breakthroughs

"Don't wait for perfection."

(This is one of the most underrated pieces of advice an entrepreneur can receive.)

In this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul sits down with Cleo Davis-Urman, co-founder of barrière, to unpack how they’re shaking up the vitamins space.

We discussed:
👉 How Cleo’s personal health journey led to the creation of Barrier
👉 The benefits of transdermal patches for vitamin absorption over traditional supplements
👉 The importance of collaborating with experienced partners in product development
👉 The role of customer feedback in shaping product evolution and strategy
👉 Gaining deeper insights through real-life interactions with customers
👉 Driving brand growth through social media, with a focus on TikTok
👉 Using technology to improve customer education and engagement
👉 Staying open to feedback and embracing iteration throughout the process
👉 Creating products that support self-care and personal expression
👉 Maintaining continuous customer interaction to stay aligned with their needs

 

Tune in:
📺 YouTube
🎧 Apple
🎙️ Spotify
🌐 Website

More episodes our listeners love:

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