By Daniel John

There’s method to the madness.

We’ve heard plenty of design rumours about the upcoming iPhone 17 line up, particularly from a design perspective. From the ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air to the bulging iPhone 17 Pro camera array, it seems we’re in for change this year. And for those who enjoy smaller phones, new leaks could be bad news – but with a silver lining.

New reports suggest this year’s Pro Max, model, typically the most advanced of the bunch, will be the thickest iPhone ever – jumping from 8.25mm to 8.725mm. For those who prefer phones that require fewer than three hands to hold, the news of an even brickier brick might not be welcome. But it’s all in the name of battery life. Because what good is the best camera phone if it’s run out of juice?

• Shop Amazon iPhone deals for Prime Day

iPhone fans have been crying out for better battery life for years, and that thicker profile could be designed to allow for a physically bigger battery. As reported by TheNews, a Weibo account with a strong track record leaked the dimensions of the Pro Max, suggesting battery is exactly the reason.

And if those rumours are true, perhaps the previously baffling iPhone 17 Air is starting to make a little more sense. If the alternative is an iPhone that, despite killer battery life, is thicker and heavier than ever, a super-thin alternative might be worth the battery sacrifice.

Time will tell what’s in store for the iPhone 17 line up, but it’s clear we’re in for one of the biggest design shake-ups we’ve seen in recent years. Add that to the eyebrow-raising new iOS design revealed at WWDC, and it seems Apple is doing it’s best to ‘Think Different’ in 2025.

Feature Image Credit: Majin Bu

By Daniel John

Sourced from CREATIVE BLOQ

By Nate Roy,

A few weeks ago, I found myself staring numbly down a long list of looming deadlines. Among them: building a deck for a fast-approaching presentation. I needed to distil complex messaging and input from multiple “cooks” into something concise, visual and engaging enough to hold an audience for 20 minutes. It felt like a full day of work—time I just didn’t have.

So, I decided to turn to the generative AI (GenAI) tool our company uses.

“Here’s what I want to cover,” I typed, feeding it my outline and talking points. Within seconds, it gave me a surprisingly solid draft. Not perfect, but enough to overcome blank-page paralysis and provide a strong starting point, saving hours.

In the end, the presentation got rave feedback, I met my other deadlines and discovered a smarter way I could “partner” with GenAI—not to automate creativity, but to ignite it.

A New Role For GenAI

Here’s the thing: GenAI isn’t just a shiny new toy for marketers anymore. I believe it should be viewed as a productivity engine, increasingly helping to secure a competitive advantage.

In my role at Constructor, AI is core to how we deliver value to the retailers we serve and help optimize shopping experiences. It’s also a big part of how I work personally. Here are four examples of how I use AI as a marketer to work faster, smarter and more strategically.

1. AI As A ‘Thought Partner’

Sometimes, the hardest part of any marketing task is just getting started. Whether it’s structuring a deck, outlining an article or creating a scoring rubric, AI can kick-start the process.

Marketers can use it to:

• Clarify and organize thinking. Try prompting it with a partial idea and asking: “What are three themes related to this topic?” or “What’s a logical flow?”

• Pressure-test assumptions. I often use prompts like: “What are the strongest counterarguments to this position?” or “What might my audience still be wondering?”

• Turn insights into action. Marketers often sit on a wealth of data but struggle to translate it into meaningful next steps. Use GenAI to summarize key trends from campaign or journey analytics, then prompt it with follow-ups like “Which channels are driving the most assisted conversions?” or “Where are drop-offs happening?” Rather than replacing analysis, AI accelerates it.

2. AI For Operational Efficiency

Task efficiency is another part of the GenAI equation. Editing, summarizing, translating, turning longer-form assets into social clips and more—AI helps cut down the grunt work so marketers can focus on high-impact deliverables.

For example, when we host a webinar, we often create a recap blog post, chop up the video into snackable segments for social and generate email copy to drive on-demand views. While we don’t use AI for all of these, it speeds up our workflow significantly. What once took a week across multiple contributors can now be done in an afternoon using AI, strong prompts and, of course, oversight from my team.

We’ve also used AI to support hiring workflows—refining job postings and optimizing them for discoverability. As a result, we’re moving much faster than before.

3. AI-Powered Personalization

Customers and prospects expect more than a one-size-fits-all experience online. They want tailored content and product recommendations, but delivering that manually can be time-consuming and hard to scale.

With AI, marketers can:

• Dynamically serve custom content and search results—based on, for instance, visitors’ industry, preferences and history.

• Power real-time chatbot interactions with smart, context-aware responses.

• Customize and trigger emails based on persona, behaviour and other attributes, and even optimize send-time for better engagement.

The result? More relevant touchpoints and less wasted effort.

4. AI-Fuelled Learning And Insights

AI isn’t just about doing more—it’s also about learning more. One valuable use case we’ve seen is through voice-of-the-customer analysis. Natural language processing tools can sift through thousands of anonymized survey responses, interview transcripts and more—revealing themes and sentiments we might otherwise miss. This helps shape our product positioning, messaging and content strategy.

Another key use case is competitive intelligence. AI tools can monitor price changes, ad campaigns, new product launches and more. This constant pulse on the market helps us stay proactive.

Potential AI Pitfalls And Lessons Learned

Of course, using AI effectively isn’t without challenges. Below are a few lessons learned:

1. Don’t Expect Full Automation

AI is powerful, but it’s not magic. We’ve tested tools that overpromised and underdelivered—like long-form content generators that produced decent and passable but uninspired copy. I think the best results happen when you bring the ideas, and AI helps you sharpen and scale them.

2. Always Prioritize Data Security

Use enterprise-grade tools when handling sensitive information and always anonymize any kind of customer, partner or other confidential external or internal data. In general, be mindful about what information you offer and how you do it, especially where security and compliance are concerns.

3. Vet Tools

Not all platforms are created equal. You’ll likely see different results related to accuracy, tone and style. And when you do test out new AI tools, be sure to do so inside your actual workflows, not just based on vendor promises.

4. Create An AI Policy

As AI usage expands, it helps to have clear guardrails within your organization and specific department—what’s encouraged/allowed, what’s not and where human oversight is required. Many organizations are already starting to make this part of their security operations centre (SOC)/compliance protocols.

The Bottom Line

If I could give marketers one piece of advice when it comes to AI, it would be that this is a shift worth engaging with—early and thoughtfully. AI literacy is quickly becoming table stakes, and companies are increasingly expecting marketing hires to show up with AI skills.

AI is no longer “futuristic”—it’s about being efficient and helping your company perform at the top of its game in a resource-constrained world. The longer you wait to get started, the steeper the learning curve will get. I believe that in the not-so-distant future, using AI won’t set you apart—it’ll simply be part of how modern marketing gets done.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Nate Roy

Sourced from Forbes

Sourced from Forbes

In the always-on world of social media, a single corporate misstep can quickly escalate into a full-blown public relations crisis. Preventing long-term brand damage, however, starts before issues ever arise. Companies that take a thoughtful, proactive approach to reputation management by building positive PR are going to be better equipped to maintain and restore trust and credibility among stakeholders when challenges do surface.

Here, 20 members of Forbes Communications Council each share their No. 1 rule for clearing potential pitfalls to avoid a PR crisis. Follow their advice below to lay the foundations of a solid crisis response, including clear communication, smart planning and strong internal practices.

1. Contextualize And Mitigate Issues

Let’s establish first that every crisis starts as an issue—and those are two distinct points in crisis management. My top rule is to make sure we have the media intelligence and monitoring data to flag and contextualize the issue, which then allows us to address and resolve it before we get to full crisis mode. We need to do everything to mitigate the issue before it swells. – Gerry Tschopp, Experian

2. Adapt And Act With Integrity

The ability to foresee every PR crisis is a fallacy. Your ability to adapt and act with integrity, not clairvoyance, is the ultimate safeguard of your brand’s future. The sensible and strategic way to assess and prepare is to foster a crisis-ready culture. Focus on foundational frameworks and proactive reputation building by risk type. This operational muscle, fuelled by transparency, empowers true readiness. – Destiny Chambers

3. Keep Lines Of Communication Open

We make sure that leadership and our community understand that talking to the PR team is not the same as talking to the public. In fact, talking to us all of the time is a great way to allow us to help shape the discussion, pitch and secure coverage. Policy should always drive PR, but pitfalls are important to point out throughout policy creation, so open lines of communication are key to success. – Sayar Lonial, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

4. Proactively Identify ‘Red Flag’ Issues

The key is to proactively identify potential issues from the perspective of all key stakeholders—internal and external. Anticipate how decisions or communications might be interpreted differently and flag “red flags” early on. When PR is embedded into core business functions, it becomes a strategic tool, not just a reactive one. It strengthens trust, protects brand reputation and ensures brand consistency – Mabel Adeteye, Wema Bank

5. Pressure-Test Messaging Before It Goes Public

Always pressure test messaging before it goes public. Do not assume your audience will interpret your message the way you intended. Pressure-testing internally across teams—such as legal, comms, DEI, product and even frontline employees—and externally with friendly customers helps identify potential misinterpretations and avoid language that could be perceived as misleading or problematic. – Ritu Kapoor, Observe.ai

6. Create An Absolutely Transparent Culture

They say that “loose lips sink ships.” If there is something that keeps CEOs up at night, it’s a reputational crisis. My No. 1 rule for preventing such a crisis is to be absolutely transparent in everything that you do. I always tell my team to “raise the red flag” at the first instance, because if you aren’t aware of it, then you won’t be able to manage it. PR crises could have serious consequences. – Fahad Qadir, Haleon

7. Prepare Internally First

B2B crisis comms starts with employees, not the media. Prepare with cross-functional training, clear updates and strong stakeholder ties. Don’t exploit rivals, but reinforce your strengths. Always be ready so no one is caught off guard. – Mike Neumeier, Arketi Group

8. Understand Your Organization

Preventing a crisis isn’t possible. However, by truly understanding your organization—your purpose, your values, your brand pillars and your people—you’ll have the foundation you need to walk through crises safely and calmly. From there, you can create a robust plan that allows you to mitigate an issue before it reaches crisis status, minimizing business disruption and maintaining brand trust. – John Jorgenson, Cambium Learning Group

9. Plan Before You Need To

My No. 1 rule for preventing a PR crisis is to plan before you need to. Companies that wait to react often lose control of the narrative. A strong crisis plan—clear roles, prepared messaging and defined channels—gives you speed and clarity when it matters most, protecting both your credibility and your brand. – Nicole Tidei, Pinkston

10. Proactively Track And Correct Unwanted Stories

Proactively track and correct unwanted stories. Be vigilant of what’s being written about your brand and prevent any potential PR crisis with strong online reputation management programs. Leveraging the proliferation of online media channels and highlighting positive stories to counter a negative one are the keys to course-correcting – Namita Tiwari, Namita Tiwari

11. Own It Early

Own it early. That’s the No. 1 rule. When things go wrong—and they will—swift and transparent accountability can prevent a full-blown PR crisis. Communicate directly, fix the issue and explain how you’ll prevent it next time. Crises test character. Brands that lead with honesty and action build lasting trust. – Sara Payne, Inprela Communications

12. Listen Early And Often

Listen early and listen often. The best way to prevent a PR crisis is to spot the signals before they spike, whether that’s by monitoring customer feedback, employee sentiment or digital chatter. Silence is rarely a good sign. – Yael Klass, Similarweb Ltd.

13. Build Trusted, Cross-Functional Relationships

My No. 1 rule is to build trusted, cross-functional relationships early on. It ensures the communications team is part of decision-making, not damage control—reducing risk, aligning messaging and enabling swift, credible responses that protect reputation and build long-term brand trust. – JoAnn Yamani, Future 500

14. Lead With Transparency To Build Credibility

Truth builds trust. Most PR crises don’t erupt because something bad happened; they erupt because a company was perceived as hiding something, spinning facts or reacting too late. When organizations lead with transparency, they earn credibility with stakeholders. This makes it easier to manage difficult news when it does arise because audiences believe the company is being honest and accountable. – Kurt Allen, Notre Dame de Namur University

15. Prioritize Internal Alignment Before External Action

Most PR crises start when teams move fast, without shared clarity on messaging, values or risk. When everyone’s on the same page, you spot issues early on and build trust that lasts beyond the moment. – Cody Gillund, Grounded Growth Studio

16. Listen Before You Speak

The No. 1 rule is to listen before you speak. Proactively monitor internal sentiment and external conversations. Most PR crises stem from ignoring early warning signs. When you’re tuned in, you can address issues with authenticity and agility, protecting trust before it erodes. – Kal Gajraj, Ph.D., CAN Community Health

17. Treat PR As A Strategic Function

My No. 1 rule is to treat PR as a strategic function, not just an execution arm. PR leaders must have a seat at the table with the C-suite to flag reputational risks before decisions are made. Without that safeguard, early warning signs can be missed, leading to avoidable crises that damage brand trust and business viability. – John Schneider, Betterworks

18. Be Human Before Being Polished

My No. 1 rule is to be human before being polished. If something feels off internally, it’ll land worse externally. I always gut-check messaging for tone, empathy and unintended implications before it goes out. It keeps the brand grounded and keeps small missteps from becoming big headlines. – Aditi Sinha, Point of View Label

19. Maintain Continuous, Proactive Stakeholder Engagement

My rule for preventing a PR crisis is proactive stakeholder engagement. Continuously communicating with employees, customers, investors and the media helps address concerns before they escalate. This ongoing dialogue builds trust and ensures stakeholders are informed and supportive, protecting the company’s reputation during tough times. – Lauren Parr, RepuGen

20. Build Systems For Recognition, Response, Resilience And Reporting

Crisis cannot be prevented given the speed that chaos moves today. The real work is building systems for recognition, response, resilience and reporting, not just messaging. Crisis puts brand equity, trust and revenue at risk. Acting on truth, even in the face of legal risk, is the only way to avoid the long-term financial and reputation cost of silence, delay and inaction. – Toby Wong, Toby Wong Consulting

Feature Image Credit: Getty

Sourced from Forbes

By Cara Sloman, Edited by Micah Zimmerman

Big moments like launches and funding rounds are just the beginning. The real ROI comes from what you do next.

By Cara Sloman,

Edited by Micah Zimmerman

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Jodie Cook,

When was the last time you got an email newsletter that was actually good? It’s far too rare, and that’s an opportunity. Company updates, useless information and mediocre offers are being blasted out to mailing lists every single day. They’re wasting everyone’s time.

While everyone is sending trash communication, yours can stand out. You can start conversations that build trust and drive sales. You can make people think, spark genuine replies, and compel people to take action. It’s possible right now.

The difference between emails that get deleted and emails that get results comes down to connection. Here’s how to maximise yours with ChatGPT. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through.

Transform your email game with ChatGPT: write messages that actually connect

Start every email like you mean it

If you were writing an email to one single person, how would you start it? That’s the vibe to channel when you’re emailing your list. Forget “hey all” or “hi everyone.” Write to one person. The solo eyes that are scanning your words. Create a pattern interrupt when they believe for a second that you’re only writing to them. Make it conversational from word one.

“Help me rewrite this mass email to sound like I’m writing to one specific person. Replace generic greetings with personalized ones using [name]. Create an opening line that speaks directly to their current situation or interests. Add a closing question that invites a real response about their challenges. The tone should be conversational, like I’m messaging a smart friend who I respect. Here’s my email: [paste email]”

Share one mistake that matters

Perfect people are boring and unrelatable. Your list wants to know you’re human too. Share one specific mistake you made this week to build trust and teach a lesson. Make it a mistake you know they’ve made as well. Pick something real that happened, explain what went wrong, then share what you learned. Show you’re the person with the way forward for them. Vulnerability creates connection when used in the right way.

“I want to share a business mistake in my next email to build trust with my list. Help me craft a 150-word story about [describe a recent mistake or challenge]. Structure it to: 1) Briefly explain what happened, 2) Share what I learned, 3) Connect it to a lesson my audience can apply. Make it feel like I’m confiding in a friend, not lecturing. My audience struggles with [describe their main challenges].”

Ask what they really need

Businesses guess what their customers want and often get it wrong. But your list will tell you exactly what to build next if you just ask. Send an email asking one genuine question about their biggest struggle right now. Then actually read every response. Position yourself in their mind as someone who actually listens. It makes them more likely to listen to you. After that, create the solution they ask for.

“Write an email that asks my subscribers one powerful question about their biggest current challenge in [my area of expertise]. Make it clear I’ll personally read every response and use their input to shape what I create next. Include 2-3 follow-up questions that dig deeper into their specific situation. End by explaining exactly how their answer will help me serve them better. Keep it under 200 words and genuinely curious in tone.”

Reply to everyone personally

One sharp sprint manning your company inbox is worth its weight in gold. You’ll hear about their niggles, understand their requests, and get familiar with how they communicate to others. The rest is easy. You have to solve their problems, empathise with their viewpoints and mirror their language back. Your open rates go up when they believe you really care. Building a personable brand starts with making connections.

“Create 5 email reply templates I can customize when responding to subscriber messages. Each should: 1) Acknowledge something specific they mentioned, 2) Add value with a quick tip or resource, 3) Ask a follow-up question to continue the conversation. Make them feel personal, not automated. Include templates for: thanking for feedback, answering a question, responding to a complaint, celebrating their win, and following up on their challenge.”

Write like you’re talking to your smartest friend

Your subscribers are smart people who appreciate straight talk. When you email them, write like you’re texting your most successful friend about something exciting you discovered. Drop the formal language and get to the point. Don’t patronize, don’t over-explain, don’t talk down to them in any way. Use short sentences to show respect. Start sentences with “And” or “But” when it feels right. Make people actually want to read your emails instead of archiving them.

“Rewrite this email draft to sound like I’m texting my smartest, most successful friend about something exciting I discovered. Strip out all corporate language, jargon, and unnecessary words. Use short sentences. Start sentences with ‘And’ or ‘But’ when it feels natural. Make it punchy, valuable, and respectful of their intelligence. Here’s my draft: [paste email]. Keep the core message but make every word count.”

Make every email count by building real relationships

Stop treating your email list like a broadcast channel. Start every email with genuine connection and end with an invitation to respond. Share your mistakes and what you learned from them. Ask your subscribers what they need and then actually create it. Reply personally to build relationships that last. Write like you’re talking to one smart friend, not presenting to thousands. Turn your mass emails into conversations and watch your business transform.

Access all my best ChatGPT content prompts.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Jodie Cook

Find Jodie Cook on LinkedIn. Visit Jodie’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

By Kanishka

Great Design Isn’t Optional—These Newsletters Prove It’s a Growth Multiplier

What Do Morning Brew, TIME, and Arnold’s Pump Club Have in Common?

They’re all built on beehiiv—but that’s not the whole story.

What truly sets them apart?

Immaculate design.

These aren’t just newsletters. They’re full-blown brands. The kind that command attention, earn trust in seconds, and convert visitors without begging.

They’ve nailed something most newsletters overlook:

Design that drives growth.

Because great design isn’t just aesthetics—it’s strategy. It’s how you turn a casual browser into a loyal subscriber. It’s the feeling readers get the moment your homepage loads-the clarity of your value proposition; the trust embedded in every pixel.

Why Design Matters for Newsletters

Here’s what good design actually does for your newsletter:

• Increases conversions: Clear layouts and CTAs reduce friction for signups.

• Builds trust instantly: Professional design signals legitimacy and credibility.

• Supports your brand: Colours, fonts, imagery, and voice create a cohesive experience.

• Keeps people engaged: Thoughtful hierarchy and mobile-friendly layouts increase time on page.

• Drives repeat visits: Great archive pages and visual consistency keep readers exploring.

For example,  here is a screenshot from Oliver Darcy’s recent email. The first line clearly directs subscribers to sign up for his paid subscription tier.

With beehiiv, you’re not stuck with generic templates. You can customize every part of your site—from the homepage to the archive to the paid content walls.

Key Design Principles To Follow

Before we dive into the best examples, here are the design fundamentals that every newsletter site should nail:

1. Clarity Over Cleverness

Your homepage should answer three things instantly:

• What is this?

• Who is it for?

• Why should I care?

Take TIME Magazine, for example. Each of their newsletters opens with a crystal-clear pitch. 

Who it’s for, what you’ll get, and why it matters.

No guesswork, no fluff. Just value, front and centre.

2. Mobile-First Thinking

Over 60% of email opens happen on mobile. If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re losing readers.   

Test your site on multiple devices. Use fewer columns, more vertical spacing, and thumb-friendly CTAs.

Arnold’s Pump Club leans on simple sections, bold headers, and legible copy—so whether you’re on a morning walk or mid-set at the gym, it works.

The Daily Bite is a masterclass in mobile UX. Large fonts, clean vertical flow, and a prominent subscribe button that never gets lost. Even their archive feels swipeable.

3. High-Contrast CTAs

Make your signup buttons easy to see, tap, and understand. No vague copy. “Join free,” “Subscribe now,” or “Get the daily email” work better than “Go.”

Upward News does this beautifully. The subscribe button contrasts perfectly with the background and uses action-driven copy: Need-to-know reporting and analysis you won’t find in the mainstream media.

4. Consistency in Visual Branding

Your homepage, your emails, your archives—they should all feel like they belong to the same world. Think consistency:

• Fonts

• Colors

• Icons

• Tone of voice

Girlboss gets this right. Their newsletter site uses the same aesthetic as their Shopify store—peach tones, clean fonts, and a cool, confident voice.

Pick a color palette, stick to 1-2 fonts, and reuse design elements. Familiarity builds trust. Mismatch kills it.

5. Visual Hierarchy

Not all content deserves equal attention. Use layout intentionally to guide your reader’s eye where it matters most:

• Big, bold headline

• Subheadline or value prop

• CTA above the fold

• Posts or previews next

Purposeful Performer is a great example. The homepage leads you through: headline → value → CTA → premium upsell. It feels intuitive, not overwhelming.

CoinSnacks uses font weights and sectioning to break down a lot of content without overwhelming the reader. You scroll because it’s easy—not because you’re lost.

🏆 The 12 Best Newsletter Website Designs on beehiiv

Here’s a handpicked lineup of the best-looking (and best-converting) newsletter websites and why they work so well.

1. TodayIn Design

Visit site →

Minimalist design with whitespace done right. Perfect for a creative audience.
Design Wins: Subtle animations, simple subscribe flow, beautiful font pairing.

2. The Daily Bite

Visit site →

A fun, vibrant site that pulls you in fast.
Design Wins: Bold colors, clean emoji usage, friendly CTA (“Get your daily bite”).

3. Big Desk Energy

Visit site →

Yes, this is beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk’s own site—and it slaps.
Design Wins: Gradient background, punchy microcopy, and strong visual brand.

4. Kristi Digital

Visit site →

Polished and elegant, with a premium digital freelancer vibe.
Design Wins: Clean serif font, light colour palette, personal brand emphasis.

5. The Neuron Daily

Visit site →

Sleek and modern, perfectly tuned for the tech crowd.
Design Wins: Compact nav, large bold headlines, and frictionless subscribe UX.

6. Purposeful Performer

Visit site →

A masterclass in monetization.
Design Wins: Premium content previews, tiered CTAs, and engaging visuals.

7. Creator Spotlight

Visit site →

Feels like a media brand. Operates like a newsletter-first experience.
Design Wins: Hero imagery, feature blocks, beautiful post layouts.

8. The Future Party

Visit site →

Pop culture energy meets publishing polish.
Design Wins: Strong visual rhythm, bold typography, fast-loading everything.

9. Girlboss Newsletter

Visit site →

An extension of the main brand with a stylish twist.
Design Wins: Icon-based nav, modern preferences centre, great typography.

10. Just Women’s Sports Newsletter

Visit site →

Sporty and bold, with great post layout design.
Design Wins: Vivid colour scheme, content-forward structure, easy scroll archive.

11. CoinSnacks

Visit site →

Clean crypto without the clutter.
Design Wins: Digest-style homepage, dark/light mode vibe, strong branding.

12. AMMI.AI

Visit site →

AI newsletter with futuristic visuals and a bold UI.
Design Wins: Custom graphics, black-and-white colour scheme, CTA button animations.

Final Thoughts: Let Your Design Do the Work

Every one of these newsletters shows what’s possible with beehiiv’s website builder: conversion-driven design that still looks damn good.

With beehiiv’s Website Builder, you get:

• Full design control — Customize your homepage, archive, subscribe page, and even post layouts

• Clean, fast templates — Optimized for mobile and conversion, no coding needed

• Drag-and-drop modules — Add image blocks, testimonials, pricing cards, and more

• Custom domains — Build on your brand, not someone else’s

• Seamless paywall integration — Perfect for premium newsletters or gated content

Don’t let your layout hold your growth back.

Want your newsletter to look this good?

Try beehiiv’s Website Builder and launch a site you’re proud to promote.

By Kanishka

Sourced from Beehiiv

By Motley Fool Staff

AI, marketing, brand, creativity, These are just a few of the subjects that Seth Godin can talk about with eloquence and insight. In this episode of Rule Breaker Investing, the Purple Cow author joins Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner and guest host Andy Cross, The Motley Fool’s chief investment officer, to shed light on what earns attention, transaction, and loyalty.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you’re ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

As I shared at the start of the year, my 2025 book, Rule Breaker Investing is now available for pre-order. After 30 years of stock picking, this is my magnum opus, a lifetime of lessons distilled into one definitive guide, and each week until the book launches on September 16, I’m sharing a random excerpt. I crack open the book to a random page and read a few sentences. Let’s do it. Here’s this week’s Page Breaker preview a succinct Godin-like statement, summing up my investing approach in exactly 20 words. I quote. “I try to find excellence, buy excellence, and add to excellence over time. I sell mediocrity. That’s how I invest.” That’s this week’s Page Breaker preview to pre-order my final word on stock picking shape by three decades of market crushing success. Just type Rule Breaker Investing into amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, or wherever you shop for great books. When you think about it, a great investment book literally pays for itself, and then some. To everyone who’s already pre-ordered, thanks. That means a lot to me. In the words of the poet, Taylor Allison Swift, our next guest is feeling 22. Seth Godin has 22 best sellers in 39 languages. He’s an Internet entrepreneur, best-selling author, renowned speaker and marketing. Sure, expert. He’s posted more than 9,000 times on his blog, and his 22 books, I think I have that number right. He can correct me if I’m wrong. It’ll destroy the Taylor Swift opening if I don’t have that right, Andy. His 22 books include The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and Tribes. I want to throw Free Prize inside in there as well, book I love. His newest book is the best seller, This is Strategy Make Better Plans, published last year. He’s one of the two most famous people from Mount Vernon, Virginia. Seth Godin, welcome back.

Seth Godin: You guys, you’re great. David, you’re a genius. I’m from Mount Vernon, New York, but I’ll take it.

David Gardner: I rarely do this step. I’m going to throw my producer Mac Greer under the bus for, I would say, inadequate research that caused me to make, What is an embarrassing gas?

Seth Godin: It’s not embarrassing. I just don’t want to take any credit for being from a place I’m not from and move people from Virginia down the ladder. It’s not fair. [laughs].

Andy Cross: It’s all in the storytelling, anyways, Seth.

David Gardner: Seth, let’s go right to AI because how can we not? Seven years ago, you joined me on my podcast. You were my first ever author in August. It was August 1st, 2018, and you described daily blogging back then as the best way to sharpen your thinking. Today, so many creators lean on AI assistant like ChatGPT to draft, edit, spark ideas. How has AI changed your own writing process, Seth, if at all, and what would your advice be to someone who worries that AI will cheat their way to insight?

Seth Godin: Let’s say it’s 1,900, 1905, and we’re talking about electricity. I think it’s a little bit of a trap to ask about, are you using a light bulb at night to help you type? Because electricity opened the door for so many miracles that we had no idea were coming. Claude is one of my closest compatriots. I find ChatGPT to be arrogant and lazy, but Claude and I get along great, and I never ask it to do my writing for me, but that’s a personal choice because I write because I want to, not because some teacher told me I had to. What I do with Claude that continually amazes me are two things. First, is if you have a complicated document, 30, 40 pages, I had one that was written by 10 different people over the course of a year, and you upload that document and say to Claude, “Please find the internal inconsistencies, please ask me five hard questions, please criticize the structure,” it will write you a two page memo better than most humans could do. The second thing I use it for is, I’ll come up with a list of three or four or five things and say, “Give me four more.” Of the four it gives me, at least two of them are things I never thought of that are really important. This idea of, did I think of all the things on my list, is great, but, two years from now, both of these uses are trivial compared to what AI is going to be doing to our lives.

David Gardner: Do you want to make any predictions, Seth?

Seth Godin: My prediction is this. Everything AI has done so far for the typical person in business in the developed world is solo. It’s me and the AI. But the Internet has two words in it, Inter, which means connected and net, which means connected. That’s what fuels everything that works on the Internet. Once AI says to me, “I noticed you were writing X, Y or Z, David, who’s also using the same tool is working on the same thing. Should I connect you guys?” Whoa. What happens when my databases talk to each other or my databases talk to your databases? What happens when we create this amplification of community, not just amplification of knowledge? That adds two zeros, I think, to the way the world works.

David Gardner: Seth, you’ve written about how true pros don’t fear amateurs, but I think a lot of pros are fearing ChatGPT, generative AI, Claude, whatever it is. Should we?

Seth Godin: Well, I’ve had technology put my projects out of business before, and it will do it again. What I mean by true pros, don’t fear amateurs, when the camera came along, a whole bunch of people who were painters poo putt it. When the iPhone came along, wedding photographers freaked out. How dare guests at a wedding take pictures? Don’t they know how hard I work to get all this fancy equipment? But the best wedding photographers got busier after that, not less busy because you’re now charging for something that’s not a commodity. If you made a living doing genre covers for science fiction novels, you don’t have a job anymore, because if there’s a genre, AI can do it better than you can. What it does is it requires you to go beyond genre and to be on the frontier. If I think about something like radiology, there are plenty of professional radiologists, but they’re doing genre radiology by the book. Now an X-ray machine can instantly and for free, read a wrist fracture 95% of the time. I don’t need a mediocre radiologist ever again. This is great news because now the 90% of the population that didn’t even have access to X-rays and is going to. It’s really bad news if you’re by the book anything, and so that’s what I mean by being a professional is you’re not just checking the box and handing in the form.

David Gardner: Such a good distinction. Let’s talk a little bit more about AI. I’m wondering, especially Seth, I admire so much so many of your thoughts, words, deeds, your books. I’ve read a bunch of them. Branding is always top of mind when I think about you, and obviously, I think about the Motley Fool brand. That’s just our company, but branding matters a lot to me as an investor. In fact, I think that branding is often misunderstood because there’s no number for it on the balance sheet or the income statement, and so most people calculate their valuation ratios without factoring in what, to me, might be the central asset of every great company. Every great company sets go and ends up looking overvalued because we’re not counting brand. But I care about brand. Do you think AI is being well-branded today? Does AI have a branding problem?

Seth Godin: What’s a brand? It’s not a logo. The Motley Fool logo is a tiny fraction of the goodness of Motley Fool. You didn’t win the logo sweepstakes, but you built a brand that matters. And if you look at AI logos, they’re terrible. A brand is simply the promise that an organization makes and our expectation of what to expect. Hyatt has a logo, but Nike has a brand. If Hyatt came out with a line of sneakers, we have no idea what it would be like. But if Nike opened a hotel chain, we all know what it would be like. [laughs] And so that’s the brand value, if you’re not paying extra, there is no brand value, if you’re not taking risks because you give them the benefit of the doubt, there is no brand value. Fifty years ago, the mass murderer Marlborough had an enormous brand value because people would cross the street if the convenience store was sold out of Marlborough’s and buy their brand across the street. The thing about AI is anthropic as they say 600 people in their marketing department. I have no idea what they’re doing because there’s no consistency, there’s no structure to what I should be expecting from them. It’s just engineers launch stuff, and then the marketing people go to meetings and try to catch up.

AI has a brand in the sense that more people are paying more money for this new technology than has ever happened before for any technology I can recall. We’re paying the money because of what it’s going to do for us tomorrow, and so there’s this expectation. The challenge they have, is in order to get our attention, they have made insane promises, and regularly they break those promises, and so I wouldn’t trust AI to drive my car, and I wouldn’t trust AI to write my prescriptions, and I wouldn’t trust AI to write my books. But it does a little of those things all the time. Going forward, if there’s going to be enterprise value greater than the tech value, they’re going to have to develop this soft tissue brand, because I think the tech value, as always happens, will become a commodity. That means you either have to have a network effect, or a benefit of the doubt loyalty brand, or else it’s a commodity you’re going to charge with, it costs you to make the electricity work and a penny more, but you can’t get a premium because if not, I’ll just switch to somebody else.

Andy Cross: Seth, just a quick follow up there. You’ve written a lot about authenticity of brands. Generative AI and those tools, do they have an authenticity problem? Then a parallel to that is just in general, how do you evaluate the authenticity of a brand’s marketing?

Seth Godin: I’ve written that I think authenticity is a crock, and I think it’s a trap, and I think it should be avoided. Friends should be authentic, professionals should be consistent. If I go to see Taylor Swift and I pay $2,000 for the tickets, and she has a cold, I don’t want her to act like she has a cold. I want her to fake it, and act like the best version of Taylor Swift, because she’s a professional, and the same thing is true for anything I transact with a stranger hoofer. What I want from AI is not authenticity because I don’t care if it’s authentically having a hallucination. I want it to consistently keep its promise, and part of the job the marketers have. Well, so let me explain about marketing in tech firms. The greatest value created ever by a marketer in a tech firm is not Steve Jobs, it’s Marissa Mayer. Marissa Mayer, who didn’t have marketing in her title was one of the first employees at Google. At the time I was at Yahoo. Yahoo had 183 links on its homepage. Google was heading down that path really fast, and Marissa Mayer put a stake in the ground and stopped at two, and every time the engineers tried to make Google more complicated, she made them stop. That single act, which took five plus years of diligence, created what is it now, $1 trillion worth of value, because otherwise, it would have just been another place to do search. Yahoo was lazy.

I was the third member of the marketing department after they acquired my company, and so the two people who were in the marketing department, they were just in charge of putting up a billboard here and there. That wasn’t marketing. Marketing is, what is the story we’re going to live? What are the promises we’re going to make and the promises we’re not going to make? When people think of us, what are they going to think of? This has been missing in tech for a long time, and so you end up with people who let the tech run the company, and as a result, they inevitably slam into the wall.

David Gardner: I want to make sure I have my math and my history right. Seth, when you said there are two options on the Google homepage, I think one was search, and the other was, I’m feeling lucky?

Seth Godin: Correct. They’re taking it down as of, like, the next couple of weeks.

David Gardner: I have to admit I haven’t really clicked. I’m feeling lucky for a long time, so maybe but I love the whimsy of it.

Seth Godin: They didn’t want anyone to click on it. They just wanted to show confidence. [laughs]

David Gardner: Let’s shift now from branding to permission marketing. Early on, Seth Godin coined the term permission marketing to contrast with interruption tactics. These days, we’ve got some cookies crumbling, privacy regulations, proliferating, first party data, now king. Seth, how do you see permission marketing evolving and where should marketers focus to earn genuine consent permitted consent in 2025?

Seth Godin: When you and I met, it was 1991 or ’92, and I think somewhere in there and I had just invented email marketing. Someone needed to invent it, and it was me. The whole point was, it’s not spam. I testified at the US Senate against spam and got kicked out of the Direct Marketing Association in response. The Direct Marketing Association said, how dare you invite regulation of anything any company wants to do to steal attention? I said, you’re completely missing the point. The good guys want there to be regulation. The good guys want it to be rational and quiet and trustworthy. It’s the scammers and the spammers that want it to be the Wild West. You, the DMA, you should be on my team. I was thrilled years later, they let me back in because they understood the mistake they had made. The stuff you’re talking about, it’s all ham-handed, but it’s all in response to greedy, lazy organizations skirting around the edges. Permission is simple. It’s not the fine print. It’s a simple question. If you didn’t show up tomorrow, would we miss you? Would we miss you if you didn’t send us that email? Would we miss you if you didn’t update your website? If the answer is no, then you’re a spammer, and if the answer is yes, you’ve earned permission. I’m confident that if the Fool stopped sending its fans and its subscribers your newsletter, you would hear from a lot of people within five minutes. That’s because you’ve earned their permission, not you have some legal loophole you’re exploiting.

David Gardner: I really appreciate that point, and I do think the Motley Fool does a good job in some regards, and I think we also send out a lot of emails, too. I don’t think we’re 100% yet, but I certainly think we’re on the path. Thirty-one years in since you embedded email marketing Seth, a lot of people are still just trying to figure out how to do it best. It’s funny, just a quick reflection, and then Andy’s going to have a follow up, but my reflection is that what you just said, if we didn’t send it, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? That’s exactly the question that I ask in something I call the snap test when I look at companies, and I’m thinking like, will I invest in this stock or that one? The snap test was later made popular. I first wrote about this in our 1998 book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers but it was later made popular by Thanos of Marvel Avengers fame when he snapped his fingers and half of the world, including superheroes, disappeared. But literally in 1998, I said, here’s the way I think you can decide whether you should buy a stock or not. When you snap your fingers, if that company disappeared overnight, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? It has focused on impact and who’s got the love out there and it’s just fascinating to me that you basically said the same thing, and we’re using different contexts.

Seth Godin: Well, I’m just stealing all your ideas.

David Gardner: Not at all. No, we stole email marketing from you, sir. [laughs] Andy,

Andy Cross: Seth, how about the progression or the regression in permission marketing when you think about the technology of programmatic ads and cookies and targeting over the years? Where do we stand nowadays with permission marketing?

Seth Godin: Well, it’s like when one of your kids grows up and ends up in a federal prison. [laughs] When we were running Yoyodyne, we had a 82% open rate and a 33% response rate to the emails we sent. We’re the largest recipient and sender of email in the world at the time that was doing permission marketing. Those were our numbers week after week. Now, for most organizations, it’s 0.000001%, and the reason is the inevitable race to the bottom caused by people skirting around the edges to make their quarterly income go up. Because they’re like, It’s OK if I burn it down because it’s an emergency, and so they cheat. It was naïve of me when I wrote the book and in the years afterwards to not expect that that would happen because it always happens. What Google could have done is established better standards for how these interactions are going to go down so that good action would be more rewarded, and the open web is magnificent. We don’t have an open web. We have a semi-open web, and when somebody who has enough money and resources comes in and decides to bend it to their will, then the principles and ethics of what I’m talking about often go out the window because Milton Friedman was wrong. We need both independent entities they are trying to maximize their profit and their shareholder value and community action that’s organized around what’s best for the culture. The purpose of culture isn’t to enable capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to enable culture, and so we’re going to see all of this craft and destruction, and then the next thing is going to come, and then the next thing is going to come. My hope is that AI is going to work at least as hard to defend my attention as it’s going to work to steal my attention.

David Gardner: Seth, let me shift now to something that I really appreciate about you, and that’s your terseness. That’s how concise you are. Truly, and I remember talking about this seven years ago with you on the Rule Breaker Investing podcast, for every blog you write, you’ve thrown out four or five. There’s a lot, and you probably still do that or maybe you’re more efficient. It’s just two or three of these days, but I really appreciate the effort that you’ve put in to make things as tight as possible. I would say in some ways, Seth, you’ve built a career on brevity. Today’s short form video, this is where I’m heading now, thinking TikTok I don’t actually use TikTok, but turns out a lot of people do, I think Instagram. I also don’t use it, and even punch your economy of attention, 15 seconds of content for a lot of videos. What lessons from your writing practice might you do this content yourself? If so, what translates?

Seth Godin: What do we make? I think most people who listen to this make decisions. You don’t make pottery, you don’t dig ditches, you make decisions. Maybe you make a difference, and maybe you make change happen. I’m a teacher. What I make is I help my students who have opted in to whatever we’re doing like right now, change the way they see the world, change the way they get what they’re getting. The rule is, put the effort in to make the teaching as cogent and concise as possible, but no more than that.[laughs] There are all these ancient fables of the guy who knocks on the Sage’s door and says, wise guy, while I’m standing here on one foot, teach me everything there is, the meaning of life. My response would be, if you’re only willing to wait long enough for you to stand on one foot, you don’t care enough to change, and I’m not here to entertain you.

The reason I don’t show up on TikTok is not that I couldn’t get a lot of use because I understand the medium and I understand how to do a dance there that people might click on or the algorithm would like. It’s that it wouldn’t get me anything. I don’t sell stuff online, but I know people who have had 42 million views of something and sold four units. The goal is not to make Mark Zuckerberg happy. The goal is not to make the TikTok algorithm happy. The goal is to achieve what you set out to achieve. What’s the purpose of this work? I sometimes run into people who said, I read a two-paragraph blog post of yours, and it changed my life, but I’m way more likely to run into someone who says, I read your book and it changed my life. I’m even more likely to run into someone who said I took the altMBA, which I used to run, and that changed my life. What I’m looking for are people who are ready to lean in, and the short stuff opens the door, but they’ve got to then teach themselves or it’s not going to work, and the problem with TikTok is there’s not a lot of autodidactic experience going on there. There’s just amusement.

David Gardner: Do I recall correctly that you only took one English course in high? There’s some story, I remember you telling Seth about your own schooling in English.

Seth Godin: My high school English teacher, I took all the classes in high school, but she wrote in my yearbook, you are the bane of my existence, and you will never amount to anything. I still have it. I dedicated one.

David Gardner: Is that really what a teacher wrote into all like that?

Seth Godin: I dedicated one of my books to her cause was slightly tongue in cheek. My dad made a deal with my two sisters and me. We’d have to pay room and board in college. He’d pay tuition, but we had a major in engineering in exchange. Because he said, learn to solve problems, the rest of this is a bonus. Take as many English classes as you want, but first learn to solve problems. When I got to school, I discovered a loophole in the course catalogue, so I took engineering and a lot of philosophy classes. I loved the thinking and philosophy, and I took exactly one English class. What I discovered is college-level English, at least for me, wasn’t about learning to express myself the way I wanted to in a practical way. It was about literature, and I have too short of an attention span for that. That’s correct. One English class in college.

Andy Cross: Seth, back to the, well, a little bit tied to attention spans and the marketing question that David had asked. I’m really curious about this concept between grabbing and earning someone’s attention, especially today, as David said and you all were talking about just the brevity of information out there and the volume of information out there. Explain to us how we can earn someone’s attention versus grabbing someone’s attention?

Seth Godin: First, I don’t remember writing any of those words. It makes me smile to read it. It was so long ago I had to call it amazon.com.

David Gardner: It’s true.

Seth Godin: I made the decision a long time ago that I generally don’t talk about what’s going to be the next big company because every time I do, I curse them and they fail. This is your job. You are much better at it than me. [laughs] But here’s what I would say. If you think of a brand that you admire, it’s not because they have a good logo. It’s because that brand is doing something that is an unfair advantage. I am deep in on Patagonia, almost every article of clothing I own. Could I tell if my eyes were closed, if it was Patagonia? Probably not. But I like the way it makes me feel to be the person that is going to buy that item from a company that stands for that. No one’s going to be the next Patagonia because that slot is taken. Luxottica figured out how to corner the market, and it took an innovator like Neil at Warby Parker to expose the $400 premium that they had been charging as a tax to everybody. No one’s going to be the next Warby Parker. There’s no room to be the next Warby Parker. You can be a bottom fisher making a nickel at a time, but Warby Parker figured out how to play a remarkable game when the space changes.

My dad used to call this a change agent. Technology, big shifts, these are agents of change. When it shows up, we rescramble the board, and we saw this happen when we got streaming and YouTube and everything and cable before that. ABC, CBS, NBC, boom, toast because we scrambled the board. What I’m seeing right now is the biggest scramble of the board since the Internet and probably bigger, which is AI. If you have a job where you do something that someone could write down what they want, they’re probably going to get AI to do it cheaper because if that’s all the job involves is writing down the steps in the spec, I got a machine that’s going to do that for me for $20 a month. That giant scramble means a whole bunch of organizations that do something that requires judgment and insight are going to arise. I think many of them are going to have very few people who work there, and most of them aren’t going to need to go public, but some of them will choose to, and we’re not going to recognize the corporate landscape, I think, in eight years. I really don’t.

Andy Cross: Yes.

Seth Godin: Before you spend $1 of your family’s savings investing in anything, understand what those two people are telling you.

David Gardner: I want to thank Seth Godin for a very special hour here on Fool 24 and some podcast-worthy stuff that we’ll be sharing throughout the fool world in the next week. Seth, I want to just say thank you, friend, and you always make me laugh, and you always make us think. Here’s to the next 3.4 million words.

Seth Godin: Thank you both.

By Motley Fool Staff

Sourced from The Motley Fool

By Efosa Udinmwen

Mailchimp is now more than email, and it might outpace your CRM

• Mailchimp’s subtle updates are stacking up to challenge what we expect from SMB software
• Integrations with TikTok, Meta, and Google are finally making Mailchimp marketing feel connected
• Metrics Visualizer offers 40+ variables, but feels like overdue functionality rather than innovation

Mailchimp’s continued transformation from a straightforward email marketing service into a broader business platform seems less like a pivot and more like a quiet evolution.

Over the past year, the company has introduced more than 2,000 updates, most of them small but collectively significant.

These updates aim to simplify customer engagement and automate key marketing workflows, quietly nudging Mailchimp toward becoming a top CRM offering – at least in ambition, if not yet in capability.

Mailchimp expands beyond email marketing

At its recent FWD: London 2025 event, Mailchimp announced a wave of new features aimed at helping small and mid-sized businesses get more from their customer data.

These include direct lead integrations with platforms like Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google, and Snapchat.

Marketers can now bring in social campaign leads more efficiently and feed them into Mailchimp’s upgraded automation flows for hyper-personalized messaging.

This, paired with over 100 new pop-up templates, seems like a step toward making Mailchimp feel less like a glorified newsletter tool and more like a proper pipeline manager.

“Mailchimp is evolving into the essential bridge between advertising and customer relationships for businesses, seamlessly connecting ad campaigns to powerful marketing automation that nurtures leads and drives sales,” said Ken Chestnut, Director of Global Partner Ecosystem, Intuit.

“We’re closing the loop between advertising, marketing automation, and powerful customer insights, giving businesses the tools to engage at the right time and place of the customer journey, from attracting new leads and nurturing relationships to driving conversions and building lasting loyalty.”

Still, it’s hard to ignore that these features look like a patchwork of add-ons rather than a coherent CRM suite, at least for now.

Freya Doggett from Serpentine Galleries acknowledged the improvements but also hinted at the ongoing complexity many users still face.

“It feels like we’re not having to do as much digging or joining the dots as much, which is really nice…Mailchimp really simplifies things that are complicated by nature.” It’s a compliment, but a cautious one.

The new Metrics Visualizer introduces over 40 reporting variables across email and SMS channels.

Marketers can now assemble custom reports with much greater clarity, a welcome step for anyone still juggling data from multiple platforms.

If Mailchimp hopes to contend with true CRM systems or even compete with the best email marketing service options out there, this kind of cross-channel insight will be essential.

What’s still ahead might be more telling than what’s here now. Mailchimp is pushing toward becoming an all-in-one growth platform, but it’s not quite the best website builder, nor a fully mature CRM system, just yet.

Feature Image credit: Shutterstock/Alexander Supertramp

By Efosa Udinmwen

Efosa has been writing about technology for over 7 years, initially driven by curiosity but now fueled by a strong passion for the field. He holds both a Master’s and a PhD in sciences, which provided him with a solid foundation in analytical thinking. Efosa developed a keen interest in technology policy, specifically exploring the intersection of privacy, security, and politics. His research delves into how technological advancements influence regulatory frameworks and societal norms, particularly concerning data protection and cybersecurity. Upon joining TechRadar Pro, in addition to privacy and technology policy, he is also focused on B2B security products. Efosa can be contacted at this email: [email protected]

Sourced from techradar.pro

By Jen Mills

If you found this article via a search engine, it was probably Google.

In the UK, 90% of general search queries use the search engine, and more than 200,000 businesses rely on its advertising.

Now, the UK competition’s regulator has given an update in their investigation into whether Google has too much power, saying it is a ‘key gateway to the internet’ and may need to loosen its control.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said today that it is minded to give the tech firm ‘strategic market status’, after starting to look into this in January.

This would require Google to follow certain rules around competition with other search engines and ad providers.

What could change for Google users?

At the moment, Google is the default search engine for Apple and Samsung phones in the UK after making deals with their makers, but in future this may have to change.

Users could be given a ‘choice screen’ to pick between search engines, in case they want DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ecosia, or something else instead.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Jen Mills

Sourced from METRO

By Pawel Rzeszucinski,

For the better part of two decades, online search was synonymous with Google. Businesses fine-tuned their digital presence for keywords, meta tags and backlink strategies, all with one goal: Land on page one of the search results. But the landscape has changed. We’re entering a new era, one where the question is no longer who ranks first but who gets cited by the AI.

The arrival of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude has introduced a fundamentally different way to retrieve information. These tools do not point users to a list of links. Instead, they deliver direct, synthesized responses, drawing from vast corpora of public content. And they are beginning to reshape the expectations of how people search altogether.

From Search Results To Synthesized Answers

The shift may feel subtle at first, but the implications are significant. Users no longer have to skim through a dozen articles to piece together an answer. Instead, AI models offer the summary upfront. This isn’t just more convenient; it’s structurally different. It bypasses the traditional web entirely.

We’re seeing this play out even within Google’s own ecosystem. With the rollout of its AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience), Google has begun integrating AI-powered summaries at the top of many results pages. The outcome? A recent analysis found that when these AI summaries are present, traditional organic click-through rates can drop by as much as 70%. Even paid ads take a hit. What we’re witnessing is not a slight dip in traffic; it’s a reallocation of user attention away from web pages and toward machine-generated summaries.

At the same time, standalone AI assistants are gaining traction. ChatGPT now ranks among the most visited websites globally, with hundreds of millions of monthly users. It has also become a starting point for research, brainstorming and decision making tasks once firmly in Google’s territory. Even smaller players like Perplexity are gaining momentum, offering a hybrid search-chat experience that combines AI answers with cited sources—an early glimpse into what next-gen search may look like.

What This Means For Your Business

If your company’s discoverability strategy still relies heavily on traditional SEO techniques, it’s time to recalibrate. The notion of “ranking” is being replaced by something more ephemeral: being included, referenced or cited by an AI system that synthesizes answers in real time.

This new landscape rewards clarity, trust and technical readiness over clever keyword placement. It values the ability to be understood by machines just as much as being read by humans. And it places a premium on domain authority, not in the SEO sense, but in the broader sense of being seen as a reliable, high-quality source of truth.

Here is what digital marketing teams should be doing right now:

1. Write for answers, not just algorithms. Content must be structured in ways that make it easy to extract and reuse. That means addressing questions clearly, using plain language and front-loading the value. Think in terms of what an LLM might quote or paraphrase when constructing a response. Analyse how people phrase their interactions with LLMs and adjust your content to fit this design pattern.

2. Demonstrate authority through quality. AI models tend to draw from reputable, high-quality sources. This includes industry publications, well-maintained blogs, peer-reviewed research and sites with a history of accurate information. Superficial content created purely for traffic will struggle to earn citations. Instead, focus on depth, originality and trust signals like author bios, clear sourcing and consistent topical expertise.

3. Invest in structured data. Schema markup and structured metadata can help machines understand your content more effectively. It is not glamorous work, but it is essential if you want to be eligible for rich results, snippets or inclusion in AI-generated overviews. Especially for product, event or FAQ content, proper tagging increases the odds that your site is seen as “machine-readable.”

4. Go beyond Google. Traffic diversification is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity. Web crawlers that feed LLMs are increasingly pulling from non-traditional platforms to find fresh, credible content. Forums like Reddit, niche communities, technical Q&A sites and public newsletters are becoming valuable sources for both real-time conversations and training data. These platforms signal human engagement and topical relevance—two things that LLMs often prioritize when generating responses.

The Strategic Imperative

This is not just a shift in how people search. It’s a shift in who controls the gateway to information—and how your company earns a spot in that conversation. Google may still dominate the market by volume, but AI tools are reshaping the experience of search. And user habits are changing faster than most brands are reacting. Traditional SEO isn’t going away. But it is becoming only one piece of a much more complex discoverability puzzle. Being “AI-visible” is the next frontier.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Pawel Rzeszucinski,

Sourced from Forbes