If you’re an ecommerce professional, you’ve likely spent a decent amount of your year so far thinking about, reading about, or listening to the idea of selling through large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI avenues. As more and more users flocked to and spent more time on the ChatGPTs, CoPilots, and Claudes of the world, it was only natural that the experience would evolve from purely awareness and consideration to supporting the entire journey.
We’re still in the early stages, so while nothing is certain yet, the potential is too great for many to miss out on doing nothing. Which is why experimentation and adaptability are going to be key.
One of the big questions on marketer’s minds is what needs to be done from a setup standpoint to get in on the LLM-selling action. And a lot of that focus is on how to connect with the LLMs themselves. But first brands need to take a step back. Let’s explain why.
Standing Out Starts With You
The battle right now for brands is that when a consumer engages with an LLM to ask for product and brand recommendations or options, they want to be one of the names that shows up. That makes sense.
Brands then need to ask themselves: how do these agentic AI platforms and agents find them? That information has to come from somewhere. Yes, some of that is from reputable third-party sites. And part of your strategy should be making sure you are being talked about (and talked about fondly) on those sites. But so much of showing up depends on what you’re doing (or failing to do) on your owned channels. That means:
Customer and product data that is clean, up to date, and accessed across platforms.
Optimized product pages that clearly identify and detail what the product is, and showcase it well through your copy and images.
Integrated and cohesive ecommerce, OMS, CRM, and other platforms that give a real-time, 360-degree view of your products and inventory.
A clear understanding of who your customers are and what they look like from a demographic and behavioral standpoint.
A website and pages that are developed using generative engine optimization (GEO).
Localized and personalized strategies to show up on specific, relevant queries.
That’s a lot to focus on and none of it has anything to do with actually connecting to an LLM to physically checkout and sell products. So while it’s tempting to look up the steps to start selling through Gemini using the UCP, none of that is going to generate the results you want unless those bullet points above are addressed first.
Take Our AI Readiness Assessment
As with anything in marketing, it’s a nuanced game. There are degrees to each of those points above. You may think you have strong product pages, but are they as good as they need to be?
We’ve developed an AI readiness assessment to help you understand where you stand on the road to AI selling and what you can do to improve your chances of standing out and converting with your customers.
Click the link below to see how you score.
