AI Is Sending Me Clients. I Want to Know Why.
About this Squarespace video tutorial
Recently, my business has changed because of AI...I've been getting more leads than ever through ChatGPT! At the start of this series, I want to break down what I've done to be visible to AI and what I'm going to start doing to test how to get even more AI leads.
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
2:34 - Getting Clients Through AI
4:49 - There is No Magic AI Optimization
7:22 - Next Steps
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As a website designer for the past few years, I’ve had some thought about AI and what it’s going to do to my job, my business, and how I work. Something unexpected has happened to me over the past couple of months, though.
Some of the best leads I’ve been getting for my business have been coming from ChatGPT.
Obviously, I’m thrilled about that, the clients have been seriously great, but I want to know why. As a digital marketer and someone who loves data analytics, why is ChatGPT recommending me and how can I be more ahead of the game instead of going “oh that’s great”.
That’s why I’m starting a new series, and to start it today, I’m going to break today’s topic up into three things. The first is to talk about my actual experience with ChatGPT and AI recommendations. The second is that I didn’t do some magical AI switch to get recommended so we’ll talk about what I did do to get to this point. The third thing is to cover the experiment itself and all the questions I have. If you have any questions about AI visibility that I can answer, put them here and we can maybe discuss them in future episodes.
The different thing about this series, though, is that I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m actively learning and figuring out as I go, so welcome to me figuring it out.
Takeaway 1: AI is now a way people are discovering my business.
I was scared AI would take away my business, but it’s been growing it substantially over the past few months. With Designing The Row, so much of my business has come from referrals and people responding to websites I’ve built. Now, for people to reach out and say they came to me from ChatGPT has been very cool and different.
If you’ve read my blogs, you’ll know I love SEO strategies and have been doing them for a long time, and it’s interesting that now they have started to really pay off.
AI is happening right now, and even over this year, I’ve seen so many more leads coming from ChatGPT, Google AI, and more because people are changing how they search for things. Even if my YouTube videos or blogs are getting less hits than they used to, my client count is increasing, and that’s more important.
Takeaway 2: There is no magical AI optimization switch
I didn’t click something last month and ‘turn on’ AI optimization. What’s clear is that all the marketing I’ve been putting out over the years, my website, my videos, my blog posts, the social media posts, all my links across the internet, my Squarespace credentials, podcasts and interviews I’ve done, all signal to AI platforms about what DTR does.
There’s an ecosystem giving the internet info on what Designing The Row is and what it does. Your website is your home base and everything else should lead to that, and this is the fruit of that strategy.
I’m excited with this series to keep talking about these ancillary marketing strategies that are more than just the website.
Takeaway 3: Intentionally experimenting with what I’m doing
I haven’t been guessing with what I’ve been doing, but I haven’t been the most consistent with everything to market myself. I’ve been doing a lot of things, but not as intentionally as I’d like.
Asking questions, getting deep with where I’m showing up, why I am, where I’m not, and what AI is saying about me, and what can I reasonably change to affect these outcomes?
Can I control the leads that come in from these AI platforms with adjustments?
I don’t have the answers but I know I’m getting leads, but I want to see if I can intentionally make a bigger impact with these tools that we all have.
The action item today is to see where your leads are coming in from. If you have an intake form that you use to bring clients into your business, ask them where they heard about you. It’s very valuable data that you can use to start figuring out if you’re getting AI leads as well and track your progress over time.
In the next blog I want to look into a new Squarespace AI Visibility tool, which will be a good way for us to start answering these questions. We’ll go over it next week!
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Recently, my business has changed because of AI...I've been getting more leads than ever through ChatGPT! At the start of this series, I want to break down what I've done to be visible to AI and what I'm going to start doing to test how to get even more AI leads.