Impulsa · The wake-up
Does this AI thing really work for a business like mine?
Maybe you think this is for big brands with tech teams. It is exactly the opposite.
What you'll take from this
- Why small, local businesses gain more from AI, not less
- The one idea you need to understand to get started (no expertise needed)
There is this idea that showing up in AIs is a thing for huge companies. In practice the opposite happens: small, local businesses are the ones that gain the most, because they are the ones people look for by recommendation.
Small, local businesses are the ones that gain the most.
If you live on being found in the neighborhood, on Instagram or on a customer passing along your contact, the AI is your word of mouth at another scale. And today it is deciding those recommendations without you. According to BrightLocal's annual consumer survey, 83% check Google before deciding where to buy, and that is exactly the kind of signal that now also feeds AI answers.
Source: BrightLocal, annual local consumer surveyYou do not need to be an expert. You need to understand one simple idea: the AI can only recommend what it knows and understands. Your job is to give it that, clearly.
That is exactly what MerbIQ exists for: so that, when someone asks an AI for a business like yours, yours has a real chance of being the answer.
Did that land?
Who tends to gain the most from AIs recommending businesses?
Take the first step: look at what AIs know about your business today.
Continue the course
You ask AIs for recommendations. Have you ever asked them about you?
Every day we ask an AI for recommendations, yet almost no owner asks why the AI is not recommending them. If someone looks for exactly what you offer and your name never shows up, that person leaves with someone else, and you never even find out. The good news: this can be worked on.
The question your customer asks the AI (and you never hear)
Your future customers no longer type only into a search engine: they ask an AI in plain language, the way they would ask an acquaintance. Knowing what they ask, and what the AI answers, is the first step to entering that conversation.
Either it recommends you, or it recommends your competition
Every time a customer asks an AI for a recommendation, someone wins that customer. If you did not give the AI clear information, another business takes the spot. There is no tie: either you show up, or someone else does.