I know this seems like a very weird topic for a blog post, but I assure you, there is logic and a practical marketing application ahead.

My story starts with Walter Isaacson.

Walter is a renowned journalist and historian. Most notably, he has carved his niche writing bestselling books about geniuses like Steve Jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Elon Musk.

A few years ago, I met and interviewed Walter at the annual SXSW conference. I asked him, “What are the personality traits that create a genius?”

He thought for a moment and said, “Two things: insatiable curiosity and an ability to connect the dots in a new way.”

I’ve met a few geniuses in my life, and I would concur that this definition is as good as any. It also points to an opportunity for you to leverage AI to reach for something greater. My thinking goes like this … AI is not curious, at least not yet. This is a uniquely human function. However, with the intelligence of all humanity at its disposal, AI excels at recognizing patterns and connecting the dots.

Let’s look at how we might put this together for you and your business.

The essential importance of curiosity

One of the conclusions I made in my book How AI Changes Your Customers is that curiosity is an essential human trait in the AI Era. If you’re curious, AI will feed you. You’ll gain wisdom. But if you’re lazy and just seek “the answer,” you’ll whither.

I am a massively curious person. Perhaps I am curious to a fault. I’ve certainly left money on the table over the years by pursuing interests rather than niches (and am much happier for it).

Here is what I have been curious about lately. My theory is that no matter what happens in the AI future, human art will persist. This suggests that a survival strategy for human marketers is to have our content approach the level of art. Not just stories … AI can do that. But a true, unique interpretation of the human experience, like the best musicians, poets, and painters.

Let’s test my latest curiosity flow and see if it can make me a genius.

Connecting the dots

For AI to connect the dots, I need to give it some dots to connect.

Here is my input to Claude:

You are the world’s premier marketing consultant and an expert in the history of consumer behavior, creativity, and business success. I have a theory that I’d like you to test for me. Even with the increasing intelligence and sophistication of AI, human marketing creativity will still stand alone as long as it digs deep to explore the singularly unique aspects of humanity — like an artist. Please create a 750-word opinion on this idea and how it might relate specifically to content marketing success. Do not be afraid to criticize me and alter my position. My goal is to gain unique insights and wisdom I can use to teach others. Here are thoughts from my books and blog posts to help you connect the dots:

• Art is our last, best expression of hope.
• When we don’t know what to trust in a world of deepfakes, we will turn to the people and organizations expressing themselves in ways that are resonant, compassionate, and authentic.
• To stand out, we must be original. To be original, we have no choice but to tell our own story.
• As people seek meaning, this will not come from scientific explanations. The only adequate response comes from art. Art is a way for people to explore and celebrate their unknowing.
• If most of our human experience becomes AI-generated, authentic human expression will become a luxury and point of differentiation.
• With the glorious output of AI, we will become de-sensitized to the sensational and be attracted to content that seems to come from a familiar human friend. The all-consuming razzle-dazzle of AI slop does not bring us into a relationship with others.
• Similarly, with AI’s exceptionally persuasive capabilities, we will tire of constant manipulation. Art moves us while AI tries to make us move.
• AI output is built on conformity. Great marketing is built on non-conformity. Attention requires an element of chaos, something that shatters expectations. AI is built to eliminate the anomalies. Art is built to focus on the anomalies.
• The most human company wins.

The results

The output from Claude (I added the reference link):

Let’s start with where the theory holds. You named Content Shock years before anyone else saw it coming—the moment content supply outstrips human attention and volume stops working. AI didn’t soften that curve. It ended the argument. Anyone can now produce an infinite amount of competent, on-brand, search-optimized content for the price of electricity. The strategy that built most content marketing careers, including parts of yours, is now worthless. On this, we agree completely.

So scarcity moves. The rare thing is no longer the content. It’s the human behind it. Fine.

Here’s where I want to push you, because your theory is half-built, and the missing half is the part you can actually teach.

You’ve located the scarce, defensible thing in the output—in art, in expression, in content that “seems to come from a familiar human friend.” But that’s a look. And looks are exactly what AI counterfeits best and cheapest. The warm, vulnerable, hand-made-feeling personal essay is already being mass-produced. Authenticity as an aesthetic is being industrialized as we speak. If your edge is that your content feels human, you will lose that contest to a machine that can feel human on demand, at scale, for free, in any voice you name.

Art is not safe because it looks like art. Vulnerability is not safe because it sounds vulnerable. AI can fake all of it, and will.

So what can’t it fake?

Stakes.

AI generates vulnerability infinitely because it risks nothing. It has no body, no mortality, no customer who can leave, no reputation that can burn. It cannot take a position that costs it something, because nothing costs it anything. That is the structural gap, and it is the only one that doesn’t close.

This reframes your best line. You wrote, “Art moves us while AI tries to make us move.” True—but ask why art moves us. Not because it’s expressive. Because someone paid for it. There was a person who chose this and rejected that, who staked a reputation, who could be wrong in public. We are moved by evidence of cost. The brushstroke matters because a hand that could have failed made it.

Authenticity, then, is not a property of content. It is a property of accountability. It lives in the relationship, not the artifact. A familiar human friend isn’t trusted because their writing has a certain texture. They’re trusted because they’ve been consistent over time, because they have skin in the game, because they can be held responsible when they’re wrong.

That’s the anomaly that survives. Not stylistic chaos—AI does chaos now; “be weird” is already a prompt. The surviving anomaly is conviction with consequences: a point of view you would defend even when it costs you customers. Patagonia telling people not to buy its jacket worked because the sentence was expensive to say, and they meant it. No model will ever generate that because the words are free, but the position is not.

Now the criticism you asked for. “Art is our last, best expression of hope” is a beautiful sentence, and it is one prompt away from becoming its own slop. The romantic frame gives marketers permission to be self-indulgent—to mistake personal expression for customer value and call it courage. The artist who ignores the audience is, in marketing terms, a failed artist. Marketing has a job: it must arrive at a human need. Pure self-expression isn’t marketing; it’s a diary. Your theory, taught carelessly, produces a generation performing depth while forgetting the person they’re supposed to serve.

So here’s the synthesis I’d hand your students, sharper than where you started:

The most human company doesn’t win by looking most human. It will lose that fight. It wins by being the most accountable—by holding a conviction it would pay to keep, in service of a customer it actually understands. Art is the medium. The moat is the stakes behind it.

For content marketing specifically, this rewrites the whole job description. The work is no longer producing volume, or even producing beauty. It’s earning the right to be believed—through consistency, through positions that could cost you, through being a person your audience can hold responsible. Everything else is texture, and texture is now free.

Stop performing authenticity. Start risking something.

That’s the line AI can’t cross, and it has almost nothing to do with art. It has to do with whether there’s a person on the other end with something to lose—and whether your audience can tell.

Did this produce wisdom?

This Claude result should prove to anyone that AI does NOT have to be a sycophant! I laughed out loud at this sentence:

Now the criticism you asked for. “Art is our last, best expression of hope” is a beautiful sentence, and it is one prompt away from becoming its own slop.

Ouch!

Of course, we must approach AI output with discernment. Just because it says something doesn’t make it true. But I did learn a few things:

Claude pushed back on the sentimentality of “being human.” AI can replicate this. It forces me to accept an uncomfortable truth: Authenticity is being industrialized. If we can’t tell the difference, there is no difference.

“Vulnerability is not safe because it sounds vulnerable. AI can fake all of it, and will.”

I’m not sure I agree with this, but Claude is pushing me to realize that no matter how spammy AI is today, we must consider the capabilities of tomorrow. Can AI seem vulnerable? Yes, I can accept that possibility. It certainly replicates empathy.

Now we get to the critical insight:

So what can’t it fake? Stakes.

Essentially, Claude is saying, “You’ve dug deep. It has to be deeper. To stand out, you must risk something.”

Conviction with consequences. This is actually aligned with what I teach in my personal branding class. I call it spiky content — a provocative position that is defensible. So this puts a new name to something I have already been teaching.

I work with many large brands. I can tell you with certainty that creating “marketing with stakes” is a distant dream for any company with a legal department.

The work is no longer producing volume or even producing beauty. It’s earning the right to be believed.

Am I a genius now?

Here’s my view of AI. It’s Ripley in the movie Alien, climbing into the cargo loader to fight the intergalactic monster.

The exoskeleton makes her bigger, stronger, more effective. But notice what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t decide to go back for the child, Newt. It doesn’t choose the fight. Ripley does that in her own skin, before she ever straps in. That is the risk. Those are the stakes.

In this post, I’m inside the suit. AI didn’t transform me. It connected my dots and put a finer point on my teaching. It made good ideas better. Scarier, but better. And I’m the one putting my name on the line to publish something like this.

Let’s go back to Walter Isaacson’s definition of genius: curiosity plus connecting dots. This post was an illustrative exercise, and it proves something. AI might connect the dots better than I do. Maybe half of genius just got automated.

What AI can’t do is collect the dots. Jobs and Da Vinci didn’t connect a few; they connected a lifetime’s worth — gathered in arguments and failures and endless experiments. And then they bet on them. The collecting and the betting are still ours.

AI did not make me a genius. It came up with a nuanced insight that makes me better. But maybe someone could be a genius if they keep collecting dots over a lifetime and get a nudge over the line from AI.

But here’s an achievement: AI helped me produce something spiky today — content with stakes. Some people will hate this post. Good. I have a defensible position, and I enjoy the pushback. That stake (my reputation) is the part that was never coming from a machine.

Perhaps this one post will stand out, but the hard question is scale. Every large enterprise is engineered to strip the stake out — legal, brand safety, the approval committee. In the past, they’ve succeeded by killing anything that threatens “the stakes.”

So the real challenge isn’t a smarter AI. It’s whether a company can find the nerve to ship risky marketing on purpose — and protect the person willing to put their name on it.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Google Gemini.

The post How to use AI to become a genius appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Too short for a blog post, too interesting to ignore, here are a few snippets on what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Content creator angst

I am finding it harder and harder to post on social media. I feel like it has become a performance. People are trying to out-vulnerable each other.

I just want to do good work. Spending one second of my life editing a Reel seems like a waste of a second that will never come back.

Perhaps this is why I like writing. Create. Let it sit. Make it sing. And it doesn’t disappear.

There’s no schtick to it.

Content you can create in your underwear. Now that’s livin’.

Content creator angst part deux

My friends and colleagues are constantly debating any system tweak that pleases the LinkedIn algorithm. The major theme is to post stuff that generates comments. LinkedIn wants conversations.

I generally do not write for comments, but sometimes I stumble into it.

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of myself sleeping on a bench in the Amsterdam airport after canceled flights and a hotel foul-up. It received more than 82,000 views.

The following week, I posted a helpful, original article reflecting on Peter Drucker’s unique wisdom and how his “five questions” remain relevant to marketing today. This post, which took about four hours to write, received 2,000 views, or about 3% of the airport post.

This suggests that the key to engagement on LinkedIn is goofy personal photos. But before you follow this path of least resistance, keep asking yourself — for LinkedIn and ALL social media activity — “to what end?”

Engagement is largely a vanity metric. You can engage yourself broke. Marketing is about creating customers.

It’s all about the feeling

New research shows that 42% of teens say that talking about their feelings is important to them, and brands are responding. McDonald’s new “Draw How You Feel” Happy Meal boxes trade the classic red for a blank canvas. This ties into a broader trend of experiential and wellness-driven packaging.

Built around the finding that 85% of teenage girls aren’t meeting recommended physical activity guidelines, Nike and Spotify launched Make Moves to encourage girls to move to just one song a day, using music to make physical activity more joyful and emotionally accessible. A UK pilot with 700 girls showed a 20% improvement in confidence and a 19% decrease in regular feelings of anxiety.

Experiential marketing is such a huge opportunity and is largely overlooked.

More about experiences

My new book, How AI Changes Your Customers, details six ways AI is rewiring human psychology.

Chief among these is cognitive offloading, addiction, and a trend to form trusting emotional connections with chatbots.

But pay attention to the news. There’s a backlash trend emerging.

Young people are rediscovering the joy of gathering. I’ve recently seen articles about young people watching movies together, listening to vinyl albums straight through at parties, and a surge in the popularity of board games:

How can your company help bring people together like this and be part of this trend?

Keeping pace with AI

The AI world is changing so rapidly. I think there are three key strategies to keep up:

1. Schedule time to dabble every day. Most platforms have a free or trial version. Push the envelope and experiment.
2. Subscribe to at least one podcast, newsletter, or video series commenting on the latest updates and releases. I really love the Artificial Intelligence podcast hosted by Paul Roetzer.
3. Join a community of like-minded people who are experimenting and can teach you by association. One option for marketers is RISE. You can’t stay relevant on your own.

We need to find new channels

Here’s another reason why looking at alternatives like experiential marketing and word-of-mouth makes sense: Social media use appears to be in decline. A roud-up of research I’ve seen:

• A 2025 Deloitte consumer trends survey of more than 4,000 Brits found that nearly a quarter of all consumers had deleted a social media app in the previous 12 months (inclund one-third of Gen Z)
• Social media use has steadily declined since time spent on the platforms peaked in 2022, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries by the Financial Times and digital audience insights firm GWI. Globally, adults 16 and over spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes per day on social platforms by the end of 2024, down almost 10% since 2022. The decline was particularly pronounced among teens and 20-somethings…
• Young people who are deleting their social media platforms cite the increasing pressures of being online as well as damage to their mental health as causes. Deloitte’s consumer survey found that nearly a quarter of respondents who deleted social apps reported that these apps had negatively affected their mental health and consumed too much of their time.

Implementing AI in your company

Long ago, I led a Fortune 100 company into the digital age.

The marketing world faced the same distractions — lots of sexy opportunities to make a splash on social media, with easy-to-measure “Likes.”

I was more successful than almost any competitor in my space by staying strictly focused on one thing: Digital applications that could directly make us money or save us money.

And, like today, measurement with absolute attribution was difficult. But you know what great managers pay attention to?” Stories, like “hey, a customer just raved about how easy it is to do business with our new eCommerce system.”

I think this is still an effective implementation playbook: 1) Focus tightly on making money and saving money instead of vanity metrics; 2) Look for qualitative measures like comments and stories as a success indicator, at least at first.

Thanks for reading along with me today. I never take you for granted!

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Content creator angst: You can engage yourself broke. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Is there anything more frustrating than justifying brand marketing to your boss? And yet, I’ll explain why brand is more important in the AI Era!

Maybe this post will even help your next budget request get approved.

Today I will cover:

• Brand as the AI override
• How AI erodes competitive advantage
• Brand as the Trust Anchor

Brand as AI override

AI is having a cataclysmic impact on every aspect of marketing, but none more important than search.

While a cottage industry emerges to figure out the new rules of SEO, perhaps your money might be best spent avoiding the SEO dilemma altogether.

Here’s what I mean.

Last year I had ChatGPT plan my five-day trip to Paris in every detail. It dutifully created an itinerary that included the best activities based on my budget and taste, every Metro stop I needed to reach my destinations, and restaurant recommendations that accommodated my need to be gluten-free.

It did a perfect job. I didn’t see any ads, branded content, or influencer recommendations. I just followed the plan exactly.

Except.

I decided to use Delta Airlines. I chose my hotels based on brand preferences. I stuck with my favorite brand names when it came to things like soft drinks, the clothes I packed and my favorite On Cloud sneakers.

My brand preferences are AI overrides. It doesn’t matter what AI thinks, I like what I like.

Figuring out the future of SEO and AI search will be critical for many brands. But don’t overlook an investment in brand to sidestep the never-ending battle over keywords.

AI eroding competitive advantage

How do you create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business?

• Special market insight?
• Do you react to market changes faster than competitors?
• Employees with elite levels of intelligence?
• Significant iteration and innovation?

All of these advantages can be neutralized by a competitor with AI. What do you have left? Your brand.

In my book Audacious: How to Win in an AI Marketing World, I feature a case study on Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage in the world — a five-year-old startup! Founder Mike Cessario said that brand is all he has as a competitive weapon:

“You’re only going to win with branding. You won’t win with some functional ingredients you can’t own. In that case, when you’re big enough, Coke or Pepsi or someone else will just produce the same thing—same ingredients, cheaper, more widely distributed, and then you lose. With water, there’s minimal, if any, functional difference between the brands. The difference is purely marketing. People want to walk around with this thing instead of that thing. None of the water brands were interesting. I did my homework. There was a huge opportunity to tell a different story.”

Brand is what’s left when the substantive differences between products disappear. When AI erodes competitive advantage, branding still creates distance between you and your competitors, paving the way for future growth.

Brand as the Trust Anchor

There’s a paradox emerging in the AI era: the more content AI produces, the less people trust what they see.

My brain hurts from trying to figure out what is real.

And, I’m not alone.

Consumers aren’t stupid. They feel it even when they can’t name it — a creeping sameness, a vague sense that the voice behind the content isn’t quite human, that the brand they’re engaging with is running on autopilot.

In this environment, trust becomes a luxury, and trust, at scale, is what a strong brand delivers.

But here’s the part most marketers miss: trust isn’t rational. You don’t earn it with better specifications or a more accurate FAQ page. Trust is emotional. It accumulates through consistent experience, shared values, and the feeling that a company sees you and stands for something you care about. That’s the domain of brand, and it’s precisely the domain where AI falls short.

Think about the brands you love. Chances are, your attachment has little to do with product superiority. It’s about how that brand makes you feel. Maybe it reflects who you are or who you want to be. Maybe it’s earned your trust through years of delivering on its promise. That emotional connection is essentially AI-proof because AI didn’t create it and AI can’t replicate it.

Liquid Death understood this intuitively. There is no functional difference between water brands. Mike Cessario built his entire competitive strategy on making people feel something when they held that black can. Rebellious. Irreverent. Part of something that rejected the corporate blandness of traditional beverage marketing.

The product is water. The value is identity. That’s pure brand.

I know the fight for your brand is never-ending. You’re constantly being pulled into the trenches of Facebook ads and proving the ROI of that Instagram post.

But try this. Ask your boss to talk about their favorite purchase of the past year. Tickets to a show? A dream car? A special gift for a friend?

Then ask them WHY they bought it. Was it because of SEO or an ad … or was it because of how the product made them feel? Because it was something that they love?

AI can optimize your media spend, personalize your messaging, and automate your content, but it can’t make someone love you.

It can’t build the loyalty that makes a customer choose you before they even start their search.

It can’t create the feeling that makes a person walk past a cheaper alternative because this is the brand that “gets them” or reminds them of the best memory.

That work is yours to do. And in a world where your competitors have access to the same AI tools, the same data, and the same efficiencies, brand may be the last remaining source of true competitive advantage.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Three reasons why brand is more important in the AI Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been blogging for 16 years, giving away all my best ideas and advice. I am continually re-evaluating my strategy and have spent time thinking about monetizing my writing by moving to a subscription model on Substack. What I concluded might surprise you and perhaps guide your own monetization strategy.

Today I’ll cover:

• My current content monetization strategy
• A high-level view of Medium versus Substack
• My in-depth analysis of the risks and opportunities with Substack
• A final conclusion

Allow me to share a little story about how blogging drives my business.

The inbound marketing model

A few years ago, I received this email:

“Hi Mark. I’ve been reading your blog for three years and have become a real fan. I purchased your latest book and wanted to let you know it is one of the best business books I’ve read in the last 10 years. Just thought it was time to tell you how much I appreciate your work.”

It was signed by the CMO of a Fortune 100 company.

Two years later, he hired me to help organize a new content marketing department. I didn’t bid on the job. He just hired me becuase he grew to know me and trust me through my content.

Let’s break this down and reveal the classic “inbound” marketing strategy:

1. This person discovered my content and subscribed. I didn’t pay anything for this connection. It was organic, driven by the helpful content I freely put into the world.
2. After reading my content for several years, a trusting relationship developed. It was one-way, of course, but he grew to trust me entirely through the blog content.
3. Three years into this relationship, he bought a book, his first purchase from me.
4. Five years after he subscribed to the blog, he hired me for my most profitable assignment of the year.

And this is the way the world has worked for me, over and over again.

I’ve never made any money directly from my blog content — no ads, paid links, or sponsored posts. But when people trust my content, they hire me for speeches, workshops, and consulting. They’ll buy my books, purchase a consulting hour, or come to my Uprising retreat.

I’ve had a successful, profitable career by giving away content for free.

But many people are earning significant income on Substack. As I move to a slower pace of life, is it time for me to monetize my content directly and charge for it?

Substack versus Medium

There are many ways to monetize content directly, but the two big ones are Medium and Substack.

So far, my strategy has been to publish content on my website and then publish for free on both of these sites. Since both platforms have millions of subscribers, this allows my content to reach new audiences. For example, I have more than 45,000 followers on Medium. Medium articles also tend to rank well on Google.

Medium has another advantage — you’re paid by the number of people who read your content. By simply re-publishing a blog post on Medium, I average a modest $250/month, which is better than the imaginary benefit of Likes and retweets. And, there was an unforgettable month I made $10,000 on Medium. It’s like hitting that one great golf shot. It could happen again, right?

High-earning posts result from a Medium “boost” that floats your article beyond your audience so many more people read it. When does Medium boost? Who knows. It’s unpredictable and frustrating.

Substack has a smaller user base compared to Medium, but offers a business model with a more reliable income stream. People pay for your content through a subscription, and as long as you provide value, the income flows. You’re in charge of your revenue potential by growing your paid audience rather than relying on an algorithmic  Medium boost.

I currently publish for free on Substack — why not? I’ve attracted far fewer followers there compared to Medium … less than 1,000. And I’ve never made a dime there because to succeed, you must commit to a subscription model and refrain from publishing anywhere else. Many people are making a healthy living on Substack. Is it time for me to finally have a reliable income stream directly from my content?

The Substack life

Focusing on Substack as an income stream would require major changes:

• I’d have to create at least one in-depth post per week, and maybe more (I can do that).
• I would stop publishing original blog content on my own website.
• I’d have to develop and grow a Substack community with bonus events and content to add value.
• I would have to move my current blog/Medium audience to a paid subscription on Substack.

While I can commit to creating great content every week, the other changes represent significant risks. Let’s look at each one.

1. The end of the content on my site

As I researched this opportunity, I looked at the websites of Substack stars. If you click “blog,” you’ll find a link to Substack. There is no web-based blog any more.

There is a serious functional implication to this. Without regular, fresh content on my site, my SEO/AI signals dry up. My website isn’t just a blog; it’s a legacy media asset. It’s a lead generation machine.

If the site goes dormant, I lose:

• Authority signals

• Fresh content triggers

• Long-tail organic reach

• Visibility when AI search dominance arrives

That is just too much to lose. The sensible option would be to create two different posts for my site and for Substack. Double the work? No thanks.

2. Moving my audience to Substack

How many of my free blog readers will pay for Substack content? The research shows it will be 5% or less.

But those “free” readers have fueled my entire business model.

• Book sales

• Speaking leads

• Personal branding classes

• Media invitations

• Uprising retreat attendees

• Word-of-mouth leads

The average annual subscription price on Substack is $96. Assuming that 5% of my subscribers move, it’s probably not worth the financial risk.

And there’s another consideration. What if Substack goes out of business?

3. Building a community

The most successful Substack pros fully leverage the platform’s ability to create community through commenting, special events, and exclusive livestreams.

This would be a major benefit of Substack. But I already have a community called RISE. I’ve poured my heart and soul into that community, and I love the people there. I don’t have the need or bandwidth to duplicate that effort.

So a Substack community has no appeal or financial benefit.

The overarching goal

In summary, I certainly have an opportunity to monetize through Substack, but the risk of losing my SEO value and large audience overwhelms the benefits.

In the end, it comes down to my goals at this stage in my life. Money is less important than it was ten years ago. I want my ideas to spread. I want to help and teach. I want to find interesting projects that challenge me and connect me to cool people. I want to maintain a healthy and profitable speaking career.

A regular Substack income jeopardizes:

• SEO discovery for my website
• Serendipity (that random CMO, journalist, or CEO finding me)
• Long-tail inbound traffic
• A large, loyal audience

Monetizing content directly could actually shrink my economic surface area.

At this point in my life, a wide audience and the highest level of discoverability outweigh the potential of a steady income. I’ll stay the course and monetize through the indirect method.

Drop me a line and let me know if you’ve come up with a different strategy for your content.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Is it time to monetize your audience through Substack? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I often consult with people who want to begin or jumpstart a speaking career. I have one key piece of advice and let’s start with a little piece of data I’ve been using in my classes for a while:

Look carefully at the top five ways that speakers are found by meeting professionals: they are seen and recommended by someone else.

The key action here is … you MUST BE SEEN.

Jumpstart a speaking career

When new speakers ask me for advice, I always tell them the same thing: Don’t worry about the money. Just get out there and SPEAK.

The more you speak, the more you’ll speak because you’ll be seen and recommended.

Be humble. Take anything and learn, learn, learn. The momentum will begin to roll.

Of course, you need a great speech — something that is new, interesting, and appeals broadly to audiences. But when you’re ready, get out there any way you can.

And don’t wait for an invitation. Get out there and make something happen yourself. Take control of your career.

The beginning

I have about 25 different revenue streams, but speaking is my most important.

I didn’t plan to be a professional speaker. But as my personal brand began to grow, I started to get invitations. You ARE working on your personal brand, aren’t you??

Here is how my speaking career began.

I live in Knoxville, TN, a wonderful city, but not a hotbed for budding marketing speakers. When I started my speaking career around 2009, I developed a speech titled “Five Things You Need to Know About Social Media Now.”  Social media was a red-hot topic back then, and I had immersed myself in studying the topic.

Then I went out to the chamber of commerce, community service groups, marketing clubs, and anyone who would be interested in hearing me speak. I landed 10 or 12 talks (all free) and kept getting better and better.

Then, somebody from Nashville saw me at one of these talks and asked me to speak at their marketing event. That is a three-hour drive from Knoxville. I asked if they could find $500 to cover my travel expenses, and they agreed.

Now I was speaking in a major city and a bigger venue. At the Nashville talk, somebody saw me who was representing a professional association. They were impressed and asked me to speak at their annual conference in Nashville in a couple of months. I asked them if they could cover my travel and pay me $1,000. They agreed, and I was officially a professional speaker.

At that event, somebody from a big trucking association saw me and asked if I could speak at their event in New Orleans. I said sure … could you pay me $2,000? Yup.

And I was on my way. The momentum was building.

Speak to speak

This is how the world works. The more you speak, the more you speak!

The hardest part is swallowing your pride in those early days and starting at the bottom. My first talk was for the Farragut, Tennessee Lions Club! The AV didn’t work. The chicken lunch was dismal. Two fellows fell asleep. But that’s OK. I was learning. I was moving forward.

When nobody would hire me to speak, I even started my own event called Social Slam. 450 people attended in the first year, and I got some great photos and videos for my website.

That’s how it works. If you want to jumpstart a speaking career, get out there and take control of your own destiny.

Be humble, don’t wait for an invitation, keep working it, and the momentum will build.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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Every ad dollar we spend fuels algorithms we know are harming people, chewing up the environment, and stoking hate between neighbors.

I must face the fact that my beloved field of marketing contributes to some of society’s biggest problems.

It pains me to write about this. I mean, I’m part of the problem, too. But it’s time to start this conversation because the traditional marketing approach is at a breaking point.

• AI-driven amplification of addiction
• Deep fake, misinformation, the decline of trust
• Easy AI content requires more energy consumption
• U.S. Surgeon General’s warnings on youth mental health and social media

We need to consider what it means to lead and sponsor ethically-sourced marketing.

Let’s break this problem down into four categories today:

• ADDICTION
• DIVISION
• ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT
• OPERATING WITH VALUES 

1. Addiction

Back in my corporate days, I dreamed of creating a product or service so great that people would be addicted to it. I remember saying those words out loud.

Before the internet, the chance of doing that was slim, especially in B2B. We didn’t have the repetitive internet memes, challenges, or reels that could drive people down a rabbit hole.

But today, marketers fund a system where attention is literally the product being sold. And it’s working exactly as designed.

Here’s the basic math nobody wants to talk about. Engagement equals money. Five billion people spending over two hours a day on these platforms? That’s not accidental. That’s the entire business model. Every scroll, every like, every second you spend staring at your screen — that’s a data point being harvested to sell more targeted ads.

The platforms use artificial intelligence to analyze your emotions, habits, and vulnerabilities. They’re predicting human behavior at scale.

But here’s where it gets really interesting, and honestly, a bit sinister. The designers of these platforms have deliberately borrowed from the playbook of slot machines and casinos. Infinite scroll. Autoplay. Those little notifications that pop up right when you’re about to put the phone down? They’re triggering the same reward circuits that gambling does.

It’s the variable reward schedule that behavioral psychologists have understood for decades, now deployed across billions of devices.

Think about the “like” button. It’s a dopamine delivery system. You post something, and you get that little hit of validation when people engage. So you post again. And again. The platform has essentially weaponized human psychology for engagement.

How many of you optimize likes and engagement as an essential part of your career success?

It gets worse. Younger brains are exponentially more susceptible to this stuff because they’re still developing the neurological circuits for impulse control and delayed gratification. U.S. children generate more than $11 billion in advertising revenue for major social media platforms.

Let that sink in. $11 billion extracted from the psychological vulnerabilities of kids who don’t yet have the brain development to resist these systems.

The platforms give lip service to parental controls and safeguards, but they don’t care.

Your marketing dollars fuel the addiction machine. Digital ad dollars are hurting children.

Addiction is the foundation, but the consequences don’t stop at endless scrolling. They spill into something darker.

2. Division

In the social media world we all love, hate is good for business.

A Wall Street Journal investigative report revealed that Facebook knew that its core social media product makes the world more toxic and divided.

“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from an internal presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”

One example: 64 percent of the growth in online extremist groups was fueled by Facebook’s own recommendation algorithms!

The company assigned a high-level team to develop a plan to combat this issue … and they did. But then Mark Zuckerberg shelved the basic research and blocked efforts to apply its conclusions to Facebook products. In fact, the Facebook leader has publicly denied his company’s findings and recommendations.

Why?

An internal report said that moderating hate was anti-growth.

That makes me sick. When hate becomes a growth strategy, every advertiser becomes a silent financier of dysfunction.

While the emotional toll of division is staggering, the physical toll on the planet is just beginning to surface.

3. Energy and Environmental Impact

Last year, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at the Belgian Association of Marketing’s annual conference, a first-class event. It was there that I met Dr. Victoria Hurth. She introduced the audience to a new way of looking at marketing and its impact on the environment. I felt ashamed that I had never really considered these realities.

Marketing, she said, is the engine of demand. That’s our superpower. And it’s also part of the environmental problem.

When we stimulate desire, we stimulate production, shipping, packaging, and, too often, waste. The question isn’t whether marketing affects the environment. It’s whether we’re willing to measure it.

Even “digital” isn’t clean.

Programmatic ads ride on massive server networks that consume real energy. An industry analysis shows the carbon cost of every ad impression — grams of CO? tied directly to the ads we place. One publisher cut its emissions 70% with smarter supply-path decisions, with no revenue loss.

E-commerce? It helps when it consolidates freight … until fast shipping and high return rates obliterate any benefit. U.S. product returns alone generated 24 million metric tons of CO? last year and sent billions of pounds of goods to landfills.

Even our content diet carries a carbon footprint. Streaming and online video now account for an estimated 3–4 percent of global emissions. “Virtual” isn’t virtual. It’s powered by real data centers, real devices, real infrastructure.

And then there’s AI.

OpenAI’s planned chip network may consume 250 gigawatts of power by 2033. That’s one-fifth of America’s total electric generation capacity today. If OpenAI were a country, it would be the seventh-largest electricity producer on the planet. Energy prices are already rising nationwide, as is the environmental impact.

So yes, even creativity now carries a carbon cost.

Dr. Hurth argues that businesses must prioritize human sustainability over profits. It sounds idealistic — until you realize the alternative.

We’re not just creating demand. We’re creating emissions.

4. Operating with values

In the early days of web marketing, I attended a presentation by an SEO “pioneer.” He had hired home-bound disabled people to pose as online commenters in an effort to impact his customers’ search results.

When it came time for the Q&A, I asked, “How do you live with yourself? This is so unethical!”

He responded, “It works. And if I didn’t do it, somebody else would.”

Too often, marketers opt for “what works” and turn a blind eye to the holistic impact of their actions on the world and our customers. A brand strategist is a role in which you are effectively a cosmetic surgeon for capital.

While hiring people to fake our content seems extreme, aren’t we doing the same thing today with AI? Half the comments left on my content are AI-generated fakes.

I learned at a recent meeting that 85% of companies use AI to generate content and that, on average, their content output has increased by 45%.

To what end? To replace humans? To add to the barrage of noise we must endure to find truth? To consume vast amounts of energy and clean water to generate AI slop?

Can we keep one eye on the bottom line and one on our moral compass? If we don’t reclaim the soul of our work, the machines will do it for us.

What do we do about it?

First, let me emphasize that I’m proud to be a marketer. The marketer is the creator, the innovator, the front line of our business. We can be the beacon, shining a light on the good and the worthy.

Throughout history, advertising and marketing have played a role in positive societal change and in creating demand for life-changing products.

Second, the weight of these problems does not necessarily fall solely on us. We’re expected to work in a deeply flawed social media / digital environment beyond our control. Any real change would require complex systemic changes.

So what’s the point of this post?

I’m willing to bet every person reading this has had pain in their heart over the online safety of our children, the impact of global warming, and the divisions that are tearing countries and families apart.

Am I suggesting that we sell less? Quit digital advertising? Abandon profitability?

No. But at a minimum, we need to open this conversation and re-frame the marketing profession in a more holistic context. Any change begins with awareness.

What if marketing became the world’s most powerful engine for human flourishing instead of manipulation? What if innovation, storytelling, and creativity were measured not just by impressions but by the impact we have on the people we serve?”

I don’t have the answers. But here are a few ideas I picked up from Dr. Hurth and others.

Reframe success.

Replace metrics like engagement and impressions with impact: well-being, trust, sustainability, and authentic connection. Isn’t this why we love the Patagonia brand? It can be done.

Track “advertised emissions,” addiction time, and content energy use alongside ROI. Transparency changes behavior. Above, I cited the Scope3 research. One publisher cut average CO2 per thousand impressions by about 70% through supply-path optimization, with no revenue loss.

Design for restraint.

Use creativity to promote durability, repair, and reuse. Ask: “Does this campaign help or harm long-term human flourishing?” Re-use is a significant priority for Gen Z shoppers. A positive trend!

Invest in ethical tech.

Support platforms and partners committed to transparency, safety, and carbon-neutral operations. The energy efficiency of most technologies (especially AI) is increasing at a breathtaking rate. Are you aware of the relative energy use of your tech stack?

Lead with humanity.

Make ethics a competitive advantage. Reward teams for doing the right thing, not just the fastest or cheapest.

“Ethically Sourced Marketing” is a new idea. Corporate culture doesn’t change without a leader who makes this a priority. If this idea catches on, it will likely be because one person embraces the change and sets an example.

Dramatic change is possible

Here’s a point of inspiration.

Madewell, a German-based clothing retailer, is working to eliminate plastics, aiming to have 100% of its packaging be sustainably sourced and free of virgin plastic by the end of this year. The brand is also reducing plastic in its products by increasing its use of sustainably sourced fibers and recycled materials, such as recycled insulation and recycled nylon, and is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. 

I read that the CEO is even trying to eliminate plastic pens in their offices.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to eliminate all plastic in your company? But one leader is driving this change, shaping a company culture that makes a difference on a vast scale.

If one company can eliminate plastic, I have hope that somebody out there can eliminate marketing and advertising that contribute to hate, polarization, addiction, and waste.

There has never been a better time to re-evaluate what we do and how we do it.

If positive change seems unattainable, here’s a good place to start: If you are directly or indirectly doing things that people hate, STOP IT.

Double down on what people love. Trust. Transparency. Humanity. Community. Ethics. A responsible, measurable environmental impact.

Eugene Healey wrote:

“We have to fight under the contradictions of capitalism. That’s non-negotiable. But we should still get to do so by creating beautiful things. In that, we can find meaning.

“If you’re a marketer, make things you believe should exist. If you’re a senior marketer, make the case for the existence of beautiful things. Look at your brand advertising, your out-of-home, hell, even your performance ads, and ask yourself: does this make some meaningful contribution to public space, or at the very least not deplete it?”

The Most Human Company Wins. Keep fighting the good fight.

Help me start this conversation by sharing this post with your marketing and advertising friends. Thank you.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Is it time to embrace ethically-sourced marketing? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently participated in a research project that gathered input from futurists on how AI will change humanity by 2030. Of course, nobody can foresee what this AI world will be like five months from now, let alone five years from now, but it was a great exercise that yielded some consensus among the experts.

But this pushed my thinking in a different way. If we are to consider how AI is changing humanity, what exactly is humanity?

If we think back to a human existence 200 or 300 years ago, a human adult would have had three primary goals: 1) don’t die, 2) find food/shelter, 3) have babies. Is that how our ancestors would have defined the meaning of humanity?

Today when we think about AI impacting “humanity,” we might reference the impact on our careers, our privacy, or our purpose in life. We might be worried about an AI impact on our schools, democracy, or relationships.

But is that humanity?

Today I want to strip away the pretense of modern life and explore what the intrusion of AI might mean to our humanity, and by extension, our businesses.

What doesn’t change?

In the early days of Amazon, Wired magazine interviewed Jeff Bezos and asked him what new technology excited him the most. Amazon was revolutionizing eCommerce, but Bezos took the interview in another direction.

“Changing technology is interesting,” he said, “but what is even more interesting is what will NOT change, because that’s how you build a business. I find it impossible to consider that in ten years our customers will want higher prices, less selection, or slower delivery. Our success comes from focusing on the factors that never change.”

His insight is even truer today as we face the future with our new AI masters. Instead of focusing on change, the most robust businesses will serve the elements of humanity that will not change.

The humanity that remains

There is certainly a lot of hyperbole around AI and its implications. But I trust the view of an insider like Satya Nadella of Microsoft when he says AI is the most profound development in history — more important than fire, electricity, or the internet.

However, just as important as the power of the change is the speed at which it occurs. The improvements are dizzying. So in this hurricane-force environment, how do you build a durable business?

Let’s take a page from the Bezos Playbook. If we strip away the pretense and pressure of the modern world, what about humanity will NEVER change? Here’s a starter list:

• SAFETY
• LOVE
• CONNECTION AND COMMUNITY
• CREATIVITY
• COMPASSION
• CONTENTMENT / PEACE
• HEALTH
• FAMILY
• SPIRITUALITY / SPIRITUAL LONGING
• CURIOSITY
• RITUAL
• AUTONOMY / FREEDOM
• HOPE

I realize this is an imperfect and incomplete list, but give this grace as a thought experiment.

If your business is serving one of these needs, you’re probably in good shape, no matter what happens with AI. Similarly, if AI were to threaten any of these characteristics, you could create a durable business by preserving these aspects of humanity.

Building a durable business

Let’s put this into practice.

What are the new threats to personal safety?

• Deep fakes
• Cyber attacks
• Attacks on the electrical grid or water system
• Hacks into credit cards and bank accounts

These threats will not disappear anytime soon. Why hasn’t somebody invented a hack-proof credit card that can only be activated by a fingerprint or iris scan? There’s a growing niche industry that provides insurance against cyber attacks. That’s smart. Likewise, sales of back-up power supplies are booming because our concern for our safety will never go away.

Let’s try another one: Curiosity

• Why not package a service where AI can make custom novels based on your interests and favorite characters?
• Open a creator hub where people could take classes in ancient arts like glassblowing or woodcraft all in one place.
• I love my app that helps me identify birds by their songs and calls. But it poses such a limit on my curiosity. Why not turn it into a network that can alert me to new bird sightings in my neighborhood or create gamified bird collection teams?

Another way to look at this is to mash up your current products with human needs to reimagine your business value.

Let’s say you own a bakery that specializes in making unique and delicious cookies. How can you position your cookies to appeal to fundamental human needs, such as love, community, creativity, health, or ritual?

You get the idea now.

Building a durable business relies on serving persistent human needs. Strip away the veneers of social performance that have accumulated for centuries and focus on the needs that never change.

This post was excerpted from my new book How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.

I think you will enjoy this book!

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Strip humanity to its essence and you’ll build a durable business appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the personal angst I had about people creating custom GPTs that replicate my intellect. Is this flattering and fun, or a creepy theft of intellectual prowess?

I went through a period of introspection and came to a new realization as I was writing my new book How AI Changes Your Customers (… and all of humanity by the way).

There is no way to escape the influence of AI. No way to dismiss it. No way to deny the permanent impact it will have on our lives, our careers, and our families.

So we have a choice. We can live in fear and denial. Or we can reimagine how AI can make us bigger, bolder, stronger, more creative, and more impactful.

I choose impact. So, I did a thing. I created  The MarkBot — an Expert Trained Model informed by my public work, like books, blog posts, speeches, classes, strategic frameworks, and more.

I am a teacher, a mentor, a guide. If I had an AI that could truly channel my philosophy, education, and experiences, then I could be a teacher to the world … anywhere, any time I am needed. I would be using AI to reimagine myself as a global marketing teacher and business consultant.

I’ve been working on this for a few months, tested it with more than 100 people and now I’m giving it away for free.

Which might not make any sense. So read on.

The Business Strategy

Why would I give away my knowledge base for free?

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this debate. In the early days of content marketing, your boss probably said: “What??? You want me to give away my content and best ideas for free on a blog?”

Yes.

Because if you didn’t, your competitors would. Their content would be discovered, highlighted, and shared — and you’d lose out.

The same is true with AI.

For better or for worse, information flows freely on the web. Once you publish anything, anywhere, it will find its way to open waters. Everything I’ve ever written is already part of the immortal glue holding AI together. Why not channel it in a way that helps people … in my way?

I wasn’t sure how giving away content in the early days of the web would result in business for me, but it did. No matter how much I gave away, people still wanted to connect to me personally for a speech, a workshop, or a business consultation.

Giving away content fueled my success. I’ve never paid for an ad in my life.

Is the MarkBot just another vessel for my content and ideas? Will this work the same way and bring me business? I don’t know. But I do know is that this is a way to help people with honest advice at scale, and that is a dream come true for any teacher.

And it works!

I’ve been working on MarkBot for several months, and I’ve learned that building a great GPT requires much more than just feeding it content. This thing had to be an extension of me. It had to be something I was proud of.

MarkBot is not just an expression of my intellect. It also reflects my values and personal consulting style.

Dozens of people have tested it, and the results have been startling.

One person said it was like talking to me.

Another person received some advice on her business, which she called “profound.”

A third person tested it against other LLMs and found it to be superior for marketing strategy and brainstorming.

Some of the advice it provides seems beyond anything I could do myself. Which is hard to explain, but I’ll take it!

It’s not perfect, and it will always be a work in progress, but I think you might enjoy trying it out. It’s free and private, so your questions and answers are not stored anywhere.

Try MarkBot here.

Beyond marketing consulting

I recently got into a deep discussion on custom GPTs with Dana Malstaff during an episode of The Marketing Companion podcast. She is also developing her own AI to drive her business but in a radically different way.

Her approach is to design AI—chatbots, custom GPTs, and other agents—that set boundaries and parameters. For Dana, it’s critical that these tools reflect her authentic voice and beliefs, and that they’re honest enough to challenge users and not just validate their ideas. This is foundational to building trust and long-term value.

Key highlights from her approach include:

• A “future self” guidance AI bot
• A conversion scanner that assesses websites for conversion opportunities
• An internal bot that streamlines company operations and helps with conflict resolution.
• Certification programs

Integrating AI into key company processes allows her to spend even more time on the human side of the business that drives revenue and loyalty.

Custom AI isn’t about cutting costs or flooding the web with more generic content. It’s about deeper service, smarter boundaries, and building something that truly sets you apart.

I hope you’ll dive into the MarkBot and learn more about Dana’s revolutionary use of AI in the new episode of The Marketing Companion.

You can listen to this special show here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 325

Please support our sponsors, who make this fantastic episode possible.

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OpenAI just turned chat into a checkout line. That might sound like another hype-y tech headline, but if you sell products online, this could be an e-commerce re-set in real time! It’s not for everybody at this moment, but you can see the direction here: AI as eCommerce.

OpenAI is building native shopping into ChatGPT conversations.

A customer asks for the best hair routine for an oily scalp, and can see product cards inside the answer. If the merchant is enabled, the purchase can be completed right within the chat. No tab hopping. No leaky funnels.

The customer journey is compressing. Google shortened the path from question to answer. Amazon shortened the path from decision to delivery. TikTok collapsed discovery and purchase into a single scroll. Now, OpenAI is turning customer curiosity into commerce.

Here’s what’s happening and how to capitalize on it in these early stages.

Why this matters

OpenAI has introduced Instant Checkout within ChatGPT for select U.S. merchants. The first wave is Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants on the way. Payments run through Stripe using an open protocol that lets an agent complete a purchase on your behalf.

Product cards and carousels appear in ChatGPT Search results when the system detects shopping intent. While OpenAI was not specific about what “shopping intent” means, when I asked ChatGPT, it said that direct commerce would be triggered when users query with words indicating an imminent purchase, like “best diet plan for my overweight cat.”

OpenAI said results are ranked based on relevance and quality, not ads. The company charges a small fee when an order is completed.

This is the beginning of conversational shopping at scale. One place to ask, learn, compare, and buy. OpenAI said additional capabilities will be introduced later, including multi-item carts and expanded regions, but the direction is clear. This is going to scale.

Clear purchase intent

Azeem Azhar observed this week in his excellent Exponential View newsletter that:

“The unit economics could work for OpenAI if LLM discovery actually surfaces better options (early personal evidence is positive) and merchants compete for citations rather than purchases. Our researcher Chantal Smith saved $2,000 on a travel package to Mongolia she found through Deep Research that traditional Google search did not even surface.”

Google is not going to sit still. The race to conversational commerce is on.

How to get on board

The retail shelf has moved. If your products don’t appear inside AI answers, you’ll be invisible at the exact moment of intent. What an opportunity: Education, recommendation, and transaction can happen within a single conversation.

How to win product placement with zero media spend:

1. Make sure you’re eligible. If you sell on Etsy, enroll items you want to be eligible and keep inventory data accurate. If you sell on Shopify, prepare to connect the new channel when it opens. Have payments and shipping policies buttoned up.

2. Let ChatGPT see and understand your catalog. Don’t block OpenAI’s crawler in robots.txt. Use clean schema.org product markup. Keep titles, prices, availability, and variant data up to date. The model pulls this current information into product cards.

3. Build conversational SKUs. Customers ask questions. Bundle products as jobs to be done with clear outcomes. Think “frizz control for 48 hours” or “starter shoes for a new runner.” OpenAI suggests using short titles, three crisp benefits, and a simple how-to. These convert well inside a single product card.

4. Feed the model proof. Publish an ingredient and claims explainer in plain language. Include what an ingredient does, evidence, and safety notes. Add short demo videos and before-and-after photos to product pages. These assets often appear in cards and increase click-through rates.

5. Treat ChatGPT as a new retail channel. Set up reporting in your e-commerce platform. Track clicks, Instant Checkout orders, conversions, refunds, and repeat purchases from this source. Tighten fulfillment and service levels. Availability and quality are likely ranking signals.

6. Write for answer engines. Create Q&A pages that match the way people speak. Compare and contrast guides work well. The cleaner your explanations, the more likely the model will quote you and surface your products.

A complete OpenAI FAQ about this process is available here.

New kings, same castle

Month by month, ChaGPT is eating into Google’s share of search. Google is still the industry gorilla, but the trend is clear:

Search and social moved us from websites to feeds. Agents move us from feeds to results. We are entering an era where customers no longer browse. They ask. The answer is the retail shelf.

Last year, Perplexity introduced a similar in-chat shopping and payments feature. Microsoft also offers merchants the ability to create in-chat storefront capabilities with the Copilot Merchant Program.

This type of frictionless experience has the potential to spark a new movement in online shopping — one that shifts away from search engines like Google and e-commerce platforms like Amazon toward conversational agents with curated recommendations, comparisons, and seamless checkout experiences.

It’s also setting the stage for new power brokers to emerge in eCommerce. Google and Amazon have long been the gatekeepers for retail discovery. If more purchases start inside AI chatbots, the firms behind them will suddenly have more control over what products are surfaced and what commissions or fees they charge.

If your brand can be a helpful teacher at that moment, then the sale becomes a service. That’s a significant mindset shift.

Will this shift the balance of power between retail marketplaces and individual merchants? What about free shipping and next-day delivery? What about lenient return policies that consumers expect? There is much work to be done, but this marks the beginning of a new world where AI agents will become the operating system for online commerce and daily life.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post OpenAI Instant Checkout: Conversations just became eCommerce appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been immersed in the world of social media marketing since the beginning. It was so exciting to be part of those early pioneering days!

It took us years to determine how authentic creativity and real human engagement blended (or didn’t blend) with the stodgy culture of traditional corporate marketing.

It took a lot of patience and experimentation to prove that we fit a marketing department. The biggest question we always faced: “How do you measure the value of this stuff?”

I lost one of my first customers because I couldn’t measure the ROI of a tweet!

We’ve come a long way, and social media marketing has evolved into an independent skill set and budget item. However, according to new research from Sprout Social, we’ve made little progress in terms of measurement and legitimizing our work.

This chart from the report made my head spin:

So 68% of social media marketers define Return on Investment … by engagement???

No wonder some regard the field as fluffy.

ROI is a financial measurement. Period. Always has been. Always will be.

If you came to my office justifying the ROI of your effort by engagement, I’d throw you out.

Social media marketers have been at this for more than a decade. Shouldn’t we be aligned with the real language of business by now?

To make matters worse, there is little to no correlation between engagement and the business’s revenue, conversions, or brand loyalty. Social media marketers are literally picking the worst possible measurement — engagement — to justify their existence.

The purpose of marketing is to create customers. If you’re driving engagement without conversions, you’re “engaging” your company into the poor house. Let’s look at a better way.

What “Measurable ROI” Looks Like

When we say “social media,” do we mean ads or Instagram Reels? Sprout probably needs to do a little better with the question because a good marketer will use both, and “ROI” lands in different ways.

When we consider social media advertising, we can generally measure ROI with precision — Conversions, CPA, ROAS.

When you run paid campaigns with clear calls to action, you can measure cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and lead generation. This is where social media behaves like any other performance channel.

So for the “bottom of funnel” or “middle to bottom funnel” activity, social media is highly measurable. You can put in dollars, get out hard numbers, rinse and repeat.

This success requires collaboration with a trusted, experienced ad partner, but on the performance marketing side of the business, the real ROI of social media is easily measured. So why not say so?

Brand Marketing is Critical, Too

Now to the less measurable, but equally crucial side: awareness, trust, brand equity. This represents brand marketing, and these benefits matter deeply, but they don’t always show up on the next quarter’s P&L in obvious ways.

Direct ROI attribution for organic TikTok videos, thought leadership posts, and podcasts is notoriously difficult.

My friend Martin O’Leary put it well in his excellent newsletter:

• 77.5% of sharing is invisible (Dark Social data)
• 93% of attribution died with iOS 14.5 (Dashboard data)
• Most metrics don’t drive revenue anyway (Vanity metrics data)

If you’re obsessed with attribution and engagement, you’re not seeing the full picture. And that might be the best thing that’s happened to you.

Because once obsession over attribution dies, you have to look elsewhere.

• Do people remember you?
• Are they talking about you?
• Do they come back without needing a discount code?

That’s marketing.
Not math.

This is where we usually fumble the ROI discussion. It’s hard to find the money, so we revert to “engagement” because it’s easy to measure.

But not all measurements are important. And, in this case, all things important cannot be easily measured.

Brand marketing — and I would include almost all organic posting in this category — is essential because it builds a company’s emotional connection with its audience, fosters long-term trust, and ultimately drives sustainable growth. In a world flooded with noise, choice, and copycats, a brand is the one thing nobody else can replicate. It’s your reputation, your signal, and your promise all wrapped into one.

The Brand Equity Imperative

Your reputation and brand equity is hard to quantify on a month-to-month basis, especially for smaller companies, but it is no less important than the advertising side. Done right, social media can propel awareness, foster brand conversations, and cultivate a community that can significantly increase revenue.

Brand equity is a proxy for trust. People don’t buy from faceless companies. They buy from those they feel understand them. And trust is earned through consistent, human-centered communication. When your marketing focuses on reinforcing your values and emotional resonance, it accelerates the building of trust.

Second, brand marketing creates differentiation. In fact, it is probably your only differentiation. Competing on features or price is a race to the bottom. The best brands compete on emotion, identity, and belonging. Apple, Patagonia, and Nike aren’t just companies. They’re symbols of aspiration and identity.

Third, a well-developed brand becomes a growth engine. Studies show that brand-loyal customers spend more, refer more, and forgive more. They become your marketing department (see my book Marketing Rebellion to do a deep dive on that idea).

Brand marketing builds resilience. When economic conditions shift or new competitors enter the market, it’s not just your product that keeps you afloat — it’s your brand equity. A well-loved brand gives you margin, customer loyalty, and relevance when everything else is uncertain.

Finally, brand marketing has a compounding effect. The more people encounter your message in a clear, emotional, and consistent way, the more brand momentum you build. Like investing, the returns grow over time.

Measuring Social Media Brand Marketing

Just because social media brand marketing is harder to measure doesn’t mean it’s unmeasurable. But folks, we need to move beyond engagement.

The truth is, there are reliable indicators that show how your brand-building efforts contribute to ROI over time. These may not appear to be instant sales, but they are leading indicators of future financial health.

Here are a few:

Share of Search

This is one of the best proxies for brand awareness. If more people are typing your brand name into Google compared to competitors, you’re winning mindshare. Les Binet’s famous research shows that share of search is a strong predictor of future market share.

Branded Traffic

Website visits that come directly from brand-related keywords and links are another sign of brand equity. Growth in branded search volume indicates that customers know you, remember you, and are actively seeking you out.

A side comment — When customers care enough about you to include your name in a search, you are “overriding” the automated decision-making of AI. In the AI world, brand is more important than ever.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

A strong brand doesn’t just attract customers; it keeps them. CLV grows when your brand fosters loyalty and repeat purchase behavior.

Referral Rates and NPS (Net Promoter Score)

People are more likely to recommend brands they trust. Tracking referrals, reviews, and NPS is a way to connect emotional equity to bottom-line growth.

First-Party Data > Everything

If you don’t own the relationship, you don’t own the result. Attribution models that rely on third-party data are dead. What works now:

• Email capture with progressive profiling
• Customer accounts with behavioral tracking
• Direct website visits through branded searches
• SMS opt-ins for immediate communication

Pricing Power

Strong brands can command a premium price. If you can maintain margins or raise prices without losing customers, that’s a measurable ROI of brand strength.

Subscriptions

Especially for small businesses, building an email list is everything. These are the people who love you and will buy from you.  Subscribers are a leading indicator to revenue.

It’s hard to attribute brand marketing to a precise dollar amount on every social media post, but you can measure whether your social media efforts are moving the levers that ultimately lead to revenue and customer acquisition.

So yes, social media is both advertising (measurable today) and brand marketing (measurable over time). Budget for both brand AND performance marketing. When you account for both sides of the equation, you’re not just justifying social media — you’re proving its role as a powerful business driver.

Just don’t ruin it by telling your boss that an increase in engagement is the ROI of your marketing! Are you with me on this?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

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