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Bonjour Millionaire, On Sunday I told you the Age of Agentic shopping is here, whether any of us like it or not. Today, what we actually DO about it. Starting with a favorite lever of mine...how to write your way into the answer. Shall we? Okay, if you insist. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here
Sponsored by Anrok You couldn't pay me to wait on hold with a department of tax revenue EVER again.
And if you could, it would cost a lot more than $50.
Which is the new flat rate Anrok just rolled out for us ecom types.
Reasons to investigate this now:
a) all you have to do to see your tax obligations GLOBALLY is...connect your Shopify store.
b) $50/month/state includes EVERYTHING. Shopify calculates the tax, Anrok takes EVERYTHING from there.
c) real human experts if/when things get complicated.
A year of coverage now costs less than a single nexus study.
My advice: hand off all your tax woes to the people who know what a nexus study is do taxes for Anthropic (& thousands of others).
ON THIS EPISODE OF GO-TO-MILLIONS How to write product content that wins AI search (even if you aren't AI-pilled)A few short weeks ago, I suggested you start with the most basic metric of AI visibility: open up your AI engine of choice, ask it to recommend “the best [YOUR CATEGORY],” and see who showed up in the answer. On incognito and without wifi. No cheating. If the results made you wish you were nicer to the robots, today’s newsletter is for you. Now, am I an SEO/AEO/GEO expert? No.
Could I tell you what to do with an H1 tag? Yes, but I don't want to bore so I won't.
But, am I going to personally make sure my brand beats yours in AI search?? Absolutely. Every day. Because the stakes are high! I believe, bittersweetly, that in 5 years most people won’t even make it to our sites. Because their agents will shop for them. Maybe in 2 years. So, if you, like me, are responsible for AEO strategy, let’s hold hands & join forces in the robot wars jump in. (Yes, we’re competitive, but we also aren't mean and I will help!) If I had to boil down a good AEO strategy into 1 sentence, it’d be: Get FOUND, then get CONFIRMED. If I had 2 sentences: AI has to find you before it can fall in love with you. 🧙♀️ THE 6 COMMANDMENTS OF MAKING SURE MY TEAM’S AEO BEATS EVERYONE ELSE’S
1️⃣: Thou shalt write for the real queries real humans would type.
This gives me SEO déjà vu, but on steroids - because people ask ChatGPT more specific and personal things than they ask Google. They don’t ask for “body wash” or “snacks for kids.” They ask for “the best body care gift for someone who has everything and who also has sensitive skin and hates strawberries.” Or “snacks for 3-year-olds that don’t like bananas and are allergic to eggs.” Or “lightweight luxury bags between $XXXX and $XXXX that fit a ‘quiet luxury’ aesthetic, meet TSA carry-on restrictions, and can double as an undercover diaper bag.”
Start with the 5 questions your customer asks, and answer them better than anyone else. Preferably on your PDPs.
2️⃣: Thou shalt steal from your thine own reviews.
Free, and sitting in your channels right now! Words real people use to describe you, the 1s you’d NEVER pick for yourself, the 1s that (eek) aren’t on-brand. Like, if you get reviews all the time calling your stuff “a great gift for my [insert older woman in your life].” Just 1 of many treasures you’ll get from combing your reviews. Among them: use-cases, surprising phrases, language that’s unglamorous and pedestrian but CLEAR. All ripe for feeding back into your content.
3️⃣: Thou shalt not mass-produce slop as a substitute for strategy.
You want to be FOUND by AI. You do NOT want to look like AI. This is the new “keyword stuffing.” 🧓 i.e. just because Claude CAN write you 50 blog posts by lunch, doesn’t mean it SHOULD. Everyone can smell it, robots included. Instead, dial in on the specific, original, useful things you actually do/make. Your specific combo of expertise, novelty, and utility will be more valuable to AI than 50 near-identical posts nobody (even robots) will ever read.  So lifelike! 4️⃣: Thall shalt never bury the answer too deep.
Sadly, AI is not lovingly reviewing your entire (gorgeous) website to understand you. It skims it, often inconsistently. There are firewalls!!!!! If your shipping, returns, and FAQs live 3 clicks deep, or the answer to a query is hidden in an accordion or on some orphaned page, it may as well not exist. Put the answers where the machine AND the human can see them. FAQs on the product page. All of them! Real product details, ON the product page. Answer first, bury nothing. (We built FAQs into basically every PDP back in my agency days. Everything old is new again!) (We did that because it worked for conversion. It still does, but now it's easier to get everyone on board. )
5️⃣: Thou shalt be crawlable, lest thy disappear.
The saddest way to lose is not to be in the conversation at all. I understand why some entities block AI crawlers, but DTC? We should never be 1 of them. Check to make sure you’re not unintentionally banning AI from your site, this week. If that’s your problem, the fix is quite attainable - it’ll run you about $5k and someone competent. (And if you're on Shopify, you've got a tailwind, because they're laying the agentic pipes for us mostly.)
6️⃣: Thou shalt get confirmed, and get in The Roundups.
Being found by AI is only half the battle. Then, you will be fact-checked by AI, to make sure your claims are corroborated. This is when your reviews, Reddit chatter, and any other inconsistencies between your marketing & your product can turn into chickens, and come on home to roost. (I have OPINIONS on review auditing. For another day). For example, if every "best [category]" and "alternatives to [big brand]" article features your competitor and not you, the robots will notice. I learned this summer that the amount of internet chatter about you is the single strongest signal of whether AI will recommend you. So, get in the conversation. Be the alternative to the big guy. Bring your marketing closer to the realities of your product.
Sponsored by AppLovin Bombas, Quince, me. 🙂 📲💘
There are many reasons the big dogs of DTC are on AppLovin:
- It's creative-hungry, so all my fatigued assets become fresh & new again
- The more you feed it, the faster it finds your buyers
- I find it's particularly effective (vs. Meta) for repeat purchasers
Pixel installs through Shopify + budgets start at $10/day. (Though I'd add a few zeroes. Just personally.) Grab your fatigued creative and go live in less than 1 hour.
GO-TO-MEME If you haven’t noticed, a lot of this is SEO with a vastly more complex & evolving layer built on top. The SEO dogs still have work. They’re just AEO/GEO dogs now. I know because I pay some of them. Woof. Until the AI Search Commandments change (and they will), go forth! Write and build the things only you can write and build. The robots are reading. Yours,
Ari | 
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