How AI Is Changing the Way Customers Find Businesses
People are not finding businesses the same way they did a few years ago. Google is still part of the picture, but so are AI tools, social platforms, reviews, and the other places people turn when they are trying to figure out who to trust.
In a recent episode of Enrich Your Empire, Richie Huffman, CEO of Huffman Family Brands, sits down with Billie Jacobo, Senior Account Director at Enspire for Enterprise, to talk about what the growing role of AI in marketing means for businesses in 2026.
The conversation covers AI, content, SEO, paid media, reviews, and the marketing metrics that are actually worth watching.
Content Is Still Doing a Lot of the Heavy Lifting
Billie sums up one of the episode’s central ideas pretty quickly:
“Content is king. It still is.”
AI may be changing how people search, but it has not made useful information any less important. If anything, businesses now have more reasons to publish clear, relevant content that answers real questions and accurately reflects who they are.
Billie notes that AI tools are pulling from far more than a company website. Reviews, blog posts, social conversations, and other online mentions can all become part of the picture. So showing up well online is no longer just about ranking in a traditional search result. The broader trail your brand leaves matters, too.
So yes, marketers have acquired yet another reason to care about content. Apparently we were not done talking about it after all.
The Customer Journey Is Getting More Connected
Another theme throughout the conversation is that marketing channels do not operate in neat little boxes.
Someone may hear about a business through AI, check Google, see an ad on social media, then return to the website when they are ready to act. From an attribution standpoint, that can be messy, but it is also much closer to how people actually make decisions.
Billie and Richie also discuss how businesses can use organic performance to make smarter paid-media decisions.
Looking at what people search for, which pages attract attention, and where interest already exists can help inform where paid campaigns should focus.
Celebree comes up as a real-world example. Billie credits the brand’s ongoing investment in content and local SEO with helping individual schools stay visible as search habits continue to evolve.
The platforms may be changing, but the goal is familiar: give people useful information, make it easy to find you, and understand what is actually helping them move toward a decision.
Watch the full conversation between Richie and Billie for a deeper look at how AI, SEO, paid media, content, and consumer behavior are reshaping digital marketing.