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In the latest episode of Charlie Explains AI Search, Charlie Marchant, CEO of Exposure Ninja, shared a story about buying a specific SPF after asking ChatGPT for advice on LinkedIn. The post picked up almost 400 likes and 183 comments, many from people describing their own customer search journey to the exact same product, and no two were the same.
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One Product: Two Completely Different Journeys
Charlie Marchant’s partner asked ChatGPT what to do about a sunscreen causing clogged pores. Charlie Marchant then googled the recommendation, saw an AI Overview, and bought the product on Amazon within five minutes.
A week later, her sister-in-law pulled the exact same tube out of her bag. Her route to it was nothing like Charlie Marchant’s.
“So she searched through TikTok reviews for hours. She said she watched loads of reviews. Then she googled the brand to see how trustworthy they were, check if there’d been any news stories about them. Read an article in The Guardian where they were featured in the best SPFs or a similar kind of roundup list. Then she read a bunch more reviews on retailers like Look Fantastic and then bought it there.”
Two people, of similar age, with the same skin concern, and completely different search behaviour.
If your marketing plan assumes every customer takes the same path to purchase, you’re already missing a large chunk of your audience. The people most likely to buy from you might never touch the channel you’ve invested the most in.
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Why Search Stopped Being a Straight Line
The traditional buyer funnel still exists in theory: awareness, consideration, comparison, and purchase. But almost nobody moves through it in order anymore.
“As my friend Phil Tragus Evans, who works at Giraffe Social, says, this is because the way that we search is actually much more akin to a pinball machine. So rather than going in this sweet, straight line, we’re actually ping-ponging all over the place before we finally make a purchase,” explains Charlie Marchant.
Mapping a single, tidy customer journey is no longer useful. Instead, marketing teams need to identify every platform where their audience researches, from AI chatbots to Reddit threads, and make sure a consistent, trustworthy story about the brand exists on all of them.
Embed Quote: Charlie Marchant: While one of us is reading ChatGPT or an AI Overview, some of us still search on Google, some are actually just straight into TikTok, others are on Instagram reels, some are in Reddit threads reading reviews there, some are buying through resellers, some would never ever buy through resellers and are buying direct from brands.
The Dark Traffic Problem AI Has Created
This scattered behaviour creates a tracking headache. Charlie Marchant’s own purchase shows why.
“While some traffic can be tracked and attributed directly to ChatGPT, if you click directly on a link inside ChatGPT, then someone with a business would be able to see that in their Google Analytics. In many cases, there’s this kind of situation, which is known as dark traffic, where there’s no way to a hundred percent be able to attribute exactly what it was that led a customer to you.”
Beauty of Joseon has no idea ChatGPT and Google’s AI overview were both part of the sale, as Charlie Marchant puts it.
This means last-click attribution is increasingly misleading. If your reporting only credits the final channel before checkout, you’re underestimating the value of the AI Search touchpoints and reviews that actually persuaded the customer to buy.
Building a Strategy for a Search Everywhere World
Beauty of Joseon has built consistent proof points everywhere.
By securing coverage in trusted third-party publications, running consistent messaging across TikTok and reseller sites, and keeping its USPs identical everywhere, this brand has fed the same pool of signals that AI platforms and search engines pull from when recommending products.
Charlie Marchant’s takeaway for brands is straightforward, even if the execution isn’t.
“The overarching point of this podcast is that if you are a brand, you need to be thinking about search across platforms. You need to be thinking about attributing not just a last-click attribution, but how you think about all of the touch points that your customers might be having, and also how you meet your customers where they are,” says Charlie Marchant.
Brands need to be built for both the five-minute buyer and the six-week researcher. That means strong AI Search visibility, credible digital PR and reviews for the long researchers, and fast, frictionless purchase paths for the ones ready to buy now, backed up by email marketing to nurture repeat purchases once they’re in.
If your marketing is still built around a single channel or a last-click report, you’re likely missing most of the customer search journey that actually leads to a sale. Our team can show you exactly where your customers are searching and how to show up there. Book a consultation call with Exposure Ninja to find out where the gaps are.
