“Louder” is No Longer a Marketing Strategy, According to new Cordial Study
We all know that AI is having a massive impact on how consumers search for goods and services. A new study by Cordial, a leader in messaging for enterprise retail marketing teams, reveals that brands (including MULO or multi-location companies) are woefully under-prepared to deal with its impact.
The Cordial report, combining the survey results of 1,000 U.S. consumers and 30 marketing executives, confirms that:
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One-third of consumers now regularly use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude throughout their shopping journey, with Millennials and Gen Z leading adoption at rates 33% and 11% higher than average, respectively.
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Despite this growing consumer behavior, nearly half of all brands (47%) maintain minimal or no AI agent presence, while only 7% have developed comprehensive AI optimization strategies.
The report reveals that the “louder is better” philosophy no longer works. Marketers now struggle to break through the noise amid consumer fatigue and declining engagement.
“Generic communication adds to the noise. While executives estimate only 22% of their messages are truly personalized, a widening performance gap reveals where brands fall on the marketing maturity curve. The culprit? Technological fragmentation — with organizations juggling more than five disparate marketing applications, and 60% expressing low confidence in their customer data.
Only 3 percent of brands, overall, have the ability to predict what customers actually want by leveraging behavioral data in real time.
While “Basic” and “Emerging” brands remain trapped in siloed operations and declining performance, “Optimized” brands have achieved full integration across data, AI and channels to enable personalization in real time and at scale. This elite cohort reports consistently growing performance while fragmented competitors battle stagnant results, enabling personalization in real time and at scale.”
Rob Garf, Head of Strategy and Insights at Cordial, offers these three powerful tips for how brands should be changing their search strategies to lean into the new rules of search.
“Optimize for personal AI agent discovery. One-third of consumers now use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude in their shopping journey, yet most brands can’t be found. This creates a major opportunity for MULO brands to gain visibility where consumers increasingly discover brands.
Consolidate your martech stack. Marketers manage customer engagement across multiple marketing applications, causing many to have low confidence in customer data. MULO brands should unify fragmented systems to improve data quality and enable better personalization across online and offline destinations.
Ditch generic messaging. Only 38 percent of consumers say most messages feel personalized to them. MULO brands must understand customer intent – at the moment of truth – to deliver dynamic and relevant engagement across all touchpoints.”
The impact of AI in all aspects of MULO marketing will be one of the key topics at Street Fight LIVE 2025 in Los Angeles. We hope to see you there!
