I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how companies approach customer acquisition, especially the ones that are just getting started.
If I were starting a business today, I wouldn’t be thinking about SEO, paid media, and affiliate as completely separate strategies. I’d be thinking about how they all work together to get my product in front of the people who might actually want it.
I think affiliate is especially interesting here, partly because I sell affiliate marketing technology. Historically, it’s been treated mostly as a revenue channel. But the publishers and creators participating in affiliate programs are also part of the broader discovery process: they write reviews, compare products, and help customers decide what to buy.
And now AI search is finding and citing that content too.
So if you’re a founder trying to bootstrap a product, why wouldn’t you be thinking about those relationships from the beginning?
How to Test Your Visibility in AI Search (Lazily)
If you’re trying to show up in answers generated by LLMs, I think you first need to understand how these systems are discovering and recommending products.
There’s a company called Profound that’s doing interesting work here. They help companies understand how often they appear in AI-generated answers, how they’re being described, which competitors are showing up, and what sources are being cited.
But if you’re not looking to add another platform to your mix, you can always start by experimenting on your own.
Open ChatGPT and ask questions that potential customers might ask. Run the same questions across different accounts, including ones with different personalization histories, and compare the results.
Which brands are showing up? How are they being described? Are the recommendations consistent? And most importantly, where is the information coming from?
Once you understand that, you can start thinking about where you want your company to show up and what you want people to associate with it.
Why Smaller Publishers Matter for AI Search and Customer Acquisition
This is where I think things get really cool.
Let’s be realistic: if you’re just starting a company, getting featured in TechCrunch or another major publication is probably going to be difficult.
But what about the other million publishers out there?
There’s research suggesting that AI search citations don’t always come from the websites ranking at the very top of Google. One study of Google AI Overviews found that 60% of cited domains weren’t in the top 10 organic results for the same queries.
That doesn’t mean Google rankings don’t matter, or that AI is pulling everything from page two or three. But it does make me curious about the publishers we might otherwise overlook.
Think: smaller blogs, niche publications, and independent writers who have spent years talking about a particular subject.
As you get deeper into a category, you start finding people who genuinely care about what they’re writing about. They might not have the biggest audiences, but they have opinions, expertise, and communities that trust them.
Those are the people I’d want to build relationships with.
How Affiliate Partnerships Can Support Customer Acquisition
This is where affiliate marketing could become a much bigger part of a company’s distribution strategy.
If I found publishers who were already talking about the problems my product solves, I’d want to figure out how we could work together. They already have what a new brand usually doesn’t: an audience that trusts them.
Affiliate can be a way to capture demand that already exists. But it can also be part of how a company creates awareness, builds credibility, and reaches new audiences.
Platforms like Awin can make those relationships easier to manage. They connect brands with publishers and creators and handle the tracking, reporting, and payments, whether your program is small or large. But I’d start with the people, not the platform. Find who’s already influencing your category and make it easy for them to share your product.
We spend so much time talking about paid search and paid social. I think partnerships deserve to be part of that conversation from the start, especially since publishers and creators shape what people discover, right alongside SEO.
Why Founders Need Their Own Point of View
And this isn’t only about working with publishers. I think founders should be publishers too.
Especially now that technology is becoming more of a commodity.
You can have the best product and still not win.
If I were building something today, I’d want to write about it. I’d start a blog, share what I was learning, talk about the problems I was trying to solve, and develop my own opinions about the industry.
Not because every blog post is going to generate customers. But because I think there’s value in giving people a reason to understand what you’re building and why you care about it.
Over time, maybe those ideas start attracting people who think about the same problems.
Maybe they become customers. Maybe they become partners. Either way, you’re building something beyond the product itself.
You’re building a perspective that people can associate with you.
Until next time ✌️