The internet is in the middle of a big shift, and if you run a small business, you’ve probably felt it even if you couldn’t quite name it. People are asking ChatGPT for restaurant recommendations instead of scrolling Yelp. They’re asking Claude to compare software instead of reading ten blog posts. The path a customer takes to find you has changed, and so has the amount of human attention available once they get there.
Our very own Mickey Mellen recently wrote two posts that, together, tell the whole story: The Verification Loop and Machines of Connection. One is about how customers are finding you now. The other is about how you can use the same technology to actually connect with them once they do. We think both are worth a few minutes of your time, so here’s our take.
The verification loop: AI gets you noticed, but your website closes the deal
Mickey pointed to a recent study from Yext showing that 43% of consumers have used AI for local search in just the past month. That’s a massive shift in behavior. But here’s what matters most for small business owners: only 5% of people go straight from an AI answer to a purchase. Almost everyone else still does a Google search and visits the company’s website before they buy anything.
Mickey calls this the verification loop, and it means two things at once:
- If AI doesn’t know about you, none of this matters. You need to show up in AI conversations, or people never get the chance to verify you in the first place.
- If your website can’t back up what AI said about you, you’ll lose the sale anyway. A slow, cluttered, or confusing site breaks the trust that AI just built on your behalf.
This also lines up with something Mickey has said before about how attribution can lie to you—your analytics might show a customer came from “Google,” when really, AI is what sent them there to search for you.
For our clients, the lesson is simple: a fast, clean, credible website isn’t optional anymore. It’s the second half of a conversation that AI already started for you. If your site hasn’t been touched in a few years, now’s a good time to change that.
Machines of connection: the same tools can make you more human, not less
Here’s where it gets more interesting, and more hopeful. In Machines of Connection, Mickey makes a point we believe deeply at GreenMellen: AI can either put distance between you and your customers, or it can close that distance. The choice is yours.
He shared a few ways he’s using AI to do the latter. Internally, GreenMellen uses a tool called ClientPulse to keep track of client needs, and Mickey recently added features that help him send genuinely personal check-in messages to hundreds of clients without losing track of who needs what. It’s not automation replacing a human touch; it’s AI clearing away the busywork so the human touch actually happens.
He also described a tool built with a friend to help organize Atlanta marketing meetups: deciding who to invite, tracking RSVPs, and handling the logistics that used to live in a chaotic pile of spreadsheets. The goal was never to reduce human interaction. It was to spend less time managing spreadsheets and more time actually having lunch with people. And he’s used Dex and a self-built tool called Rekindle to nudge himself to reach out to people he hasn’t talked to in a while. He uses AI as a memory aid for relationships, not a replacement.
Two sides of the same coin
Put these two posts together, and you get a pretty clear picture of where marketing is headed. AI is changing how people discover your business, and it’s changing how much bandwidth you have to actually build relationships with them. The businesses that win won’t be the ones that ignore AI, and they won’t be the ones that hand everything over to it, either. They’ll be the ones that use it to show up in the right places and to make more room for real, human connection once someone’s paying attention.
That’s the whole idea behind intentionally human marketing: it’s better to reach the right someone than just anyone, and every bit of technology we use should serve that, not replace it.
A few things worth doing this week:
- Search for your own business in ChatGPT or Claude and see what they say about you. If it’s wrong, outdated, or you’re simply not there, that’s a problem worth solving.
- Take a hard look at your website with fresh eyes. If an AI tool just sent someone your way, would your site back up what they were told?
- Find one place in your business where a little bit of automation could free up time for a genuinely personal touch—a check-in call, a handwritten note, a follow-up that isn’t a template.
If you’d like a second set of eyes on any of this, whether it’s making sure your website can hold up its end of the verification loop or building out a digital marketing approach that actually shows up where your customers are searching, we’d love to talk.
