How AI Search Is Changing Marketing — And What Businesses Need to Do

AI is changing how people search, discover brands and make purchasing decisions — but many businesses are still optimizing for the old internet. In this episode of Build With What You Know, I speak with Vyara Stefcheva, an independent expert in applied AI for marketing and business, about what happens when AI becomes part of the customer journey. Vyara has helped scale more than 300 brands across 15 countries and trained more than 20,000 people. Her work focuses on practical AI adoption for SMEs, AI search and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), AI literacy, and the practical application of the EU AI Act in marketing. We discuss: • How AI search is changing the way customers discover businesses • What Generative Engine Optimisation means in practice • Why traditional SEO alone may no longer be enough • How businesses can increase their chances of appearing in AI-generated answers • What information AI systems need to understand a company • Why structured, trustworthy and consistent business information matters • How SMEs can actually adopt AI without creating unnecessary complexity • The biggest mistakes businesses make when introducing AI • Why AI literacy is becoming a business skill rather than a purely technical one • How marketing teams should think about AI adoption • What the EU AI Act means for businesses using AI in marketing • Why companies should focus on practical use cases rather than simply adding AI everywhere The conversation is ultimately about a bigger shift: AI isn't just changing the tools businesses use. It is changing how customers find information, evaluate companies and make decisions. Vyara's website: https://stefcheva.com/en/ Watch the full conversation: https://youtu.be/4FCKSV4NwFg #AI #AIsearch #GEO #GenerativeAI #Marketing #SEO #AIAdoption #DigitalMarketing #EUAIAct #BuildWithWhatYouKnow