What AI Is Actually Doing to the Customer Journey (And Why Your Website Strategy Is Already Behind)
For two years we've all been having the same hallway conversation at every franchise conference: "Are you using AI yet?" It's a nebulous, almost meaningless question at this point. The real question — the one almost nobody is asking — is how AI is rewiring the way our customers find us, vet us, and decide to trust us before they ever land on our website. And what it actually means for us as marketers when our bosses start expecting answers.
I sat down with Kim Gouch, Chief Brand Officer at Retro Fitness, and Will Fraker, VP of Brand and Performance at the Good Feed Store, to get past the buzzword phase. What came out of it was a framework for talking to your CEO, a clear-eyed look at where AI is not winning, and a channel conversation that every franchise marketer needs to be having right now.
When I asked both guests to pitch AI investment to their leadership in one sentence, Will led with revenue. Kim pushed back immediately: "Efficiency actually drives revenue." Her logic was simple — marketing is the heartbeat of the business, and if your team is more efficient across data, creative, and advertising, the revenue follows. It's not an either/or, it's sequencing. Lead with efficiency to get the conversation started, and let revenue be the proof you bring back six months later. If you're struggling to get budget approved for AI investment, that reframe is your way in.
The bigger unlock from Kim was her approach to adoption itself. "Go slow to go fast" sounds counterintuitive when everyone around you is sprinting, but her point was specific: don't treat AI as a one-size-fits-all net. Look at each discipline on your team individually and ask which model fits that job. Claude for data and analytics, ChatGPT for creative inspiration — the tool follows the problem, not the other way around. If your team is diving in without first defining what they're trying to solve, you're going to waste budget and credibility, and those are two things franchise marketers can't afford to burn.
The part of this conversation that actually stopped me was Will's observation about the customer journey. While we've been busy figuring out how to use AI to write faster and analyze better, our customers have been using it to form opinions about our brands before they ever hit our websites. Will's team at the Good Feed Store discovered significant customer conversations happening on Reddit — conversations that were shaping purchase decisions — that they weren't monitoring at all. They brought in an AI visibility partner to track what LLMs are actually surfacing about their brand, and it changed how they prioritize content and where they invest in SEO. The no-click era isn't coming. It's already here, and most franchise brands are still optimizing for a search behavior that's already shifted underneath them.
Will's take on the website itself was direct: "I don't think tomorrow anything is changing with your website. But it is changing. It is happening right now underneath your feet." The Good Feed Store has already updated blog structure, page schema, and added content around conversations they weren't previously having on their site — all in response to what they're seeing in LLM outputs. Kim added the mobile-first lens from a conversion standpoint: if your younger customer cohorts are only on their phones, the optimization question starts there, not at the desktop experience you've been perfecting.
On creative, both guests landed in the same place from different angles. Kim's framing was the sharpest: "Brand is emotional. Marketing is a transaction. To marry those two, you cannot lose that emotion." She believes AI has a real role in scaling quantity — if you need 45 ad variations for a Google campaign, AI gets you there — but the foundation has to be human-created every time. Will confirmed the Good Feed Store doesn't use AI-generated creative in any client-facing material, full stop. Where both of them are leaning into AI heavily is internal: slide decks, landing page mockups, design concepts that used to take a designer two days and now take twenty minutes. Kim also described building custom AI agents trained on brand personas and standards — not to generate final creative, but to use as a filter to optimize copy and color against brand guardrails before anything goes out.
The UGC point underneath all of this is worth sitting with. Both guests pointed to a consumer training effect — people are getting better at spotting AI-generated content, and it's creating distrust. The deliberately less polished, shot-on-an-iPhone testimonial is outperforming high-gloss production precisely because it reads as real. Franchise brands have a structural advantage here — hundreds of locations means hundreds of potential sources of authentic local content — but only if someone builds the system to capture it. That system is still the missing piece for most brands.
On channel prioritization heading into 2027, Will's framework was the most honest answer I've heard: prioritize by impact, not by habit. For the Good Feed Store, that meant starting with data analysis — building out reporting inside Claude so the team could actually query store performance without going to a spreadsheet — because that's where they could move fastest and prove the most value. Kim's take on email was equally direct: on the consumer side for Retro Fitness, it's a necessary evil, too slow for an emotional in-the-moment fitness decision. Where it's still earning its keep is on the B2B side, specifically franchise development conversations.
The closing challenge from both guests was almost identical, and it's the one I want to leave you with. Will said it plainly: if you can allow AI to do all of your work for you, you're not going to be around much longer, because AI could probably do your job in about a year. Kim's version was more visual: "AI is not a crutch. It's superfood. Add a little kale to my salad, there's my AI." Use it to sharpen your output. Don't use it to replace your judgment.
So here's the question I'd put to you going into 2027 budget season: when's the last time you actually looked at what the LLMs are saying about your brand — not what your website says, but what ChatGPT and Claude are telling your prospective customers before they ever find you?
This post was inspired by a conversation with Kim Gouch, Chief Brand Officer, Retro Fitness and Will Fraker, VP of Brand and Performance, The Good Feed Store, recorded for the Franchise Marketing Spotlight in September 2026. Listen to the full conversation at https://youtu.be/WkqRx4sPUcc
