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Overview
Think about the last time you hired a service you’d never bought before, like a bookkeeper, a lawyer or an ad agency. Chances are you asked Google, a chatbot or a friend long before you talked to a business. In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch explains how that habit has rewritten the buyer journey. AI tools now narrow real buying decisions down to a few finalists, and the businesses on that list never find out they were being considered.
Jantsch revisits the Marketing Hourglass, the seven-stage customer journey he created around 2008: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat and Refer. He walks through how AI is changing each stage. He covers the move from ranking in search results to being cited in AI answers, why competent content no longer sets anyone apart, what trust looks like now that almost anything can be faked, and why Try is the stage most businesses never design on purpose.
The big idea is that the reviews, case studies and mentions your current customers leave behind are the signals AI uses to decide who gets recommended. That means Repeat and Refer now create demand back at the top of the hourglass. This episode is for small business owners, marketers and consultants who want to show up in AI search and get chosen, without chasing the latest technical hack.
About the Host
John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He has spent more than twenty-five years helping small businesses build marketing that works. He created the Marketing Hourglass, a customer journey model that carries past the sale into Repeat and Refer. He’s the author of several books, including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine and The Ultimate Marketing Engine.
Key Takeaways
- AI tools now build short lists for real buying decisions. Neither the businesses on those lists nor the ones left off ever see it happen.
- The Marketing Hourglass still has seven stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat and Refer. The buyer walks them in a line, but the business has to run them as a loop.
- The artifacts happy customers leave behind, such as reviews, case studies and social mentions, are the signals AI uses to recommend a business.
- Ranking has given way to being cited. Most of those citations sit on pages you don’t own, like Reddit, LinkedIn, industry roundups, directories and other people’s podcasts.
- A specific review like “they fixed our scheduling mess” tells a machine far more than “great service.” Describe your category in one plain sentence, and list your business name the same way everywhere.
- Competent content is cheap now. The content that stands out shows your work (dead ends included), puts a real person on camera and takes a position a competitor would argue with.
- Trust signals need to be hard to fake: reviews on platforms you don’t control, named clients, real team photos, published pricing and results with dates on them.
- Put every claim, review and award in text on your website. AI tools have a hard time reading images and some JavaScript elements.
- Try is the most common gap. Most businesses already have one by default, like a phone call, a form or a quote, but nobody designed it.
- Ignoring Repeat and Refer costs you twice: you lose the business itself, and you lose the reviews and case studies that send new buyers your way. Skipping stages also invites price resistance.
Great Moments
- [00:01] John asks where you started the last time you hired a service you’d never bought before
- [00:26] The HVAC prompt experiment: three finalists in about ten seconds
- [02:45] Why retention and referrals now feed AI short lists
- [05:08] The move from ranking to being cited, and what actually gets a business named
- [07:29] Why competent content no longer stands out, and what trust looks like when anything can be faked
- [09:35] Putting claims in text, and why Try is the biggest gap
- [11:46] Repeat and Refer, and why word of mouth is now indexable
- [14:06] The best way to rank in AI, and how to find your biggest gap
- [16:24] Why the hourglass is a practical mechanism for getting found
Memorable Quotes
“Being found and being chosen used to be two different jobs. They’re kind of just one job now.” – John Jantsch
“Competent content is very cheap. So competent is really not setting you apart anymore.” – Jantsch
“Everything that we’re doing in the bottom half of the hourglass is now actually creating demand in the top half.” – Jantsch
“You can move people through stages pretty quickly, but you cannot skip any of the stages.” – Jantsch
“Guiding customers all the way through the customer journey, past the sale to the point where they’ll say your name out loud, somewhere public, is now the practical mechanism by which anybody finds you.” – Jantsch
