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P&G Rebuilt Its Operations and Saved $600 Million. Here's How.

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 19:15:18 GMT

Procter & Gamble didn't simply outsource its support operations. It first rebuilt how they worked, then brought in outside partners. By 2008, its business-services transformation had generated approximately $600 million in cumulative savings.

In the late 1990s, Procter & Gamble faced a problem familiar to businesses of almost every size: too many teams performing similar work.

Finance, human resources and other support functions were spread across different parts of the company. That meant duplicated activities, inconsistent processes and unnecessary costs.

Instead of continuing to expand those departments independently, P&G decided to fundamentally change how its business operated.

First, P&G Fixed Its Internal Operations

In 1999, P&G began bringing its support functions into a single global organization.

Over the following three years, the company consolidated and standardized more than 70 services. It also established shared-service centers to support operations around the world.

The goal was to replace fragmented systems with a more consistent and efficient operating structure.

Importantly, P&G didn't begin by handing all these functions to outside companies. It first reorganized how the work was performed internally.

That foundation would make the next phase possible.

Then Came $4.2 Billion in Outsourcing Agreements

In 2003, P&G entered into outsourcing partnerships valued at approximately $4.2 billion.

Outside specialists took responsibility for selected operations, including IT infrastructure, payroll support, accounts payable and facilities management.

Rather than maintaining every capability internally, P&G could rely on partners with specialized expertise, established systems and the scale to manage these activities.

But it didn't outsource everything.

The company retained control of functions it considered strategically important, including procurement, logistics, IT architecture and technology-driven innovation.

This distinction was central to the strategy. P&G wasn't trying to eliminate internal operations. It was deciding which activities made sense to manage itself and which could be handled more effectively by partners.

The Benefits Went Beyond Cost Savings

One of the clearest examples came during P&G's integration of Gillette.

According to P&G's business-services leadership, its established systems and outsourcing partners helped the company mobilize approximately 750 additional people within weeks.

The business-services integration was completed in 15 months, a process its leadership believed could otherwise have taken three to four years.

That flexibility mattered. P&G could draw on existing capabilities and outside resources without having to build every part of the operation from scratch.

By 2008, the company's broader business-services transformation had produced approximately $600 million in cumulative savings.

Those savings came from a combination of internal consolidation, standardized processes and selective outsourcing, not outsourcing alone.

What Smaller Businesses Can Learn

Most businesses aren't managing P&G's scale or negotiating multibillion-dollar agreements. But the underlying decision is surprisingly relevant.

As companies grow, they often add employees and departments without reconsidering how work gets done.

Over time, the same problems can emerge: duplicated tasks, fragmented responsibilities, rising administrative costs and employees spending too much time on activities outside their core expertise.

The first step isn't necessarily outsourcing. It's understanding the operation.

Which processes are inefficient? Which functions require direct internal control? Which activities could a specialist handle more effectively?

Customer support, bookkeeping, administrative work, creative production and certain technology operations may be candidates for outside support, depending on the business.

But outsourcing a poorly defined process can simply transfer the problem to someone else.

P&G's experience illustrates a more disciplined approach: improve the system, identify which capabilities are strategically important and use external partners where they offer a genuine advantage.

You Don't Have to Build Everything In-House

The most important lesson from P&G's transformation isn't that every business should outsource more.

It's that growth doesn't require owning and managing every operational function.

By combining stronger internal processes with carefully selected partners, businesses can reduce unnecessary complexity and concentrate their resources where they create the most value.

Sometimes the smartest way to grow isn't to build another department. It's to rethink how the work gets done.

Sources

McKinsey & Company, From internal service provider to strategic partner: An interview with the head of Global Business Services at P&G (2008).
Procter & Gamble, 2008 Annual Report.

More Employees, Same Problems: Why Hiring Isn't Always the Answer

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:08:56 GMT

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Advertisers Refreshing Their Ads More Often Saw 23% Better Returns

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 20:18:49 GMT

New research from AppLovin suggests that better advertising performance may come from changing your creative, not increasing your budget.

Businesses spend enormous amounts of time adjusting advertising budgets, audiences and targeting. But what if the bigger opportunity is simply giving customers something new to look at?

New research from AppLovin, examining Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising in 2025, found that advertisers introducing new creative during three or four weeks of November achieved 23% higher median seven-day return on ad spend (ROAS) than those refreshing ads during only one or two weeks.

That's a meaningful difference, particularly during one of the most competitive advertising periods of the year.

Fresh Creative, Stronger Results

The research found that 63% of advertisers introduced new creative during three or four weeks of November, while 37% did so during only one or two weeks.

Newer advertisements also performed better than older ones:

15% higher ROAS for creative uploaded during November compared with ads more than 60 days old.
13% lower cost per purchase for newer creative.
23% higher median ROAS among advertisers refreshing creative more frequently.

These results don't prove that frequent updates alone caused better performance.

However, they suggest that creative freshness deserves more attention in advertising strategy.

Promotions and Short Videos Made a Difference

Promotional advertisements accounted for 64.2% of attributed revenue during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period.

Deal-focused advertising generated approximately $1.38 in revenue per dollar spent, compared with $1.26 for product-focused advertising.

Video length also produced interesting results. Videos lasting 15 seconds or less recorded an 83% improvement in new-customer first-interaction ROAS compared with an earlier nonpromotional baseline.

Longer videos also improved, but by smaller percentages. That doesn't mean shorter videos always win. It does suggest that concise creative is worth testing during major shopping events.

What Businesses Should Take Away

The lesson isn't to replace every advertisement each week.

If an ad is profitable, keep it running. Instead, introduce fresh variations alongside it.

Test new opening scenes, headlines, product demonstrations, customer testimonials or promotional offers. Measure what works, and continue developing the strongest performers.

With Black Friday 2026 approaching, businesses have an opportunity to review their creative strategy before competition intensifies.

Your next advertising improvement might not require a bigger budget. It might require a better ad.

Sources:

AppLovin: BFCM Creative Drives Results
Marketing Dive: Optimizing Ad Spend Ahead of Black Friday: What the Numbers Say

IKEA Found a Better Way to Use AI

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:40:23 GMT

IKEA automated nearly half of its customer inquiries, retrained approximately 8,500 employees and reported millions in savings. Its approach offers an alternative to treating AI primarily as a tool for cutting payroll.

For many businesses, the financial appeal of artificial intelligence is straightforward. If software can perform work previously handled by employees, operating costs could fall.

But IKEA's experience raises another question: What happens when a company uses AI to eliminate repetitive tasks without eliminating the people who used to perform them?

The furniture retailer offers a useful example of how automation, employee development and new sales opportunities can work together.

Automating 47% of customer inquiries

IKEA introduced an AI-powered customer-service chatbot called Billie to handle routine inquiries.

Between 2021 and 2023, Billie handled approximately 47% of customer inquiries, taking on questions about orders, deliveries, returns and other common service issues.

The benefits were significant. IKEA reported approximately €13 million in savings associated with automating customer inquiries.

For a company operating at IKEA's scale, automating repetitive conversations can reduce the workload placed on customer-service teams and improve the efficiency of support operations.

That alone would have made the technology valuable.

But IKEA did not stop at automation.

What happened to 8,500 employees?

Rather than treating the automation of routine customer-service work solely as an opportunity to eliminate positions, IKEA invested in retraining approximately 8,500 call-center employees.

The company redirected workers toward more complex customer interactions, including remote interior-design consultations and sales.

These responsibilities required a different set of skills.

Instead of primarily answering questions about delivery dates or order status, employees could help customers plan living spaces, choose furniture and make purchasing decisions.

AI could handle repetitive inquiries while employees concentrated on interactions requiring product knowledge, judgment and personal assistance.

The distinction is important.

Automating a task does not necessarily mean that the employee performing it has become unnecessary. It may mean that the employee's time can be used differently.

Turning customer service into a sales opportunity

IKEA also expanded its remote interior-design and sales services.

Through these services, customers could receive assistance planning rooms, selecting furniture and making purchases without visiting a physical store.

This created an opportunity for employees with customer-service experience to contribute more directly to revenue-generating activities.

A conventional support interaction typically begins when a customer needs help resolving a problem.

A remote-sales consultation can go further. It can help a customer understand their options, build confidence in a purchase and complete an order.

For IKEA, this meant that employees previously associated with routine customer support could take on responsibilities connected to sales and customer relationships.

The company was not simply finding ways to answer the same questions at a lower cost. It was also developing new ways to serve customers.

A remote-sales business generating approximately €1.25 billion

According to Fortune's July 2026 reporting, IKEA's remote-sales channel generated approximately €1.25 billion in revenue during fiscal 2025.

Fortune also reported that remote sales had become IKEA's fastest-growing sales channel for three consecutive years, with annual growth of approximately 15% to 20%.

Those figures are substantial, but they require an important distinction.

The €1.25 billion represents revenue from IKEA's broader remote-sales operation. It should not be interpreted as revenue directly generated by its AI chatbot or attributed entirely to retrained employees.

Remote-sales performance depends on numerous factors, including customer demand, service development, marketing, product availability and execution.

Nevertheless, the figures provide context for the business IKEA was developing alongside its investment in automation and employee retraining.

The company was pursuing operational efficiency while expanding a channel where employees could contribute to sales.

Two ways to approach AI

Consider two companies introducing similar AI systems into their customer-service departments.

The first company focuses primarily on reducing payroll.

It automates routine tasks, determines how many positions are no longer required and reduces staffing accordingly.

That can be a legitimate business strategy, particularly when the work eliminated by automation cannot be productively redirected.

The second company considers an additional possibility.

It automates the same repetitive tasks but evaluates whether employees can be retrained for responsibilities that produce more value.

Those responsibilities might include sales, customer retention, account management, product education or more complex service interactions.

Both approaches can improve efficiency.

The difference is that the second also explores whether the time released by automation can support business growth.

IKEA's experience illustrates this broader approach.

The opportunity for smaller businesses

The principle is not limited to multinational retailers.

Imagine a business where employees spend several hours each day answering routine emails, entering information into systems, updating customers or preparing repetitive reports.

AI and automation could reduce that workload.

The immediate financial question might be how much staffing the business could eliminate.

But another question deserves attention: What could those employees accomplish with the time they recover?

A customer-service representative might spend more time helping existing customers make additional purchases.

An administrative employee might take on order coordination or account-management responsibilities.

A marketing employee might shift from repetitive production tasks toward campaign testing, customer research and conversion improvements.

These changes are not automatically profitable. Retraining requires investment, employees need appropriate skills, and the business must have productive work available.

But evaluating those opportunities before making staffing decisions can reveal options that a cost-cutting exercise alone might overlook.

The bigger lesson from IKEA

IKEA's reported results show that AI-driven customer-service automation can produce meaningful savings.

Its decision to retrain thousands of employees also demonstrates another use of the technology: changing what people do rather than assuming that automated work must translate directly into fewer workers.

The lesson is not that businesses should never replace jobs with AI.

It is that headcount reduction should not automatically be the only measure of success.

A company might save money by automating work. It might also create more value by using the capacity that automation releases.

For business owners evaluating AI, both possibilities deserve consideration.

The most valuable AI strategy may not be the one that eliminates the most jobs. It may be the one that produces the strongest overall business results.

Sources

eBay's Live Shopping Business Just Grew 8X

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:46:11 GMT

Live shopping has spent years trying to establish itself as a meaningful part of ecommerce in the United States. While platforms such as Whatnot have built businesses around livestream selling, traditional online marketplaces have generally continued to rely on product listings, search results and conventional checkout experiences.

Now eBay is reporting growth that suggests live commerce is becoming an increasingly important part of its business.

During the second quarter of 2026, eBay Live's gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of merchandise sold through the platform, increased eightfold compared with the same period a year earlier.

The company also reported improvements in live-shopping engagement, including viewers, watch time and items sold.

Those results have attracted attention beyond the ecommerce industry. In October, Morgan Stanley highlighted live commerce as a potential contributor to eBay's growth, bringing renewed investor attention to a selling format that has often been viewed as a niche activity.

The development raises a broader question: could live shopping become a standard part of how established ecommerce marketplaces operate?

From Traditional Marketplace to Live Shopping

eBay built its business around connecting buyers and sellers through online listings and auctions. Customers could search for products, compare options, examine photographs and make purchasing decisions independently.

Live commerce introduces a different experience.

Rather than waiting for customers to discover individual listings, sellers can present products during a livestream, demonstrate their features, answer questions and interact with potential buyers as purchases take place.

The approach combines several activities that traditionally happen separately: product discovery, customer engagement, sales presentations and transactions.

For sellers, that creates opportunities to explain products in greater detail and build relationships with audiences. For customers, it provides a more interactive way to evaluate merchandise before buying.

Importantly, eBay doesn't have to replace its existing marketplace to introduce this experience. Live shopping can operate alongside traditional listings, providing an additional route for customers to discover and purchase products.

That makes eBay's expansion particularly interesting. The company is introducing a different buying experience within an established ecommerce ecosystem rather than building an entirely new marketplace around livestreaming.

What Eightfold Growth Actually Means

The headline figure is significant: eBay Live GMV increased eightfold year over year in the second quarter of 2026.

GMV measures the value of merchandise sold through a marketplace. It is not the same as the marketplace operator's revenue, which depends on factors such as fees and other services.

An eightfold increase therefore indicates substantial growth in merchandise sales conducted through eBay Live, not an eightfold increase in eBay's overall revenue.

There is also an important limitation. Without knowing the starting GMV, the growth rate alone cannot establish the absolute size of eBay's live-shopping business.

A relatively small business can achieve an exceptionally high growth rate while still representing a modest portion of a much larger company's operations.

Nevertheless, the reported increases in viewers, watch time and items sold provide additional evidence that activity on the platform has been expanding.

Together, those indicators suggest eBay Live is gaining traction, even though the publicly reported figures do not yet provide a complete picture of its scale or profitability.

Why Wall Street Is Paying Attention

The growth has also begun attracting greater interest from financial analysts.

In October 2026, Morgan Stanley identified live commerce as a potential driver of eBay's performance and estimated that it could account for more than 40% of the company's growth.

That figure is an analyst estimate, not a metric disclosed by eBay, and should not be confused with the company's reported eightfold increase in eBay Live GMV.

The distinction matters because the two figures describe different things. One concerns growth in merchandise sold through a particular channel. The other reflects an outside assessment of how that channel may contribute to the broader business.

What makes the analysis notable is the attention itself.

Live shopping is increasingly being discussed not merely as an experimental feature or marketing activity, but as a possible contributor to growth at a mature ecommerce company.

For an established marketplace, developing new ways to engage buyers can be particularly valuable. Rather than depending entirely on attracting more search traffic, the business can create additional opportunities for customers to discover products and transact.

Why Collectibles Are a Natural Starting Point

Live commerce isn't equally suited to every product category.

Its advantages become clearer when the buying process benefits from demonstrations, explanations, interaction or a sense of discovery.

Collectibles are a particularly strong example.

Buyers of trading cards, memorabilia and other collectible items often care about details that are difficult to communicate through a limited number of product photographs.

Condition, rarity, presentation and seller credibility can influence purchasing decisions.

A livestream allows sellers to show merchandise from different angles, respond to questions immediately and create a shared experience around discovering individual products.

It also introduces an entertainment element.

A customer might join a livestream without planning to purchase a specific item, remain to watch the presentation and eventually discover something worth buying.

That differs from the traditional ecommerce journey, where customers often begin by searching for something they already know they want.

For categories built around collecting, enthusiasm and discovery, this difference can be meaningful.

A Different Way for Customers to Discover Products

Traditional ecommerce generally follows a familiar sequence: customers search for products, compare available options and make a purchase.

Live commerce introduces another path.

A customer can begin by watching a livestream, interact with the seller, discover a product and decide to purchase it during the same session.

The buying experience becomes less dependent on a customer arriving with a specific product in mind.

This creates opportunities for sellers to generate demand through presentations, demonstrations and audience relationships rather than relying exclusively on product searches.

It also changes the role of the seller.

In a traditional marketplace, the product listing carries much of the responsibility for communicating value. In live commerce, the person presenting the merchandise becomes an important part of the shopping experience.

Their product knowledge, communication skills, consistency and ability to build trust can influence how successfully the channel performs.

That creates new operational requirements. Running an effective live-selling operation involves more than switching on a camera. Inventory preparation, presentation, audience engagement, order management and fulfillment all need to work together.

For businesses considering live commerce, those practical requirements are just as important as the technology.

What eBay's Growth Means for Other Businesses

The lesson from eBay's reported growth isn't that every retailer should immediately start livestreaming.

Live commerce works best when the format adds something meaningful to the purchasing experience.

Products that benefit from demonstrations, personal explanations or real-time questions may be more naturally suited to the format than products customers prefer to purchase quickly through a conventional listing.

Businesses also need to consider whether they can sustain a consistent live schedule, prepare enough inventory and manage orders without creating unnecessary operational costs.

But eBay's results illustrate why the format deserves serious attention.

Live selling doesn't necessarily have to replace an existing ecommerce operation. It can become another sales channel, operating alongside a website, marketplace listings, social media and other customer acquisition activities.

For companies with suitable products and an audience that responds to interactive shopping, that creates an opportunity to test a different way of generating sales.

The most useful question isn't simply whether live commerce is growing. It's whether live selling can create a better buying experience for a particular customer and product category.

Live Commerce Is Moving Beyond Specialist Platforms

The growth of platforms dedicated to livestream shopping demonstrated that audiences were willing to purchase products through live video.

eBay's expansion points toward another stage of development: established marketplaces incorporating live selling into their existing businesses.

That distinction matters.

If live commerce becomes a standard capability within major ecommerce platforms, more sellers may be able to experiment with the format without moving their businesses to entirely separate marketplaces.

It could also make live shopping more familiar to consumers who already use those platforms for traditional purchases.

There are still unanswered questions about the size, profitability and long-term growth of eBay Live. The eightfold increase is a strong growth indicator, but it doesn't provide those answers on its own.

What it does show is that live shopping is gaining enough traction at an established ecommerce company to attract both operational investment and investor attention.

For businesses watching the evolution of ecommerce, that may be the more important development.

Live commerce is increasingly becoming another way to sell online, rather than an entirely separate category of online shopping.

Sources

Claude Code's Creator Says We're Overcomplicating AI Prompts

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 16:49:41 GMT

For years, people have been told that getting better results from artificial intelligence requires mastering the art of prompt engineering. Detailed instructions, carefully structured requests and elaborate step-by-step directions have become common recommendations for anyone trying to use AI effectively.

But Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, is suggesting that the approach may be getting unnecessarily complicated.

In advice reported by Business Insider on October 7, 2026, Cherny argued that as AI models become more capable, users should spend less time micromanaging how they complete tasks and more time explaining what they actually want to accomplish.

His recommendation comes down to three principles: tell AI what you want it to do, tell it how much effort to spend, and tell it how to verify its work.

For businesses increasingly incorporating AI into everyday operations, that distinction could change how employees approach everything from research and reporting to marketing and financial analysis.

Why More Instructions Aren't Always Better

Early AI models often needed substantial guidance to complete complicated tasks reliably. Users learned to break work into smaller steps, specify exactly how responses should be structured and provide detailed instructions to keep the model on track.

Those techniques can still be useful. But Cherny's argument is that increasingly capable models can make more of those decisions themselves.

Consider the difference between asking an employee to achieve a result and telling them precisely how to perform every action along the way.

An experienced employee can often work more effectively when given a clear objective, relevant context and enough freedom to choose an appropriate approach. Cherny believes a similar principle increasingly applies to advanced AI models.

That doesn't mean providing less information about the task. It means distinguishing between information the model genuinely needs and instructions that unnecessarily restrict how it works.

Rule 1: Tell AI What You Want It to Do

The first principle is straightforward: clearly describe the outcome you're trying to achieve.

For a business owner, that might mean asking AI to identify opportunities to improve profitability, evaluate customer feedback or develop a plan for entering a new market.

The important part is explaining what a successful result should look like.

For example, "analyze our sales" leaves too much open to interpretation. It doesn't explain the business objective, the period being examined or what decisions the analysis should support.

A more useful request would be:

"Analyze our last 90 days of sales and identify the three biggest opportunities to improve profitability. Explain your recommendations in plain English."

This provides a clear direction without dictating every calculation, comparison or analytical step.

The model has an objective, but it also has room to determine how best to approach the work.

Rule 2: Tell AI How Much Effort to Spend

Not every task deserves the same level of investigation.

Rewriting a short email may require only a quick response. Evaluating a company's financial performance, researching competitors or comparing expansion opportunities demands considerably more attention.

Cherny recommends making that expectation clear.

Instead of assuming the AI knows how deeply to investigate, users can explicitly request a quick answer, a thorough analysis or deeper research and reasoning.

For example, a business owner might ask for a brief summary of customer feedback before a meeting. But when evaluating a significant investment, that same person could ask AI to investigate multiple options, compare their advantages and disadvantages, and identify risks before reaching a recommendation.

The distinction matters because a response can appear polished without being sufficiently researched.

By communicating the required level of effort, users give AI a better understanding of the importance and complexity of the task.

Rule 3: Tell AI How to Verify Its Work

The third principle may be the most important for businesses.

An AI-generated answer can sound convincing even when it contains incorrect calculations, outdated information or unsupported conclusions.

Cherny's recommendation is to explain how the result should be checked.

For financial analysis, that could mean verifying calculations against the original spreadsheet. For market research, it could mean checking claims against credible sources.

For an operational recommendation, it might involve identifying assumptions and highlighting information that is still missing.

A practical request could include:

"Check all calculations against the source data, identify any assumptions you make and flag conclusions that cannot be verified."

This doesn't guarantee accuracy, and AI reviewing its own work isn't a substitute for independent verification when the stakes are high.

But defining verification requirements gives the task a clearer standard for completion.

For businesses, the goal should be to receive work that can be examined and trusted, rather than simply accepting the first confident-sounding response.

What Better Prompting Looks Like in Practice

Imagine a business owner wants to understand why profitability has declined over the last quarter.

A vague request might be:

"Analyze our sales."

At the opposite extreme, the owner might write a lengthy prompt dictating every calculation, requiring twelve specific charts and prescribing the exact sequence of the analysis.

Neither approach is necessarily ideal.

The first doesn't explain what the business needs. The second may spend too much effort controlling the process instead of communicating the objective.

A stronger alternative would be:

"Analyze our last 90 days of sales. Identify the three biggest opportunities to improve profitability. Investigate thoroughly, verify your calculations against the original data and explain your recommendations clearly."

This request covers all three of Cherny's principles.

It establishes the outcome, specifies the level of effort and explains how the result should be verified.

The examples are illustrative rather than prompts quoted from Cherny, but they demonstrate how his advice can be applied to everyday business decisions.

Anthropic Has Been Simplifying Its Own Instructions

Cherny's October comments weren't the first time he made this argument.

In a July 2026 discussion, he described how Anthropic had removed approximately 80% of

Claude Code's system prompt as its models improved.

System prompts are the underlying instructions that guide how an AI application behaves.

They can define its role, expectations and operating rules.

The reduction reflected a broader idea: instructions that were helpful for less capable models may become unnecessary, or even restrictive, as models improve.

This doesn't mean AI applications no longer need guardrails or carefully designed workflows. Rather, it suggests that some of the complexity previously required to guide a model can be replaced by the model's improved ability to understand and execute a task.

The same thinking underlies Cherny's advice to everyday users.

Simple Prompts Still Need Good Context

There is an important distinction between simplifying a prompt and making it vague.

A business owner asking AI to develop a marketing strategy still needs to explain the company, its customers, its goals and any meaningful budget or operational constraints.

Someone requesting financial analysis still needs to supply accurate data and explain which decisions the analysis should support.

And repeatable business processes may still require detailed instructions to ensure consistency, compliance and predictable outputs.

In legal, financial and other high-stakes situations, human review and independent checks remain essential.

Cherny's advice isn't an argument against precision. It's an argument against unnecessary micromanagement.

The most effective prompt may contain substantial business context while leaving the model flexibility to determine the best approach.

Better AI Results Start With Better Objectives

The growing accessibility of AI has created an unusual challenge for businesses. Employees can now delegate increasingly complex tasks to software, but many still approach those tasks as though they need to describe every individual action.

Cherny's advice suggests a simpler approach.

Define the result you need. Explain how thoroughly the work should be performed. Establish how the result should be checked.

Then allow the model to determine an appropriate way to complete the task.

As AI becomes more capable, the advantage may shift away from knowing complicated prompting techniques and toward knowing how to define business problems clearly.

The skill isn't necessarily writing longer prompts. It's knowing what outcome matters and how to recognize a good result.

Sources

Business Insider, October 7, 2026: Claude Code creator Boris Cherny's AI prompting advice

Boris Cherny, July 2026: We Cut 80% of Claude Code's Prompt

How Shapermint Is Building a $10 Million TikTok Shop Business Without Chasing Gen Z

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:43:04 GMT

How Shapermint Is Building a $10 Million TikTok Shop Business Without Chasing Gen Z

TikTok Shop is often associated with younger consumers, viral trends and creators who know how to capture attention in seconds. But one shapewear brand is demonstrating that the platform's commercial potential extends well beyond Gen Z.

Shapermint, a direct-to-consumer shapewear company primarily serving women between 35 and 65, is on track to generate approximately $10 million in TikTok Shop sales in 2026, according to reporting from Modern Retail.

The company's approach challenges several assumptions about social commerce. Rather than trying to attract a younger audience or relying on a handful of celebrity influencers, Shapermint has built a large network of everyday creators who resemble its customers.

The results offer an interesting example of how brands can combine creator partnerships, high-volume content production and performance analysis to build a scalable sales channel.

TikTok Shop Isn't Just for Younger Shoppers

For businesses considering TikTok Shop, one of the first questions is whether their customers actually use the platform.

It's a reasonable concern, particularly for companies selling products to people over 35. TikTok's reputation has historically been closely associated with younger audiences, and many brands still approach it as a platform dominated by Gen Z.

Shapermint took a different approach.

Its core customer base consists primarily of women aged 35 to 65. Instead of changing its positioning to appeal to younger shoppers, the company focused on finding creators who already connected with its existing audience.

According to the company, 60% of its top-performing TikTok Shop affiliate creators are over 35.

That distinction is important. Shapermint didn't need to reinvent its product or customer profile to participate in social commerce. It needed to identify the communities and creators already reaching the people most likely to buy.

For other businesses, the lesson is that a platform's reputation doesn't necessarily describe every audience that can be reached through it.

From $1.5 Million to a Projected $10 Million

Shapermint's TikTok Shop operation has grown quickly.

The company reported reaching approximately $1.5 million in TikTok Shop sales within the first four months of 2026, with sales increasing by as much as 515% in a single month.

It now expects to generate approximately $10 million through TikTok Shop for the year.

Those figures are particularly interesting because the company isn't relying on a single viral video or a short-term promotional campaign. Its growth strategy involves building an ongoing system for recruiting creators, producing content and identifying what performs.

A viral moment can generate an unexpected spike in sales. A repeatable content and affiliate operation offers a different opportunity: the ability to keep testing, learning and generating new sales opportunities over time.

The Power of 5,000 Creators

One of the most significant parts of Shapermint's strategy is the scale of its affiliate network.

The company works with more than 5,000 active creators through TikTok Shop's affiliate program.

Rather than concentrating its marketing efforts on a small number of high-profile influencers, Shapermint has developed a large community of women who can demonstrate its products in everyday situations.

For shapewear, that approach makes practical sense.

Customers want to understand how a product fits, whether it's comfortable, how it looks under clothing and whether it stays in place during normal activities. Those questions can be difficult to answer through traditional product photography.

A creator demonstrating a product at home can show details that a polished advertisement might overlook.

When the creator also resembles the customer, the demonstration becomes more relatable. Viewers can see how the product might work for someone with a similar body type, lifestyle or set of concerns.

The value isn't necessarily celebrity influence. It's relevance and credibility.

More Than 20,000 Videos and Thousands of Opportunities to Learn

Shapermint's creator network also produces an extraordinary volume of content.

According to the company, its creators have generated more than 20,000 TikTok videos since January 2026, including more than 5,000 in a recent 30-day period.

That volume creates a major advantage beyond simply increasing the number of people who might see the brand.

It gives Shapermint thousands of opportunities to discover which demonstrations, messages, creators and product features actually influence purchasing decisions.

One video might succeed because it shows how a product fits under a particular outfit.

Another might perform better because it addresses a common concern about comfort. A third might generate sales because the creator explains a specific problem the product solves.

Instead of trying to predict the perfect creative approach in advance, the company can observe what customers respond to across a large body of content.

For smaller businesses, producing thousands of videos may be unrealistic. But the underlying principle is transferable: test multiple approaches, measure their results and use the findings to guide future content.

The Best Content Doesn't Always Look Like Advertising

Traditional advertising often emphasizes polished production, carefully written scripts and tightly controlled brand messaging.

Shapermint's affiliate strategy demonstrates the value of a different kind of content.

Its creators frequently show products in their homes while going about normal activities.

They demonstrate fit, comfort and functionality in situations that potential customers recognize.

This approach allows content to serve several purposes at once.

It introduces the product, provides a demonstration, addresses purchasing concerns and gives viewers an opportunity to see the product on someone they may relate to.

The result can be more useful than a conventional promotional message.

This doesn't mean production quality or brand consistency no longer matters. It means that for certain products, authenticity and practical demonstrations can be more persuasive than highly produced advertising.

Shapermint Studies What Works, Then Repeats It

Producing a large amount of content is only one part of Shapermint's strategy.

The company also analyzes its strongest-performing creators, the videos they publish and the messages they use.

Those findings are shared with its creator community through weekly creative briefs, helping other affiliates understand which approaches have been generating results.

This creates a feedback loop.

Creators publish content. Shapermint studies the performance. The company identifies successful approaches and shares them with the wider network. More creators can then test variations of those approaches.

Over time, the company develops a clearer understanding of what motivates its customers to purchase.

That process is what makes the case study particularly relevant to other businesses.

The strategy isn't simply to recruit more influencers or produce more videos. It's to connect content production with actual sales performance and use that information to improve the next round of content.

What Other Businesses Can Learn From Shapermint

Not every business has the resources to build a network of 5,000 creators, and not every product category will perform the same way on TikTok Shop.

But Shapermint's approach highlights several principles that apply well beyond shapewear.

First, businesses shouldn't automatically dismiss a platform because its perceived audience seems different from their target customer. It's worth investigating whether relevant communities and creators already exist there.

Second, creator selection should prioritize audience alignment over follower counts alone. A smaller creator who reaches the right buyers may offer more commercial value than a much larger account with an unrelated audience.

Third, product demonstrations can do more than generate awareness. They can answer questions, reduce uncertainty and help customers make purchasing decisions.

Finally, content should be treated as something a business can continuously test and improve. Understanding which messages actually lead to sales is more valuable than simply accumulating views.

Find Your Audience on the Platform

Shapermint's projected $10 million in TikTok Shop sales is an impressive figure, but the more useful story is how the company is working toward it.

It didn't abandon its established customer base to pursue a younger demographic. It found creators who matched the people already buying its products, developed a large-scale content operation and used performance data to guide what happened next.

That approach offers a useful perspective for any business exploring social commerce.

You don't necessarily need to change your audience to fit a platform.

You need to find your audience on the platform, understand what influences them and build a repeatable way to reach them.

Source: Modern Retail, Shapermint is on track to hit $10M in TikTok Shop sales by targeting women ages 35–65

https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/shapermint-is-on-track-to-hit-10m-in-tiktok-shop-sales-by-targeting-women-ages-35-65/

TikTok Wants to Turn Every Video Into a Storefront

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:33:38 GMT

TikTok has spent years proving that a short video can make someone want a product they weren't looking for. Now the company wants to make sure that when the interest happens, the rest of the purchase can happen inside TikTok too.

The company has launched an AI-powered Shopping Assistant alongside a new one-click checkout feature that allows users to purchase directly from brands through the For You feed.

Individually, neither feature sounds revolutionary. Together, they point toward something much more significant: TikTok is trying to compress product discovery, research, decision-making and checkout into a single experience.

For businesses, that could change what social media content is capable of doing.

TikTok's New AI Shopping Assistant

TikTok describes its Shopping Assistant as a conversational AI agent designed to help people discover and purchase products.

A shopper who sees something interesting can ask questions about the product without leaving TikTok. The assistant can provide information about sizing, availability, shipping and other product details, while remembering the shopper's preferences and needs throughout the conversation.

That matters because discovering a product is often only the beginning of a purchase.

Someone might see a jacket they like but wonder whether it comes in their size. They might discover a piece of furniture but want to know about shipping. They might like a product demonstrated by a creator but need another piece of information before they're comfortable buying it.

Traditionally, answering those questions could mean leaving the social platform, visiting the retailer's website, searching through product pages or even opening Google or an AI assistant.

TikTok wants to keep that conversation inside TikTok.

Then TikTok Removes Another Step

The second part of the announcement is potentially even more important.

TikTok is introducing a checkout feature that allows users to purchase directly from a brand from the For You feed with one click.

The features are being developed with commerce and payment companies including Shopify, Salesforce, Shoplazza and Stripe.

TikTok Shop already allows products to be purchased within TikTok's ecommerce marketplace. The difference here is that TikTok is integrating commerce more deeply into the broader experience of using the app.

Instead of shopping being something users do in a separate marketplace section, the For You feed itself can increasingly become part of the shopping experience.

A video introduces the product. AI answers the shopper's questions. Checkout completes the transaction.

The distance between discovery and purchase gets much shorter.

From "See It" to "Buy It"

Consider how many online purchases currently work.

Someone sees an advertisement or piece of content. They click through to a website. They find the product. They research it. They answer whatever questions they have. They add it to their cart. They enter the checkout process. Then, eventually, they buy.

Every additional step creates friction and another opportunity for the customer to leave.

TikTok is moving toward a much simpler journey:

See it → Ask about it → Buy it.

And potentially all three happen without the customer ever really leaving the experience that originally created the demand.

That is where this announcement becomes more interesting than simply another TikTok feature.

Content Is Becoming Part of the Store

Businesses have traditionally separated content and commerce.

Content generated awareness. Advertising generated traffic. The website converted that traffic into customers.

Social commerce has been gradually breaking those boundaries apart.

A creator can introduce a product, demonstrate how it works, show what it looks like in the real world and generate comments from other customers. Now the same environment can potentially answer questions and facilitate the transaction as well.

The content is no longer simply promoting the store.

The content is becoming part of the store.

That changes how businesses should think about social content, particularly for products that benefit from demonstrations, recommendations, creator endorsements or impulse discovery.

A successful video isn't necessarily the beginning of a funnel that sends someone somewhere else. Increasingly, the platform itself can become the funnel.

TikTok Already Has Enormous Influence Over What People Buy

TikTok isn't building these features without evidence that its users already behave this way.

According to TikTok's Economic Impact Report, 54 million Americans said they had purchased a product after watching a TikTok video.

TikTok Shop itself has also grown rapidly since launching in the United States in September 2023. Market research firm eMarketer estimates that the marketplace generated approximately $15.8 billion in U.S. sales in 2025, accounting for roughly 18% of U.S. social commerce.

TikTok has already demonstrated that its content can generate demand.

The next logical step is capturing more of what happens after that demand is created.

TikTok Doesn't Want Shoppers to Leave

There is another interesting piece of the strategy.

AI assistants such as ChatGPT are increasingly being used for product research. Search engines, retailer websites and marketplaces are all competing to become the place consumers go when they have questions before making a purchase.

TikTok now has its own answer.

If someone discovers a product on TikTok and immediately has a question, TikTok would rather answer it than have that person leave the platform to search somewhere else.

The Shopping Assistant gives TikTok another opportunity to keep the customer inside its ecosystem.

Combine that with direct checkout, and TikTok can potentially participate in far more of the customer journey than simply generating the initial product discovery.

What This Means for Businesses

The biggest lesson isn't simply that businesses should start using TikTok.

It's that the boundaries between marketing, content and ecommerce continue to disappear.

Businesses have spent years optimizing websites to reduce friction. Fewer clicks, faster checkout, better product information and simpler purchasing processes can all improve conversion.

Social commerce is now applying the same principle earlier in the journey.

If the customer becomes interested while watching content, why force them through five additional steps before they can buy?

TikTok's answer is increasingly: don't.

That also makes the quality of the content more important. When content sits closer to the transaction, videos aren't simply competing for views. They can become product demonstrations, discovery tools, sales conversations and storefronts.

The Best Checkout May Be the One Customers Barely Notice

TikTok's new Shopping Assistant and one-click checkout are still individual product features, and their ultimate impact will depend on how consumers and businesses actually use them.

But the direction is difficult to miss.

Social platforms are moving deeper into commerce. AI is moving deeper into the buying process. And the distance between discovering something and purchasing it continues to shrink.

For businesses, there is a simple principle underneath all of this:

Make the path from "I want that" to "I bought that" as short as possible.

TikTok is trying to make that path happen inside a video feed.

And if it works, the distinction between watching content and shopping could become increasingly difficult to see.

Meta Just Launched an AI Employee for Small Businesses. Here’s What Muse Actually Does

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:01:19 GMT

Meta Just Launched an AI Employee for Small Businesses. Here’s What Muse Actually Does

For the past few years, most businesses have used artificial intelligence in roughly the same way: open a chatbot, ask it to do something, get a response and decide what to do next. AI has become useful for writing emails, researching topics, analyzing information, creating content and answering questions, but the human has generally remained responsible for moving the work forward.

Meta’s new Muse for Small Business represents a different approach. Rather than functioning primarily as a chatbot, Muse is an AI agent designed to work through tasks, use tools and interact with the systems a business already uses. Give it a goal, and the idea is that Muse can help determine the steps required and carry out parts of the work rather than simply explaining how the user could do it.

For small businesses, that difference could be significant. The next stage of AI may be less about having a smarter assistant to talk to and more about having software to which actual work can be delegated.

What Exactly Is Muse?

Muse is Meta’s new AI agent, and one of the easiest ways to understand it is to compare it with the chatbots businesses have already been using.

If you asked a chatbot to research competitors and develop a marketing plan, it could provide research, suggest a strategy and help write the plan. But you would still be responsible for gathering information, moving between systems, deciding what happens next and prompting the AI through each stage of the process.

An AI agent is designed to take on more of that process itself. Muse can work toward a goal, determine the steps needed, use available tools and help complete multi-step tasks. Instead of every interaction beginning with another prompt, the agent can maintain a larger objective and continue working toward it.

The distinction is essentially the difference between asking AI how to do something and asking AI to help do it.

Muse Gets Its Own Virtual Computer

One of the features that makes this possible is Muse’s ability to operate inside its own virtual computer environment. It can work with a browser, files, a terminal and other tools rather than being restricted to generating responses inside a chat window.

That matters because most useful business processes involve more than producing a piece of text. Researching a market might require finding information from several sources, organizing it, comparing competitors and creating a report. Reviewing marketing performance could involve looking at data from different systems, identifying patterns and developing recommendations based on what the agent finds.

Giving an AI agent access to a computer environment allows it to work through more of those individual steps. The result begins to look less like using a chatbot and more like delegating a digital task.

That does not make Muse an employee in the traditional sense, despite the convenient comparison. It does, however, show why companies are increasingly describing AI agents in terms of work rather than simply intelligence.

It Can Keep Working After You Leave

Another major difference is that an AI agent does not necessarily need the user sitting in front of it throughout the entire process. Muse is designed to handle ongoing goals, scheduled work and tasks that can be triggered by events.

For a business owner, this could change how AI fits into everyday operations. Instead of remembering to ask an AI tool to check something every morning, an agent could potentially be assigned responsibility for monitoring it and bringing relevant information to the owner when attention is required.

Consider a business that wants to monitor sales, advertising performance, customer activity and operational issues. Today, someone may need to open several platforms, review the numbers and determine whether anything unusual has happened. An agent connected to those systems could potentially perform much of the initial monitoring and analysis before presenting the important information to a person.

That is a much more useful model for businesses than simply having another place to type prompts.

Connecting Muse to the Business

Muse for Small Business becomes particularly interesting when it is connected to the software a company already uses. Meta has positioned it to work with business tools including Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe, Klaviyo, Slack, Canva, Asana, Facebook and Instagram.

These connections matter because an AI agent becomes considerably more useful when it understands what is actually happening inside the business. A generic chatbot may know how ecommerce works, but it does not automatically know what is happening in a particular Shopify store. It may understand email marketing, but it does not automatically know how that company’s Klaviyo campaigns are performing.

Connecting AI to business systems gives it access to more relevant context. In theory, that allows the agent to work with the company’s actual information instead of relying entirely on whatever someone remembers to include in a prompt.

This is also where AI agents could eventually become valuable across multiple departments. Rather than treating marketing, ecommerce, finance and operations as completely separate activities, an agent could potentially work with information coming from several parts of the business.

What Could a Small Business Use Muse For?

There are many potential applications, but the most useful ones are likely to be ordinary tasks that currently consume a surprising amount of time.

Muse could assist with research and planning by gathering information, comparing options and helping develop plans. In marketing, it could help prepare content, analyze campaign information and develop ideas based on performance. In operations, it could monitor information across connected systems and identify issues that deserve attention.

Customer communication is another potential area. An agent could help prepare messages and responses using information already available within the business. Reporting could also become much easier if an agent can collect information from several systems and turn it into a useful summary rather than requiring someone to manually assemble the same report every week.

The bigger opportunity, however, is not any individual task. It is the possibility of connecting them.

Small businesses often have information scattered across ecommerce platforms, accounting software, project management systems, email marketing tools, social platforms and internal communications. The owner or management team frequently becomes the human connection between all of them. An AI agent that can work across those systems could potentially reduce some of that coordination burden.

Businesses Still Keep Control of Important Actions

Giving an AI agent access to business systems also creates an obvious concern: what happens when the agent wants to take an action that has real consequences?

Meta says Muse is designed so that important actions still require user approval. That includes actions such as publishing content, sending communications or spending money. The agent can prepare work and move a process forward, but the business retains control over consequential decisions.

That distinction is important because useful business automation does not necessarily require handing complete control to AI. A more practical model may be to let agents handle research, preparation, monitoring and repetitive execution while keeping people involved at important decision points.

For many businesses, that may also make adoption easier. Owners do not need to choose between doing everything manually and allowing AI to operate completely independently. There is a large middle ground where agents can perform substantial work while humans remain responsible for approval and oversight.

The Bigger Shift From Chatbots to AI Agents

Muse is one product, but the more important story is the broader direction of AI. The technology is beginning to move beyond systems that primarily generate information toward systems that can interact with software and carry out tasks.

The first wave of generative AI showed businesses that software could write, analyze, summarize, brainstorm and answer questions remarkably well. That created enormous value, but it still required people to manage much of the process around the AI.

Agents are attempting to address that next layer. Instead of only generating the answer, they can potentially perform some of the work that follows the answer.

A chatbot can explain how to analyze a marketing campaign. An agent could potentially access the relevant information and perform the initial analysis. A chatbot can suggest what a business owner should monitor each morning. An agent could potentially monitor those systems automatically and surface what changed.

That is why Muse is worth watching even for businesses that have no immediate plans to use it.

What Muse Could Mean for Small Businesses

Muse is still new, and businesses should be careful not to confuse the potential of AI agents with proof that every workflow will operate perfectly. Real companies have messy data, unusual processes, security requirements and countless exceptions that are difficult to automate.

But the direction is becoming clearer.

For years, software has required businesses to adapt their work to individual applications. Someone logs into the ecommerce platform, another person checks the CRM, someone else looks at the accounting system, and managers piece together information from all of them.

AI agents introduce the possibility of another layer that can work across those systems on behalf of the business.

For a large company, that could mean automating pieces of complicated workflows. For a small business, the impact could be even more noticeable because owners and small teams frequently perform several roles at once.

The most important question may therefore be changing. Businesses have spent the past few years asking what AI can tell them, write for them or create for them. The next question is likely to be what work they can actually hand over to it.

Chatbots answer questions. AI agents do work.

Muse is another indication that AI is moving in that direction.

Best Buy Is Betting on TikTok Shop. Here’s Why It Matters

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:21:16 GMT

TikTok Shop built its reputation on viral products, creators and impulse purchases.

Now it wants something bigger.

Best Buy plans to bring nearly 10,000 products to TikTok Shop, giving shoppers another way to discover and purchase electronics without leaving the platform.

And Best Buy isn't arriving alone.

Major retailers and brands are increasingly appearing on TikTok Shop, while TikTok itself continues adding features that make the platform look less like a social network with shopping attached and more like a full ecommerce marketplace.

The interesting part isn't simply that another retailer has opened another online storefront.

It's what happens when content, product discovery and commerce all start happening in the same place.

Best Buy Is Bringing Thousands of Products to TikTok Shop

Best Buy plans to launch nearly 10,000 products on TikTok Shop in late October.

That means someone watching TikTok could discover a Best Buy product through a creator, video or TikTok's shopping experience and purchase it without having to leave the platform.

For Best Buy, that's another sales channel.

But it's also access to a very different kind of shopping environment.

Amazon, Google and traditional ecommerce sites tend to capture customers who already have some idea of what they're looking for.

Someone searches for headphones because they need headphones.

TikTok can introduce the product before that intent exists.

A customer might open the app with absolutely no intention of shopping, see a creator demonstrating a pair of headphones and decide they want them.

That distinction is important.

TikTok isn't simply trying to make online shopping easier. It's trying to turn product discovery itself into part of the shopping experience.

And It's Not Just Best Buy

Best Buy's arrival makes more sense when viewed alongside the other retailers moving onto the platform.

Sephora joined TikTok Shop in September, while Ulta Beauty had already joined earlier in the year.

TikTok has been actively working to attract larger, established retailers as it tries to broaden the perception of what people can buy through the marketplace.

That's significant because TikTok Shop initially became associated with a particular type of ecommerce: viral products, aggressive discounts, creator promotions and inexpensive impulse purchases.

Bringing recognized retailers onto the platform changes that equation.

The more familiar brands and established merchants consumers encounter, the more TikTok Shop can begin to look like somewhere people deliberately go to shop rather than somewhere they occasionally happen to buy something.

TikTok Shop Is Changing Its Image

This is arguably the larger story behind Best Buy's move.

TikTok already has something traditional marketplaces spend enormous amounts of money trying to acquire:

attention.

Millions of people are already opening the app to watch content.

TikTok Shop allows the platform to connect that attention directly to commerce.

A creator can introduce a product.

A video can demonstrate it.

Comments can provide immediate social proof.

The customer can then purchase the product without leaving the platform.

Discovery, marketing and checkout begin collapsing into the same experience.

That removes several of the steps businesses have traditionally needed to move a customer through.

Instead of attracting someone on one platform, sending them to another website and hoping they eventually purchase, TikTok can potentially contain much of that journey inside a single ecosystem.

TikTok Is Even Building Its Own Version of Prime

TikTok's ambitions become even clearer when looking beyond individual retailers.

The company has introduced TikTok Shop Plus, a paid membership program offering benefits such as free shipping, member discounts and coupons.

The comparison with Amazon Prime is difficult to ignore.

Membership benefits give customers another reason to shop repeatedly through the platform rather than treating TikTok Shop as somewhere they make the occasional impulse purchase.

For TikTok, that could help create shopping habits.

And shopping habits are what turn a sales feature into a marketplace.

TikTok Has One Major Difference

TikTok doesn't need to become Amazon to become a major force in ecommerce.

Its biggest advantage may be that it starts from a completely different place.

Amazon usually begins with intent.

“I need headphones.”

TikTok can begin with discovery.

“I wasn't looking for headphones, but a creator just showed me a pair I want.”

That combination of entertainment, creators and product discovery gives TikTok Shop a different role in the buying journey.

Traditional ecommerce has spent years optimizing search, product pages and checkout.

TikTok introduces another variable: the content itself can become the storefront.

A successful video isn't necessarily just advertising that sends someone somewhere else.

It can create the demand, demonstrate the product, provide social proof and lead directly to a transaction.

Content Is Becoming the Storefront

That has implications well beyond companies the size of Best Buy.

Businesses have traditionally treated content and ecommerce as separate functions.

Marketing generates attention.

The ecommerce store converts it.

Social media builds an audience.

The website makes the sale.

TikTok Shop increasingly blurs those boundaries.

A creator video can be advertising, product demonstration, recommendation and storefront at the same time.

For businesses selling products online, that means the question may eventually become less about whether TikTok is another social media channel worth posting on.

The more important question could be whether content-led commerce belongs in the company's overall ecommerce strategy.

This Is Bigger Than Another Sales Channel

It's easy to look at Best Buy joining TikTok Shop and see another retailer expanding onto another marketplace.

But the underlying shift is more interesting.

TikTok can increasingly operate as several things simultaneously:

A marketing channel.
A creator network.
A product discovery engine.
And a marketplace.

That combination is difficult to replicate because TikTok doesn't need customers to arrive specifically intending to shop.

Commerce can appear naturally inside the experience that brought them there in the first place.

Best Buy bringing thousands of products onto the platform is another indication that this model is moving beyond small sellers and viral products.

Established retailers are paying attention too.

The Line Between Content and Commerce Is Disappearing

For years, businesses have built funnels designed to move people from discovery to purchase.

See the ad.

Visit the website.

Browse the products.

Read the reviews.

Add something to the cart.

Check out.

Social commerce compresses that journey.

The content that introduces a product can increasingly become the place where the customer buys it.

Best Buy joining TikTok Shop isn't interesting simply because another storefront is opening.

It's another sign that where people discover products and where they buy them are becoming the same place.

And that could change much more than where businesses choose to list their products.

Can ChatGPT Find Your Business? 7 Things to Check

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:10:16 GMT

For years, businesses have worried about one basic question:

Can customers find us on Google?

That question isn't going away. But there's now another one worth asking:

Can AI find us, understand what we do, and confidently recommend us?

More people are using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI experiences to research products, compare businesses and decide where to spend their money. Instead of searching through ten websites themselves, they can simply ask a question.

“Who installs impact windows near me?”

“What's the best accounting firm for a small ecommerce business?”

“Find a restaurant nearby that's open late and has vegetarian options.”

“Which companies offer this service, and how are they different?”

That creates a new challenge for businesses. It isn't enough for information about your company to exist somewhere online. AI systems need to be able to find it, understand it and have enough confidence in it to use it.

The good news is that you don't necessarily need an expensive AI visibility platform to discover some of the biggest problems.

Here are seven things you can check yourself.

1. Can AI Access Your Website?

Start with the most basic issue: can automated systems actually reach the information on your website?

A website can work perfectly well for a human visitor while creating problems for crawlers.

One place to start is your robots.txt file. You can usually see it by adding /robots.txt to the end of your domain.

Look for rules affecting AI-related crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended. Blocking a crawler isn't automatically wrong. Businesses may have legitimate reasons for controlling how their content is accessed or used.

The important thing is knowing what your website is actually doing.

Then look at the website itself.

Cookie walls, geographic selectors, language prompts and other interstitials can make accessing information more complicated. If important information is difficult to reach without interacting with the page first, that's something worth investigating.

Before worrying about how well AI understands your business, make sure the information you want discovered is actually accessible.

2. Is Your Business Easy to Understand?

Visit your website as if you know absolutely nothing about the company.

Within a few moments, can you answer:

What does this business do?

What does it sell?

Who does it serve?

Where does it operate?

How does someone buy, book or contact it?

Businesses often assume these answers are obvious because everyone inside the company already knows them.

They aren't always obvious to someone, or something, encountering the company for the first time.

Create clear pages for your major products and services. Explain locations and service areas. Document important policies.

Make contact information easy to find.

If you operate locally, geographic context becomes particularly important. Don't assume that listing a city somewhere in the footer provides everything needed to understand where you operate.

The goal isn't to stuff pages with keywords.

It's to remove ambiguity.

3. Can Your Claims Be Verified?

Now look at the language you use to sell the business.

“Leading.”

“Best.”

“Trusted.”

“Award-winning.”

“Industry-leading.”

These phrases appear on thousands of websites. By themselves, they don't provide much evidence that distinguishes one company from another.

If your business has something impressive to say, support it.

If you've won an award, identify the award.

If you've generated a measurable result, document it.

If you're certified, explain the certification.

If customers consistently praise a particular part of your service, make sure those reviews exist somewhere credible.

Case studies, certifications, awards, customer reviews, original research and reputable third-party mentions can all create stronger evidence around what your company claims to be.

The question to ask isn't simply:

“Does our website say we're good?”

It's:

“What exists online that gives someone else a reason to believe it?”

4. Do Your Business Details Match Everywhere?

Your website isn't the only source of information about your company.

Depending on the business, information might also appear on Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook, industry directories, review platforms and dozens of other websites.

Put the important details side by side.

Check your:

Business name

Address and service area

Phone number

Opening hours

Website

Products and services

Business categories

Important policies

You may discover that your website says you close at 6:00, Google says 5:00, and another directory has hours from three years ago.

For a customer, that's annoying.

For a system trying to determine the correct answer, it's conflicting evidence.

Cleaning up those inconsistencies is one of the simplest improvements a business can make.

5. Does Your Website Use Structured Data?

This part sounds technical, but the idea is straightforward.

Your website is designed primarily for people. Structured data provides additional machine-readable information that helps systems understand what parts of a page represent.

It can identify things such as an organization, local business, product, service, address, article or other defined information.

You can inspect the source code of your website and search for application/ld+json, which is commonly used for JSON-LD structured data.

Finding it is only the beginning.

The structured information should be accurate, sufficiently detailed and consistent with what the rest of your website says.

If you don't know what you're looking at, this is one area where getting someone technical to review the implementation makes sense.

6. Does Google Clearly Understand Who You Are?

Search your company's exact name.

What appears?

Does your website rank prominently?

Is there a Google Business Profile or Knowledge Panel?

Are the social profiles, directory listings and other results actually about your company?

Could another organization with a similar name easily be confused with yours?

This is essentially an identity test.

A business with a consistent name, website, profiles, contact information, descriptions and third-party references creates a much clearer digital footprint than one represented differently across the internet.

AI systems have a similar problem to human researchers: before deciding what is true about a company, they first need to determine which company the information belongs to.

7. Ask AI Directly

This may be the simplest test of all.

Open several AI tools and behave like a potential customer.

Don't just type your business name.

Ask the questions customers would actually ask.

For example:

“What are the best [type of business] in [city]?”

“Where can I buy [product] near me?”

“Does [company] offer [service]?”

“What are [company's] opening hours?”

“Which companies offer [service] in [area]?”

“What's the difference between [your company] and [competitor]?”

Then look at the answers.

Is your business mentioned?

Is the information correct?

Does the AI understand what you actually do?

Are important services missing?

Does it confidently state something that's outdated or wrong?

Try multiple AI platforms because the answers and underlying information sources can differ.

You're not trying to produce a perfect scientific measurement.

You're looking for obvious gaps.

AI Visibility Is Becoming Part of Your Online Presence

Businesses spent years learning that they needed to think beyond their own websites.

Google Business Profiles mattered. Reviews mattered. Maps mattered. Social profiles mattered. Directory information mattered.

AI adds another layer.

The companies that are easiest for AI to understand aren't necessarily the ones producing the most content. They're often the ones leaving the clearest trail of consistent, accessible and verifiable information about who they are and what they do.

That makes the first step surprisingly simple.

Check whether AI can access your website.

Make your business easy to understand.

Document the things you want to be known for.

Keep important facts consistent.

Give machines structured information where appropriate.

Make your company's identity clear across the web.

Then ask the AI tools themselves what they know.

Because the question businesses have asked for decades is starting to change.

It isn't only:

“Can customers find us?”

It's also:

“Can AI find us, understand us and confidently recommend us?”

Your Next Customer Might Not Be a Person

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:20:58 GMT

For most of ecommerce history, the process has been straightforward.

A person searches for a product. They compare a few options. They visit a store, read the product page, make a decision and complete the purchase.

AI is beginning to change that process.

A series of recent announcements points toward a different version of online shopping, one where AI doesn't simply recommend what someone should buy. It can search, compare, communicate with businesses and increasingly take action on the customer's behalf.

At the same time, AI is appearing on the other side of the transaction too. Businesses are beginning to use AI agents to monitor ecommerce stores, identify problems and even conduct conversations with customers.

Put those developments together and something interesting starts to emerge:

AI could increasingly operate on both sides of ecommerce.

AI Agents Are Starting to Buy Things

One of the biggest steps toward this future is giving AI the ability to actually complete transactions.

Mastercard's Agent Pay initiative is designed to enable AI agents to make payments on behalf of consumers while maintaining authorization and controls around the transaction.

New integrations are beginning to connect that infrastructure to AI agents. Google and its partners are also developing technology intended to make it easier for AI agents to discover products and transact with participating businesses.

That changes what an AI shopping assistant could eventually do.

Today, you might ask an AI:

“What's the best hiking backpack under $200?”

It can research the question and recommend several options.

The emerging model goes further.

You could tell an AI what you need, your budget and your preferences. The AI could search different stores, compare products, evaluate prices and availability and eventually help complete the purchase.

The customer moves from doing the shopping to describing the outcome they want.

Shopping Could Become a Conversation

This could also change how people discover products.

Traditional ecommerce requires customers to navigate categories, search results, filters and product pages.

AI allows the interaction to begin with a request instead.

“Find me a lightweight laptop under $1,000.”

“I need a birthday gift for a seven-year-old who loves Minecraft.”

“Find running shoes similar to these, but under $150.”

Instead of figuring out which keywords, filters and websites to use, the customer simply explains what they want.

The AI can do more of the searching and comparing.

For businesses, that introduces an entirely different kind of customer journey. A potential buyer may never browse a website the same way a person does. An AI could increasingly become the layer between the customer and the businesses competing for that purchase.

Even Advertising Could Become Conversational

Advertising may change for the same reason.

OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents that can allow someone to move from an advertisement into a conversation with an AI agent created by the advertiser. The early integrations described include Shopify for ecommerce and HubSpot for CRM.

That's a very different interaction from clicking a traditional digital ad.

Instead of:

Ad → landing page → browse → form or checkout

the experience could increasingly look like:

Ad → conversation → questions → recommendation → action

A customer could ask about availability, specifications, pricing or which product fits their situation without navigating several pages to find the answer.

The advertisement stops being only a doorway to a website. It can become the beginning of the sales conversation.

But AI Isn't Only Appearing on the Customer's Side

This is where the bigger shift becomes more interesting.

While some companies are building AI that shops for customers, others are building AI that works for the businesses selling to them.

Noibu, for example, recently introduced AI agents designed to monitor ecommerce operations, identify problems, diagnose issues, propose fixes and measure the results.

Tasks that traditionally required someone to continuously inspect analytics, identify problems and determine what needed attention can increasingly be assisted by software operating in the background.

That doesn't mean an AI is suddenly replacing an entire ecommerce team.

But it does mean the software businesses use is beginning to move beyond simply reporting what happened.

It can increasingly identify what needs attention and help determine what should happen next.

AI Can Talk to Your Customers Too

Customer research is changing in a similar way.

Marvin recently introduced Live Intercept, which uses AI to conduct customer interviews directly on websites. The system can ask follow-up questions based on someone's responses and conduct conversations across more than 40 languages.

Traditionally, meaningful customer research might require recruiting participants, scheduling interviews, conducting them and analyzing the results.

AI makes it possible for parts of that process to happen continuously.

A business could potentially learn why customers hesitate, what they're looking for or what confused them while those customers are actually interacting with the business.

Again, AI isn't just sitting on the customer's side helping someone shop.

It's sitting on the business side helping the company understand the person shopping.

AI Could Be on Both Sides of the Transaction

Taken individually, these announcements look like separate technology stories.

Payments for AI agents.

Conversational advertising.

Automated ecommerce monitoring.

AI-powered customer interviews.

Taken together, they point toward something bigger.

On one side of a transaction, an AI could search for products, compare options, communicate with sellers and help make a purchase for a customer.

On the other side, another AI could monitor the store, answer questions, analyze customer behavior and help the business improve its operation.

We aren't at a point where this describes everyday ecommerce. People are still browsing websites, comparing products and clicking checkout buttons themselves.

But the infrastructure for something different is being built.

And if these technologies continue developing in the same direction, ecommerce may increasingly involve something that would have sounded strange only a few years ago:

AI doing business with AI.

Sources

Practical Ecommerce: New Ecommerce Tools, September 23, 2026

What Does Your Business Really Look Like Online? 8 Things to Check

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 17:04:36 GMT

Before someone calls your business, requests a quote, books an appointment or makes a purchase, there’s a good chance they’ve already researched you online.

They may have searched your company on Google. Read your reviews. Visited your website. Checked your social media. Asked ChatGPT about you. Or found a conversation about your company that you didn’t even know existed.

By the time they contact you, they may have already formed an opinion about your business.

The problem is that business owners usually see their online presence very differently from potential customers. You know which information is outdated. You know what your company actually does. You know which social account you stopped using two years ago.

A new customer doesn’t.

Every so often, it’s worth looking at your business online as if you’ve never heard of it before.

Here are eight things to check.

1. Search Your Business on Google

Start with the obvious one: search your company name.

But don’t immediately click your website.

Look at the entire results page and see what a potential customer sees. Is the information accurate? Are your products or services clear? Are old addresses, outdated descriptions or pages you no longer use still appearing?

Look at the images, reviews, social profiles, directory listings and other results surrounding your company.

Your website might be completely up to date while the rest of your search presence tells a very different story.

The question isn’t simply, “Does my website rank?”

It’s: What does Google tell someone about my business before they even visit my website?

2. Ask AI About Your Business

Search is no longer the only place people go when they want information about a company.

Ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini what they know about your business.

Then go further and ask the kinds of questions a potential customer might ask.

What does your company specialize in? Who does it serve? What products or services does it offer? Is it a good option for a particular need?

See whether your company appears and, more importantly, whether the information presented is accurate and current.

You can also test broader discovery questions related to your industry or location. If someone doesn't already know your company exists, would an AI assistant ever introduce them to it?

AI is becoming another layer between businesses and potential customers. It’s worth knowing what that layer looks like for yours.

3. Read Your Reviews for Patterns

Most businesses know their average review rating.

That number doesn't tell you nearly as much as the reviews themselves.

Instead, read your most recent 20 or 30 reviews together.

Look for patterns.

What do customers consistently praise? What complaints appear repeatedly? Are people mentioning communication, response times, product quality, shipping, pricing or customer service?

One negative review might be an isolated experience. The same complaint appearing repeatedly is something different.

Do the same with positive feedback. If customers repeatedly praise something you barely mention in your marketing, you may have discovered a selling point worth emphasizing.

Reviews aren't just reputation management. They’re customer research.

4. Find the Conversations You Don’t Control

Not every conversation about your company happens on a page you manage.

Search your business name on Reddit, Facebook groups, industry forums and other online communities relevant to your customers.

You may find recommendations, questions, complaints or discussions you’ve never seen.

These conversations can be particularly valuable because people often speak differently when they’re talking to other customers instead of directly to a business.

You can't control every conversation about your company, and you shouldn't try to.

But you should know what those conversations are saying.

5. Search Like Someone Who Doesn’t Know You

Searching your company name tells you what people find when they already know you exist.

Now test something harder.

Search for the products or services you provide without using your company name.

Think about what a real customer would type when looking for a business like yours.

Do you appear?

Which competitors dominate the results?

What types of pages are Google showing? Local businesses? Directories? Videos? Articles?
Marketplace listings?

There’s a major difference between being easy to find when someone searches for your name and being discoverable when someone is simply looking for what you sell.

The second group represents people who haven't chosen a business yet.

6. Use Your Website Like a Customer

Business owners spend a lot of time looking at their websites.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they use them like customers do.

Open your website on your phone and pretend you know nothing about the company.

Within a few seconds, can you understand what the business does? Can you find the product or service you need? Is the next step obvious?

Then actually use the site.

Submit the contact form. Click the phone number. Request a quote. Add something to the cart. Go through checkout. Check the confirmation email.

You may discover broken links, confusing forms, awkward mobile layouts or unnecessary steps that you've stopped noticing because you're too familiar with the site.

Don't just look at your website.

Experience it.

7. Check Whether Everything Tells the Same Story

Your online presence is bigger than your website.

Compare the information customers find across your website, Google presence, social media profiles, directories, marketplace accounts and other important listings.

Does everything accurately represent who you are and what you do today?

Check your company name, contact information, opening hours, services, descriptions, links and other basic information.

Also look beyond factual accuracy.

Does your LinkedIn page describe the company one way while your website positions it another way? Does an old Facebook page make the business look inactive? Are outdated services still being promoted somewhere?

Individual inconsistencies can seem insignificant.

Together, they can make a business look neglected or create uncertainty about which information a customer should trust.

8. Ask Whether You’d Trust This Business

Finally, stop examining individual pages and look at the complete picture.

Imagine you know absolutely nothing about the company.

You search for it. You read the reviews. You visit the website. You look through its social profiles. You see what other people are saying.

Does the business look active?

Does it look professional?

Does the information feel consistent?

Does it seem credible?

Most importantly: Would what you found make you comfortable contacting the company, booking a service or making a purchase?

If the answer is no, you've probably found something worth fixing.

See What Your Customers See

Your online presence isn't just your website.

It's the complete picture customers find across search engines, AI assistants, reviews, social media, directories, online communities and every other place your business appears.

And that picture exists whether you're actively managing it or not.

Every few months, look at your company through the eyes of someone discovering it for the first time.

Search it. Ask AI about it. Read the reviews. Find the conversations. Search for your services.

Use the website. Compare your profiles.

Then ask yourself one simple question:

If I knew nothing about this company, would what I found online make me want to become a customer?

The answer may show you exactly what needs attention next.

You Can’t Beat Amazon at Being Amazon. So Stop Trying.

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 17:43:19 GMT

For smaller online retailers, competing with Amazon or Walmart can feel like an impossible game.

Amazon has built enormous advantages around product selection and convenience. Walmart has spent decades building the scale required to compete aggressively on price.

Chewy COO Scott Anderson believes retailers should stop trying to win those battles on the giants’ terms.

In a recent interview with Supply Chain Dive, Anderson argued that ecommerce retailers essentially compete across four areas: price, convenience, selection and experience. His point is that for many specialty and smaller retailers, the fourth category may offer the greatest opportunity.

If You Can’t Win on Scale, Win on Experience

Anderson knows the Amazon model from the inside.

Before joining Chewy, he spent nearly a decade at Amazon, eventually becoming a vice president overseeing transportation and customer fulfillment in North America. Today, he leads end-to-end logistics at Chewy.

His assessment is fairly straightforward.

Amazon is exceptionally difficult to compete with on selection and convenience. Walmart is exceptionally difficult to compete with on price.

But experience is different.

Smaller and specialty retailers can potentially know their customers better, personalize the relationship and pay attention to parts of the buying process that become harder to individualize at enormous scale.

And Anderson argues that one of those opportunities is hiding in a place many businesses still think of primarily as an operational expense: delivery.

Delivery Is Part of the Product

For an ecommerce company, the customer experience doesn't stop when someone clicks “Buy.”

The package still has to arrive.

Anderson points to features such as adjustable delivery windows, proof-of-delivery photos and the ability to communicate more directly about a delivery as ways retailers can differentiate. Even the box and packaging materials contribute to the experience.

That's an important shift in thinking.

A business might spend enormous effort optimizing its website, photography, checkout process and customer service, only to treat the final physical interaction with the customer as a commodity.

From the customer's perspective, however, it's all one purchase.

The tracking notification is part of the experience.

The package arriving when expected is part of the experience.

Opening the box is part of the experience.

And when something goes wrong, that becomes part of the experience too.

Your Dashboard Doesn't Tell You Everything

One of Anderson's more interesting lessons comes from his time at Amazon.

He says Amazon looked at both aggregate delivery metrics and individual customer anecdotes. When one customer's experience revealed something materially different from what the overall numbers suggested, that discrepancy was worth investigating.

That's a useful principle far beyond ecommerce delivery.

A dashboard might tell you that 97% of orders are being handled correctly.

That's valuable information.

But the remaining 3% may contain the problem that eventually becomes much larger.

A complaint that initially looks like an isolated incident could expose a broken process, confusing communication, a technology problem or an operational gap that aggregate reporting hasn't made obvious yet.

The average tells you how the business is performing. Individual customers can sometimes tell you where it is breaking.

The mistake is assuming those two sources of information are competing with each other.

You need both.

When You Find a Problem, Fix It Fast

Anderson also makes another important point: customers have limited patience when they've already told a company what's wrong.

Once a customer has identified a problem, repeatedly making the same mistake becomes much harder to excuse. His advice is to use that feedback to identify the underlying issue and build a process to address it quickly.

For a smaller business, this can actually be an advantage.

Large organizations can have layers of systems, teams and processes between customer feedback and operational change.

A smaller company can often hear something on Monday and change the process on Tuesday.

That speed matters.

The goal isn't simply to resolve an individual complaint. It's to ask whether the complaint revealed something that should be fixed for every customer who comes next.

Your Delivery Partner Is Part of Your Customer Experience

Anderson's third lesson is about the relationship between retailers and the companies delivering their packages.

He argues that businesses shouldn't simply hand over an order and treat everything that happens afterward as someone else's problem.

Retailers should communicate specifically with delivery partners about what their customers need and what problems they're trying to solve. Those conversations shouldn't revolve exclusively around finding the lowest possible shipping rate.

That's because the customer doesn't necessarily separate your business from your delivery provider.

They ordered from you.

If the delivery experience is frustrating, your brand often absorbs at least some of that frustration.

That makes delivery providers more than vendors moving boxes from Point A to Point B.

They're participating in one of the final stages of your customer experience.

Smaller Can Be an Advantage

There's a broader business lesson in Anderson's advice.

Companies often look at much larger competitors and immediately start copying what makes those competitors successful.

More products.

Lower prices.

Faster shipping.

More technology.

More automation.

But scale advantages are extraordinarily difficult to defeat by simply trying to reproduce them with fewer resources.

The better question is:

What can we do exceptionally well precisely because we aren't Amazon or Walmart?

Maybe it's deeper product expertise.

Maybe it's more responsive customer service.

Maybe it's better packaging.

Maybe it's knowing your niche extraordinarily well.

Maybe it's noticing an individual customer's problem and fixing the underlying process before hundreds of other customers encounter it.

Or maybe it's creating a buying and delivery experience that feels like it came from a company that actually knows who its customers are.

You don't necessarily have to beat the largest competitor at what they do best.

You need to give customers a compelling reason to choose you instead.

Source: Max Garland, Supply Chain Dive, “3 tips from Chewy’s COO on gaining a last-mile delivery edge,” September 18, 2026.

Coca-Cola’s CMO Says “Brand Love” Isn’t Enough. Here’s What Businesses Can Learn From It

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 17:39:41 GMT

For decades, Coca-Cola has been one of the clearest examples of the power of branding.

Few companies have built the kind of global recognition, nostalgia and cultural relevance associated with the Coca-Cola name.

But Coca-Cola’s global chief marketing officer, Manuel Arroyo, has been making a distinction that matters far beyond one of the world’s largest advertisers: people liking your brand is not the same as people buying from it.

Speaking about Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy and what the company wants from its agency partners, Arroyo has emphasized a greater focus on consumer behavior, consumption and the ability to connect marketing investment with actual business results.

For business owners, the lesson is surprisingly simple.

Marketing should ultimately change what people do.

People Can Love Your Brand and Still Not Buy

Brand awareness matters. Reputation matters. Having customers who recognize and like your company certainly matters.

But those things aren't the final objective.

Arroyo has used Coca-Cola itself to illustrate the problem. People can wear Coca-Cola merchandise, display its logo and express affection for the brand without necessarily consuming more Coca-Cola.

That creates an important distinction between brand sentiment and customer behavior.

The same problem exists on a smaller scale every day.

A business can accumulate Instagram likes without generating sales. A LinkedIn post can receive thousands of impressions without producing a qualified lead. A company can have a recognizable brand while struggling to convert that recognition into customers.

Those metrics aren't worthless. They simply don't tell the entire story.

Coca-Cola Changed What It Measured

Coca-Cola began shifting its marketing focus away from relying heavily on measures such as "brand love" and toward understanding what consumers actually do.

That meant putting greater emphasis on behavior and consumption.

According to Arroyo, the change wasn't automatically embraced internally. When traditional brand metrics and sales performance appeared to tell different stories, it created debate over which measurements actually mattered.

The broader principle is useful for almost any company:

The metrics a business chooses influence the marketing it creates.

If the objective is engagement, teams optimize for engagement.

If the objective is traffic, they optimize for clicks.

If the objective is qualified leads, bookings, purchases or repeat customers, marketing starts being evaluated very differently.

Marketing Should Change Behavior

Every marketing campaign should eventually face a straightforward question:

What did someone do differently because of it?

Did they:

> purchase a product?

> request a quote?

> book an appointment?

> subscribe?

> visit a store?

> return and buy again?

That doesn't mean every advertisement needs to produce an immediate transaction. Awareness and consideration still play important roles in how customers make decisions.

But businesses should understand how those activities contribute to the behaviors that actually move the company forward.

Otherwise, it becomes very easy to confuse activity with results.

Coca-Cola Wants Marketing Connected to Sales

This philosophy is also showing up in where Coca-Cola is putting its attention.

The company has a massive global media, data and technology account under review, reportedly worth roughly $4 billion. Among the areas Arroyo has identified as priorities are creators and influencers, retail media and commerce, and better attribution connecting marketing investment to sales.

Those priorities point toward a larger change taking place across digital marketing.

The boundaries between advertising and commerce are becoming increasingly blurred.

A creator can introduce a product and generate a sale. A retail media advertisement can appear close to the point of purchase. Social and live commerce can move customers from discovery to checkout within the same platform.

As those connections become easier to measure, businesses have more opportunities to understand whether marketing actually influenced revenue.

You Don't Need Coca-Cola's Budget to Apply the Same Thinking

Most businesses aren't managing billions of dollars in advertising.

The underlying discipline still applies.

Start by identifying the actions that matter most to the business.

For an ecommerce company, that might be purchases, conversion rate, repeat purchases or customer acquisition cost.

For a service business, it could be qualified leads, consultations, appointments or closed deals.

For a local business, it might be bookings, calls, store visits or returning customers.

Then work backward.

Which channels generate those actions? Which campaigns contribute to them? Which content attracts people who eventually become customers? Where are potential customers disappearing before they convert?

Suddenly, marketing becomes less about generating impressive-looking numbers and more about understanding what actually moves the business.

Measure What Moves the Business

There is nothing wrong with people liking your company.

Strong brands have enormous value, and Coca-Cola itself is perhaps one of the best demonstrations of that fact.

The mistake is treating admiration as the finish line.

For businesses spending money and time on marketing, the more useful question is what happens next.

People saw it. People liked it. People remembered it.

But did they do anything?

That is the measurement that ultimately matters.

Source: Adweek: Coca-Cola’s Top Marketer Reveals What He’s Looking for in His Next Agency

5 Ways to Start Using Claude for Your Business

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:23:29 GMT

AI tools are becoming increasingly capable, but many business owners are still using them in roughly the same way they used them a few years ago: open a chat window, ask a question, get an answer, close it.

That can be useful, but it barely scratches the surface of what tools like Claude can do.

Anthropic has been steadily moving Claude toward deeper business use. Projects can give Claude persistent business context, Skills can package repeatable processes, and Claude's growing collection of connectors can bring it closer to the software and information businesses already use. Anthropic has even introduced a small-business offering built around connectors and ready-made workflows for tools including QuickBooks, HubSpot, Canva, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.

For a business owner just getting started, however, the goal shouldn't be to automate everything.

Start by making Claude useful for one part of your business.

Here are five places to begin.

1. Give Claude Your Business Context

One of the easiest ways to get better results from Claude is to stop treating every conversation like your first conversation.

Imagine hiring an employee but never telling them what your company does, who your customers are or how you like things done. You wouldn't expect particularly good work.

AI isn't much different.

Create a Claude Project for your business and provide useful background information such as:

What your company does
Your products and services
Your ideal customers
Your brand voice
Frequently asked questions
Examples of previous work
Important business processes
Internal reference documents

Claude Projects are specifically designed to combine chats with project knowledge and custom instructions. That allows Claude to work from information relevant to your business instead of relying entirely on whatever you happen to include in the latest prompt.

You don't need to upload your entire company on day one. Start with the information you find yourself explaining repeatedly.

2. Use Claude for Research

Claude doesn't have to be something you use only after you've already figured out what you want to do.

It can help with the figuring-out part too.

A business owner could use Claude to research competitors, investigate a new market, compare software, organize customer feedback, prepare for a meeting or explore a potential business opportunity.

Instead of simply asking:

"What's the best CRM?"

Give Claude the actual problem:

"We're a 15-person service business. We need a CRM for five salespeople, automated follow-up, email integration and simple reporting. Research the main options and compare them based on our requirements."

The difference is context and specificity. Anthropic's own prompting guidance recommends providing relevant context, clear instructions and examples when appropriate to improve the usefulness and consistency of Claude's output.

You still need to evaluate important information and verify decisions that matter. But Claude can significantly accelerate the process of gathering, comparing and organizing information.

3. Create and Improve Content

Content is one of the simplest places for a business to start using Claude because almost every company produces some form of it.

That might include:

Emails
Social media posts
Blog articles
Proposals
Product descriptions
Sales materials
Presentations
Customer communications

But don't limit Claude to generating something from nothing.

Often, it's more useful as an editor.

Give Claude an email you've already written and ask it to make it clearer. Give it a long article and turn it into social posts. Provide several examples of your company's writing and ask it to follow the same style.

The objective isn't necessarily to have AI create all your content. It's to reduce the amount of time between an idea and something you can actually use.

4. Analyze Your Business Data

Businesses generate enormous amounts of information that often gets collected without being fully used.

Sales reports. Marketing results. Customer surveys. Website data. CRM exports. Spreadsheets. Support tickets.

Claude can help you interrogate that information.

For example, you could provide a spreadsheet containing monthly sales and ask Claude to identify:

Which products are growing or declining
Unusual changes
Trends over time
Possible problems worth investigating
Questions the data raises
Information that should be included in your next report

The important shift is from asking AI for general business advice to letting it work with information from your actual business.

This is already becoming part of real business workflows. Anthropic recently demonstrated how its own marketing operations team rebuilt a weekly metrics-reporting process that previously took two days into a Claude workflow taking roughly two hours.

That doesn't mean every spreadsheet should be handed to AI. Sensitive information needs appropriate controls, and important conclusions still need human review.

But the data you're already collecting may contain far more value than you're currently extracting from it.

5. Automate a Repetitive Task

This is where AI starts moving beyond occasional assistance.

Look at the things you or your employees do every day or every week.

Maybe someone:

Prepares the same report
Summarizes meeting notes
Researches new sales leads
Organizes incoming information
Drafts follow-up emails
Reviews documents
Prepares recurring marketing content

Pick one.

Write down the steps.

Then see how much of that process Claude can handle.

Claude's Skills are specifically designed around this idea: packaging instructions, resources and processes so Claude can perform specialized tasks more consistently. Anthropic is also increasingly combining Skills with connectors so Claude can work across the systems businesses already use.

You don't need to begin by building an elaborate AI agent.

A repeatable workflow that saves 30 minutes every Monday is already useful.

And once that works, you have a blueprint for finding the next one.

Start With One Task

The mistake is thinking that adopting AI means transforming your entire company overnight.

It doesn't.

Pick one task that takes too much time.

Give Claude the context it needs. Test what it produces. Improve the instructions. Decide where human review is necessary. Then use the process again.

Once you've made one workflow genuinely useful, find another.

That's when Claude stops being something you occasionally chat with and starts becoming part of how your business actually operates.

Growth Can Break What Used to Work: 5 Signs Your Business Is Outgrowing Its Systems

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:40:47 GMT

Growth is usually the goal.

More customers. More revenue. A larger team. More demand.

But growth creates a problem that is easy to overlook: the way your business operates today may not be capable of supporting the business you're becoming.

A spreadsheet that works perfectly with 20 customers can become a liability with 200. A founder who personally oversees every important decision eventually becomes a bottleneck. A team that communicates through a handful of messages can reach a point where nobody is quite sure who owns what.

These aren't necessarily signs that a business is being poorly managed.

Sometimes they're signs that the business has simply outgrown the systems that helped it get there.

Here are five places where that tends to become visible.

1. Your Team Can't Keep Up With Demand

One of the most obvious responses to growth is hiring.

More customers create more work, so the company adds more people.

But hiring isn't always fast enough, and adding permanent employees every time demand increases can create another problem: rapidly increasing fixed costs.

A better question is often:

Where do we actually need more capacity?

Some work may require another full-time employee. Other work can be handled by a contractor, specialist, virtual assistant, external partner or temporary resource.

And increasingly, some of it doesn't need another person at all.

Routine administrative work, reporting, customer communications, scheduling, data entry and other repetitive processes can often be partially automated.

The objective isn't simply to keep adding employees as the company gets bigger. It's to build a combination of people, technology and processes capable of handling increased demand.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as a business scales.

2. Customers Start Feeling the Growth

Internally, growth can feel exciting.

Customers don't necessarily experience it that way.

They experience slower responses.

Longer turnaround times.

Missed emails.

Delayed orders.

Less personal attention.

The danger is that a company can be winning more business while simultaneously making the experience worse for the customers it already has.

Customer service is therefore one of the clearest places to look for early signs of operational strain.

Businesses should examine where inquiries are coming from, how they're being routed, how long customers are waiting and which interactions actually require human involvement.

A CRM can make customer information accessible across the company. Automated messages can handle routine updates. AI tools can help categorize or respond to common inquiries. Better workflows can make sure requests reach the right person without being manually forwarded several times.

None of this means removing people from customer service.

It means making sure the people responsible for customers aren't spending much of their day doing work that a better system could handle for them.

The business should be able to serve more customers without making every individual customer feel less important.

3. Revenue Is Growing, But So Are the Demands on Cash

Growth costs money before it makes money.

A company may need additional inventory before those products are sold. Employees need to be paid before the additional revenue they help generate is collected. Marketing campaigns require spending before customers convert.

Then there are new software subscriptions, equipment, office space, contractors, fulfillment costs and dozens of smaller expenses that accumulate as the business expands.

This is why increasing revenue doesn't automatically mean increasing financial flexibility.

One way businesses can protect themselves is by being deliberate about which new costs become permanent.

Does the company need another full-time position immediately, or can additional capacity be created another way?

Does it need to purchase something, or can it be leased?

Does a new system require a long contract, or can it be tested first?

Growth inevitably requires investment. The important distinction is between investing in additional capacity and locking the business into costs it may not need six months from now.

Flexibility has value when a company is changing quickly.

4. Manual Processes Start Becoming Bottlenecks

This is one of the easiest growing pains to miss because nothing necessarily appears broken.

The process still works.

It just requires increasingly more effort to keep it working.

Someone manually copies information from one system into another.

A manager maintains a spreadsheet that nobody else fully understands.

Employees send messages asking for information that already exists somewhere else.

Reports take several hours to assemble every week.

Customer details live across inboxes, documents, spreadsheets and different software platforms.

Individually, these can seem like small inefficiencies. At scale, they multiply.

A task requiring five minutes isn't particularly important when it happens twice a week.

If it eventually happens 100 times a week, the economics change completely.

This is where businesses should begin looking systematically at automation, integrations and better software.

CRM platforms can centralize customer information. Project-management systems can establish ownership and deadlines. Integrations can move information between applications automatically. AI can increasingly handle repetitive information-based tasks that previously required someone to read, classify, summarize or enter data manually.

But automation shouldn't begin with buying software.

It should begin by identifying repetition.

Ask:

What are we doing manually today simply because we've always done it manually?

And then:

What would happen if our business doubled and we continued doing it exactly the same way?

Those questions tend to expose systems that are approaching their limits.

5. Too Much of the Business Lives Inside People's Heads

Small companies can operate remarkably well without much documentation.

Everyone knows what they're supposed to do.

A new employee can ask the person sitting next to them.

The owner knows the important customers.

Someone on the team remembers how a particular problem was solved last time.

That informal knowledge can be an advantage when a company is small.

It becomes a vulnerability as the company grows.

If only one employee knows how an important process works, the company doesn't really have a process. It has a dependency.

The solution isn't to document every minor action or bury employees in procedures.

It's to identify the knowledge the company can't afford to lose.

How are new customers onboarded?

How are complaints escalated?

Who approves spending?

How are leads followed up?

What happens when an order goes wrong?

How should recurring tasks be completed?

What information needs to be recorded, and where?

Documenting these processes makes onboarding easier, reduces inconsistency and creates something else that's increasingly important: a foundation for automation.

It's difficult to automate a process nobody can clearly explain.

The Real Question Isn't Whether You Can Grow

Businesses naturally spend enormous amounts of energy trying to create growth.

They invest in advertising. Build sales teams. Launch products. Enter new markets. Develop partnerships. Improve websites. Generate leads.

But eventually another question becomes just as important:

What happens if it works?

Can the company process twice as many orders?

Can customer service handle twice as many inquiries?

Can managers oversee twice as many employees?

Can the existing software support the additional activity?

Can information still move efficiently through the organization?

Or does every increase in revenue require a roughly equal increase in people, manual work and complexity?

That last question is particularly important.

A scalable business isn't simply one that can generate more demand. It's one that can handle substantially more demand without its costs, complexity and problems increasing at exactly the same rate.

Technology and automation can play an important role in that transition, but they're only part of it.

Sometimes the answer is better software.

Sometimes it's a clearer process.

Sometimes it's outsourcing.

Sometimes it's hiring.

And sometimes it's simply recognizing that a system designed for the company you were three years ago isn't the system you need today.

Growth doesn't automatically break businesses.

Failing to change the business as it grows can.

Live Shopping Sales on TikTok Just Doubled. Here's What Businesses Should Pay Attention To

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:15:42 GMT

For years, livestream shopping in the United States has been described as the next big thing in ecommerce.

The difference now is that some of the numbers are starting to look much harder to ignore.

According to CNBC, TikTok says U.S. live-shopping sales more than doubled during the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. The number of live sessions increased more than 60%, while total hours streamed increased more than 80%.

And TikTok isn't alone.

Whatnot, a marketplace built around live selling, reported $8 billion in global sales in 2025, with the company telling CNBC that the majority came from the United States.

Live commerce is still nowhere near replacing traditional ecommerce. But it is increasingly becoming something businesses should understand, because it changes more than where a transaction happens.

It changes how products are discovered and sold.

Shopping Is Becoming Content

Traditional ecommerce usually begins with intent.

Someone searches for a product, visits a website, compares options, reads reviews and eventually decides whether to buy.

Live commerce can reverse that process.

The customer may not be looking for anything at all. They open TikTok or Whatnot to watch something interesting, encounter a product, see it demonstrated, ask questions and potentially purchase it without leaving the experience.

The storefront becomes content.

That distinction matters because businesses are no longer competing only for search rankings, ad clicks or space on a marketplace.

They're competing for attention.

The Numbers Are Starting to Become Significant

CNBC highlighted Beachwaver, a hair-care brand that has generated roughly $1 million through TikTok Shop in 2026, with approximately one-quarter of those sales coming from livestreams.

During one livestream observed by CNBC, the company generated roughly $8,000 during the first four hours.

Then there is QVC.

The company helped popularize televised home shopping decades ago. Now it is reportedly streaming more than 200 hours each week across seven TikTok channels.

That's an interesting evolution.

QVC isn't abandoning the fundamental idea that made its business successful. It's moving that idea to wherever today's audience happens to be watching.

The screen changed. The underlying sales model didn't.

Live Commerce Isn't Just Another Sales Channel

It's tempting to look at live shopping as another place to list products.

That's probably the wrong way to think about it.

A traditional product page is largely static. A livestream can demonstrate the product, answer objections, create urgency, show customer reactions, introduce additional products and respond to questions in real time.

The salesperson, product demonstration, customer service interaction, entertainment and checkout can effectively happen inside the same experience.

That creates a very different relationship between the business and the customer.

It also explains why simply turning on a camera isn't enough.

Successful live commerce requires its own operational infrastructure: hosts, programming, offers, inventory, moderation, customer service, graphics, production, scheduling and an understanding of what keeps viewers watching.

Businesses Don't Need to Become QVC

The takeaway isn't that every business should immediately start livestreaming for hundreds of hours a week.

Live commerce will make far more sense for some products and industries than others.

But there is a larger lesson here.

The distance between content and commerce is getting smaller.

Social platforms increasingly don't just influence what people buy. They can host discovery, education, interaction and the transaction itself.

For businesses that sell products online, that changes the question from:

How do we get someone from social media to our store?

to:

What if the social experience becomes part of the store?

The Next Storefront Might Not Look Like a Store

Websites aren't disappearing. Neither are marketplaces, retail stores or traditional ecommerce.

What's changing is the number of places where a purchase can begin and end.

A customer might discover a product through a creator, watch it demonstrated live, ask a question in the comments and purchase it without ever conducting a search or visiting the brand's homepage.

TikTok's live-shopping sales doubling doesn't mean every business needs to jump into live commerce tomorrow.

But it does provide another signal that content, community and commerce are continuing to converge.

Businesses that understand that shift may find entirely new ways to reach customers before those customers ever start shopping.

Source: CNBC, Sept. 1, 2026.
Read the original CNBC reporting >

If Your Business Can’t Survive Without You, You Own a Job With a Logo

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:41:33 GMT

For many business owners, being needed feels like success.

You know every customer. You approve every important decision. When something goes wrong, you're the person everyone calls. When a difficult problem needs solving, you step in and fix it.

That level of involvement is often necessary when building a company. In the early days, the founder usually is the sales department, operations team, customer service manager and decision-maker.

But what helps build a business can eventually become the thing that prevents it from growing.

If your business cannot function properly without your constant involvement, you may have created something valuable, but you haven't yet created something independent of you.

Everything Runs Through You

Founder dependence doesn't usually happen because someone deliberately designed the company that way.

It happens gradually.

Employees learn which decisions need your approval. Important customers become accustomed to dealing directly with you. Problems get escalated because everyone knows you'll solve them. Processes live in your head instead of somewhere the rest of the company can access them.

Before long, almost every important road leads back to the owner.

That can feel like control. It can even feel productive.

But you're also teaching the business that nothing important happens without you.

You Become the Bottleneck

There are only so many decisions one person can make, problems one person can solve and hours one person can work.

Eventually, your personal capacity becomes the company's capacity.

Ten employees can generate far more work than one owner can review. More customers create more questions. More sales create more operational complexity. More locations, products and services create more decisions.

If all of that continues flowing through one person, adding more business doesn't necessarily create more freedom or even more capacity.

It can simply create more work for the owner.

That's when growth starts making the business harder to run instead of easier.

Scaling Requires Letting Go

Building a company that operates without your constant involvement doesn't mean walking away from it.

It means changing what you're responsible for.

Some decisions need to move to employees. Repetitive work can be automated. Processes that exist only in your head need to be documented. Specialists and outside partners can take ownership of areas where the founder doesn't need to be involved.

Most importantly, people need enough authority to actually do their jobs.

Delegation isn't simply giving someone a task and then approving every decision they make.

Real delegation means transferring a degree of ownership along with the responsibility.

You don't lose control of the business.

You stop needing to control everything inside it.

The Real Test? Step Away.

There is a simple way to expose how dependent a company is on its owner:

Leave.

Not permanently. Just long enough to see what happens.

Could you disappear for a week without customers noticing?

Would employees continue making decisions, or would they wait for you?

Would projects continue moving?

Would problems get solved?

Would sales continue?

Would you return to a functioning company, or seven days of accumulated questions, approvals and problems?

The areas that struggle when you're unavailable reveal exactly where the business still depends on you.

And those are often the areas that need better people, processes, systems, automation or delegation before the company can move to its next stage.

The Goal Isn’t to Be Less Important

Building a business that can operate without you doesn't make the founder irrelevant.

It changes where the founder creates value.

Instead of spending your time approving routine decisions, fixing recurring problems and keeping everyday operations moving, you can focus more of that time on where the company is going next.

New opportunities. Better products. Important relationships. Strategy. Growth.

The goal isn't to build a company that doesn't need you at all.

It's to build a company that benefits from having you, but doesn't depend on having you.