I Respectfully Challenge HubSpot’s CMO. Here Is What Every Small Business Owner Actually Needs to Hear.

Top 3 Key Takeaways

Reference article being challenged – Forbes

01 — Large companies give large company advice.
When HubSpot’s CMO says the AI search playbook is not that different, he is speaking from twenty years of domain authority and a team of hundreds. For the small business owner, this is not a minor adjustment. It is a complete rethink of how the next client finds you. The enterprise playbook and the SMB playbook are not the same document.

02 — The SMB version of AI visibility is simpler than anyone is telling you.
You do not need Reddit communities or YouTube channels or affiliate ecosystems. You need genuine client reviews. A website AI can read. Consistent business information everywhere AI looks. And plain language answers to the questions your clients actually ask. That is it.

03 — The AI Translator exists because nobody else wrote it.
Every major piece of AI guidance published in 2026 was written for large organizations with large resources. Not one of them told the twelve-person law firm or the solo healthcare practice what to do on Monday morning. That is the gap The AI Translator fills. Start there. Everything else follows.

Read the full article here: by Hema Dey

Let me start with a confession.

I read a lot of marketing articles written by very smart people at very large companies.

And most of the time, I finish reading them with the same thought.

This is brilliant advice for someone with a hundred million dollar marketing budget and a team of two hundred content creators.

What about the rest of us?

• The law firm with twelve people.
• The healthcare practice where the owner is also the intake coordinator.
• The manufacturer who has been building something extraordinary for twenty years and has just realized that the way their next client finds them has completely changed.

What about those businesses?

That is why I am writing this.

What Just Happened to Search — In Plain Language

Here is what used to happen when someone needed a service like yours.

They went to Google. They typed a question. They saw a list of ten websites. They clicked one. They read it. They called.

That journey is over for most buyers. May 19th, Google declared the 10 blue links and keywords as an obsolete product after 25 years, with detailed updates on the do’s and don’ts on June 5th. The details HERE

Here is what happens now.

They open ChatGPT or Google AI Mode or Gemini. They type a question. An AI reads thousands of websites simultaneously and gives them one answer. One business name. One recommendation.

They call that business.

They never visit any website.

They never see your Google ranking.

They never find you — unless you are the business AI named.

HubSpot, one of the largest marketing companies in the world, lost 140 million website visits in a single year because of this shift.

One hundred and forty million visits. Gone.

And if it happened to HubSpot — it is happening to your business too.

Quietly. Invisibly. Without anyone sending you a notification.

What HubSpot’s Top Marketing Person Said About It

HubSpot’s chief marketing officer Kipp Bodnar gave an interview to Forbes in June 2026 about what businesses need to do to be found in this new AI world.

• He said some things that are genuinely important.
• He said the way AI finds and recommends businesses is different from traditional search.
• He said businesses need to be present across multiple platforms — not just their website — so AI sees them mentioned consistently in many different places.
• He said the visitors who arrive from AI recommendations become paying clients at three times the rate of traditional search visitors.

And he said the most important thing of all.

“I don’t think you have any choice but to play it.”

He is completely right about that.

Where I Respectfully Disagree With Kipp Bodnar

Kipp Bodnar is brilliant.

And he was speaking to an audience of very large company marketing leaders.

Which is why three things he said accurately for HubSpot could leave the small business owner with the completely wrong impression.

He said the playbook is not that different – BS 101

For HubSpot it is not.

For your business, it is completely different.

HubSpot has been doing all the right things for twenty years at a scale most businesses cannot match. The shift to AI search is a small adjustment for them.

For most small businesses, it is not an adjustment.

It is a complete rethink of how the business gets found.

And nobody is saying that clearly enough.

He said AI search is about being in many places at once.

He talked about Reddit communities, YouTube channels, affiliate websites, and LinkedIn.

For HubSpot, yes. They have the team and the budget to be everywhere simultaneously.

For your business — this is the wrong starting point.

Being everywhere is not what small businesses need to do first.

What you need to do first is much simpler.

• Make sure your website tells AI exactly who you are and what you do in a language AI understands.
• Make sure your happy clients have left real reviews on Google and Trustpilot that AI can cross-reference.
• Make sure your business information is consistent everywhere AI looks — your website, your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn page.

That is the small business version of being in many places.

It is achievable this week.

Without a content team. Without a YouTube channel. Without a Reddit strategy.

He said measure AI visibility like a brand awareness metric.

He is right but for most small business owners, this sounds complicated and abstract.

Here is the plain language version of what measuring AI visibility looks like for your business.

• Open ChatGPT right now.
• Type the question your next client would ask when they need what you do.
• Not your business name. The question.
• Read what comes back.
• Is your business named?
• If yes — you are visible to AI. Keep building.
• If no — you are invisible to the most important recommendation system in your market right now.

That is your starting point.

The Plain Language Version of What You Actually Need to Do

I am going to translate everything Kipp said accurately and brilliantly for a large company audience into the plain language version for every small business owner.

Step 01 — Make your website easy for AI to read.

Think of your website like a menu at a restaurant.

If the menu is clear, well-organized, and answers every question a customer might have — the waiter can recommend the right dish instantly.

If the menu is confusing, vague, and full of things that look the same — the waiter hesitates. And a hesitating waiter recommends the restaurant across the street instead.

AI is the waiter.

Your website is the menu.

The clearer, more specific, and better organized your website is — with proper technical markup underneath it that AI can read — the more confidently AI recommends your business to your next client.

Step 02 — Answer the questions your clients actually ask.

Not the marketing language you use to describe what you do.

The plain language questions your clients ask before they decide to hire you.

How much does it cost? What happens in the first appointment? How long does it take? What makes you different from the firm down the street? Do you speak Spanish?

Write those questions and answers on your website.

Every single one of them.

AI will find them. Extract them. And cite your business as the expert answer when your next client asks the same question.

Step 03 — Get real reviews from real clients.

Not because reviews make your website look good.

Because AI uses reviews as one of its primary signals for deciding whether a business is trustworthy enough to recommend.

A business with forty genuine reviews from real clients who had real outcomes is more trustworthy to AI than a business with a beautiful website and no reviews.

Call three happy clients this week and ask them to leave a Google review.

That is the most immediately impactful thing most small businesses can do today.

Step 04 — Make sure every platform says the same thing about you.

Your website. Your Google Business Profile. Your LinkedIn page. Your Trustpilot listing. Every directory you appear in.

Every one of them should say the same business name, the same address, the same phone number, the same description of what you do.

When AI cross-references your business across these platforms and finds consistency — it trusts you more.

When it finds inconsistency — it trusts you less. And recommends the consistent competitor instead.

Step 05 — Check your AI visibility every week.

Open ChatGPT. Type the five most important questions your ideal clients ask before hiring a business like yours.

Read what comes back.

Is your business appearing?

If yes — what is being said? Is it accurate? Does it reflect your genuine expertise?

If no — which of the four steps above is missing?

That five-minute weekly check is the most practical AI visibility measurement system any small business can implement starting today.

Where to Start — Before Any of the Above

Here is the honest truth about everything I just described.

The steps are simple.

But understanding why each one works, why AI evaluates trust the way it does, why the FAQ format produces citations, why consistent entity signals matter, and why reviews carry more weight than website copy makes every step more effective.

Because when you understand the why, you do not just follow the checklist.

You build the instinct.

And the instinct is what lets you make every marketing decision every piece of content, every review request, every website update with AI recommendations in mind rather than retrofitting AI thinking onto a strategy that was built for a world that has already moved on.

That understanding is what The AI Translator was written to give you.

In plain language. Without jargon. Without assuming you have a marketing team or a technology background or a hundred million dollar budget.

• Written for the law firm partner who needs to understand this before their next partner meeting.
• For the healthcare practice owner who needs to explain it to their front desk team.
• For the manufacturer who needs to bring their sales and marketing team into the same conversation.
• For the professional services business owner who has been building something real for twenty years and deserves to know how to make sure their next client can find them.

The AI Translator starts with the most important question any business owner can ask in 2026.

What does AI see when it looks for a business like mine?

And then it answers that question — and every question that follows from it — in the plainest language possible.

Because making AI simple is the entire point.

The Bottom Line

Kipp Bodnar said you have no choice but to play it.

He is right.

But the game looks different at the small business level than it does at the HubSpot level.

The principles are the same.

The resources are different.

And the playbook has to reflect that difference.

The AI Translator is that playbook.

Start there.

Read it. Understand it. Apply it.

And then if you want help building the systems that make it work inside your specific business, my team and I are here.

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Start with the book. Everything else follows from there.

📖 The AI Translator — available on Amazon now
Kindle $9.99 · Paperback $15.99 · Hardcover $19.99
amazon.com/dp/B0H13FMQCT

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Ready to talk about what AI search visibility looks like for your specific business?

Schedule a complimentary assessment with Hema Dey directly.

📞 +1 (949) 779-6442

🔗 iffelinternational.com

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Hema Dey is the Founder and CEO of Iffel International Inc., a Forbes Top 5 AI Leader, and the bestselling author of The AI Translator. She has been building AI visibility systems for law firms, healthcare practices, manufacturing companies, and professional services businesses across the United States and internationally since 2006.

Source: Forbes CMO — Gaining Visibility In The AI Search Era — June 3, 2026 · featuring HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar