Part 5: Your Action Plan for the New Distribution Era

In the last few posts, I have chatted about the shifts in distribution, including older channels that may get phased away and newer channels that emerge.

I talked about how traditional channels are facing massive headwinds - Facebook and Instagram ads becoming 10-100x more competitive as AI democratizes ad creation, informational sites getting hit as users shift from clicking blue links to chatting with AI assistants, and email marketing devolving into an exhausting personalization arms race where everyone's inbox overflows with AI-crafted "personal" messages. I walked about how VC funding is shifting even more from product development to marketing spend, as building becomes trivial and distribution becomes the primary challenge.

I explored the new opportunities emerging in AI chat visibility, where appearing in ChatGPT or Claude's recommendations will matter more than ranking #1 on Google, and where sponsored AI chat placements will become the new SEM. I discussed the power of Visual Wow moments - how products that enable users to create shareable, visually stunning outputs (like Midjourney's images or Lovable's instant websites) achieve viral growth in our visually-driven social feeds I examined the rising influence of trusted curators, from AI-focused influencers who are becoming the new kingmakers in software discovery to private Discord and WhatsApp communities where genuine recommendations still thrive, and even predicted the emergence of AI celebrities that millions will trust.

The landscape has changed, and the companies that will win in this new landscape aren't necessarily the best at traditional marketing - they're the ones that:

• Build products with inherent visual shareability that create viral visual moments.
• Capitalize on the temporary AI advantage by taking advantage of new AI tools on social media and email channels before the rest of the market catches up.
• Build their own audiences and/or partner with established social influencers who can amplify their message authentically.
• Invest early in optimizing for AIVO/LLM SEO before it becomes too crowded.
• Experiment with entirely new distribution channels that others haven't found yet.

The Time Advantage

Most companies are still playing by the old rules. They're optimizing for keyword SEO while the world moves to AI search. They're building traditional email funnels while their competitors are optimizing AI-generated enrichment and outreach.

The companies that recognize this shift and adapt quickly have a massive window to gain distribution advantages. But these windows are closing fast - probably 6-12 months for most channels before they get saturated and commoditized.

The Real Opportunity

AI is democratizing software creation in ways we couldn't imagine five years ago. But it's also created a new scarcity: user attention and effective distribution.

The builders who understand this shift will have enormous advantages. These are the ones who recognize that the hard problem has moved even further from "How do we build it?" to "How do we get people to find and use it?" and who can capitalize on the new distribution channels.

This isn't about the death of marketing. It's about the birth of an entirely new game. And like any new game, the rules are still being written by the people bold enough to play it.

The technology barrier is vanishing. The distribution game has just begun.