The principles of digital strategy have never been static, but the pace of change facing digital marketers in the self-care industry today is unlike anything we have seen before. The way customers discover, evaluate, and choose over-the-counter medicines, natural health products, and alternative therapies is being fundamentally reshaped by AI-driven ‘answer engines’.
For many marketing strategists, this shift can feel unsettling. Tactical initiatives are implemented just as the digital landscape evolves again. Measurement frameworks change mid-cycle. Familiar signposts, such as website traffic and search rankings, no longer tell the full story.
And yet, there is reason for optimism. When we come together to share experiences, test assumptions, and learn collaboratively, clarity begins to emerge.
This was highlighted during the recent webinar hosted by IGEPHA and presented by Julia Walsh, CEO of Brand Medicine International. The session brought together digital marketing specialists from a wide range of member companies, including leading global organisations such as Bayer, Schwabe and Nestlé, all grappling with the same rapidly evolving reality: AI-driven search is increasingly controlling the voice of self-care brands.
From Search Results to Answers: The New Digital Information Experience
The focus of the webinar was simple but profound: answer engines have reshaped search, and in doing so, have permanently transformed the digital information experience from navigating a menu of ranked websites to an AI-curated conversation.
‘Answer engines’ deliver synthesised responses drawn from content across multiple sources, often without the user ever visiting a brand’s own website. For healthcare customers seeking fast, digestible information, this ‘zero click search’ experience can be helpful. For brands, however, it raises critical questions about visibility, accuracy, and control.
A key objective of the webinar was to explore practical digital strategy ‘hacks’ for the age of AI. Central to this was understanding how brands can maintain a meaningful presence online by expanding their digital footprint across the third-party platforms that exert the greatest influence on AI responses within their category.
But First: How Are Digital Marketers Really Feeling?
At the outset of the webinar, we asked participants to share how they were feeling about the pace and scale of change they are now forced to navigate in their roles. This exercise revealed a striking mix of uncertainty and cautious optimism.
The responses reflected what many in our industry quietly acknowledge: adapting capabilities, processes, and measurement frameworks to keep pace with AI-driven search is challenging.
On the challenge side, participants candidly shared about the difficulty of keeping pace with constant change, from understanding how consumer prompts shape AI responses to ensuring correct source attribution and guarding against misinformation or misleading content. Concerns were also raised about the accuracy of translation from approved medical materials into AI-generated outcomes, particularly when complex information is simplified or visualised. Many cited the sheer speed of evolution, resource constraints, and information overload as barriers, noting how difficult it is to stay updated when tools, algorithms, and expectations are shifting so rapidly. Maintaining a competitive advantage within a category is becoming increasingly elusive. The goalposts keep moving, and that is deeply unsettling, even for experienced digital strategists.
Yet when we asked participants about opportunities, an energised tone emerged.
Alongside the challenges, there was a clear sense of possibility. Participants saw real potential in more precise demographic targeting, greater efficiency, faster optimisation, and earlier visibility for products when AI is used strategically. There was strong interest in the ability to accelerate workflows, reduce costs, increase output, and access consumers sooner in their information-seeking journey. For some, the opportunity lay in being first to adapt and shaping how brands are represented in answer engines.
Together, these perspectives reflect a sector in transition, navigating complexity to capitalise on the upside offered by the new online dynamics.
The Exercise That Changed the Conversation: “The AI Answer You Want vs the One You’ll Get”
To move from theory to practice, we ran an interactive workshop titled The AI Answer You Want versus the One You’ll Get.
Participants were asked to identify a meaningful real-world question that consumers ask about their brand from search query databases. They then wrote the ideal answer they hoped an AI engine would provide, including the key messages and benefits they wanted conveyed. Importantly, they also listed the websites they expected AI to use as source material, including both their owned assets and trusted third-party sites.
Next, participants entered their selected question into an AI engine of their choice (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and others).
The results were sobering.
100% of participants identified critical brand information missing from the AI response.
75% reported false or inaccurate information, a particularly concerning finding in self-care categories where a healthcare professional is not always present to contextualise claims.
Only 25% felt the AI response came close to their ideal answer.
Where Was the Brand Voice?
Perhaps most striking was what we learned about source attribution.
Despite significant investment in owned websites, 50% of participants found their own sites were not cited at all. In these cases, none of the AI-generated content had been drawn from material that had undergone medical, legal, and regulatory review prior to publication, but was harvested by AI from unverified third-party websites as the authority on the brands participants in the workshop are responsible for.
A further 38% reported limited citation of owned websites, while just 13% saw their owned websites used meaningfully in the AI response.
When we examined which third-party websites were cited, 100% of participants said these were not the sources they had expected. Not one participant was presented with a third-party website they anticipated in the sites cited by AI in response to the real-world question about their brand asked by customers many hundreds, if not thousands of times a day.
From Site Traffic to Citations: A Fundamental KPI Shift
What does this mean for digital marketers?
As the digital information experience shifts from site navigation to conversation, key performance indicators are evolving. Website visits are no longer the most meaningful measure of success. Citations now matter just as much, if not more.
In this new environment, many brands are unintentionally losing their voice. As was illustrated with our workshop activity, AI engines increasingly prioritise third-party websites to generate content. Furthermore, the third-party sites selected by AI are often not the ones the brand team might expect. Yet these are the sites shaping the narrative, influencing perceptions, and driving consumer behaviour for these brands – thus heavily influencing commercial potential.
Reclaiming Influence: A Targeted Approach To Expanding Digital Influence
The implication is clear: identifying and understanding the most influential third-party websites in your category is no longer optional. It is essential.
Through the proprietary digital share-of-voice analysis developed at Brand Medicine International, we consistently see that websites with strong organic Google rankings are preferentially scraped by AI engines, not only within Google’s own ecosystem but across a range of AI answer-engine platforms such as Perplexity, Bing CoPilot, and SearchGPT.
Our unique analysis confirms the short-list of sites with highest organic share of voice in any category. Once these most influential websites on a topic are known, brand teams can audit content, address misinformation, collaborate with authors to update outdated material, and request links back to owned assets. This strategy future proofs the brand voice even when AI draws from third-party sources. Targeted digital housekeeping along with intentional collaboration with publishers of the most cited sites increases the potential to present consumers with brand-approved and regulatory-aligned information.
Learning Together in a Level Playing Field
One of the most powerful outcomes of the workshop was a shared realisation. Regardless of company size or category, all digital marketing professionals are being challenged by the same disruption. AI is changing everything, and no organisation has all the answers yet.
That recognition brings relief, but also momentum. By leaning into experimentation, sharing insights, and continuing to learn together, our industry can adapt and implement responsive digital strategy with confidence.
The future of digital communication, in self-care as well as all industries, will not be defined by standing still, but by collaboration, curiosity, and the willingness to evolve. It was clear that IGEPHA members embody a spirit of adventure so are well positioned to succeed!
IGEPHA members can access the full webinar recording free of charge via the IGEPHA Media Library.
