In our fifth Search forward Q&A, I spoke with Oluwatobi Folasade Balogun, co-founder and CEO at SustainWyse, about how AI is reshaping discoverability, brand strategy, and sustainability goals for growing businesses. Tobi shares why AI is a co-pilot – not an autopilot – in marketing, the importance of optimising content for AI experiences as well as search engines, and how brands can balance automation with authenticity to build trust and stay visible in an increasingly AI-powered world.
How has AI changed the way your team approaches digital marketing?
AI has definitely made us rethink how we approach digital marketing but from the start, our mindset has been about using AI responsibly. It’s not just about automating for the sake of it; it’s about asking, where does AI genuinely add value for our audience and our goals?
We now use AI to support research, speed up initial drafts (blog posts), personalise customer experiences, and find insights faster, always with a human touch layered on top. It’s helped us become more agile and data-driven, but also more conscious about quality, tone, and ethics. Instead of replacing creativity, AI has become a tool to sharpen it making sure our marketing is smarter, not just louder.
Are traditional SEO techniques still relevant in today’s AI-driven search environment?
Absolutely. Traditional SEO remains foundational things like structured data, clean site architecture, quality backlinks, and keyword strategy still matter.
What’s evolving is how those fundamentals are applied in an AI-augmented world. Search is no longer just about ranking on Google; it’s also about training large language models to associate your brand with relevant prompts. So we’re now optimising for visibility in AI tools as well as search engines, which means better semantic content, clarity, and contextual depth.
What challenges have you encountered when adopting AI-driven tools?
The biggest challenge is knowing where AI adds real value and where it risks introducing noise. With tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others SEO AI tools, there’s a temptation to automate everything but that often leads to generic content that doesn’t resonate with our audience or meet our sustainability goals.
Another issue is team upskilling making sure everyone understands how to use AI responsibly, without compromising brand voice or accuracy. AI is a co-pilot, not an autopilot.
How do LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini change the way your customers find your brand?
They’ve shifted discoverability from search engines to search experiences. We’re seeing more people discover content through AI-generated summaries or direct answers often without clicking through.
That means brands need to optimise for visibility within the AI interface itself, not just SERPs. It’s changing how we think about metadata, content structure, and even how we phrase thought leadership clarity and authority matter more than ever.
What risks and opportunities do you associate with zero-click search and AI summaries?
The risk is obvious: reduced traffic to owned platforms, especially for startups and niche content creators.
But the opportunity lies in brand association and trust-building. If your content is consistently referenced or summarised by AI tools, you’re still winning mindshare. That’s why the focus should be on creating content that’s authoritative, structured, and attributable, so it’s more likely to surface in AI responses even when no link is clicked.
How do you envision the balance between organic search and paid visibility shifting with these changes?
I think organic search will become even more critical but it will look different. With AI tools pulling answers directly from content, brands can’t rely on paid ads alone to stay visible.
People are increasingly trusting natural, AI-surfaced recommendations over obvious paid placements. That means investing in high-quality, AI-friendly organic content is going to drive real brand equity.
Paid visibility will still have a role, but it’ll need to be more strategic and integrated supporting organic efforts rather than trying to replace them. Smart brands will blend the two, making sure their paid strategies amplify genuinely useful, discoverable content, not just chase clicks.
Where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth in AI-optimised search?
For me, it’s in sustainability-focused digital marketing.
As more companies aim to reduce digital emissions and align with ESG goals, there’s a growing demand for efficient, AI-supported content strategies, ones that cut down waste, improve UX, and still perform in AI-enhanced search environments.
There’s also a huge opportunity in fine-tuning content for niche audiences and prompt-based discovery, not just keywords.
Five years from now, what role will AI play in shaping customer engagement and findability?
AI will be the default layer between brands and audiences, shaping how people ask questions, interpret answers, and discover services. Frankly, it’s already happening.
We’ll move from SEO to SER (Search Experience Resonance); not just being found, but being relevant in how AI tools surface information.
Brands that invest in clarity, ethics, and ecosystem visibility today will be the ones people find and trust tomorrow. The future belongs to marketing ecosystems that are discoverable, resilient, and deeply aligned with ethical and sustainable practices.
It’s an exciting time for digital marketing, but also one that demands more responsibility, creativity, and clarity than ever before.
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We’ll be publishing Q&A’s every fortnight with invaluable insights from experts in AI, SEO and digital marketing. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay informed when new Q&A’s are published.
You can read previous Q&As in the series here:
- Kevin Indig, growth advisor
- Andrew Bruce Smith, chair of the CIPR’s AI in PR panel
- Mary Kemp, founder at AI Potential
- Tom Swinbourne, digital marketing manager at Reconomy
We offer search engine optimisation services to help your business be found by the right audiences. If you’d like to find out more, email me at greg@magentaassociates.co.
