Watch the full conversation with Jennifer here →
## The traffic problem nobody has solved yet Before positioning, Jennifer makes a structural observation about the ground shifting under ecommerce marketing. HubSpot has lost 80% of its Google search traffic as users shift to asking AI tools directly. That number lands differently depending on how much of your business runs on organic acquisition. > "If you rely solely on that to run your business, it's shifting all the time. The advantage of building a brand and people knowing your brand is, I'm going to your website. I know who you are. I trust you." — Jennifer Montague Her framing: brand recognition is a structural defense against whatever the next platform shift turns out to be. Traffic channels will keep changing. A customer who already knows you is not dependent on those channels to find you. ## It's not what you sell, it's why they buy The concept Jennifer returns to throughout the conversation is positioning. Her definition is precise. > "Positioning is how you define the why. Why should someone — why is your product the best thing for your ideal customer? Why should they buy from you and no one else? And if the answer to that is price, they will always go to someone cheaper." — Jennifer Montague This matters in B2B because buying cycles are long and buying committees are large. A six-to-eight person committee over an eighteen-month sales cycle forces a clarity that price alone cannot provide. It matters in ecommerce for a different reason: Temu. The jobs-to-be-done framework gives Jennifer her tool for finding that clarity. The idea is to think of your product as something a customer hires to accomplish something for them. The example she uses: she didn't buy a blazer because she needed a blazer. She hired a blazer to make her look like she means business. And the example that applies most directly to ecommerce: > "I don't want to search for a light baby stroller. I want to make traveling easy and stress-free with my kids. That's the job to be done." — Jennifer Montague The product is the same. The framing changes everything downstream: how you talk about it, who you reach, and what you say to them. ## Playing a different game than Temu When the conversation turns to Chinese marketplaces, Jennifer reaches for a Warren Buffett line. > "How do you beat the chess prodigy Bobby Fischer? You play him at anything but chess." — Jennifer Montague You cannot compete on price. The supply chain economics are different. The compliance standards are different. The fulfillment geography is different. Competing on price against Temu is a race with a predetermined outcome. There are things Temu cannot do. Local fulfillment means no two-to-three week delivery windows and no customs complications. Quality guarantees are credible in ways Temu's are not. Returns work. Customer service is reachable. Brand trust is real. > "You can capitalize on trust, local fulfillment. You can capitalize on free returns. There's things that you can do — great customer service — that the Chinese can't do." — Jennifer Montague Jennifer points to Boost as an example worth studying: a Nordic online department store positioned around the experience of shopping rather than any individual product. At-home fitting, hassle-free returns, size consistency. None of those features are about what they sell. All of them respond to frustrations that Temu structurally cannot address.  ## Building loyalty in a B2C context Community building is often discussed in ecommerce as something abstract and hard to act on. Jennifer makes it more concrete by pointing to Glossier. Glossier built a community through user-generated content. Customers document their experience, share results, and amplify the brand to each other. The brand creates the conditions. Customers create the content. The parallel in B2B is review platforms: G2, Capterra, video testimonials you earn by offering something in return. The principle translates: incentivize existing customers to speak authentically to prospective ones. > "UGC is gold for AI discoverability. That's what people — that's what the AI wants to see — is other people talking about you. So it kills so many birds with so few stones." — Jennifer Montague B2C companies have more transactional data, more customers, and more natural occasions for customers to share experiences. The ones who build systems to activate that are building an AI discoverability advantage at the same time as a loyalty one. ## AI search rewards authenticity There is an irony at the center of AI discoverability that Jennifer names directly. AI search rewards authentic, expert, intent-based content. It rewards real people speaking from experience. It rewards reviews and discussions and product descriptions that address actual problems. AI-generated writing tends to be the opposite. > "To stand out, you have to be more authentic, more human sounding. And to do that, you need to have a position that you can lean into that makes you stand out from the bland sea." — Jennifer Montague Her practical advice for getting started is specific. Reframe your FAQs. Write them the way a customer would actually ask the question in an AI tool: "How do I stop dry skin?" does more work than "clinically proven hydration solution." Then run an audit: ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini the questions your ideal customer would ask. See who shows up. If you don't, ask the AI directly why. It will tell you what your competitors are doing that you aren't. The goal is not to optimize for a keyword. The goal is to be the most relevant and authoritative answer to a problem your customer is trying to solve.  ## What Hello Retail brings to this Jennifer talks about personalization as one of the most powerful tools B2C has available, and one that most businesses underuse. > "The thing that companies do get wrong is personalization at scale. If it's not done well, it is hollow. It's not just slapping my name on an email and then telling me something that's completely irrelevant to me." — Jennifer Montague Relevant personalization requires understanding what a customer is interested in, not just what they have purchased. It requires connecting the right product to the right person at the right moment. That connection is what Hello Retail's [Product Intelligence](/en/product-intelligence/) is built to make. The behavioral layer, knowing what a shopper viewed, what they are likely to buy next, and when to reach back out, turns the data B2C companies already have into the kind of personalized experience Jennifer describes. [Product Agents](/en/product-agents/) extends that further. Price drops on products a shopper viewed. Replenishment timing based on purchase patterns. Alternatives when a product goes out of stock. Every trigger decided by product intelligence, every message personalized to the customer and the brand's tone of voice. One of Jennifer's frameworks fits here precisely. She calls it the before-after bridge: where the customer is now, where they want to be, and the product as the bridge between the two. That is the layer where product intelligence and personalization meet.  ## Final thought Jennifer's closing advice in the conversation is the thread running through the whole episode. > "Future-proof your business by focusing on what you do, who you do it for, and why they should use you." — Jennifer Montague The specifics change. Traffic channels shift. Temu grows. AI restructures search. New platforms emerge. But a business with a clear answer to those three questions has something none of those shifts can take away: customers who come back because they know who you are and what you stand for. That clarity is the hardest thing to build. It is also the most durable.Jennifer Montague
Senior Director, GoToMarket · Verdane
When we sat down with Jennifer, she was Senior Director of GoToMarket at Verdane, where she supported portfolio companies on positioning, GTM strategy, and AI search readiness. She is now VP of Marketing at Carivo.