How to Market an AI Product (When Every Product Says It Has AI)

1. Blog
2. Strategy & Positioning

By Saroj Jha · October 1, 2026 · 9 min read

Market an AI product by what it does for a specific buyer, not by the fact that it uses AI. Then show it working on the buyer’s own work, and never claim accuracy or autonomy you have not tested.

“AI-powered” used to set a product apart. Now it describes almost everything. McKinsey’s 2026 survey found nearly nine in ten organizations use AI regularly in at least one business function (McKinsey, 2026). When everyone says the same word, the word stops working.

It also no longer reassures people. In Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey of 5,023 US adults, 50% said they were more concerned than excited about AI, up from 37% in 2021 (Pew Research Center, 2025). In a set of consumer experiments, simply mentioning “artificial intelligence” in a product description lowered trust and purchase intention (Cicek, Gursoy and Lu, 2025). Business buyers may react differently, but none of this suggests the word sells on its own. Here is what I would do instead, in six steps.

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

The running case: Example Co. (fictional). Example Co. is a seed-stage EdTech startup with an AI reading coach for children in kindergarten to grade 3. A child reads aloud, the coach listens and flags words to practise, and adults get a weekly progress report. It sells first to independent tutoring centers, for $200 a month per center. Its first homepage said “AI-powered reading assessment platform”. This post follows the team as it fixes that. Example Co. and all its numbers are illustrative.

Step 1: Say the job first, then how the AI does it

Use this order: who it is for, the job it does, the result, then how AI does it, then the limit. The limit is not a weakness. It answers the first question a careful buyer will ask.

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 1. Who and job: owners of tutoring centers who need to show parents their child’s reading progress. Result: a weekly report for every family, without extra tutor time. How: the coach listens as a child reads aloud and flags words to practise. Limit: a tutor checks every flag before parents see the report. The new headline: “Show every parent their child’s reading progress every week, without extra tutor time.” All wording is fictional.

Do this: rewrite your headline in that order, then test it with the Five-Second Message Test.

Step 2: Compete on what the model cannot give your rivals

Stop competing on the model. Stanford’s AI Index found that the cost of GPT-3.5-level performance fell more than 280-fold between November 2022 and October 2024 (Stanford HAI, 2025). What was an advantage can become a commodity within a year or two.

Compete on what is harder to copy: how well the product fits the buyer’s workflow, the domain data behind it, its measured accuracy on the buyer’s task, and the support that gets customers to results. And remember the new competitor: in McKinsey’s 2026 survey, 32% of respondents said their organization had decided against buying one or more software products or features because they could be built internally with agentic coding tools (McKinsey, 2026). Your message has to answer “why not build it ourselves?”, and often “why not use a free chatbot?”

What Duolingo’s shareholder letter shows. When Duolingo launched its AI tier, it described the features by the job they do and placed its advantage around the model. Its first-quarter 2023 shareholder letter says the two AI features in Duolingo Max, “built with GPT-4”, “are aimed at teaching better by emulating a human tutor experience”. It adds: “our competitive advantage comes from our vast user data, in-house machine learning and AI expertise, gamified approach, and brand. We’re not using GPT-4 ‘off the shelf.’” (Duolingo Q1 2023 shareholder letter). Its annual report for 2023 describes Max as a premium tier “priced higher than Super Duolingo” (Duolingo 10-K for 2023). This is what the filings say, not an account of how Duolingo made its choices internally.

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 2. The team’s alternatives are a parent with a free chatbot, a tutor doing checks by hand, and Competitor A’s reading app. Its hard-to-copy list (fictional): accuracy tested on K–3 children reading aloud, a product built into the tutoring session, the weekly parent report, and clear rules on children’s recordings.

Do this: write one sentence on why a buyer should choose you over building it, and one on why over a free chatbot.

Step 3: Prove it on the buyer’s own work

Let buyers see it on their own work. Forrester’s 2026 research found more than 60% of business buyers purchase some form of trial, but just over a third of them planned to convert to a full paid version with the same provider (Forrester, 2026). A trial is a test, not a sale.

Make trials convert by agreeing three things before they start: one workflow and one success measure (time, cost or error rate); the data the test will use, and how it is protected; and a decision date. Then let a person walk the buyer through the results. Gartner found 69% of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with sales reps (Gartner, 2026).

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 3. A 30-day pilot with one center, 20 readers and three tutors. The measure is tutor minutes spent on reading checks each week, before and after. Recordings are deleted at the end unless the center buys. On day 30 the owner decides: buy, extend once with a new date, or stop. All details are fictional.

Do this: put the decision date in writing before the pilot starts.

Step 4: Check every claim before you publish

Claim only what you can back with a test at the time you say it. In 2025 the FTC acted against Workado, which had marketed an AI-content detector as 98% accurate; the FTC’s complaint said independent testing found 53% accuracy on general-purpose content (FTC, April 2025). The final order requires “competent and reliable evidence” for future accuracy claims (FTC, August 2025). The SEC has charged companies with “AI washing”, claiming AI they did not have (SEC, 2024).

If you sell in the European Union, the AI Act’s transparency rules apply from August 2, 2026: people must be told when they are interacting with an AI system unless it is obvious (European Commission, 2026). If your product serves children, US children’s privacy rules count a recording of a child’s voice as personal information (16 CFR 312.2). This is orientation, not legal advice.

Three quick checks for every claim:

1. A number: is there a dated, repeatable test behind it?
2. “Autonomous” or “agent”: does the product act without a person doing the work?
3. “Secure” or “private”: can you name the standard, audit or policy?

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 4. An early deck said “95% accurate”, with no test behind it. After a proper test, the team writes: “In a March test on 500 recordings, the coach agreed with a trained tutor on 9 in 10 flagged words.” Because the product records children’s voices, it gets legal advice on children’s privacy before launch. The claim and its numbers are fictional.

Do this: list every claim on your site with its evidence and date next to it. Delete what has none.

Step 5: Show up in AI answers

Increasingly, buyers look in AI assistants. Forrester found 94% of business buyers use AI during their buying process (Forrester, 2026). If ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity cannot describe what you do, you can be missed early in the buyer’s research. Publish clear, factual pages on what the product does, who it is for, pricing and limits, so AI assistants can cite them. My post on why ChatGPT does not recommend your company covers this.

After that, hands-on channels work best: a free trial or sandbox, short demos on realistic data, and content that shows your evaluation method.

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 5. The team publishes one plain page with what the coach does, who it is for, the price and its limits, then asks three AI assistants to describe the product each month and fixes the page when an answer is wrong. It demos live at tutoring-center association meetings. Fictional choices.

Do this: ask the AI assistants your buyers use to describe your product, and note what they get wrong.

Step 6: Price it to match the value

Match the price to the value and to your running costs. Bain’s 2026 review of about 200 B2B software companies found about four in five vendors introducing AI pricing chose capacity models, such as prepaid credits, and only about 10% of companies introducing a hybrid AI meter tied it to outcomes (Bain, 2026). A base fee plus included usage is a predictable starting point. The Marketing AI Products Playbook compares the options.

Running case · Example Co. (fictional)

Example Co., Step 6. $200 a month per center, including up to 40 active readers, with extra readers at $4 each a month. Most centers get a predictable bill; the price grows only for large centers, where Example Co.’s running costs also grow. The reader limit and add-on price are fictional.

Do this: check what your price would be for your smallest and largest likely customer, and whether both cover your AI running costs.

What changes by stage?

Pre-seed. One buyer, one job, one measured result. Write the limits down.

Seed. A repeatable pilot with agreed measures, a security and data-use page, and pages AI assistants can cite.

Series A–B. Content for larger buying groups (security, legal, finance), a quarterly value report for customers, and a regular review of every public claim.

What mistakes should I avoid?

• “AI-powered” as the headline. It says nothing a buyer can use.
• Untested numbers. They create legal risk and break trust when buyers test them.
• Free pilots with no end date. Without a decision date, a pilot drifts into free use.
• Hiding the limits. Buyers find them anyway, usually in the trial.
• Ignoring AI search. Buyers are asking assistants before they visit your site.

Use this on AAJ

• Marketing AI Products Playbook: the full method in eight steps, including pricing, the rules on claims and what happens after the sale.
• How to Market to Developers: if your AI product is an API or SDK, the first call, docs and adoption.
• How to Make Security a Selling Point: the data-use answer buyers ask for before an AI product touches their data.
• Five-Second Message Test: Step 1. Check your headline.
• Positioning Statement Generator: Step 1. Write the job-and-result positioning.
• Privacy and Advertising Rules for Startup Marketers: Step 4. The FTC’s rules on claims, reviews and testimonials, including AI claims.
• Why doesn’t ChatGPT recommend my company?: Step 5. Get found in AI answers.
• AI Answer Share of Voice: Step 5. See how often AI assistants mention you.