If you are not in AI answers, you do not exist for customers.
Customers no longer search the web and click through search results. AI gives them one answer with a few recommended brands. If you are not in that answer, you do not exist for a potential customer.
AI has removed the need to trawl through websites.
Customers used to spend evenings browsing manufacturers’ websites, reviews and discussions before buying. Now they increasingly ask AI, which does the work in a few seconds. For customers, the obligatory trawl is over. For your brand, that makes it essential that AI recommends it in its answer.
You did not write the best text about your brand.
A customer you do not know wrote it in a review or discussion. Brands naturally praise themselves on their own websites. When AI chooses who to recommend, it therefore draws mainly on what others write about them. It uses your website primarily to verify facts such as prices and specifications.