We’re entering one of the biggest shifts in customer behavior since the invention of Google. AI-powered search engines, social commerce, peer-driven trust, and changing buyer expectations are fundamentally reshaping how contractors discover products, evaluate brands, and make purchasing decisions.
At the 2026 National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) National Meeting, I presented a session titled “Likes, Leads & Loyalty: Turning Social Influence and AI Into Profit.” Here’s the script I wrote for my speech:
The Biggest Shift in Customer Discovery Since Google
ChatGPT users now submit 2.5 billion prompts every single day. Answer engines and AI summaries have led to a massive decrease in web traffic. Some reports estimate web traffic plummeted 60% since last year.
We’re undergoing what’s being called “the biggest shift in how customers find business since the invention of Google.” Right now, electricians are asking AI chatbots the same questions they used to ask your counter guys. And the gap between how fast their expectations are changing and how slowly your systems are changing is where your margin starts to leak.
And if you’re thinking, “not my customers,” I bet you didn’t think you’d see your customers dancing on TikTok either but here we are.
[Queue the montage I edited of viral construction worker dance videos… It was great. You would have loved it.]
The Buying Journey No Longer Starts at the Counter
I’m here today speaking on behalf of your customers. I’m here to share what hundreds of thousands of electricians and contractors are already doing whether you’re ready for it or not.
I’m the VP of Marketing at Trade Hounds, America’s largest social commerce app for the trades. I spend every day with electricians who share posts about their pain points and how their jobs are changing because of AI and social media. I also have a Ph.D. in emerging technologies, so I’ve been conducting research into this massive evolution happening in the way electricians buy the products you sell.
Here’s the hard truth: a growing share of your future revenue is won or lost before anyone ever contacts your branch. Before the counter. Before the quote. Before inside sales even knows a job exists.
Today, the buying journey starts somewhere else. It starts:
• in a feed
• in a direct message
• in comments under a product video
It might happen on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Trade Hounds.
AI Search Engines Are Learning From Social Media
What does social media have to do with AI? There are two game-changing shifts underway right now. The first shift: chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude are pulling an increasing percentage of their answers from social media platforms.
According to new research by Profound, LinkedIn just surpassed Reddit as the number one most cited domain for B2B queries across all AI search platforms. That’s followed by YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
And not only are more people using AI search, they’re also starting to prefer it over traditional search. According to an Innovating with AI Magazine survey, over 80% of respondents now find AI-powered search more efficient than traditional search.
So, the question distributors and manufacturers now have to answer isn’t just, “do we rank on Google?” it’s, “can AI understand us well enough to recommend us?” Because if AI doesn’t understand who you are, what you sell, and why you’re credible it won’t recommend you.
Influence Now Happens Before Sales Ever Gets the Call
Influence has moved upstream and preference is being formed before the call. That matters because preference usually means:
• less selling effort
• less price pressure
• faster conversion
• higher chance of repeat business
When influence moves upstream, profit moves with it.
Social Commerce Is Reshaping Purchasing Behavior
The second shift is social commerce. U.S. social commerce will cross $100 billion in 2026. TikTok Shop alone is projected to hit more than $23 billion in U.S. sales.
There’s another force colliding with all of this and it’s demographic. Over the next decade, roughly half of today’s electrical contractors and tradespeople will retire. They are being replaced by a new generation of buyers. Digital natives. Buyers who grew up asking questions in apps, not over the phone. Buyers who expect instant answers, side-by-side comparisons, social proof, and self-service.
This next generation still values distributors. They still need fulfillment. They still need expertise. But their expectations are different. They expect:
• faster answers
• fewer steps
• less friction
• digital-first experiences
This is where social media stops being just a “marketing thing” and starts being a serious revenue lever.
Why Peer Trust Matters More Than Brand Messaging
AI accelerates research. Social validates trust. Buyers increasingly ask AI things like, “what breaker should I use for this type of job?”
AI gives them speed. Then they ask people on social media:
• “Is it worth the money?”
• “Does this actually work?”
• “What can I swap this with?”
This is why, especially in the trades, peer credibility is increasingly more important to your bottom line.
A poll we ran in Trade Hounds found 70% of users are more likely to buy a product after seeing it on the app. That’s because they trust their peers. They’ve grown up skeptical of spammy ads. They’ve grown up in digital communities where they get advice from creators who look like them.
Print ads. Email campaigns. Perfectly designed brochures. All of that still works for customers who had the patience to sit through dial-up. But younger buyers can spot overly polished marketing instantly. If something feels too salesy, they don’t complain. They disengage.
A polished brand video says, “we care about quality.” A creator video says, “I dropped it off a ladder. Still works.” That’s the only certification that matters on a jobsite.
83% of Trade Hounds users told us ads should feature real workers on real jobsites not stock photos, not studio lighting, not overly polished demos.
AI Visibility Depends on More Than SEO
AI search engines are rating your credibility based on what other people are saying about you online.
They’re evaluating signals like:
• how often your products appear in credible content
• how many reviews or mentions exist
• what tradespeople say about you on social media
• how clean, consistent, and complete your product data is
If you don’t have user-generated content, you’re invisible to buyers and to machines.
To win in 2026, you need to optimize for three things:
• Visibility — can AI and humans find you?
• Validation — do real tradespeople trust you?
• Velocity — can someone understand what you sell in under 60 seconds?
Product Data Is Now a Revenue Strategy
At this point, someone always asks: “Why can’t we just rely on our own ecommerce and AI ordering?”
Here’s the reality: the average contractor buys from five or more distributors. That’s five logins. Five websites. Five carts. Five chances to forget a password and give up.
Contractors aren’t tired of distributors. They’re tired of friction. That’s why the future isn’t isolated storefronts. The future is platforms.
Trade Hounds isn’t here to disintermediate distributors. We’re here to make it easier for buyers to purchase from you. Our agentic AI allows electricians to discover products, get answers, and order materials directly to their preferred distributors right inside the Trade Hounds app. That’s what platforms do.
We don’t replace relationships. We scale them.
As I’ve been working to onboard distributors and manufacturers into the Trade Hounds app, a few things have really stood out to me as major opportunities to improve.
Lots of marketing teams I meet with are surprised to see their product data is incomplete or missing images. If your data teams aren’t maintaining robust and up-to-date data feeds with aggregators like IDEA, your ecommerce, AI engines, and platforms like Trade Hounds display incomplete product information.
If you’re wondering how much that really matters, we asked your customers and here’s what they said:
• 71% said product images are very important when buying
• 90% said accurate and complete product data is very important when purchasing materials
If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: Product data feeds everything else. If your product data is lacking, you are losing customers whether you realize it or not.
What Distributors Should Do Next
The first thing I would do is check in with your data and tech teams. Make sure you don’t lose opportunities because of incomplete product data. Clean your dirty data so you’re discoverable on AI platforms.
The second thing I would do is work with your marketing and sales teams to showcase your expertise across all social media platforms where your buyers are, not just LinkedIn. Engage in the comments and show customers that you are a resource for them.
The third is to leverage customer content to raise peer-to-peer awareness. One great way to make sure your content is buyer-centric and authentic is to literally put your buyers in your videos.
And if all of that sounds like too much to add to your already long to-do list, companies like Trade Hounds are here to help. We’ve managed hundreds of creator campaigns and can help companies make their mark during this crucial shift in the industry.
Final Thoughts
The companies that win in the AI era won’t simply have the best products or the biggest inventories. They’ll be the companies that are easiest to discover, easiest to trust, and easiest to buy from.
The next generation of contractors expects instant answers, authentic peer validation, and seamless digital experiences. AI is accelerating those expectations even further.
This shift is already happening — and the distributors and manufacturers who adapt early will have a major competitive advantage in the years ahead.
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