Showing up in AI search begins with first understanding the questions your customers are asking and the conversations they are having online and the sources AI engines use to formulate the answers.
Begin with the questions your customers are asking
Take some time to think about how people conduct research when looking for a product or service. Rarely does someone start their search with a company name unless they are doing a comparison. Usually, they have a need, and they are trying to find out what product or service meets that need. Consumers search for ‘best product for ___’ or ‘what product does ____’ or thousands of other nuanced searches.
This is important for AI search because broad questions and specific questions can produce very different answers. For example, “What is the best project management tool?” is a broad search. “What project management tool is a good choice for a five-person design studio?” is much more specific.
For your brand, the goal is to show up for nuanced searches that you are a good fit for. This will give you high converting prospects where you solve their problems. So, think about this when you think about the questions your customers ask. What problems are they trying to solve? What alternatives are they comparing? What are the big things they care about? Is it price? Features? Those are the types of market-fit searches you want your brand to appear in.
Brand mentions and citations are not the same
A brand mention is what happens when your company or product is named in the AI engine’s response.
A citation is the source where the AI engine gets its information.
To show up as a brand mention, you must somehow be a part of the citation pool, which is the set of citations (sources) used to formulate the response.
These citations may come from information on your own website, or they may come from other locations on the web, such as other websites talking about your product. Most of the time, the brand mention is formulated from both on-site and off-site citations.
Where brand placements come into play
Your owned website is an excellent place to talk about your product or service. You should be detailed in what you offer and keep your website up to date. However, a website explains your product from your point of view. Third-party sources give more context to certain questions people ask, such as problems, comparisons or buying decisions.
For a SaaS company, this may mean being mentioned in a guide for managing workflows, a comparison of different platforms, or an article about a problem your product solves.
Is the brand placement relevant to your company?
Relevance is super important when it comes to managing your brand placements. You don’t get any benefit from a mattress review article discussing your project management software. Those types of mentions are unlikely to get pulled into the citation pool because they are not relevant to the brand.
The objective is to identify which third-party articles and web locations are relevant and getting your brand included on these. This is done by looking at the existing known citations for the questions your customers are asking, along with competitor analysis, and then looking at an overall picture of where your brand should be on the web.
These placements strengthen the source environment around your company. To quote ChatGPT, “we look everywhere on the web to determine what companies belong in the answer.”
As your brand appears in more guides, more articles and more key locations on the web, you are telling your brand story to the AI engines so they can then recommend you to your customers.
Written by Sarah GilbertBrand placements. AI visibility. A clearer way to see the whole picture.