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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
What do we do?
How can we increase AI visibility?
The trap to be careful about when
you're just sort of asking this
question, what, what are we doing?
What's our AI visibility strategy?
Why is our number so low?
Is that a lot of tools, they
create a single metric, which is a
convenient way to analyze it, but it
prioritizes quantity over quality.
My issue with a lot of these tools, less
so the ones shown, but some of the other
AI visibility tools, is they approach
it with like a sense of fear mode.
It's showing you that your brand
is not doing as well as others, but
again, they're not looking at your
brand from a sense of what topics
actually matter to your company.
Okay, Benji, we're back.
Are you excited?
We are, yeah.
It's been a little too
long of a hiatus here.
This is, uh, the Grow and
Convert marketing show.
We're back after Benji has been
in Europe for a million years.
Welcome back California.
Thanks, California.
Um, we are here to talk about, uh, what
everyone is talking about in our space.
Which is AI versus SEO.
We are doing a bunch of work on
this as just a general update.
We're analyzing client data.
We're updating our AI visibility
tracking app, uh, tracker.
We're also working on AI writing.
Um, wave Writer.
But today, this video, we're gonna
answer a very simple question, but
an important question that a lot of
people, I think, in marketing teams
content, SEO folks are stressing about.
And a question that we've gotten from
more than one client this week, which I'm
gonna summarize or generalize as just.
What do we do?
How can we increase AI visibility?
So you received this question
from a client, um, and I received
it, and in both cases from a
different client and in both cases.
An interesting thing happened, which is
they, both of them, two different clients,
used two of prominent SEO tools, you
know, that, that anyone has heard of.
And they used kind of this, like
those tools as like AI visibility
kind of dashboard slash like output.
And so I want to talk about with you
both what we recommend you do if you
just have this general amorphous, vague.
Goal feeling or uneasiness of like,
Hey, like what is our company or brand
doing to increase our AI visibility?
And I also want to talk about how to
use these tools and maybe also what
not to do, because I think a lot of the
traps that you and I have talked about
for like six, seven years about SEO
competitor research, keyword targeting.
Applies here in ai.
Just the same.
Yep.
Fully agree.
So the first example was, um, I think
maybe you can tell, which is a client
that sort of you are working with more
carefully on the growing convert side.
That sent a spreadsheet output that
one of these tools had of like, here
is a competitor and all of these terms
where the competitor is showing up in
the Google AI overview and the client
sort of presented it to you and our
strategist that's on that account
of like, Hey, what should we do?
Can we also show up for this?
Is that right?
Yeah.
I mean the, the question was more
specifically, Hey, I ran this competitor
analysis and it looks like one of
our competitors has a lot of AI
visibility in, in one of these tools.
It, it seems to be a, a
lot of top of funnel stuff.
Is there anything that we should
be doing around this essentially?
So I, I think slightly different
question than many people would ask.
'cause they're already bought into
our process in terms of going after
more of the bottom of the funnel, the
keywords, and they've seen a lot of
success doing that on the SEO side.
But I think maybe the concern comes from.
When you go into these different AI
tools and they're showing how you compare
to other brands, it's always an uneasy
feeling when the tool shows that another
brand is doing much better than you.
Yeah.
And so I think from a high level
perspective, the CEO looks at this
or maybe the CMO and, and just
kind of ask that question, what
are, what are we not doing well?
It seems like one of our competitors
has a ton of visibility here.
What should we be doing?
And so there's just this feeling of
unease that's coming from the client
side or the brand side around my
competitor is seemingly do doing better.
This, this also happens on, on the SEO
side too, where, where the, the CMO
or the CEO will will look at some tool
and say, it looks like my competitor
has a lot more organic traffic than us.
Is this bad?
But I think part of the issue cutting
to the chase a little bit is that
not all organic traffic is, is equal.
So a lot of that time that those high
organic traffic numbers are driven
by keywords that are just not that
valuable from a conversion perspective.
And it's the same kind of thing that
we're seeing on the AI side where
a lot of these competitor brands
are showing up in AI tools for.
Keywords or topics or prompts that
are just not that valuable and
don't really have any buying intent.
Yeah, so let me just sort of make it
fun by, by reading off some anecdotes.
So from the spreadsheet, so you know,
without revealing too much of different
client's identities and all, when
we do these videos, we can just say.
This is a software client.
It's B2B software, and the type
of businesses they sell into are
businesses in the vacation space.
Their customers are people that go on
vacation, let's say in different places.
So this competitor.
Who also sells software to kind
of vacation related companies.
Is that fair?
Is that accurate?
The competitor does that?
Well, I, I don't know if I would describe
the company like that, but I, I'll say,
I'll, I'll let it slide because we don't
wanna reveal too much about, I was, I was
trying to be, I was trying to be vague.
But anyway, the keywords, I'm gonna
read off a few of these keywords.
They're keywords like cities in the USA
and this tool outputted the AI overview.
And I think.
If I'm understanding this correctly
and you can tell me it, and it also
outputted all of the links within the
AI overview on the right hand side.
You know, whenever you see an AI
overview, you see like sources
linked, and it was like, oh, this
competitor of yours is linked in
the AI overview of these keywords.
Keywords being things like cities
in the USA, things to do in
Illinois, most visited cities.
Destination marketing.
That's a little bit more like
appropriate fun places to go in the us
There are some that make more sense.
There's like a keyword here of
equipment rental software, so at
least it's in the software realm.
I'm gonna let that sit.
The takeaway there is if you are
selling software and you just put into
one of these tools, like here are my
competitors, or I've noticed by the way.
Sometimes you just put your name into this
tool and you're like, you like click like
the AI suggest button and it's like, we'll
come up with your competitors for you.
I did that with Grow and Convert
in like one of these tools.
I was like growing.
I put Grow and convert in and it was like
AI suggest competitors and it was like.
HubSpot and this and that.
I'm like, I, I guess like HubSpot's a
competitor from like a content angle.
'cause they probably like rank for
content marketing related terms, but
they're obviously not a competitor to us.
We're like an agency.
And so the point is these
keywords make no sense.
For our client to go after
our client sells software to
businesses kind of in that space.
So like keywords around fun things
to do in Illinois doesn't make any
sense, and that's how you end up
misusing the software and that's how
you end up getting an unnecessary
anxiety as the CMO, the marketer or
the CEO or the founder of, oh my god.
We're, we're doing so bad.
Our competitor is ranking for all
of these things, why aren't we?
And it's like, well, look,
what are those things?
So then the second example I'm
gonna actually show, um, and, and,
and that example I'm gonna show is.
SEM Rush has one of these tools, and
I'm gonna show you how you can use it
just a quick look in a good way versus
kind of, uh, in a non-productive way.
So, SEM Rush has this like measure
your brand performance and AI tool.
So to actually enter your domain,
you have to pay, they give you
a free example of Warby Parker.
Let's look at it.
So say you're Warby Parker
and you put the same.
First things first.
You're dropped into a very common type of
thing that a lot of these have, which is
like brand performance, and this is the
first source of your anxiety, which all
of these give you like this percentage.
Google AI mode visibility, voice
share a voice, 14% share a voice.
Marketers will and SEO folks will know.
Hasn't that like been around in
marketing and SEO for a while?
That's that concept of share a voice.
You can confirm this, whatever, but I'm
pretty sure what this is, is just like.
How many of the prompts that they
happen to check for you are you,
is is like Warby Parker being
mentioned in and it's like 14%?
Yeah.
I think, I think share of voice
is taken from the PR world.
Mm-hmm.
It is like they, they run, they run
these studies on how many people
know a brand and so it's kind of
taken that concept into these tools.
So exactly what you're
saying, if, if we're running.
Prompts on different topics.
How many times is that
brand likely to show up?
Essentially?
Like what percentage of the overall?
Yeah, so they have your like
share of voice percentage, right?
And so if your percentage looks like
it's going down, it would look bad.
In this case they have
sentiment, et cetera.
But I just wanna bring the same takeaway
over here, which is if I click over to
their visibility tab and you scroll down
after all of these, like nonstop share a
voice type graphs, you finally get a list.
Of the questions, and this is where you
can see what questions it's running.
In other words, this tool is testing
and seeing which brands are mentioned.
So the first question is like,
which retailers have the best
customer reviews for eyewear?
Who are the best rated online
retailers for prescription sunglasses?
And you can like click in and see, in this
case, Google's AI mode answer, and then
it like parses the answer and says, oh,
Warby Parker has mentioned number one.
So you're number one for this.
Here's like the way to use it in, in
my opinion or our opinion, and not,
and Benji, you can comment number
one, the details here are, I think.
The most useful part of doing this kind
of analysis where you can be like, look,
if this query matters to us as a company,
if it matters to us to show up when
somebody's asking about retailers for
prescription sunglasses, which on the
surface makes sense for Warby Parker.
They sell glasses, they sell particular
prescription glasses, if that matters.
Then Sure.
Checking automatically whether you
are mentioned and which position
you're mentioned or whatever is
like useful, and we're even building
a tool around that for ourselves.
Tracker, which we're gonna release
the new version of to the public soon.
That's fine.
The danger is.
That these tools are coming up
with these prompts for you, and
often they come up with things
that may not make sense for you.
One of them is, how do I get blue
light filtering glasses online?
If you happen to sell blue light
filtering glasses, it can make sense.
But if you have stuff, well, I, I think
that, that, that one's more on topic
because there are blue light glasses
that some of these brands sell, including
Warby Parker, I would say like the who
offers in-app virtual try on for glasses.
Like that probably serves
no value to your brand.
And so you showing up for that in
AI really doesn't make sense, right?
And or like, it's not something that you
should really try to show up for because
it probably has zero value to your brand.
And the previous examples we used
are even more egregious, right?
It's like you're selling software
to vacation related companies and
then it says like, something that
your competitor ranks for is like
fun things to do in Illinois.
You're not selling to consumers.
It happens to be a competitor that's
writing some consumer facing blog posts
about fun things to do in Illinois.
So I think the, the trap to be
careful about when you're just
sort of asking this question,
what, hey, like what are we doing?
What's our AI visibility strategy?
Why is our number so low?
Is that a lot of tools.
They create a single metric, which is
a convenient way to analyze it, but
it prioritizes quantity over quality.
That it comes up with a list of prompts
or a list of keywords that you're maybe
it, it thinks that you should rank for or
your competitor ranks for, and it just.
Adds up.
It tallies up.
How many times has your brand mentioned?
Gives you a number.
But the question that you
should be asking is, do those
queries actually matter for us?
It's the same thing that we've
been talking about with the
SEO space for a long time.
Intent matters.
Intent also matters when it
comes to a AI search as well.
I think my issue with a lot of these
tools, le less so the ones shown, but
some of the other AI visibility tools is.
They, they approach it with
like a sense of fearmongering.
It, it's, it's showing you that your,
your brand is not doing as well as
others, but again, they're not looking
at your brand from a sense of what
topics actually matter to your company.
Yeah.
They're just looking at the
entire landscape and saying,
you're just not doing as well
as some of these other brands.
Therefore, you need to focus more on ai.
But.
I guess our, our point of view is,
yeah, AI is becoming more important.
It's something that you should pay
attention to, but you also need to
have the same filter when it comes to
what are the prompts that matter to
your business, what are the topics that
matter to your business, and, and have
a concerted effort to focus on those.
And I mean, I know we'll go into it in
a, in a future video, but also AI is, is
still a very small percentage of traffic.
It's still a growing se, like a growing
channel, and so I, I think some of the
other issues that I take with a lot of
the narratives being pushed by these
AI companies is just, you need to run
concerted campaigns to, to make sure that
you rank in these, you need to, like what?
Like the whole Reddit, you need to do
Reddit responses around certain topics.
Yeah, the, I don't know, you
need to do digital pr, like of
course these things can help, but.
I, I think, look, we, we have run
studies and there's been a lot of
research that has just been published
or like stories that have been broken
around how chat GPT is largely just
crawling Google and, and just has
different ways, like, like a different
algorithm for determining what shows up.
But there's really high correlation that
we've seen in our studies and that other
people have shared of ranking in SEO
and also showing up in these AI tools.
And so.
I still think, and, and from all of our
data, it just makes sense to focus on
ranking for the keywords that matter
to your business and the topics that
matter to your business first, and then
if you want to have specific campaigns
to help you then show up better in ai.
Because let's say you're ranking in
the top three spots in Google, but
you're not showing up in those AI
tools and maybe doing guest posts.
That also go after those topics or
trying to get in some of the publications
that also show up around those topics.
That, that makes sense to me.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and then
doing cer concerted campaigns
around that makes sense.
But I think, I think the opposite
approach is being pushed where people are
pushing this narrative that SEO doesn't
matter anymore, and that you should
just focus on showing up in AI tools.
And that's.
What I take issue with, I like from all
of our research, it's just such a small
percentage and it's not driving a ton of
revenue or conversions for many companies.
And so the idea of creating specific
campaigns or spending tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars on
just showing up in AI at this point
doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, I think, um.
Here's a proposal that could be
actionable to a lot of people listening.
If, if you don't have the budget or
don't want to spend money on these tools.
And, and look, I'm saying this
transparently as a way to genuinely
help knowing that we are a provider
of one of these tools, right?
Of tracker.
But I'll say this, I think
your, your time is better spent.
Rather than worrying about your
share of voice percentage number
being too low in, in whatever tool
you're using of AI visibility.
If you sat down as a founder, as a CMO,
as a rank and file marketing employee,
whatever, as a consultant and with whoever
opinion matters, came up with five to 10.
Topics you can consider them, like SEO
keywords or whatever that matter to you.
So for example, for Warby Parker glasses,
it would be like prescription glasses, buy
frames, online glasses online or whatever.
For us it would be, or?
Or, yeah.
For us, it would just be truly, I
think the only ones that I would focus
on, and you can disagree with me, are
just best content marketing agency.
A best content marketing agency
for SaaS and various variations
that indicate our best customer.
Yeah, I mean, for us, I would
actually say maybe doing concerted
campaigns around showing up for some
of those keywords might make sense.
But again, we're not ranking in in the
top spots for those keywords right now.
So I would actually say we probably
just need to do a better job of
focusing on updating our posts.
Yeah, updating our posts
around those topics.
And then also simultaneously.
Maybe trying to get on
some of the existing lists.
So again, like we're not saying that
some of the ideas that are being shared
around how to actually get into AI
are wrong, such as being included in
other relevant lists on the same topic.
Doing your own SEO.
Yes, of course.
If, if you're able to show up in
forums or on, let's say, other sites
that rate different agencies, that
could also be a signal and help you.
But I think what we're saying is just.
Most companies aren't
doing the basics right now.
And if you're not doing the basics, then
you're gonna have a lot harder times
showing up in AI and these other tools.
It's gonna be a lot more costly
and it just doesn't make sense from
a strategy perspective, like just
focus on the basics first and the
once you've accomplished that and.
Let's say if we were ranking in the
top three spots for all these different
variations of best content marketing
agency with our own content, then the
next step would be, okay, now let's
get in some of these other lists
and try to show up there, because
that's also gonna be another signal
to these tools to help us show up.
I think other people are taking
the opposite approach where they're
trying to do these really short
term hacks, like let's just go and
comment on a bunch of Reddit threads
and see if that influences things.
Sure, it might help you in
the short term, and we're not.
Discrediting any of the ideas out there,
but these aren't long-term strategies.
So something that might work today,
I don't know, you might get down
voted a TAA ton on Reddit or even
just, uh, I know a lot of people
are talking about like paying for
placement on some of these publications.
Like sure that stuff may work now.
But again, when you do stuff that
goes against Google's policies and
just kind of internet policies,
eventually that comes back to bite you.
And so I think all we're saying is.
Do the basics, try to
do things the right way.
And yes, it may take a little bit longer
to see success, but that's probably
gonna drive long, long-term success over
like years to come rather than these.
Reddit hacks or like all these things
that are being suggested on LinkedIn,
if I can say what you're saying in
maybe like a, a summarized way we know
in terms of increasing your visibility.
First of all, to complete my thought,
what I was gonna say is instead of
worrying about the visibility score
from these tools, I, if you're like,
Hey, I can't afford this, like,
HRESs tool, I think when I go to it,
it, it's saying six $7,000 a year.
Do you wanna buy like our AI brand
visibility or brand radar tool?
A lot of people don't
have the budget for that.
That's fine.
You would be, I think, almost better
off just picking those five to 10 topics
that you think are the absolute most
high buying intent core product related
topics that it's important for you to
rank for, whether it be on traditional
Google Organic, and of course that
means the Google AI overviews for
those and related prompts in Chachi pt.
And let's be honest, all all LLM
traffic, and we're gonna have a separate
video on this is basically either
a Google a IO, or chat pt. We have
the data, at least from our clients.
Everything else is like a tiny fraction.
So that's what we're talking about here.
If you just picked five to 10 yourself
and found a way to monitor that, you
could use these tools and then instead
of worrying about the tool, single
number, like a percentage, just look
at your ranking for those things.
Again, we're releasing our own tool or
habit for this, and we're gonna update
it, but you could also just do it
manually once a month or two a month.
Just put a spreadsheet in there and then
have a discussion in your marketing team.
I think that's fine
because then you control.
What you're worried about, you
decide it's these prompts, it's these
topics because they matter to us.
Not the tool told me that our competitor
is ranking for all of this stuff,
and that may or may not matter.
So that's, that's kind of
my suggestion or idea there.
If people wanna budget that.
To summarize what you're saying in terms
of do the mentals, I think a way that
I've been thinking about it is these
LLMs, you think about Chachi pt, like.
And then Google AI overview is gonna be
kind of like that, even more like that.
It has two major inputs I'm
gonna grossly summarize.
One is its training data and
the second is it Googles it.
We release the study as you said.
We can link to it in the show
notes showing a massive overlap
of times where you rank in
Google and you rank in chat GPT.
But also other people have
looked at this as well.
Chat, GPT, Googles things.
When you type something in,
even without hitting web search,
and it says searching the web.
It has decided my training data is
not enough to answer this question.
I'm gonna go search the web.
And it's literally using Google.
Is, is, is, is what everyone
has, has figured out.
So you have two choices
to influence its answer.
You can show up in its training data.
How in the world do you do that?
You just have to be in
like books and podcasts.
That's like a long-term, 10
year brand building campaign.
That's all of marketing
contributes to that.
So you put that aside.
The second thing is you show up on Google.
What Benji says, do the fundamentals.
If you decide, okay, showing up on
Google for the related topics and
queries is how you get on chat's radar.
Then there's two options to show
up on Google having your own Google
result or finding a way to get
in other people's Google result.
Reddit.
You can find a way to get in
there by like commenting or
whatever, but as Benji said, like.
You, what are you gonna
do that for two years?
Like, there's like a few threats,
but even, even with Reddit, I
just think as you grow your brand,
people will naturally talk about it.
Yes.
If you, if you have a positive brand
and you're doing something really well,
that's how you get positive reviews.
You get people talking about yourself.
So it's, it's like, again, it all
goes back to marketing fundamentals.
And yes, there's ways to manipulate
this stuff and be a marketer and
try to do all these hacky things,
but like the real way to do it is
just have a good brand, do something
really well, have a good product.
Have a good agency, have do good work.
And then the other one is
getting on other people's lists.
How do you get on other people's lists?
I, I think there's two ways.
One is exactly what you said, which is
just grow your brand enough to where if
somebody else is making a list of, in our
case, content agencies or Warby Parker's
case, like glasses online or whatever,
if you build your brand big enough,
you're gonna be included in the list.
And number two is the hack, which is
like, you can email them, as you said,
there's nothing wrong with doing that.
Like if you want to email people who
are ranking for terms that you want
and you wanna get in there, like
just email them, like that's fine.
It's kind of like traditional pr, but
like that's maybe not sustainable.
So that's kind of the summary is like
Google is the most controllable way to
influence what Chachi BT is exposed to.
And there's two ways to show up in the
Google result, your own content, which
if you wanna know how to do that, read.
The top articles on our
site, there's a link to it.
That's what we've been talking
about for like a million years.
And then the number two way that people
are seem to be talking about is like
what we're calling hacky ways is somehow
getting into other people's list.
That's the overall thing of visibility.
And I want to end by emphasizing what we
started off with is like, I think it's
worth saying again, don't stress about the
metrics that these tools are giving you.
You control the topics
that you are interested in.
Don't just rely on 'em because, and you
need to evaluate that in our opinion,
in the exact same way that we've said
to evaluate SEO keywords, which is,
is there buying intent for my product?
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