AI search: a 5-step content blueprint to make sure your brand shows up

This article is part of a series about marketing in the age of AI. Access additional articles here:
– Cut through hype, keep a level head: smarter AI transformation strategies
– B2B personalization that’s personal: humanizing the buyer’s journey
– Why creativity is a sure bet in the AI age

If your B2B content strategy is built for Google circa 2023, your brand’s digital visibility has likely tanked where it matters most: in AI-generated answers.

That can be hard to face. B2B marketing leaders in the tech space spent years mastering the rules of search engine optimization (SEO). While those rules still apply, they’re no longer enough.  

After all, your B2B tech customers are researching you via AI on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. 

And the zero-click phenomenon — in which searchers are getting the answers from AI alone without ever clicking through to a website — ups the urgency of action. If your competitors are showing up in AI and you’re not, you’ve lost a potential conversation. And you’ve definitely lost a conversion.

As a marketing leader, you know the new era of GEO demands attention. But many marketing leaders are unsure where to start or how to prioritize the transformative work to get the most impact for their businesses.

Our AI enterprise search blueprint will help you retool your content marketing strategy for the AI age. If you haven’t started, fear not. AI operates at speed, and brands that go all in can net positive, measurable results relatively quickly. (No more waiting 12 months to demonstrate meaningful metrics.) So get going.

1. The Audit: Know where you stand in the AI ecosphere. And know where you’re getting smoked by competitors. 

Build a visibility plan for where you are now. A GEO visibility audit and competitive positioning report are critical for assessing how often your brand is cited in AI search results from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and others. Your gaps and goals need to be mappable, actionable and clear.

GEO depends on a deep understanding of the niche audiences that might buy your B2B solutions. You need to have a laser focus on the specific challenges they’re trying to solve. Why? Because that tells you the very specific questions they’re likely posing to AI and the answers your brand needs to provide.

2. The Content Reset: Win fast by refreshing your existing content for GEO. 

Large language models (LLMs) don’t rank content like Google does. They reference it. AI draws answers from what it perceives as trusted, clearly written, consistently structured content. If your content is too long, if it’s not scannable and orderly, or if it’s full of flair but lacks clear, simple answers, then AI will devalue it.

Of course your content likely is valuable. Now your task is to structure it so AI knows how to value it. A content restructuring sprint and an AI-trained content strategist and team can help you do just that. The goal is to restructure and rewrite existing blog posts, case studies and landing pages for AI-native readability and model relevance while ensuring your unique brand voice isn’t lost in the process.

Want to strike out on your own? Here are a few guidelines for an editorial approach that works:

• Open with a short article overview to tell the AI machine what’s coming.
• Use headers and subheads to make scanning effortless.
• Write like a BBC journalist — short paragraphs, clear sections, no filler.
• End with a summary or takeaway block.

3. The AI Content Class: Make trustworthy, authoritative content that (also) passes through the AI gate. 

Your audience is still your customer. But to reach them, your digital brand needs a close relationship with LLMs. GEO isn’t just about ranking in outputs. It’s about becoming part of the model’s memory. Your generative content program should continuously monitor for and remake “signal-rich” content designed to shape how LLMs “remember” your brand. To stay at the top, brands have to keep up. 

Original data, benchmarking reports, product definitions and comparison frameworks are examples of content that’s designed for humans, but can also train the machines to get your brand noticed. It’s not marketing as usual. It’s mindshare for machines.

That might mean:

• Publishing original insights and definitions
• Feeding your own content into finely tuned models
• Embedding yourself in high-authority content ecosystems

4. The Performance PR Playbook: Old media is new again. Add PR and the trades to your performance marketing strategy.

In the AI era, PR just became performance marketing.

Why? Because generative engines prioritize sources with authority and visibility. That means if your brand is mentioned in a reputable trade publication, a comparison article or a roundup of industry leaders, that brand mention is now feeding the machine. Media visibility counts as algorithmic influence and increases the likelihood that LLMs will cite your brand.

In other words, you need more traditional media exposure, not less. What if your competitors are getting that exposure and you’re not? Then they’re going to be the ones recommended when a prospect asks, “What’s the best B2B software that can solve [insert your customer’s core challenge] for [insert your customer’s industry here]?”

That’s why B2B brands need to pursue an AI-optimized thought leadership PR program that can secure trade press mentions, land industry listicles and more.

5. The Tech Team: Build an always-on digital visibility program that evolves as AI does. 

To win in GEO, your digital brand has to be clear, consistent and recognizable—in machine terms. That means:

• Structuring your site so it’s open-access and easy to parse by AI
• Using structured data and semantic markup to guide the bots

That’s why your marketing partner needs the technical expertise to make it easy for AI to remember your brand and your content. Because that’s the game now. They need to know how to update site structure, markups for AI visibility, implement schema, fix crawlability issues, optimize for HTML clarity and more.

Conclusion 

If your buyers are asking AI questions, and you’re not in the answer, you’ve already lost. As a marketing leader for B2B tech, you’ve got to treat AI like your next channel. This isn’t a side project — it’s the next evolution of your entire digital strategy. The good news is that you don’t need a massive rebrand to take advantage of AI enterprise search. You need a smarter strategy for the way your buyers actually find you now.

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