When a customer asks an AI tool to recommend a company, a brand can lose business in two ways. The tool might overlook it entirely or recommend it for a service it doesn’t offer.
Tim Gray, senior PR manager at Intelligent Relations, says brands that track their search rankings should also look at what prospective customers see in AI answers.
“They can get recommendations and start forming an opinion about your business before visiting your website,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
A company may never know it lost a potential customer this way.
Gray recommends brands start by asking the questions their customers would ask. If someone needed your services but did not know your company existed, what would they type?
“Look at what comes back. Are you there? Does the answer explain your business in a way that makes sense for the people you’re trying to reach?” he suggested.
Wake-Up Call for PR and Marketing Teams
Visits to U.S. retail sites from AI tools rose 71% in September compared with a year earlier, according to a recent Adobe report.
Gray sees a parallel with the early days of SEO, when companies were experimenting with ways to get their content into search results.
“We are still focused on search ranking. SEO is still important, but another channel is rapidly being used to find information about your business,” he said. “Asking an AI tool a question is becoming part of people’s day-to-day routine.”
Getting that placement is just the beginning. Check whether the information you want customers to understand shows up in these answers. That takes some deliberate work, he added.
“For PR teams of these companies, it also means thinking about which publications reach the right audience and what those readers need to understand about the company,” he advised.
Where SEO and AI Answers Overlap
Gray sees common ground between search engine optimization and answer engine optimization. A company that tracks where its website ranks in search results now has another question: When does an AI assistant recommend its business?
“Google itself includes AI answers, so I wouldn’t look at this as leaving one system behind and moving to something completely separate,” he offered.
Customers still need to be able to find a clear explanation of what you do on your website.
Beyond your own website, how do the publications your customers read describe your product? Are customers talking about their experience with it? Those conversations can help someone understand whether you are a good fit for them.
“The additional job is checking the answer itself. You might be mentioned, but is the tool recommending you for something you actually do? That’s what I’d want to know,” Gray said.
Tracing Errors in AI Answers
If an AI tool gets a product detail wrong, Gray recommends checking how other tools describe the same product.
“You’re not going to guarantee accuracy 100%. You have to keep monitoring and testing, testing and monitoring across the different tools,” he advised. “When an answer includes links, it is important to follow them.”
Those links may lead to an older article or an ad that was accurate when it ran but describes a product the company has since changed.
“You can correct outdated information on pages you control. Beyond that, you need to make sure the content being published about you explains the business as it exists today,” he offered.
The Role of News Coverage in AI Answers
When an AI answer cites a news story, that reporting can shape what a customer learns about a brand. For PR teams, the work starts before publication, with a question: What can the company or its customers explain firsthand that would help a reporter covering the subject?
“You still need to provide journalists with a reason to be interested. They cover a particular beat and serve an audience. Your job is to understand where your company’s experience could be useful to their reporting,” Gray said.
He suggested these strategies:
- Have a company official explain an issue the reporter is following
- Have customers talk about a problem they encountered and how they dealt with it
- Offer firsthand experience to give the reporter something to ask about
“That’s where I’d put the effort. What do you know about this subject that would help someone understand it better? Being available for an interview isn’t enough on its own,” he advised.
