How to get your business recommended by AI
If you’re a small business, creative entrepreneur or freelancer who is struggling to get eyes on your business then this conversation is for you. Marketing is a key part of running a business but the way in which we find and speak to our target market is changing rapidly with the rise of AI each engines. People are moving away from search engines like Google and instead going direct to AI platforms like Chat GTP to ask for recommendations. The trust in which many are placing in these platforms means we spend less time searching and instead take their word for it. So if your business isn’t coming up in those recommendations then you’re likely to be losing out on new clients and business opportunities.
I recently caught up with Celia from LEOPRD to discuss the ins and outs of AI search engines and to help understand how things have changed so drastically. Celia, who specialises in PR within the AI space, provides some really great insights into how AI platforms recommend businesses and offers practical tips for optimising websites to appear in these recommendations so as to better enhance your marketing strategies.
Tell us how you got started?
I've been in the PR industry for over 20 years now and I've worked in lots of agencies and with massive brands like Google and MasterCard and Harley Davidson.
After doing that for a long time and having kids, I realised I can't keep on this agency treadmill anymore. So I started my own company called PR Shed, which was designed to help startups and scale ups, have more affordable access to PR and educate more people on what the fuck PR was because a lot of them just didn't know.
It's a travesty because often you've created these amazing businesses, you've seen a gap in the market and you're not actually telling enough people what it is that you're doing. So a lot of founders, I would see them just spending heaps of money on Meta ads, which is great to get awareness out there quickly. But as soon as you stop spending cash, that message disappears and I don't know about you, but how often do you scroll past the ads?
I had three kids in that time, it was pretty full on and I absolutely loved the clients that we worked with. But now that the kids are in school, I could see how my Google usage was changing and how I wasn't actually going to Google every day. I was using my mate ChatGPT for all of my queries and I started thinking about it from a marketing perspective. While everyone's talking about productivity, no one's thinking about AI visibility and reputation. So I created Leopard, which is the world's first AI visibility consultancy and we help businesses be the answer in AI.
We launched last year by doing a big study into what was influencing AI responses about Australia's fastest growing companies. AI is moving at breakneck speed, what we're seeing today is still very representative of the data that came out in the report last year.
K: I really want to get into that and I think it'd be super helpful.
There's a lot of exhaustion out there in that small business space trying to keep up with the constant need to pivot, learn and apply new marketing strategies.
Can you tell us what you know about AI, let's break it down. What's happening out there and how are things changing? Are AI platforms replacing search engines like Google?
Here’s some stats for you.
There's 2.5 million prompts going into chat GTP alone per day. They have 900 million weekly active users.
Where Google and AI platforms differ is that people are relying on these for decision support. Historically with Google, you just go to find the best restaurant in a location, whereas, with AI, you're going to put more constraints in there and do more comparisons.
People are trusting that recommendation more because they're not searching or having to distill hundreds of links to find the information. Instead, you're being served up something, which seems pretty great and believable and so you take that as gospel.
So if you're a founder and your business isn't mentioned in the answer, you've got a big problem because you're effectively out of the consideration set and that has huge ramifications financially.
AI uses a massive range of sources to pull those answers and so what we do as a company is improve your chances of being recommended by influencing the sources that it is pulling from.
“We can see that the biggest driver of AI recommendations actually comes from earned media.”
That's why my PR experience really lends itself to working in this space because we are already experts at getting other people to talk about your business, whether that is the news media, lifestyle media, trade publications etc. It’s not just online news media as well. It's things that you do offline that send those trust and credibility signals.
So whether it's winning an award or speaking on a podcast, all the content helps to build up that profile and this signals the AI that you have earned trust and are worth putting in their answers.
As a small business, in order to show up in these AI recommendations you need to give AI as many resources as possible that it can pull on to gain its trust and get it to recommend you to their users?
Language Engine Optimisation is looking for trust and authority signals. 60% of those signals are coming from external sources. So 20% will be on your own site and you absolutely need to make sure that that is optimised and you've got all your technical SEO aligned and the content structure is good for machine learning.
But the other 60% is elsewhere and that's really where you need to look where it's pulling from. It could be government or regulatory sites, your online copy, blog posts etc. The compounding messages that are feeding these machines is what you really need to influence.
It touches a lot of areas of the business that I think a lot of people probably won't even be thinking about. That's why we start with an audit, to really understand what are the sources that are influencing your category, your competitors and who's showing up in the answers. Is it saying the right thing about you and if not, how do we fix it?
Tell us about the findings of your report and what kind of influences AI is scanning to recommend businesses?
60% come from earned media, but specifically it's looking at editorial reviews and awards. Each of the different platforms, we looked at four, Chat GPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft’s Copilot, has very different personalities in the way it works and the information that it scrapes to curate these answers.
We can see that with some of the partnerships that these models have struck up.
So for example, chat GTP is very editorial and publisher-led. It has a partnership with News Corp so NewsCorp stories in the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, The Australian, that is training these models on its content.
So if you’re getting news coverage or trying to get some PR, it would be wise to try and get it in a NewsCorp publication. If you're looking at affiliate marketing strategies, it would be worth doing it in a NewsCorp publication because we know that these sites are getting scraped 88% more than sites without publisher deals.
The Guardian is another example as well that has a lot of deals with AI and there's lots globally.
You really need to understand who has the partnerships with which. ChatGPT has over 80% market share in Australia and really is the dominant AI platform.
Copilot is its nearest competitor, which has about 8%. If you have a B2B business or you sell to an enterprise, Copilot actually might be more influential for you because it's used within an enterprise environment. Each of them has a different personality and pulls on different content. Copilot heavily leans on Bing, it prefers structured content and relies on Wikipedia and then Gemini is different again.
It really pays to understand where all of their sources are coming from, how they work and then what you need to do to tackle it. ChatGPT is the biggest one, so start with that.
A lot of small businesses and creative entrepreneurs, freelancers have typically relied on social media, blogging, content creation and LinkedIn to drive traffic to their website as their main marketing plan. Do these things still work and will they help with AI recommendations?What should we be focusing on? How should people be spending their marketing time and money in their small business?
Social media, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram don't really show up as a source in AI.
So if you've been investing a lot of time and energy into those platforms, you're not going to show up, because it's not where it takes its information from. It does use LinkedIn and heavily relies on LinkedIn articles. YouTube is influential for Gemini, but it's not for Chat GPT. Reddit is huge and that's because it's a lot of natural language, which is how these machines operate, they are looking for real questions and real answers.
If you're spending money on ads, it's not being scraped by these machines, they're looking for organic content, not what you're saying about yourself.
“What others say about you matters three times more than what you say yourself.”
Blog content is really important, keep that up and keep refreshing content on your site.
Try and get on other people's blogs as well, even better. Really think about who else can I get talking about me? Who's an authority in your business space?
What are your predictions and where do you think it's all going next?
I think, historically, in e-commerce, people have been able to just query things by predefined filters, so whether that's the brand like The Iconic, you can search by brand, by colour, by size.
But because we've got this conversational commerce now, I think there's going to be a lot more scrutiny on the supply chains, how your products are made, what ingredients are included.
Because when it comes to agentic shopping, people are going to say ‘I want a shopping list created for X amount of money or I want something that's completely low tox.’ So anything with dangerous chemicals could be removed. Historically, it's been difficult to look for that information online and requires a lot of time and energy to apply that kind of filter for that information. But the good thing about AI is that it can do all of it for you in seconds. So I think particularly for the bigger brands that may have avoided some of that scrutiny today, I think it's coming for you.
If you're a small business and you've got chemicals in your products that perhaps shouldn't be in there or aren't great for the planet, I think people are going to be a lot more aware of that accordingly.
I think a positive of that too, is that it forces people to be more transparent and about what they're doing and really lead with their values.
The implications for that in the real world is that if people have all these automated shopping lists that are set and forget because we're all on this quest to save time and money, then I that's really going to shake up the retail environment because that is going to be where you can disrupt. It's a chance for people to try and experience new products that may not be on their agentic shopping list.
I think that's going to be quite interesting and a new experience.
I think in the retail environment, there's going to be a lot of brands doing a lot more activations and trying to distract you in store to get you to make the switch.
Do you think networking, partnerships and events will still be useful as marketing strategies and how much impact will they have?
I think publishers are essentially the most influential when it comes to AI, but the double-edged sword is that they are also losing money by the day because they're not getting as many clicks on their sites and not as many people are seeing their content. Their advertising is being affected and therefore they don't necessarily have the resources to continue.
But a lot of the publishers put on great events and the ticket sales will be a revenue driver for them. If you can get on the bill of one of those events, that's going to tell these models that you are a great person to feature in their recommendations.
With AI, everyone has their head down on their computers all the time so real world events are going to become really important for those serendipitous connections and meeting people that you can collaborate with. It also helps you with connecting with people that you might not have otherwise come across online and you never know what impact that can have on your business?
What do you think about influencers and their role in convincing customers to trust your business/brand and buy from you?
The influencer economy for me feels a little bit stale. I still believe in it and we do influencer work with our clients, if it's done in the right way. There's obviously some really great influences that do amazing content and are super creative and awesome.
But if you're just spruiking a shampoo and showing it on the screen and it's a sponsored ad, I'm like, really? What value is that providing to a business? Your money is better spent elsewhere but it really depends on the brand, the audience and what you're trying to achieve.
I've been coaching people for the last 12 years on building their ‘expert status’ to encourage their audience to build with them and their brands. How do you get AI to see you as an expert that's worth recommending? What are some of your quick tips around people who are trying to build themselves as that expert?
I think it operates in exactly the same way in AI as it doesn't real life. It's why these models work in the way they do, they're looking for those trust and authority signals. So awards are a really great way to be seen as an expert because it's a stamp of approval.
Essentially it’s about telling enough people about what you're doing, whether you do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you so that you’re seen as a trusted leader, PR is really important for AI visibility.
When I started my business, I spent so much time building my network and it paid off. There are networks that I met 12 years ago who still consider me for jobs or send people my way, human capital can be just as important.
What role do you think it will play in the future of marketing?
It doesn't come naturally to everyone but I think the more that people are head down at work, working from home, we are losing our networking skills. The more that you can get out there in real life and meet people and connect, it really does pay dividends.
And I think often the best way to do it is just going to these events because everyone's in the same boat as you. They're there because they want a network, they want to get to know people. Don't just stand there on your phone, chat to people in the coffee queue, ask people how their day is going? What have you learned?
K: It's so terrifying to think that we're losing the skill to talk to strangers and to go to in-person events. Even more reason to do it and to keep it alive so we can tell our kids we used to speak to strangers and make new connections.
Something that I've always thought about is that if you tell me about your idea and what you want to achieve, even if it's at a dinner party at a friend's house then I’m always going to think about who or what I know that could help you or I'm going to put that information that in the back of my head and keep you in mind for future opportunities to connect you with my network.
C: Networking is a great way to build trust and you never know how that relationship could pay off down the down track.
Most of our work does come through word of mouth and people we've met in real life.
There’s people that see my content online and they're harder to convert than people who have seen me speak at an event or that I've met in person. Don't overlook it, it's really, really important and I think it's probably your best sales driver.
K: One of the main reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you is to help reduce anxiety for people on the future of AI. For me, working from home I don’t do as many in-person events as I used to and need to get back into the habit of meeting people in person.
We spend so much time on the internet and there's so much content trying to sell to us that we’re starting to crave actual connections with people.
C: Yeah, it's quite refreshing. Once you've nailed the events then you can move to striking up conversations with people on the bus to work, that might be a step too far for many people.
K: Yeah that’s really pushing it ;)
C: Try and look up and communicate more is probably the best advice.
Are there any other tips or things that you would suggest for people who are wanting to really get ahead of this?
C: Auditing your brand. It’s where we start with a lot of businesses, but you can do this on a much smaller scale. You can set up prompts across multiple models, we set up hundreds and monitor them at scale to see the patterns in the data to then provide strategic recommendations.
But you can do this yourself by just asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity about your business. So you want to ask it some prompts without your brand name.
Say that you've got a cleaning product, you could ask ‘I'm looking to get some new cleaning products, what should I use?’ You would hope that your brand shows up. If it doesn't, then you've got a problem. If you show up and it's saying something negative, you have a problem.
You need to understand whether you're part of the consideration set, then you can try some prompts with your name in it.
For example, ‘Is product X better than product Y?’ using a competitor's name.
If so, what's causing it? Then look at the information that you're being presented with.
Again, is it favourable?
Is it negative?
Does it say I don't have any information about the product, ask why and fix it.
You can pull together a series of questions, both branded and unbranded. And look at what it's saying.
K: That's really great advice, thank you.
Lastly, can you tell AI to recommend your business?
C: I think there's lots of things that you can do to help it give it a nudge. If you use ChatGPT or whatever platform in your day-to-day life and your work stuff that will help to train it. But obviously you need to be mindful that if you're working with commercially sensitive information that you don't want it knowing about, then you don't want it to be using that information to train the models.
You can adjust that in your privacy settings if you've got a load of documents that you want it to read, you could just turn it on for a few hours, feed it all of those documents, and set it to private. But again, be mindful of your settings and remember to turn it off.
