Being found by AI is not the goal. The goal is to be recommended by AI.

There is a lot of chatter from marketing agencies and publications about the importance of being mentioned by AI Search.

And while I don’t disagree that being cited by Google’s AI overview is helpful for branding and awareness, that is not the goal.

Or at least the business goal.

The business goal is to be recommended by AI as the solution to your buyers problem.

The interesting thing about AI search is this:
𝑩𝒖𝒚𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒕𝒚𝒑𝒆 𝒌𝒆𝒚𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒑𝒉𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔.

They are having a multi-layered and complex requirements discussion to find a solution to their problem.

In other words, they talk to their AI tool as if it was a Research Assistant,
not a search engine.

And the result of this AI conversation is a shortlist of potential vendors for your buyers to choose from.

And to be on that shortlist, you need to stop making:
❌ Content that is Keyword optimized for SEO
❌ Informational (eg: how to guides) content
❌ This top of funnel content is not answering the buyers requirement questions.

To answer your buyers requirement questions you need to create bottom of the funnel content that:
✅ Demonstrates you understand their problem
✅ Shows you have the experience to solve their problem
✅ Answers the question of why should I buy from you

Being mentioned by AI is certainly nice.

But, being recommended by AI as the vendor to solve their problems is what gets you sales.