We initially covered this topic in our webinar Navigating the AI era, highlighting the growing use of AI in riders’ product research journeys, and therefore the importance of understanding and earning brand visibility in the answers that these AI platforms provide. In the past few months there have been some interesting pieces of research shared on what specifically drives visibility in LLMs, and in this article we’ve pulled out a key finding from this growing body of research and what it means for smaller and larger brands.

What Does an AI Actually Know About Your Brand?

When a consumer asks an AI tool like ChatGPT for a product recommendation, how does the machine decide which options to present?

A study from March this year reveals that 63% of a brand’s LLM visibility is predicted by long-term brand equity. The remaining portion is split between current marketing spend (22%), recent citation volume like PR (11%), and influencer reach (4%).*

Because an LLM cannot physically experience a product or ‘read’ real-world brand tracking research, it relies entirely on the digital evidence of a brand’s size. As Shane O’Leary from Zoetis puts it, an LLM sees "the residue that brand equity has created across the web".

This "brand residue" is the collective digital footprint a business builds over years. The AI evaluates this equity by scraping and analysing website authority, social media mentions, consumer reviews, media coverage, third-party retailer descriptions, and forum discussions. The broader and deeper this footprint, the more authority the AI grants to the brand.

The Scale Advantage (And Why It Isn't Destiny)

On paper, large legacy brands should therefore easily dominate AI visibility. They benefit from decades of substantial marketing budgets and widespread product use, resulting in a large historical footprint of online discussions. Meanwhile, smaller companies - on average - face an* inherent disadvantage simply because they have fewer existing customers and smaller budgets to earn that critical digital presence.

However, market share does not guarantee future success.

Although it is still early days in the widespread adoption of these AI tools, we are increasingly finding the specific levers that can support greater LLM visibility. And much like the growth of SEO in a previous wave of digital tool adoption - executing well against these elements can enable brands to outperform the expected visibility level that their long term brand equity suggests.

Small brands that quickly move to embrace this new reality can support wider growth ambitions and bigger brands that are slow to move risk losing the visibility they would usually expect.

Seven Steps to Optimise for the AI Era

This is still an evolving field, so we will all continue to learn how to best support LLM’s as they answer users' queries. However from our experience - and the wider emerging body of research - the brands that are strategic about which queries to target and adopt the below tactics will see the strongest LLM visibility growth:

1. Measure and Track: Establish a baseline for your current LLM visibility and monitor how it evolves over time.

2. Identify Key Queries: Determine the high-value and brand-relevant search queries your audience uses and build strategies around them.

3. Targeted PR: Focus earned media efforts on authoritative publications and titles that AI models frequently crawl for information. Align media briefings with your priority queries.

4. GenAI Readability: Clean up and structure your website's technical backend to ensure it is fully optimised for AI crawlers.

5. Align PR & Content: Keep your external PR pitches and internal content creation tightly aligned to your target consumer queries.

6. Optimise Retailer Listings: Ensure product descriptions on third-party distributor and retailer sites are cohesive and consistent, preventing conflicting information.

7. Prompt Reviews: Proactively encourage customers to leave authentic reviews online, as forum discussions and user feedback are highly valued by LLM scrapers.

Setting a baseline and achieving internal alignment

The research shared at the start of this post reinforces that long-term brand equity is the baseline for LLM performance. Providing yet another data point that investing in building your brand creates sustainable long term value for your business. It also reinforces that most brands in the cycling industry can’t accurately measure their brand strength. Which is the exact reason that SHIFT Active Media created Leaderboard, an affordable way for brands to understand if they’re reaching and connecting with riders across key European and North American markets.

Being able to measure your brand and your LLM brand visibility can help you to establish whether your brand is under or over performing versus expectation and great alignment around the challenge faced. Given that LLM visibility is earned through the coordination of PR, digital, content and social teams, this alignment can be crucial to getting everyone inside a business pulling in the same direction.

If you’re interested in speaking to us about Leaderboard, or about our LLM measurement, content and PR services, I’d be happy to chat - just email me at doug.baker@shiftactivemedia.com.

*Charlie Oscar, AEO / GEO / LLM Search / AI Search | Should I really care? What does the data say?