The average B2B company scores 28 out of 100 when we assess their AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. At that score, they are absent or misrepresented during the most consequential phase of the modern buying journey.
The good news: AI visibility is measurable and improvable. Here is the practical process.
Step 1: Run a Baseline Assessment
Before you can improve your AI visibility, you need to know what buyers are actually finding when they ask about your company, your category, and your competitors.
Run this spot check manually: go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview. Ask 10-15 questions that your ideal buyer would realistically ask. Include category questions ("what are the best revenue marketing agencies?"), comparison questions ("how does [your company] compare to [competitor]?"), persona-specific questions ("what should a VP of Marketing look for in a MarTech implementation partner?"), and problem questions ("how do I know if my marketing function is ready for revenue marketing?").
For each answer: Is your company mentioned? Is the information accurate? Is the framing favorable? How does your representation compare to your primary competitors? Document the results in a simple table: query, AI response summary, your brand presence (present/absent/misrepresented).
This baseline is your starting point. The gaps it reveals are your content priorities.
Step 2: Identify Your Content Gaps
Most AI visibility gaps fall into one of three categories.
Coverage gaps: There are buyer questions relevant to your business that your content simply does not answer. The AI tools have nothing to cite because you have not produced the content.
Quality gaps: You have content on the topic, but it is too vague, too general, or buried in long-form narrative that AI tools cannot cleanly extract. The AEO-compliance issues described in the previous post apply here.
Authority gaps: Your content exists but is not generating the external signals (backlinks, citations, social shares, engagement) that increase its probability of being included in AI training and retrieval indexes. A piece of content that nobody links to has limited authority signal for AI tools.
Categorize each gap from your baseline assessment. Coverage gaps require new content. Quality gaps require content updates. Authority gaps require distribution and link-building programs.
Step 3: Build the Content Fixes
For coverage gaps: build a question inventory. List every question a buyer at each stage of the Revenue Loop might ask about your category, your company, your products, and your competitors. Prioritize by search volume (if you have SEO data) and by deal frequency (which questions come up most in sales conversations). Build content to answer the highest-priority questions first.
For quality gaps: audit your existing content for AEO compliance. Does the opening paragraph answer the title question directly? Are there specific claims with source attribution? Is there an FAQ section? Are headers phrased as buyer questions? Update non-compliant content before producing new content.
For authority gaps: build a targeted link-building and amplification program. Get your best content linked from industry publications, partner sites, and customer success resources. Increase social sharing through employee advocacy. Get your thought leaders quoted in industry research and analyst reports.
Step 4: Structure Content for AI Citation
Every piece of content produced going forward should follow the AEO content standard.
Title: a specific question or claim that a buyer would realistically type into an AI tool.
Opening paragraph: direct answer to the title question, 100 words or fewer, specific and citable.
Body: structured with H2/H3 headers that are buyer-phrased questions. Each section answers one question completely before moving to the next.
Data points: every major claim backed by a specific number, attributed to a specific source. "Based on TPG's RM6 assessments of 200+ B2B organizations..." is citable. "Research shows that many companies..." is not.
Author attribution: named author with visible credentials. Joe Smith, VP of Marketing, 15 years in B2B SaaS, is more citable than "TPG Content Team."
FAQ section: 6-10 buyer-phrased questions with direct answers, structured for schema markup.
Step 5: Monitor and Iterate
Run the spot-check assessment monthly. Add 5-10 new queries each month to cover new topic areas and new buyer personas. Track whether your brand presence is improving on the queries where you have published content.
At TPG, we run the full AXO diagnostic quarterly: a structured assessment across 100+ buyer queries, six AI platforms, and five buyer personas, producing a scored readout and specific content recommendations. For B2B companies where AI visibility is a significant pipeline driver, this level of diagnostic rigor is justified.
For companies starting out, monthly manual spot checks are sufficient to identify the highest-priority improvement opportunities and track progress.
FAQ
Q: Why does AI visibility matter for B2B pipeline? A: B2B buyers are using AI tools as primary research channels. According to multiple recent B2B buyer behavior studies, 60-70% of buyers complete most of their vendor research before speaking to a salesperson. AI tools are now a primary channel for that research. Brands absent from AI responses are excluded from early-stage consideration sets.
Q: How long does it take to improve AI visibility? A: Coverage gaps addressed with new content typically show up in AI responses within 3-6 months, depending on the update cycle of the AI tools. Quality improvements to existing content can show faster results in tools that do real-time retrieval (like Perplexity). Authority gaps take the longest to address: 6-12 months of consistent link-building and amplification.
Q: What is the difference between AI visibility and SEO visibility? A: SEO visibility measures how well your content ranks in traditional search engine results. AI visibility measures how well your brand is represented in AI-generated answers. A company can rank strongly in SEO and be poorly represented in AI, or vice versa. Most B2B companies need both, but AI visibility is increasingly where early buyer consideration is formed.
Q: What is the AXO diagnostic? A: The AXO (AI Experience Optimization) diagnostic is TPG's proprietary tool for measuring a B2B brand's AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. It assesses 100+ buyer queries across multiple personas and six dimensions of AI presence, producing a scored report with specific improvement recommendations. Contact TPG at pedowitzgroup.com to request an assessment.
Q: Can small marketing teams improve AI visibility without a large content budget? A: Yes. The highest-ROI starting point is updating existing content for AEO compliance rather than producing new content. A team that audits its top 20 blog posts and updates them to include direct opening answers, question-based headers, and FAQ sections will see faster AI visibility improvement than a team that produces 20 new posts without AEO structure.
Q: Are AI visibility results different by buyer persona? A: Yes, significantly. This is one of the most common findings in TPG's AXO assessments. A brand may have strong AI visibility for CMO-level queries and weak visibility for CFO-level queries, even though both personas are involved in the same buying committee. Persona-specific content gaps are the most common root cause of uneven AI visibility.
Jeff Pedowitz | President and CEO, The Pedowitz Group | AXO Diagnostic | AEO Services