What AEO Gets Right, What It Misses, and Why AXO Changes Everything
What Is AEO and Why Does It Matter for B2B Marketers?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so it gets cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Where SEO was about getting ranked and driving traffic to your website, AEO is about building trust and citation authority inside large language models.
The distinction matters. Organic traffic is declining at most B2B companies. Buyers no longer need to visit your website to get their questions answered. They get the answer directly from the AI. The only way you stay in that answer is if your content is structured, authoritative, and written in language the models can cite.
AEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is an extension of it. Think of it as SEO plus. The foundational principles still apply. But now there is an additional layer: being found inside the AI answer layer, not just the search results page.
This is the right question. And the answer is yes, but only if you measure it.
Research from The Pedowitz Group and data from CMO Huddles shows that companies seeing results from AEO are achieving 4 to 6x improvement in both pipeline conversion and revenue. TPG's own client data came in at 4x. The volume is lower than what marketers are used to with MQL-based funnels, but the quality is significantly higher. Buyers arriving through AI citations have already done substantial research. They are closer to a decision when they surface.
This means the MQL waterfall model is no longer the right frame. AEO shifts the metric from lead volume to buyer quality and conversion rate.
AEO solves the visibility problem. It does not solve the pipeline problem. Three gaps consistently show up in TPG's diagnostic work with B2B marketers.
Gap 1: Single-persona content in a multi-stakeholder buying process. AI models lock in on one or two buyer personas when they cite your content. But the average B2B deal now involves 6 to 15 people across multiple functions: the CMO, the CFO, procurement, IT, the CRO. If your content only speaks to one persona, you are building citation authority with one slice of the buying committee. The rest of the committee is forming opinions about your company from sources that do address them.
Gap 2: Company language instead of buyer language. B2B marketers consistently write in their own vocabulary: proprietary acronyms, category terms, framework names. Buyers don't use that language. They search in the language of their pain. "Why is my CFO cutting my marketing budget?" is how a CMO actually thinks about the problem. That is not how most company content is written. Reddit and Quora rank so highly in AI results precisely because those platforms host real conversations in real buyer language. The AI models recognize that and reward it.
Gap 3: No revenue measurement. Most AEO tools measure citations, rankings, and traffic. None of them measure pipeline or revenue. That makes AEO difficult to defend commercially. If you cannot connect your AEO efforts to pipeline and closed revenue, you cannot prioritize them against competing investments. This is a structural gap in the category, not just a reporting problem.
AXO is AI Experience Optimization. It is the framework The Pedowitz Group developed to address what AEO leaves out.
Where AEO asks "Is our content being cited by AI?", AXO asks "Are we showing up for every buyer in the buying committee, wherever they are, in the language they use, in a way that can be tied to pipeline?"
The pyramid framework:
AXO is not a replacement for AEO. It is the complete system AEO was missing.
Reddit is one of the highest-ranked sources in AI model training and output. Google is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to license Reddit data. The reason is recency and authenticity. Reddit is a live, ongoing conversation. Posts surface on the first page of Google results within hours, not weeks.
In a test on Revenue Marketing Raw, Jeff published a Reddit post on AEO versus AXO. It ranked on page one within two hours. An equivalent SEO effort would have taken 30 days or more.
The AI models reward recency and authority. A Reddit post on a relevant topic signals both. It also connects to other content you own: a LinkedIn article on the same subject, a blog post on your website. The models triangulate across sources and build a picture of topical authority. When your Reddit content, your LinkedIn articles, and your website content all speak to the same topic in consistent language, the AI treats you as an authority and cites you more frequently.
For B2B marketers, this is a significant shift. Reddit is no longer a B2C platform. Your buyers are there. They are having conversations about the problems your product solves. If you are not in those conversations, your competitors and your buyers' peers are shaping the narrative without you.
Make AXO your top priority for the rest of the year.
The shift is not about adding another content channel to an already overloaded calendar. It is about rewiring how you think about who you are creating content for, where they are having conversations, and how you measure the results.
Three actions that matter most:
One: Audit your personas. Map out every person involved in a buying decision for your product. Most marketing content addresses one or two. Identify the gaps and build content that speaks to each role in their language, at each stage of the buying journey.
Two: Research buyer language before you write. Ask an AI tool to generate the 100 questions a buyer would ask at each stage of the buying journey for your category. Read those questions. That is how your buyers actually talk about their problems. Rewrite your content to match that language.
Three: Get on Reddit. Start with the subreddits where your buyers spend time. Post original thinking, not promotional content. Participate in conversations. The benefits compound: faster indexing, AI citation authority, and direct access to the language and concerns of your actual buyers.
AEO gets you found. AXO gets you chosen. In 2025, you need both.
Jeff Pedowitz is President and CEO of The Pedowitz Group. Dr. Debbie Qaqish is Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at TPG. Revenue Marketing Raw is their weekly show covering the intersection of marketing, revenue, and AI. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.