Let me start by framing what I think the future of Marketing looks like for B2B tech companies in the AI era: it’s about Brand. With a capital B, so not logos, color palettes and style guides. Instead, a practical, strategic tool for differentiation and distinctiveness in the marketplace, which helps consumers recognize and choose one product over another.
I wrote about this at the very beginning of the year – Why WordPress businesses should invest more in their brand this year. It’s worth a read.
SEO tool’s new AI features are positioned more like brand monitoring tool
Not so long ago, and if you could afford it, you used services like Brandwatch to keep track of your brand mentions across multiple channels. It’s still a useful exercise to do, particularly if you do a lot of PR.
What has changed, is how AI is changing our searching habits. Spitting out answers to a query, bypassing the need to click through to the source of the information. The only option for a business is to get a ‘mention’, and that’s what SEO tools are analysing now.
- ahrefs have a Brand Radar to “win brand visibility in AI search and beyond.”
- Semrush have gone all in AI with their new Semrush One product. Their homepage headline reads: “Win digital brand visibility, everywhere it matters”
- SERanking have launched SEVisible to “monitor brands, sentiment, and competitors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and more to shape your AI search visibility.”
For a Marketer with a bit of a fixation on brand, this is refreshing. I think that the smarter of the SEO pros are learning about Marketing fundamentals.
Yoast SEO AI+ gets it
The blurb on their landing page tells a similar story: “find out how your brand shows up in AI answers.”
Admittedly, I haven’t tried it, so can’t vouch for its effectiveness. But I think they have nailed its scope:
You’re getting the AI expected metrics – mentions and citations – along with another very important one: sentiment. Just like Brandwatch and similar tools measure.
Why is this important? Because placement alone tells half the story. If you’re #1 for a popular keyword but everyone hates you, then it’s better that you don’t rank at all!
Other tools are also reporting back on sentiment, but Yoast is giving it the importance it deserves, and the radar chart is a great way to present KPIs.
To me, this also means that their Product Team are clued up as to what businesses need to succeed in the new AI brand era.
