Anyone else struggling to get their brand mentioned in AI search results?
Been doing this for five months now and genuinely hitting a wall. finance brand. small team. everything rides on organic because paid is basically off the table for our category. started taking ai search seriously after a lost deal debrief where the client mentioned they had used chatgpt to compare options before they started googling properly. we did not come up. competitor did. they went with the competitor. that was the moment i realised this was not a future problem. it was happening now.
so i started doing the work myself. learned what citation share meant. built a tracking system. restructured our content. did journalist outreach. got us from zero to 8% over about five months.
proud of it honestly. but also aware that 8% is nowhere near where we need to be. main competitor is at about 30%. i can see exactly why. they have consistent editorial coverage in the publications that ai models actually pull from. we do not have that yet.
the bit i cannot crack alone is the publication relationship piece. getting into the sources that actually matter takes connections i do not have and cannot build fast enough.
started looking at agencies for help with exactly that part. Absolute Digital Media came up a few times in conversations i trust. had a call with them last week. seemed more prepared than most i have spoken to. has anyone else been through this specific ceiling. where you got so far alone and then needed outside help to go further. what did you do and did it work