Who Controls Your Brand Narrative in a World of AI? An AEO & GEO Discussion
As AI continues to reshape how buyers research products and services, marketers are facing a new challenge: ensuring their brands are visible not only in search engines, but also in AI-generated answers. This quandary became the focal point of our May event – “Who Controls Your Brand Narrative in the World of AI?” This discussion was between Brian Reed, TMA board member and CMO of Corsia, and CP Morey, CMO of Reach Security, an AI-native platform that continuously hardens security controls to activate underutilized features and fine-tune configurations. In this virtual fireside chat, they focused on the rapidly emerging disciplines of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), highlighting practical strategies B2B technology marketers can implement today to ensure their companies remain discoverable as AI tools and buyer behavior simultaneously evolve.
Check out the full recording on the TMA YouTube channel here. If you know an executive-level marketer who may be interested in our next event, encourage them to apply for no-cost membership through the ‘Membership’ tab on our website.
The Eureka Moment
Morey began by sharing Reach Security's journey into GEO. Initially focused on traditional SEO initiatives, his team discovered that many of the same practices that improve search rankings were also helping them from a GEO perspective.
In particular, Reach Security began appearing ahead of Wiz – a formidable exposure management company acquired by Google for more than $30 billion – in Gemini responses. Morey joked that they were “Out-Googling Google on Google,” saying that this finding demonstrated a “David and Goliath opportunity” which could level the playing field for smaller companies to gain traction alongside larger and better-funded competitors.
What is Fan-Out Content?
Morey then discussed how his company uses a tool called Reach LLM, which simulates thousands of user queries that a typical buyer might ask, to continuously assess how Reach is showing up and to shape fan-out content.
Traditional SEO, he and Brian explained, revolves around target keywords while LLMs seek to anticipate follow-up questions and present a more comprehensive response to the prompt that was entered. For example, a simple query may trigger dozens of related topics and subtopics that AI systems evaluate when constructing a response. Reach LLM and similar tools assess this behavior so that companies can better understand fan-out responses and weave it into the content they produce. “It’s not just about figuring out how you rank,” Brian says, “but how you reverse engineer for the rank.”
Human Authority Matters More Than Ever
A major theme throughout the discussion was the ever growing importance of individual expertise and personal authority. According to both Brian and Morey, AI models increasingly prioritize content that comes from identifiable, credible subject matter experts rather than anonymous, corporate sources.
LinkedIn articles emerged as a particularly valuable channel. Rather than publishing content solely through company pages, executives and technical leaders on the Reach Security team publish thought leadership to their personal accounts. These individual profiles bring years of industry experience, professional networks, and demonstrated expertise that AI systems recognize as credible signals. One tactic, he describes, is to have your company account comment on a LinkedIn article posted on an executive’s profile in order to tie the brand with the individual voice.
Reddit is another key platform as it rewards authenticity and resists overt corporate promotion. Rather than pushing traditional branded messaging, organizations should encourage knowledgeable employees, customers, and other community members to participate in relevant conversations and share genuine experiences. Similarly, YouTube transcripts have become valuable assets because they provide AI systems with structured, searchable content tied to identifiable experts.
Brian reminds the audience that brands should exist to support individuals’ voices, not the other way around.
Optimizing Your Website for AI Search
While off-site authority signals are growing in importance, the fundamentals of website optimization still matter. Both speakers agreed that many proven SEO on-site best practices continue to support GEO performance, including:
Clear heading structures (H1s and H2s)
Tables and structured data versus long form copy
Table of contents
Frequently Asked Questions sections
Authoritative quotes and expert commentary
Schema markup (set of metadata for LLMs to scan your page) especially for your company blog
Competitor comparisons
Brian mentioned that he’s seen some of these elements notably improve visibility in AI-driven traffic sources, saying that “who, what, where, when, why, how” questions in FAQ sections boost rankings since they mirror the common structure for queries typed into AI platforms (“How to do X?” “Why should I do Z?”)
Measuring Success in an AI Search World
TMA Chair Elizabeth Shea asked how companies can measure progress and how KPIs may have changed. Morey responded that unlike traditional search, AI-generated answers often provide users with the information they need without requiring them to click through to a source. This makes attribution more difficult to measure and changes how marketers should evaluate performance.
He explained that along with keeping track of traditional metrics, marketers should pay attention to qualitative signals such as:
Increased inclusion in AI-generated responses
Accurate brand descriptions within AI outputs
Strong positioning relative to competitors
Customer familiarity with company messaging during sales conversations
Brian emphasized that gathering this information allows for “indicative, not absolute, measurement” and that companies with good SEO and GEO hygiene will still likely be seeing an increase in clicks. He then mentioned that while it’s important to look across all platforms, it's especially crucial to keep a pulse on how a company is appearing in Gemini. Since most of the population uses Google as their primary search browser, Gemini is likely to be more of a “reflection of the broadest swath of your market behavior,” he says.
Authenticity Still Wins
Both marketers again emphasize the importance of storytelling to situate human authorities at the center of a company and brand. Morey mentions how AI platforms are becoming increasingly sophisticated at identifying content that appears machine-generated and may deprioritize content that lacks genuine expertise or original insight. Thus, it’s important to use AI to supplement initiatives instead of creating content end-to-end. The marketers who succeed will be those who combine AI-enabled efficiency with authentic storytelling, trusted expertise, and meaningful engagement across digital communities.
In other words, the most effective GEO strategies are not built solely through technical optimization. They are built through people: executives, engineers, product leaders, customers, and other advocates. As AI increasingly becomes the first stop in the buyer journey, organizations need to elevate trusted voices, create authoritative content, and participate authentically in industry conversations will be best positioned to thrive in the next era of search.