Why high-consideration industries need AI optimization

Every jump forward in technology changes the consumer journey — sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Online searches and interactions are changing fast; ignoring this shift could hurt your brand. Whether it’s Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode, Perplexity, models like ChatGPT o3 and o4-mini or one of a dozen other options, AI’s popularity significantly impacts how consumers seek solutions.

The old paths of discovery, comparison, engagement and conversion are vanishing. As a result, tried-and-true brand influence models aren’t as effective. Brands face challenges connecting with their consumers as the digital landscape fragments, exacerbated by AI evolution and user adoption.

AI platforms, rather than the brands themselves, are defining brand stories for global companies, usurping narrative control and eroding reputations. 

The stakes are higher in complex sales

In high-consideration industries (healthcare, finance, insurance, etc.), brands must achieve and maintain trust and provide accurate, nuanced narratives to win customers. They must weather long sales cycles, complex decision-making, high cost-per-acquisition and regulatory scrutiny.

And they now have to consider what AI models are telling millions of people about their offerings and brands. When AI gets it wrong or generates brand-damaging narratives, building trust, validation, proof and assurance becomes harder.

When large language models misrepresent your position, misquote brand facts or cite a competitor’s assets above your own, you lose influence before a human even visits your site. And in industries with already sky-high customer acquisition costs, this could mean significant marketing loss.

In the vast and complicated content ecosystems of high-consideration industries, brands need to achieve clarity and empower discovery to navigate the pitfalls of AI. Brands need a strategy to take back control.

Dig deeper: Guardrails and governance — How to protect your brand while using AI

The GEO opportunity

How can brands manage the newest narrative threat? AI optimization. Also known as generative engine optimization or GEO, AI optimization strategies rapidly emerged along with AI search. And because AI has heated up so fast, GEO is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s an imperative.

In the marketing mix, generative engine optimization is at the intersection of SEO, content strategy, customer experience and data science disciplines. This convergence is a unique value of GEO, as many brands lack it.

GEO and other AI optimization strategies differ from traditional performance marketing. It’s not about hitting a bunch of targets; it’s about brand credibility in an increasingly AI-dominated landscape. GEO centers around things like presence, brand impressions, sentiment, trust and share of voice.

Dig deeper: How marketers can succeed with generative engine optimization

GEO makes your brand’s assets and digital properties accessible, intelligible and valuable to AI tools. It aims to give AI what it needs to deliver the correct value to the human audience. With GEO in place, AI search platforms like Google Gemini can serve as a “messenger” between brand and audience instead of a rival that degrades the brand narrative. Here’s an abbreviated tour of some GEO aspects.

Content optimization

Optimizing existing content and developing and distributing new digital content about your brand is designed to offer the LLMs that power AI search the correct value and narrative. The goal is to get pulled into AI as a source to establish brand visibility and influence the narrative consumers see. 

Semantic alignment

Building assets across your entire brand space that offer similar content and context to the questions consumers ask AI tools. This alignment is another method of informing AI tools with answers humans are searching for.

Narrative clarity

Optimizing your brand story across your assets to create one unified, consistent narrative free of noise, duplication or staleness. 

Measurement and iteration

Evolving your strategy and tools to keep up with the constant flux of the AI search landscape using GEO’s real-time insights. That allows you to influence AI tools, achieving brand visibility and growth through AI-driven transformation.

Dig deeper: GenAI is already telling your brand’s story — are you guiding it?

GEO: The key to brand trust and discovery

The old rules no longer apply when the digital marketing field has changed. It happened so fast that many are still catching up. For high-consideration industries, this spells trouble unless you’re ready to manage your brand within genAI. Wherever you are in the process of dealing with AI, generative engine optimization is the answer to achieving control and influence across the increasingly fractured digital landscape.