5 Tips To Show Up In LLM Search Results

0:00You need to open the gates to these AI LLMs who are searching your pages. Before marketers were really focused on, I need to be that first link. That doesn't matter as much anymore. You can be the first link and never be found at all. These LLMs and these AI agents, they are trusting third-party content. If you as a marketer are not showing up on YouTube, you're not showing up in podcasts, you're not showing up in this omni-channel, omni-content type of way, you're not going to be found. It can't just be blogs anymore. 79 % of buyers agree that LLMs have changed how they conduct research. search and make decisions for purchasing.

0:37By the time that buyer gets to a salesperson, they already made up their mind. If you're just saying, hey, I'm the best CRM, no one cares. And it's not thought leadership if you're just talking about here's my product and here's how great my product is. So like step one, get your corporate plugs out of the content and focus just on creating really good content that your ideal customer would actually be interested in. So you need to. This is like urgent. You need to be showing up in these things. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Marketing Trends. I'm so excited because this one's a very different format.

1:13We've got Lacey Peace here joining me on the episode. She is Mission's chief of staff and she's the host of one of our top podcasts called Experts of Experience. Hello. Hello. I'm so excited to be here again. It's been about three months since we last chatted on marketing trends. We got a lot of feedback. It's got to be like a quarterly thing for us now. Every quarter we got to do an interview. This has been the most requested format that I've ever heard. So I'm like, obviously there's some good juju happening. We need more of these. And this one I'm excited about because it's a little bit different because this one is like a fire drill.

1:45We're here to solve problems today because we've been hearing some themes. And over the past, I'd say maybe three months, maybe six months, we've heard a lot of marketers saying that they're very worried about seo and llm results and they basically have been i should say for the past forever building content and building for seo and optimizing it in certain ways and then with all these new llm search results they are all wondering is everything that we did doesn't matter is it going to show up how do we get found how are our products our companies like how do we operate in this new ai search world and so with that after we heard this countless times from people worried about this.

2:23We're like, you know what, we're going to dive in, pull some stats. Well, and from an experience standpoint, like thinking of, you know, I get to talk to customer success leaders, chief customer officers. Discoverability is a huge component of the customer journey. And this affects that. So whether you're in marketing or you're in sales or you're in some other department, this is really, really important for all of us to understand. Yep. And my goal for this episode, and I want you to hold me accountable to this goal. You can count on me. Is that by the end of it, anyone listening, anyone watching, they've got five great steps to take to make sure that any product, any service, any company that they are marketing for, they know how to pivot what they're doing in a way that allows them to be showing up in these LLM search results.

3:06And so I want you to hold me accountable. I'm going to count them out loud as we go. One, two, do it. I want that. Awesome. First, I think it'd be good to start with some metrics because you and I were just pulling together a report for a couple companies who were asking for our support of how do we show up in these LLM search results and what's the playbook? And as we were looking up these stats, I think both of us were like, oh, damn, this is an interesting world we're in. And so one stat that we pulled was that within a couple months from I think it was between January and March 2025, there was 102 % growth in Google queries that were firing an AI overview.

3:42So before marketers were really focused on, I need to be that first link. I need to pay for a lot of ads to get me up there. That's how I'm going to be found, or at least in the top five. What I'm seeing from this 102 % growth of AI overviews is that - And that's just in the last three months. Just in a couple months. That doesn't matter as much anymore. You can be the first link and never be found at all. What I think is interesting about that is sort of like a secondary metric is that people are not clicking as much on the pages, right? Because I'm getting everything I need in that overview.

4:11I don't need to click out to your website and read about it. Yep. Which is also a very interesting new shift when it comes to buyer behavior, because now, at least in the world of B2B, by the time that buyer gets to a salesperson, they already made up their mind. Yep. And it's from what they're being fed when it comes to these AI overviews, what they're finding in chat GPT, what they're seeing on G2, what they're seeing on YouTube. We call this like the dark funnel that they're playing in where it's hard to track. It's hard to attribute to. But these buyers are already making up their mind long before they get to your sales team.

4:42Another thing that I find really interesting, and this comes from a G2 report that was just published, which we'll link in the show notes, is that 79 % of buyers agree that LLMs have changed how they conduct research and make decisions for purchasing. And so what this really means is there's a more self-directed buyer journey. And people are really, to your point, making that decision before they even get onto a demo call. So like, how do you show up for that? When it comes to showing up, another hot stat for you. Another hot stat. So I saw that there is a 310 % year over year rise in YouTube citations and podcast transcripts when it comes to these AI overviews and these AI search results.

5:27And to me, I mean, this is the space that we obviously play in all the time. And we've been seeing these large language models scraping our transcripts, pulling them into search results, showing them to people in different ways, but to actually have stats now showing that if you as a marketer are not showing up on YouTube, you're not showing up in podcasts, you're not showing up in this omni-channel, omni-content type of way, you're not going to be found. It can't just be blogs anymore. And it's not just, I made a YouTube video and posted it. It's like, is it formatted in the way that the LLMs will pull it?

5:57Are you asking questions in a way that they'll actually understand that and pull it into an AR overview. So it's not enough just to put the content out there. It's also how you're thinking about making that content from the very beginning. So that way the AI or the LLM is pulling it in. Yep. Well, I mean, let's get into good content, bad content, because you've been doing this with me at Mission here since 2017, right? And so we've seen a lot of companies that come to us with not so great content. They're like, look at these videos we made. They're so good. And we're like, ooh, ah. So how do you think about good thought leadership content that a brand can be proud of?

6:33And where are areas that you've seen content that's just not so great? It comes back to, are you just talking about yourself and putting out content that you think is interesting for your company? And it's not thought leadership if you're just talking about, here's my product and here's how great my product is. We actually just got off an interview with Amber Armstrong, who was talking about how their team has always been putting thought leadership content creation first and thinking about how can I make content that sales teams actually are going to be interested in. And so it might be, how do I have career growth in my sales job?

7:05Or it could be like, how do I take a prospect from this place to this place? And so it's very practical advice for sales teams. It's not, here's why sales cloud is so great. So like step one, get your corporate plugs out of the content and focus just on creating really good content that your ideal customer would actually be interested in. Yeah, I think good thought leadership is the name of the game for the years to come. Positioning your brand and your products alongside thought leaders who are already trusted. Yeah. And so if you're a brand where you're like, all we've ever done is corporate content before, and we don't know how to be cool, you don't always have to.

7:40There's a lot of people out there who already have an audience of followers who are your ICP. And you can just position yourself alongside them in a way that's authentic, that your brand is showing up alongside helpful thought leadership content. And it's going to get you what we call the Michelin star effect, where you're basically being seen alongside these thought leaders in a way that people trust you through and by association. I think that trust component is a big piece of this because it's not just trust from like an individual consumer perspective. Like I trust this piece of content. It's also what's the technology trust.

8:12These LLMs and these AI agents, they are trusting third party content. So to your point, like you're showing up over here on this other thing that's trusted. You're showing up on G2. you're showing up on a top podcast, that gets more cred in the algorithm than you on your own blog are talking about yourself. Yep. Yeah. I don't know if we've seen a stat around that yet, but I've definitely seen a lot of research showing that if you're just saying, hey, I'm the best CRM, no one cares. Versus if five other people, five other companies, five other lists are saying that your customers are saying that, like that's going to hold way more credibility than you, you know, tootie your own horn.

8:49The other thing that I think is super interesting about this, you know, new AI overview world is that people that are coming in through LLMs to your page are more likely to convert. And I have this stat here that says they're more likely to convert by 4.4 times. And we heard recently from a CMO that she is seeing 40 % more engagement from those people actually, you know, putting their emails in and filling out something than previously when they were getting like 15 % before. Like if I had just clicked in on a link that popped up on page one, these people are four times more likely to convert and they're actually better qualified.

9:28It's not just like they're filling something out. They are also more qualified leads. Yeah. These buyers are ripe. They're ready. They're ready. They're ready for it. Yep. Okay. So now that we know the importance of why this space, one, it's evolving quickly, why marketers are worrying about it, we definitely get it. And that's why I want to come up with five like action items, a sprint where you can walk away from this episode and be like, hey, my team needs to know these are the things we're looking into. Are you ready for that? I am not, but I'm eager. The first one is you need to open the gates to these AI chatbots, AI LLMs who are searching your pages.

10:07So this is something that I did not really think about until more recently, that for a while, a lot of websites are actually blocking AI scraping. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you remember the timeframe where they're like, whoa, I don't want you getting my data for free. Yeah, I don't want you to take my information. I'm gating things. I don't want you to surface it. It's my own IP. I want to get paid for these things. And so a lot of websites actually have AI blockers on there where you cannot scrape anything on there and put it into these search results. And in some cases, maybe that still makes sense.

10:39But if most people are finding your content through these AI overviews, you might want to check your website and make sure that is not already toggled on. Like I know if people, I think if people are using Cloudflare, for example, that is an automatic thing that's already on when you're using that. To block. Yeah, to block AI. Yeah, I think it's in this like robot.txt file or something. I'm not technical. You can definitely look how to get it unblocked. And this is actually in that GT report that I just mentioned. So again, when you look at it, I think it's like halfway through the report. We'll flag what page.

11:08It's funny when you said open the gates. I just had this like inappropriate visual in my head of like, open your legs. Like let the AI in. Yeah. Absorb it.

11:22Sorry. I think we should keep this, honestly. I think that should be kept in the interview. Keep that. But yeah, I think when it comes to playing in this space, like you can't win this game if you don't let the refs onto the field, like let them in and let them look at your content. that's the first piece is like just make sure you're not blocking them from looking at your content all right so number two is being very mindful about how you're crafting and creating your content and how you're releasing it and so when it comes to as of now these search results if you have a huge long white paper these llms are going to have a hard time finding exact answers to what someone is looking for versus if you're chunking and blocking that content in a way that's easy to read, easy to be like, oh, this person is looking for the best tool to create AI agents with.

12:11And I see there's a chunk right here that talks about small businesses are able to use this tool. Yeah. Like you want to think about how you're creating the formatting and like chunks of text to be able to basically be the answer for these questions that are being put into the chat GPTs, the perplexities. And I think corporate jargon to like making sure that your content that you're releasing is actually how your buyer talks. So whatever they're actually typing into the LLM, needs to be the type of content that you're creating. It can't just be like overloaded with corporate drug in that no one is actually using, you know, when they're at home late at night trying to GPT something on their phone.

12:47I also think that these GPT results, like they will not love if they see content all directly written by AI. And so being very cautious, like you said, of like, how do you make this sound like a person who's actually asking the question? How do you make it sound conversational? how do you think of this like content that's built around flashcard style like these are just buckets of content that people are looking for in this way like if you're at dinner just be like oh yeah i use this i'm looking for this not a whole textbook like you wouldn't give someone a textbook if they ask you can you give me you know five of your favorite tools for x y and z it might just be like here's a couple of them here's what they do but it won't be a whole textbook on it yeah and so yeah formatting is super important for this this era it's funny too i think about that like AI consuming AI content.

13:33I don't know why I just get like I think about this like the snake eating its own tail. Like eventually will we get to the point where all content is AI written and now it's just like AI answering AI answering AI and that we're just like lost and there's no original content anywhere. Well let's hope not. And if so we'll figure that out when it comes. We'll do another fire drill. Everything's on fire episode. Let's figure this out together. So number three is all about flooding trusted platforms with content that's actually good. But when I say trusted platforms, that doesn't just mean blogs and that doesn't just mean G2 and Gartner, but finding the YouTube channels that people are following, finding the groups on Facebook that I've talked about in previous episodes, like these IT leaders, they love Facebook, these Facebook groups.

14:20So like finding those places, LinkedIn, like so all these platforms that already have a trust built into them and influencers or creators on them that people are following. Like you really want to find ways to partner with these people and position your content and your messaging and your brand alongside these people in a trusted way on a platform that's already trusted. And we've seen this with TikTok when TikTok started to become like a big search engine. It's like, you know, you want your content to be showing up there. Instagram is now allowing Google to crawl public posts. And so Instagram posts will start to show up whenever you Google search, which means also the LLMs are going to be pulling in Instagram posts and information from Instagram posts.

14:57They're already pulling in LinkedIn posts, but I think they'll continue to fine-tune that and make that more prominent. They're pulling in LinkedIn articles. So there's a lot of different social media platforms that you want to appear on and have your content there, people commenting, people engaging with it, and not just these really formal G2 reports or whatever, right? As a marketer, finding spots that aren't as traditional, like you're saying. I mean, we've had some CMOs coming on here talking about, like I just mentioned, the power of Facebook, which when I read it, Quora, and how even those places that normally, like for Reddit, you would stay away from as a marketer because it's like the Wild West.

15:37You might get canceled. You might get, you know, basically shamed on the platform, which is what one of those. You probably will. It means you're doing it right. Yeah, you might. But those are some of the most trusted spaces where real conversations are happening and real questions are happening. And so thinking through strategies, like how do I show up in this space in an authentic way? And that's the hardest piece to nail down. It's like you have to be authentic and helpful, not just, OK, here's my product this quarter. I want to push this. It's like you probably have to be on Reddit for an entire year trying to build credibility and get in these groups and work with these admins and make sure they like you like it's going to be a process.

16:11And so it's definitely longer term thinking. But I think those spaces that most people aren't thinking about right now are the ones that are definitely being pulled in these LLM results at a rapid pace. And I think when you say authentic, as I go back and forth, I feel like we overuse the word authentic all the time. But like, it's authentic in the sense that you can't pretend to be an expert. You know, like you can't when you're on LinkedIn, commenting and DMing back and forth. Like I either know what I'm talking about, or I don't know. And it becomes really, really clear versus like a buttoned up blog that five other people have reviewed and signed off on and AI probably helped me write.

16:45That's the reason why people like these authentic platforms is because I actually believe you're the expert because I see you commenting. I see you in the Reddit threads. I see you knowing your stuff. And in marketing, I think a lot of people do struggle when you're selling these big B2B SaaS products, actually knowing what they do and how they impact organizations. All right, so number four is all about measuring your answer share. Like how often are you being shown to your customers? And so, I mean, it's a little bit like traditional SEO where you're like, these are the keywords, the long tail keywords, the questions that my customers are asking.

17:20And am I showing up in these spaces? And so you can do a similar thing using all the different LLMs by saying, here's the spaces I want to be showing up on similar to certain keywords, long tail keywords, questions, and seeing, am I showing up? And going on ChatGPT, going on Perplexity, going on Cloud, going on all the different LLMs and measuring it on a weekly, monthly basis. And when you see gaps, then you know instantly, I need to be putting content into that space. I need to have articles going out, videos, partnering on this, because this is a space that we're not showing up on and tracking it over time to actually see the results that are happening.

17:55And you had a good idea about this. We were talking about it yesterday of making an AI agent. Maybe this is a preliminary idea. Don't tease it too much. But I like that idea a lot. I think people should be thinking about this. It's like, how do I automate that process and like actually have results that are being fed to me regularly? And I can see over time, am I getting better? Am I not? The other thing about that too is maybe you're not prompting it correctly. Like maybe your prospects are doing different search terms. I mean, it's the same thing we've seen with Google where you might like rank here or think you need to rank here, but like they're actually not searching that.

18:29So are there other questions, different things that are coming up that you should be showing up for in these GPT prompts that you would not have ever thought of. I think that does go back to like being in the Reddit groups, being in the Facebook groups to see how people are actually talking about it, listening to podcasts with these people who are actually doing the work and seeing like how are they speaking about it, getting a list of like what key phrases and key questions are coming up, you know, on a week by week basis. Because it's not just like here's my list of keywords and the questions that I want to rank for for the next year.

18:58Those things are going to change because the questions people are asking are changing every day. There are some good tools now that are tracking this. when we were looking it up yesterday. I'm not going to call them out since we haven't used them, but I know there's tools for this whole AI, LLM, AI, SEO movement. The only tip I would have is if you aren't using a tool that's actually built for enterprise usage, if you're doing it on your own, you're like, you know, someone at a smaller company and you're like, I'm going to track this myself. You do need to make sure you're doing it in a like clean chat GPT.

19:26You can't have your whole history there where it's like, I see Stephanie works at relevant emissions. I'm going to make sure to keep showing her the things that we know she wants. And so it definitely has to be kind of like an incognito chat GPT. That's a good point. Yeah, prompt or LLM. So it's just going to have to be like recycling emails. Like every week a new email, setting up a new account with GPT. Oh, no. I know. I'm like, hmm, the logistics of that definitely has to be figured out. But I could see some marketers being like, I'm going to do this myself. And then being like, look, we show up number one every single time I search for anything.

19:57And it's like, yeah, well, it knows what you want. Yeah, it's familiar. Okay, so I promised five, but I ran out at four. So now I'm going to throw it over to you to figure out a fifth one. Luckily, I got you. I got you on the fifth one. So the fifth point is you need to train the AI early. So AI works a lot like how our human brains work. We hear something and we believe it. And then if someone tries to change my mind later, it's really hard to change my mind later. Like if I heard that, you know, this team is the best team my whole life and then you're trying to convince me some other team's the best team, I don't believe you.

20:26Right. So like we are still in pretty early days of LLMs and teaching them and training them. But as the training data starts to accumulate over time and as they like refresh, you know, every however often GPT is coming out with like a new version of it, it's being trained on the old data. So if the old data says, you know, XYZ product is the best product, the next version of that is going to say the same thing. And it's going to continue to be biased towards its pre-existing ideas of what's real or what's true. So you need to, this is like urgent, you need to be showing up in these things now.

20:59now so in a year when we're having this conversation and hopefully it's not as urgent and not as much of a fire drill and hopefully you are prepared you are showing up you're not scrambling to be like oh now all of a sudden i have to make all this content and start trying to show up so yes and it does beg a good question too around and i've talked about this on the show a little bit of like what s smbs should be doing it's like and i don't have an answer maybe it's a different you know episode we could do with with someone it's like there's gonna be a point where these llms are gonna have so much information from these larger enterprises that like it will be hard as an smb to show up in the results so like what do you need to do as a small business instead if you're not showing up in llm you can't show up in google search like you really have to have a great branding play and do things very uniquely so i'm ex i'm excited for that future even though it might be hard at first uh because i think people will get really creative with what they do from a marketing perspective to be discovered as a new business.

21:55Yeah. I mean, I think that is where SMBs will always win is that they can move quicker. They can experiment quicker. They can try different formats. They're staying on top of the new platforms and consumer behavior. So I just think that they're able to act quicker. So yes, these big companies have big budgets and they're able to pump out 100 articles in a month. And these SMBs probably have their ear to the ground a little bit closer where they're like, well, this is actually what my customer is asking. Yeah. And so, yeah, but that's definitely an interesting point. If you talk about that on Experts of Experience, send me the answer.

22:25I have, but nothing concrete. We have no advice. Like I've just brought it up and I've had a good discussion about it possibly an issue. Not right now, but like in five years, right? You need a fire drill on your show. Yeah. I'll bet you on. We have another fire drill. We just determined it. Awesome. Well, hey, you hit your five points with assistance. I delivered. Yes, you did. Well, if you've made it this far in the episode, we would love it if you can hit us up on LinkedIn. Tell us what you're doing. I want to hear what are any hot tips that we should be talking about, discussing when it comes to showing up in these search results.

23:00Or if you disagree with any of these points. Yeah, tell us. Yeah. Hit us up. Also, please rate and review this show. Subscribe. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and leave us some comments. We do see all of them and I will respond to every single one of them. She does. Yep. Hit me up. She may not respond to your LinkedIn DM, but she will respond to your comment. That's so true. Yeah, I will definitely respond to the comment on YouTube. Yes. All right. Well, thanks for suggesting this episode. Super fun. We will have to do another one next month, I guess. Probably in three months.