Do you work in PR and communications and want to make the business case internally for investing in generative engine optimisation?
Have you heard that 61% of the content cited by AI search platforms to answer questions about brands is from editorial media, but you don’t know where to start to capitalise on this? Are you under pressure in your organisation to be “doing something about AI”? Didn’t get into PR to look at spreadsheets for a living? Would you like a hand from someone who did?
Well, have we got something for you if the answer to any of the above is “Errr, yes. How did you know?”…
If your organisation is anything like the 100+ businesses we’ve run GEO training sessions for and the 30+ companies we’ve run GEO audits for, you know your organisation needs to understand what AI says about it. Getting the budget to do something about it? That’s a different conversation.
Your finance director or CFO will want to know what the business stands to gain, what the work will cost and how you’ll measure whether it was worthwhile. Fair questions, since experience has also told us that “there’s a guy called Darryl in a gilet who got ChatGPT to say stuff about him” probably won’t get the purchase order signed.
For the last two years, we’ve been consistent in saying that PR and communications shouldn’t miss the boat with GEO in the way they did with SEO. In fact, Rand Fishkin agrees with us, having said that “PR is the future of AI visibility” (here) and having expanded on that in his post “PR is the future of marketing”.
One piece of the puzzle is making the internal business case for owning the budget to address this challenge. We want to help PR and communications professionals answer those questions and build a practical case for investment. We wrote a blog post on the subject of “how to make the business case for GEO”. Now, we want to go further and give you a practical guide on exactly what to do to make the case for PR to own the budget for GEO in your organisation.
Why should PR and comms claim responsibility for GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is about improving how your organisation appears in AI-generated answers. That might mean being recommended when someone compares suppliers, having your expertise cited or making sure your products and services are described accurately.
For communications teams, there’s plenty that feels familiar: reputation, credibility and content, all of which influence what third parties say about your organisation, product or service.
PR and communications professionals should be taking responsibility for leadership on reputation and how it’s shaped across all vectors and surfaces relevant to an organisation. AI search is merely one of the most recent to have gained traction. So, PR and communications should be making the case for leadership of this within their organisations.
The challenge is explaining how investment in this work supports the priorities of the people holding the budget.
At Hard Numbers, we believe PR should be measurable, accountable and commercially impactful. This guide applies that thinking to GEO, helping you move from recognising an opportunity to proposing a programme management can evaluate.
What are the key features of a business case for investment?
The guide brings together research, questions and a framework you can adapt to your organisation. It covers:
• Understanding GEO and the role of PR and communications in shaping how organisations appear in AI answers.
• Connecting investment to strategic objectives, including revenue growth, customer consideration, recruitment and investor understanding.
• Defining the problem using your own evidence alongside industry research.
• Comparing alternatives, including maintaining the current approach, running a focused pilot or investing in an integrated programme.
• Building a budget and modelling potential returns with transparent assumptions.
• Addressing risks, planning delivery and deciding when to expand, adjust or pause.
• How to measure it (clue: it’s not “soft words”): visibility, accuracy, sources cited and commercial outcomes, using clearly defined measures senior management can understand and you can track consistently over time.
What will you get from it?
A clearer way to explain what you’re asking for, why it matters and how you’ll judge the results.
You’ll be better equipped to work with marketing, digital and sales colleagues, identify the evidence you need and distinguish early visibility improvements from commercial returns. You’ll also have a structure for presenting the options and giving decision-makers confidence in your approach.
Because we’re Hard Numbers, we’d encourage you to bring some industry statistics help establish the context. Your customer journeys, acquisition costs, competitor visibility and sales conversations make the case relevant to your business.
Who should be making the case for investment in GEO?
Since October 2024, when we published our first research report into which sources influence ChatGPT, we’ve been saying the same thing: PR and communications professionals should take the lead internally on GEO.
We’ve published subsequent GEO research with our partner Onclusive on how media coverage influences recommendations made by AI search. We wrote a 3,000-word ebook on everything PR people need to know about GEO. Heck, we even got ChatGPT to say I was the UK’s best-dressed PR practitioner to show how misinformation can spread on AI search, and that PR folks need to be prepared to do something about it, in our “Gullible Engine Optimisation” report.
We don’t want the PR industry to “miss the boat” with GEO in the same way it did with SEO. So we’re giving you all the support we can to help you set the scene with data, prepare a budget, respond to questions about AI search and define how you would measure the success of a GEO audit and subsequent pilot. It’s also useful for marketing and digital colleagues contributing to the proposal.
Give your leadership team a clear opportunity, a practical plan and a sensible way to assess the investment.
