GEO: GETTING STARTED
So you’ve heard all about GEO. You get it. You see its importance. You’ve taken it and ran with it. You’ve mentioned it to your boss. Everyone’s bought in.
*If you’re one blog or breakfast seminar behind, you can catch up here.
But what next?
A good starting point is understanding where you are right now. See what your presence looks like before you’ve started developing and focusing on your GEO strategy. Establish your baseline.
This will be vital in terms of understanding where you need to go next. It will also mark a nice line in the sand - a “before” moment, if you will.
If you’re rolling this into your annual objectives, key competencies, KPIs, or anything else like that: this is the moment to capture data and show the world (and your boss) what your brand presence looked like before you started focusing on GEO.
What to do
Fire up an LLM/GPT or four. I’d go Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and one dealer's choice - you do you.
Now ask them all some questions.
Take these questions and tweak them to make them work for you, if required. But don’t tweak them too much. Don’t give the AI too much context. Don’t ask leading questions. Don’t tell it you’re the founder or the marketing director. Just treat it like a consumer would.
Who is YOURBRAND, and what should I know about it?What is YOURBRAND’s unique selling point?
What has YOURBRAND been vocal about in the past? What are its values and vision?
I’m looking for a YOURPRODUCT/SERVICE provider/manufacturer/partner in YOURLOCATION. Who are the top five recommendations and why?
What is the best YOURPRODUCT/SERVICE?
I need a PRODUCT/SERVICE and I have COMMONINDUSTRYCONCERN (like “I need a shampoo and I have dry/damaged hair”, just some sort of reason someone would be either entering your market or changing brands from within your market.) - what are the options?
Compare YOURBRAND with THECOMPETITORYOUHATETHEMOST. What are the pros and cons of each?
What are the reviews of YOURBRAND like? What do people like/dislike about it? What does it have a reputation for?
What are the best alternatives to YOURBRAND?
Who is the CEO/founder of YOURBRAND? What are they known for?
What to look for
You’ll get loads back from these prompts. Some of it will be interesting, some of it might disappoint you; you might be pleasantly surprised, or you may realise you’re reading absolute gobbledygook.
But be on the lookout for a few different things at this stage.
Veracity / Fact
Is it all true? Even the objective parts can be wrong sometimes. Is the pricing out of date? Does it describe your business as it is today, or as it was back in 2021? Does it know your new senior leadership team or does it still include previous execs?
If it’s wrong or out of date, you need a good PR agency.
Sentiment
Do generative engines like you? Is the tone neutral or is it sceptical? Does it believe everything you say or does it label description as “claims”? Does it talk about “mixed reviews” or “complaints”?
Look at the adjectives.
Are you described as “market leading” and “innovative” or “affordable” and “reliable”?
Don’t like the words they use? Are they missing what you’ve been trying to say? YFeel like they’re low-key OBSESSED with your opps? You may be in need of a good PR agency.
Sources
Where is it getting its info? Who is telling your story? Who’s telling your competitor's story? What key messaging is landing on the LLMs?
If there are no citations at all. Or if it’s citing random blogs and aggregators. Or your competitor ranking from citations in top tier news outlets? Well. I think you can guess what I’m going to say.
Next steps
OK that’s it. Easy, fun, complete. You have successfully GEO-audited your brand. Brand it up on Canva. Put it in the shared drive. Send it round in an email. Call an all-hands. Schedule an internal lunch and learn session. Do something with it.
Or ping it on to me (jamie@wearestoryshop.com). Now you know what needs fixed, let’s get to fixing.
