Imagine you ask a few friends how they made their last major purchase and you'll hear a new answer, much more frequently: I asked ChatGPT. A customer enters a query that includes a price range, a preference, possibly a gripe about the previous item they ordered and the assistant gives them a short list of options. Whoever is on that list gets the attention. He who does not get will get nothing.
That's why it has never been more important to have a marketing strategy for AI discovery on every retail team. The upside to chatbots is that they aren't just spitting out random products. They prefer things that are clear, consistent and credibly endorsed. Let's take a look at 10 tips for becoming the brand they call you.
Get Named by AI Chatbots with Yotpo Discover
There are a number of benefits that a commerce-focused tool can offer, and Yotpo Discover is designed to address all of them. Before you dive into the ten ways, it's important that you understand what a commerce-focused tool can do, and why it belongs in any marketing strategy for ai discovery. It is currently in early access and has been built on a brand's catalog, reviews, loyalty, and commerce data.
It pulls in your product catalog and automatically monitors the appearance of your products on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, by product, category and buying stage. Its prompts are based on authentic shopper feedback and Q&A, so they sound like the questions consumers ask.
It also brings up “AEO competitors” – brands that come up before you in AI-generated answers, even if you had no idea about them. Three AI agents then guide you in what to do with what you discover and then there's even one AEO consultant for every customer. It's designed for brands that have approximately $10M in GMV per year or more; lesser stores are on a waiting list.
In order to make any change, you need to understand how chatbots are currently communicating about your category. Create 40-50 questions that shoppers might have about standing desks, ranging from general to specific, such as "how to choose a standing desk" to "best standing desk under $500 for a small apartment". Feed them into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude and note the brands that are mentioned, the order and what the sources are.
Repeat each prompt multiple times – answers will differ. It doesn't need to be complicated - a spreadsheet works fine. You are creating a score board to use for reference next month.
Chatbots quote as they can. Replace ambiguous marketing lines with specifics, such as materials, dimensions, ingredients, compatibility, care instructions, warranty, and who is this product designed for? Include reasonable restrictions as well. Not ideal for very tall users provides a rationale for your model to direct the right buyers your way.
Read a description out loud. If it can say something about a competitor's product, it is too general to suggest.
Prices, stock availability, names and identifiers should be consistent between product pages, feeds, structured data and third party listings. If there are facts that clash, the chatbot has no reason to believe and rely on any version.
Address issues at the root. Use the storefront platform as the master record and pull from all feeds and tools from it. Regularly audit monthly and post sale, catalog change or platform change.
Schema Markup is a way of telling machines about a page. Be sure to include enough information in your product markup, including price, availability, brand, identifiers, and review information, and that your product markup matches what shoppers see on the page. If the two don't agree, patch the front page first.
But it's a boring technical task and it is one of the less expensive victories in this list and it also assists with the standard search.
A review stating, "runs half a size small, great for wide feet after a week of wearing in" provides a chatbot a particular reason to endorse a product. Five-star general praise doesn't give it shit.
Gather reviews gradually; seek specific follow-up questions on fit, durability and value; post responses to commonly asked consumer questions on the page. Ensure that all of it is accessible to crawlers and reviews are associated with the right product/variant. Your marketing strategy for ai discovery should treat customer language as its most credible raw material.
Chatbots are written from review publications, buying guides, forums, Reddit threads and video reviews. Check the sources that seem to show up in many of the answers from that category, then practice being there.
Submit products to trustworthy critics, provide professional commentaries on guides, and be an honest part of communities. There are a few good mentions that will often beat out two or three dozen thin mentions, and they can get you moving faster than any edits to your own site.
Some of the most business-oriented questions consumers ask are ‘X vs Y' questions. The chatbot won't create an honest comparison if you don't publish one, and that person might not be very polite.
Create, write and publish guides on which page you might play with the famous competitors in your category. Accept the winner of a competitor for a specific buyer. Balanced content is much more likely to be cited, and will make you the reliable choice when you actually are the best.
To a person a page may look perfect, and it may not to a machine. Important information can be unavailable due to specs behind tabs, details that don't appear until scripts kick in and slow variant selectors. Ensure that key product details are included in the page's HTML, the pages load efficiently, and that you are not inadvertently blocking AI crawlers by using a robots.txt.
To get started, you can choose to begin with your top 50 revenue-generating products if engineering time is limited. It isn't sexy, but it's also frequently the least expensive repair option.
If it doesn't influence what you do, then it's not really a measurement. Create a monthly schedule: review your visibility, learn about the other competitors who are still being called on to the field, and choose two to three actions for a month. Perhaps it's a product page, a review site, or a growth of a comparison guide.
Be patient. Data fixes can be noted within weeks and reviews and third-party coverage several months. Look at the pattern of the days, not any one day. This is a lot of progress from 10% to 30% of the prompts that are mentioned, even though no one day may seem particularly exciting.
While spreadsheets get you started, chatbot responses are constantly changing. You will at some point want something that will repeat prompts at a time. An AI brand visibility tool will capture which search query brings you up, where you're showing up, where you're getting cited and who is appearing next to you so that you know exactly why your competitor is ahead of you without having to guess.
The above-mentioned Yotpo Discover does just that. It automates drafting briefs and SEO-friendly content from genuine reviews with its Content Agent, identifies technical issues with its Onsite Agent, and activates real reviewers and loyalty communities with its Activation Agent.
While Yotpo claims a 16 percent increase in #1 product placements in AI answers, it also states that there is a 20 percent awareness-stage increase in shopper visibility, the latter is a vendor claim, so make sure to ask for case studies in your category. There is no price list, so it's necessary to ask for a demo. If you're outside of the target range, then the manual steps above are a good starting point.
There are no tricks to getting recommended by chatbots. It's about understanding it, consistency in the web, and credibility from real customers and trusted sources.
First, measure where you are, then optimize your product pages and data, build detailed reviews, and get your product source in the chatbots' sources. However, if a spreadsheet is not enough, an ai brand visibility tool, like Yotpo Discover or another, can continue to track competitors, and next steps all in one place.
Do all of this as part of a regular marketing strategy for AI discovery, not a project – and you will be the brand shoppers will hear first.
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