Webinar Recap: The CMO's Playbook for AI Search with Sydney Sloan

Sydney Sloan joined Josh Spilker in this AirOps webinar to break down how AI search impacts the buyer journey in 2026. The conversation focused on reviews, reputation, and answer engine optimization (AEO) for B2B brands.

The core message: buyers now start earlier in large language models (LLMs), rely on third-party validation faster, and expect direct answers before they ever visit your website.

Top 5 takeaways

1. AI search is now a primary starting point for software buyers
   More B2B buyers now start research in LLMs, which makes AI visibility a top-of-funnel priority.
2. Winning visibility now means winning answers, not just rankings
   Teams need to shift from search engine optimization (SEO) tactics built for clicks to AEO tactics built for citations, extraction, and answer coverage.
3. Reviews and third-party reputation are now part of AI search
   Review sites, community threads, and other trusted third-party pages now dictate which brands show up in AI-generated answers.
4. Buyer question coverage matters more than keyword coverage
   Brands need structured content that answers real evaluation questions around comparisons, pricing, integrations, rollout, and support.
5. AEO requires cross-functional execution and new KPIs
   Content, product marketing, growth, customer marketing, and leadership all influence share of answer, sentiment, and conversion quality.

Best practices and key learnings

AI search changed both discovery and evaluation for software buyers. The following strategies show where marketing leaders should focus first and how to turn visibility into pipeline.

Follow the new buyer path

Buyers now use AI search to research vendors earlier and narrow options faster. Missing early citations costs you pipeline, while traffic metrics alone no longer tell the full story.

Start by auditing the questions buyers ask during research, comparison, and shortlist stages instead of relying on keyword lists alone. Rework key pages for high-intent visitors who already know the category and want proof, pricing, and next steps fast. Compare AI-sourced traffic quality against traditional search traffic so you can show conversion impact, not just visit volume.

"93% of our respondents. That's 2,000 plus B2B software buyers have said that AI search has now changed the way that they search." — Sydney Sloan

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Think of reviews and reputation like distribution

Trusted third-party pages now do work that many brand sites used to own. If buyers validate on G2, Reddit, and community pages first, your brand story needs to show up there too.

• Treat your G2 profile, category pages, pricing details, and comparison pages like extensions of your owned web presence.
• Build an always-on review motion with in-product prompts, onboarding asks, QBR asks, support follow-ups, and customer events.
• Refresh review volume and profile content every quarter because LLMs reward recency, not one-time wins.

Structure content for answers, not just rankings

AEO rewards brands that publish clear, repeated, question-led answers across owned and third-party surfaces. Your content needs to match how buyers actually prompt AI tools, not how they typed keywords into Google five years ago.

Build content around comparison, pricing, integrations, security, rollout, and support questions that buyers ask during evaluation. Publish answers in formats that LLMs can parse fast, including FAQs, discussions, learning hubs, product pages, and community threads. Repeat the same positioning and answer structure across your site, review profiles, marketplaces, and partner pages to strengthen consensus signals.

Open more answer surfaces across your ecosystem

Brands often hide useful content behind gates, PDFs, or clunky site structures that LLMs cannot access well. You need more crawlable, question-led surfaces if you want to show up for follow-up questions deeper in the buying journey.

• Ungate high-value educational content where possible and publish key information in HTML instead of hard-to-parse formats.
• Open community content, help content, and discussion threads so AI tools can access real customer language and use cases.
• Pull prompts from sales calls, support tickets, and community questions to guide what content you publish next.

Measure AEO like a business priority

AEO needs new metrics, tighter reporting, and clear ownership across teams. CMOs need to treat it like a strategic growth motion, not a side project for SEO alone.

Track mentions, share of answer, citation sources, sentiment, and conversion quality so you can connect visibility to business outcomes. Show leadership simple trend lines over time instead of bloated dashboards full of disconnected data points. Set AEO as a CMO-level goal or launch a tiger team across content, product marketing, growth, and customer marketing.

How to put these AI search insights into practice

Start with the places that buyers already trust. In the first 30 days, audit your core prompts, clean up your review profiles, update product and pricing pages, and identify where third-party sources already influence your category. That work gives you a clear map of what buyers ask and where your brand still misses.

Then spend the next 60 to 90 days building coverage and tightening measurement. Publish question-led content, expand reviews through always-on asks, align your messaging across owned and third-party pages, and report on mentions, share of answer, sentiment, and conversion quality. The teams that move now will learn faster and build visibility before competitors catch up.

Final thoughts

AI search keeps pushing software buyers toward faster shortlists and stronger third-party validation. Brands that answer buyer questions clearly, show up in trusted sources, and track the right signals will win more of that demand.

How AirOps helps teams win AI search

AirOps helps content and SEO teams track share of answer, monitor sentiment, and find the prompts that matter most across AI search platforms. Teams can then turn those insights into content updates, off-site actions, and reporting that leadership can actually use.

If you want to see how AirOps helps teams improve AI visibility and act on it faster, book a call.