How Do You Get Cited by AI Search? Don't Get Ignored: Answer Buyer Questions With Video

To get cited by AI search, make video content that answers your buyers' exact questions. Pull those questions from your sales call transcripts, or use the SEO tools you already have to see what people search when they look for a solution like yours. Then post each answer on YouTube and on your website with the transcript, measure, and keep going.

Free download: Get the AEO Video Checklist to build a buyer-question video plan.

Key Takeaways

• AI search cites the best answer to a buyer's question. If someone else answered it better, their video shows up and you get ignored.
• Find the questions in your sales transcripts. If you do not have transcripts, use your SEO tools to see what buyers search.
• Plan first: list your top 10 buyer questions, then pick what is realistic, like one video a week.
• Post each video on YouTube and embed it on your website with the transcript. More surface area gives AI more to find.
• Measure four things: AI visibility, content consumption, qualified inquiries, and pipeline.
• Answer the questions that clog your funnel first. Buyers now go about 80% of the journey before they talk to sales.

This fits inside a bigger picture. If you want the full view first, here's the bigger picture.

How do you get cited by AI search?

You make video content that answers your exact buyer questions.

Take those questions from your sales transcripts. You probably know a lot of them off the top of your head. If you do not have transcripts, use whatever SEO tools you have to look at what people search for when they are looking for your solution.

Then you answer each one in depth, with visual examples, so the buyer can move on to the next phase of their journey.

Where does a buyer-question video plan start?

It starts with a goal. In my example, the goal is to sell more and sell faster in B2B SaaS.

Maybe you have a pipeline problem. Your inbound is nonexistent. Your outbound feels like crawling through glass. You are not selling as much or as fast as you would like.

From there, the plan has four steps:

1. Intel. What questions are your buyers asking you? Look in your sales transcripts.
2. Map the questions to a content plan. Say you have the top 10 buyer questions.
3. Weigh what is possible against what is realistic. Can you do one video a week? Which question do you start with?
4. Approve the plan. Then move to production.

How do you turn a buyer question into a video?

You take the buyer question you picked and record a video that answers it in depth, with visual examples, much like the video above.

Then you post it in two places:

• YouTube, because it is where people search and watch.
• Your website, with the video embedded, the transcript, and the written answer to the buyer question.

That gives the answer more surface area. It is not just the video. The transcript and the page give AI more material to find, and give readers more value.

How do you know if the video is working?

Look at YouTube. Are people clicking? Are they watching and staying, rather than clicking out early?

If they stay, they are getting their question answered. Move on to the next buyer question on your list. If they are not staying, revise the plan and do a better job of answering in your next video.

How does video make B2B sales easier?

Buyers have questions at every stage: top of funnel, middle of funnel, and a few at the end. You answer each main question with video, starting with the ones clogging your sales funnel right now. What is breaking? What is leaking?

In industries like AI, B2B SaaS, and cybersecurity, buyers go about 80% of the journey on their own. There is a lot of low trust, so they educate themselves. They will only have a couple of questions left when they are ready to talk to sales or do a demo.

So when those leads get on a sales call, they show up better educated. I've seen HubSpot report AI search leads converting about three times better. Even if that is not the exact number, it stands to reason. If people search for the topic and you are the best answer, because you went deep and gave them everything they needed, they are going to arrive better educated.

"Video exists to make sales easier. And if you do it the right way, it works." Dane Frederiksen

What should you measure?

Four numbers, in this order:

1. AI visibility. Are you showing up in AI search?
2. Content consumption. Are buyers clicking, watching, and staying?
3. Qualified inquiries. When inquiries come in, are they better educated? Or are you still answering basic top-of-funnel questions?
4. Pipeline. Better-qualified leads should be easier to convert, so pipeline should grow.

The first measurement you will see is AI visibility. The others follow.

Why can't your website do this job alone?

The old model was to drive people to your website, where they read your articles and got educated.

That has flip-flopped. Your website is still important, but you need to be where buyers are searching. They are on Reddit, asking other people. They are on social media and LinkedIn. AI search makes that an even sharper point.

What happens when a buyer searches your question?

Here is a search one of my buyers would run: "how do I get cited by AI search?"

First you get sponsored links. Scroll below those and you get an AI Overview that answers the question right there on the page. The YouTube links in it are from somebody else who has more authority, or who did a better job answering that question than me. If you are not showing up there, that is a problem.

But when I change the search to "how to get cited by AI search with video," which is my specialty, my video content is the better answer. My YouTube videos show up.

YouTube is the second largest search engine, and YouTube makes money when people watch. So it surfaces helpful content it wants people to watch. That is a powerful incentive to make video.

What is content bingo?

It is how the plan runs over time. You keep answering buyer questions, one after another. When you start to run out of questions to answer, you are approaching an end state where deals flow a lot better. And you can measure it along the way.

Get the free AEO Video Checklist

The checklist shows you how to build a video plan around real buyer questions. Download the AEO Video Checklist here. If you want help with this, reach out. This is what I do.

Doing the thing is the easy part. The hard part is knowing where you're already winning and where you're invisible. That's exactly what our free AI Visibility Snapshot shows you, before you spend a dollar.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you get cited by AI search?

Make video content that answers your buyers' exact questions, taken from your sales transcripts or SEO research. Post it on YouTube and on your website with the transcript so AI has more material to find.

Where do you find the buyer questions to answer?

In your sales call transcripts. You likely know many of them already. Without transcripts, use SEO tools to see what people search when they look for your solution.

How many videos do you need to start?

Start with a realistic plan. List your top 10 buyer questions and pick a pace your team can keep, such as one video a week, beginning with the question that clogs your funnel most.

Why post the video on your website too?

Embedding the video with its transcript and a written answer gives the answer more surface area. AI has more material to find, and readers get more value.

What should you measure to know it is working?

AI visibility, content consumption (clicks, watch time, retention), the number and quality of inquiries, and pipeline.

Why does YouTube help you show up in AI Overviews?

YouTube is the second largest search engine and earns money when people watch, so it surfaces helpful videos. AI Overviews often cite YouTube videos that answer the question best.

Full Transcript

To get cited by AI search, the strategy is to make video content that answers your exact buyer questions taken from your sales transcripts. And if you don't have that, you can just use whatever SEO tools you have to look for what people are searching for when they're looking for your solution. So I'll show you exactly how that works in great detail. Here we go. We're going to start with our goal.

So in this example, let's talk about how to sell faster and more in B2B SaaS. You've got a pipeline problem. Maybe your inbound is nonexistent. Your outbound feels like crawling through glass. You're basically not selling as much or as fast as you'd like to.

So the goal is to sell more and faster. So we're going to do some Intel. We're going to look at what buyer questions they have. What are your buyers asking you? You can look in your sales transcripts.

You probably know a lot of these off the top of your head. And then we're going to map those buyer questions to a content plan. And so let's say we have the top 10 buyer questions that are out there. We're going to look at what's possible here out of those 10. And we're going to decide what's realistic for us.

Can we do one video a week? Which one do we want to start with? Just a sort of realistic plan. And then once we come up with the right plan, then we're going to approve our plan up here. And then we're going to move over to production.

So that's the build phase. We're going to make our video content. First, we're going to take that buyer question that we talked about. We've identified which buyer questions we're going to start with. We're going to record a video, much like this one, where you in-depth answer your buyer questions with visual examples and answer the question as much as you can.

So it moves them on to the next phase of their journey. We're going to post this video on YouTube. And on your website, embedded with the transcript and with the answers to the buyer question so they can has more surface area, not just the video, but also the text transcript and your website is more material for AI to find and for readers to have value. And then we're going to analyze the results of posting this content. We're going to look at YouTube, see our people clicking.

Are they watching and staying in the video rather than clicking out early? If they are, that means they're getting their answers, their questions answered. And then if they're not, we're going to revise the plan and do a better job of answering those in our next videos. Or if they are, we're going to move on to the next answer to the next buyer question we've identified in our goal setting. So what that's going to do is it's going to accelerate your sales process.

It's going to make sales easier. And here's how. These buyers over here, they've got questions. So they've got top of funnel questions, middle funnel questions, and some questions at the end. So each of those main questions that they have, we're going to answer those with video content.

And so we're going to prioritize which ones are clogging up your sales funnel now. What's breaking? What's leaking? And we're going to basically make inroads here to get them down the funnel. We'll probably be able to answer 80% of the questions, because buyers go about 80% of the journey now, especially in AI industries, or B2B SaaS, cybersecurity, things like that.

They're really going to educate. There's a lot of low trust now. So they are going to go 80% of the way there. They'll have a couple of little questions at the end when they're ready to talk to sales or do a demo. So these leads that are coming in that have been, they show up in AI search and they're educating your buyers.

These leads, when you do get on a sales call, they're going to convert something on the order of like three times better sales conversions. And the reason that this number is what we're focused on is HubSpot did a test where they were seeing three times conversions. And even if that's not the exact number, it just stands to reason, right? If people are interested in the topic and they're searching for it, and you're answering the question well, you're the best answer out there because you've gone deeply and given them all the information that they need to satisfy that question and move on to the next one, it just makes sense that they're going to show up better educated. And if they're watching these videos all the way through, they're getting it.

If they're clicking and they're watching, they're getting educated and they're moving there. So we're going to measure these stats right here. AI visibility, are you showing up in AI search? Is your content being consumed? Are they clicking and watching?

And are they staying? When the qualified inquiries come, are they better educated? Is this number going up? Are they qualified? Or are you still having to educate people with top of funnel basic questions?

And then we're going to see pipeline because if we've got better leads, more qualified leads, those should be easier to convert and increase your pipeline. So why is this happening? Basically the old model over here is, you used to drive people to your website where they would read your articles and they get educated that way. But now things are kind of flip-flopped. Now your website is still important, but you kind of need to be where they are searching.

They're out here on Reddit, they're asking other people, they're on social media, they're on LinkedIn. So you need to be where they are searching. And AI search kind of makes that an even sharper point and I'll show you why. So when people search for, this is a search that one of my buyers would be asking, how do I get cited by AI search? Well, when they search for that, let's see what happens.

Well, we get some sponsored results here, right? These are links that they can click, but then I'm going to go into the scrolling down on that same page, this is below those sponsored links. Look what's happening here, you're getting an AI overview and it's basically answering the question right there. And so, if you're not showing up here, then that's a problem. These are YouTube links from somebody else who has more authority or has done a better job answering that question than me.

But when we change this search term to add the video component, which is how to get cited by AI search with video, which is my specialty, then my video content is a better answer. So that shows up there in the search results. These are all, this is me, and these are YouTube because YouTube is the second largest search engine. And YouTube makes a lot of money when you watch ads. So they help surface this because it's helpful content and they want you to watch it.

So it's a pretty powerful incentive to make video content because it's going to help educate your buyers. So what's going to happen is over time, as we, I call it content bingo, we're going to keep answering all these questions. And once we sort of run out of things to answer, then we're approaching an end state where these deals should be flowing a lot better. And we'll be able to measure this along the way. I think the first measurements you'll see, are you showing up AI visibility?

We'll measure that. So what that's going to look like is remember this search here. If you're answering buyer questions with content, they got the question up here. If you're right here, then that means you're showing up. You're in their consideration set right at the beginning of their journey or wherever they are in their journey.

So AI visibility is one thing we'll measure. Then we can also measure the content consumption. Are they clicking and watching? Are you qualified inquiries coming in at a higher volume? And then is that turning into pipeline?

So that's pretty much how this works. Video exists to make sales easier. And if you do it the right way, it works. And I've got the proof. And you saw it right here.

I've answered the buyer question. I've done a good job and it shows up right there. So if you want help with this, just reach out.

Most teams don't get this right on the first try. Here's how we approached it for a real team. Curious what it'd look like for you? Let's talk it through.