Past
Marketers wrote pages for search engines and watched rankings and traffic.
ACADEMY · FOUND · BE THE ANSWER WHEN THEY LOOK
Learn FOUND-F: Findable
Do we appear when relevant buyers ask?
Measured by: Share of Answer, inclusion rate, citation rate, accuracy of how AI describes the company. · Owner: your CMO
Four steps: read the letter, read the lenses, take the self-assessment, then pick one or two gaps. All learning paths.
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Treat 'how AI describes us' as a brand and positioning check: if the answer a buyer gets does n…
Close gaps with plain, direct pages and answers written for the buyer's question, not keyword t…
Statements are from this letter's self-assessment. Nothing is pre-filled and nothing is stored.
PAST AND FUTURE
FOUND-F: the story in two lines
Marketers will work differently with agents. This is what changes for this letter, and what stays with a person.
Present to future
Buyers now ask an AI assistant and read one answer. The job becomes to be named in that answer, and described correctly: GEO alongside SEO.
What the agent does
Asks the agreed buyer questions through sanctioned APIs, records which companies and sources each answer names, and drafts answer-first fixes marked draft.
What the marketer or CMO decides
Which buyer questions matter, which fixes go live, and what the company says about itself.
Shifts used here: S1 From SEO to GEO; S7 From vanity metrics to share of answer. Read the full framework and sources.
1. What the agent does
Agents check, draft, map and record. A person approves anything that leaves the company.
- Load inputs and verify evidence from the prior cycle is intact.
- Measure the letter's metrics (Share of Answer, inclusion rate, citation rate, accuracy of how AI describes the company) using deterministic calculation; LLMs may classify and draft rationales only.
- Compare to last cycle and flag deltas and anomalies.
- Draft the fixes or assets for the gaps found.
- Package findings with citations and confidence.
- Submit to the strategist for approval, then hand off.
Where a person approves
- Strategist approves decision-grade findings and anything published or sent externally.
- Review requests, analyst briefings and outreach are sent only by a human or after explicit approval.
- Agents never create or buy reviews, testimonials, analyst opinions, awards or other third-party validation.
Maturity scale (FOUND): Invisible, Detectable, Considered, Preferred, Category reference. Full letter page
2. The leader lens
How other well-regarded B2B marketing leaders would approach this letter, each named with a source. These are their opinions, not evidence about any company, and none of them has a relationship with Foundronics.
How to apply
- L3 (Fishkin): Report presence in answers and mentions as the primary result; do not set traffic growth as the goal. Add landing/product page views and conversions as secondary checks.
- L16 (Frost, HubSpot): When drafting a fix, write the exact buyer question as the heading, answer it in the first sentence, add original data and a short sub-question FAQ. Log which off-site sources the AI answers cite.
- L1 (Dunford): When reading how AI describes us, record which alternatives it compares us to and whether those match the buyer's real alternatives (including a spreadsheet or doing nothing), not only named vendors.
A person decides: the strategist approves which leader-lens suggestions are used; agents draft and check only.
Sources for this lens
- L3. Traffic is a poor goal. Measure leads and conversion, and be where the audience already pays attention, even when no click returns. Source
- L16. Publish the exact answer to the exact buyer question, answer first, and earn mentions on sources that AI tools already cite. HubSpot’s recap of a talk; its result claims are not used. Source (from a third party’s summary; check before quoting)
- L1. Start positioning from the customer’s real alternatives: what they would do if you did not exist. Source
3. The CMO lens
What a good B2B CMO would do for this letter. The lens follows the public writing of Dave Gerhardt. It is our reading, not his endorsement of Foundronics.
What a great CMO would do
- Treat 'how AI describes us' as a brand and positioning check: if the answer a buyer gets does not match our positioning (why we exist, who we help, how we differ), that is the first gap to fix.
- Close gaps with plain, direct pages and answers written for the buyer's question, not keyword tricks.
- Accept that much of this will not show up as a neat source in a report; pair the metrics with asking recent customers how they found us.
A weekly rhythm
- Mon: re-run the agreed prompt set via sanctioned APIs; log deltas.
- Tue: read the answers as a buyer would; list where the description drifts from approved positioning.
- Wed: draft fixes (plain-language page edits, answer-style FAQs) marked `draft`.
- Thu: strategist review; pick one or two fixes only.
- Fri: log decisions; note one customer-language phrase to feed FOUND-O.
An example
Hypothetical (CrowdStrike, illustration only, not a claim about the company): the agent finds that for a prompt about endpoint protection for a mid-size firm, AI answers describe the vendor generically. It drafts one plain-language comparison page for the strategist, using only approved claims, and re-measures inclusion next cycle.
What to avoid
- Do not chase every prompt, and do not build dashboards of numbers that look good but decide nothing.
- Do not copy competitor wording; differentiate instead.
- Do not scrape consumer AI interfaces or game answers.
- Do not publish without approval.
A person decides: Which gaps to fix first and which positioning sentence is the one the company wants AI to repeat. Agents draft and check; the strategist decides.
Sources for this lens
- P1. Brand is reputation, and positioning comes first. Visuals and tone come after. Source
- P6. Differentiate and have a point of view. Look for the attention gaps competitors leave. Source (from a third party’s summary; check before quoting)
- P7. Keep to the fundamentals: know your customer, use simple direct language, give value before asking, be transparent, measure what matters, and earn word of mouth. Source
- P9. Channels that build up over time often do not show in attribution. Ask customers how they found you. Source
4. Check yourself
A free self-assessment for FOUND-F. It takes a few minutes and needs no sign-in.
Take the FOUND-F self-assessment
The examples on this page are hypothetical illustrations. A named company is an example of a type, never a customer or partner of Foundronics.
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