Be the Answer AI Gives
Jenna Hannon on the moment buyers stopped researching in Google and started researching inside ChatGPT — and what that does to the sales call.
For most of marketing history, the first sales call was where the buyer learned about you. They showed up with questions. Your rep had answers. The pitch happened in the room.
Now they show up with the answers already.
The buyer opens ChatGPT on a Tuesday afternoon, asks what the best platform is for their problem, and gets a synthesized shortlist in 30 seconds — including pricing, differentiators, and why one vendor fits, and another doesn’t. By the time they reach a human, the evaluation is done. Either you were in that answer, or you weren’t.
Jenna Hannon has watched this from a few seats. She was the first marketing hire at Uber Eats, ran the fractional CMO route across several startups, and now runs Hatter, an AEO agency working with brands like Runway and Swimply. Her argument is simple: the research phase moved into the model, and the job now is to be the answer the model gives.
We sent her our questions. Her answers are below, and as always, lightly edited.
You were the first marketing hire at Uber Eats, did the fractional CMO route, and now you’ve built an AEO agency. What broke about the playbooks you grew up on the moment AI search showed up — and what surprised you about how fast that happened?
What changed is your prospect’s behavior. ChatGPT is their trusted expert for every question, and that’s a fundamentally new channel with fundamentally new behavior.
The playbooks most of us came up on, whether that’s at a forward-thinking company like Uber Eats or in an incumbent, didn’t account for this.
New behavior requires new playbooks and new systems. That’s what marketers are going to have to build, and honestly, that’s what gets me excited. It’s why we started Hatter.
You’ve described a “Magical Moment” — a lead shows up to a sales call already sold because they did their research inside ChatGPT, not Google. Walk us through what’s actually happening in that buyer’s research, and what marketing teams need to start doing to get more of it.
The Magical Moment is when a lead shows up to a first sales call already sold. They know your pricing, your differentiators, and why you are the solution for them. The pitch is already done.
This is what changed with AI. Researching solutions used to be hard, even with Google. In B2B, a department head evaluating vendors would loop in procurement, wait weeks, sit through RFPs, and committee reviews. Now that same person opens ChatGPT on a Tuesday afternoon, asks “what’s the best platform for X,” and has a synthesized answer in 30 seconds.
It’s the same for consumers. People are going deeper before they buy because AI does the work for them. They’re having real conversations, asking follow-up questions, and making comparisons. And they’re trusting those recommendations.
So what do marketers do? Be the answer AI gives. Make sure your content addresses the real questions buyers ask at every stage of the journey. If that information isn’t publicly available, AI can’t surface it to your prospects during that key research phase.
You’ve publicly pushed back on the idea that AEO, GEO, and AI search are different disciplines. Why does the industry keep splitting them, and what does that distinction cost CMOs who buy into it?
Because new acronyms sell. AEO, GEO, LLMO, and AI SEO are all things agencies can define differently and charge for separately. But it’s wrong.
Here’s the honest version: they’re all the same.
Whether you call it AEO or GEO, the work is identical. What matters is whether you’re showing up in AI answers and whether you have a strategy to get there. What’s important is that you have an AI-search-specific strategy that layers on top of your SEO efforts.
You’ve said the sources AI actually pulls from are probably not where marketers think they are. Where are they really — and what’s a realistic playbook for a B2B brand to build presence there without turning content production into a sweatshop?
Most marketers think AI is pulling from Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube. That’s not what we see in the data. What actually shows up in AI mentions and citations is mostly first-party websites and very industry-specific third-party content.
Think of your website as the foundation. Its job is to train models on who you are, what you do, why you matter, and when you should be cited. Most websites are maybe 5% of the way there. It’s like a knowledge base that only answered 5 questions and left 95 unanswered.
From there, the heavy lifting is third-party references in your specific industry: niche press, reviews, analyst coverage, the publications your buyers actually read. It’s rarely social media at scale.
The realistic playbook: start with the queries you want to show up for. Answer them one by one with owned content first. Only after that foundation is solid does it make sense to invest in earned coverage. Track your visibility throughout so you know what’s working.
That’s how you avoid the sweatshop trap. It’s not about producing more. It’s about making sure the right questions have clear, public answers before you go spend money amplifying them.
Hatter measures visibility, citations, and sentiment rather than rankings. For a CMO who has to justify the AEO budget to a CFO who only understands pipeline, how do you connect those metrics to revenue without faking the math?
Honestly, you should be tracking leads and purchases. That’s the real number.
AI visibility, citations, and sentiment are earlier indicators. They tell you if what you’re doing is working directionally before it shows up in the pipeline.
The connection between the two is difficult but not impossible. One thing we do for clients is embed AEO content in lead forms and conversion links so we can track when that content drives action. That’s how you start building a story that a CFO can work with.
Marketing leaders are being asked to fund AEO without giving up anything. If you had to pull the budget from somewhere existing — paid, brand, traditional SEO, events, content — where would you take it from first, and what’s your reasoning?
If you’re spending on technical SEO right now, stop and shift that budget to AEO content. The returns on technical SEO have diminished significantly, and that money is better spent on website content that actually answers real questions for prospects.
AEO should be your new SEO and website content strategy.
The brief is built on the same fundamentals: what your customers are asking, what your competitors are ranking for, and classic keyword research. It’s not a departure from SEO, but it is an evolution. The output has changed from optimization to content. You should expect to pay more for a good agency, as the work has changed and the quality of the content matters.
You work with brands like Runway and Swimply — companies that take this seriously. What’s the most expensive mistake you see smart marketing teams make when they decide to “get serious about AEO,” and what’s the underlying assumption that produces it?
Hiring the wrong people.
Most teams hand AEO to their SEO agency because it feels close enough. But an SEO agency that just pivoted to sell AEO usually doesn’t have the content team to execute it well. Yes, you draw from SEO strategy to inform what you’re doing, but the output is quality content that teaches LLMs about your company, your products, and your services. That’s classic content marketing, not SEO optimization.
The underlying assumption is that AEO is a technical problem. It’s not. It’s a marketing problem. Look for Product Marketers and Content Marketers to lead this, whether that’s inside your team or at the agency you hire. Those are the people who know how to explain what you do in a way that actually resonates, and that’s exactly what AI needs to cite you with confidence.
Jenna Hannon is the founder and CEO of Hatter, an AEO agency helping brands show up in AI-generated answers. She was the first marketing hire at Uber Eats and has served as a fractional CMO at MultiSensor AI, FORM Kitchens, and Kyte Care Rentals. Hatter works with brands including Runway and Swimply.
This wasn’t a paid post. We interviewed Jenna because she had something worth saying. We’re always looking for collaborations, case studies, and sharp marketers with insights to share. If that’s you — a leader with a good story — just hit reply. We’ll sort out the rest together.
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