90-Day AEO Priority Test
Baseline AI visibility, observe customer signals, then decide whether to invest
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
The 90-Day AEO Priority Test is a bounded decision process for teams that cannot pursue every emerging channel. Spend only enough to establish prompt tracking and a visibility baseline, then observe the data for one to three months without first committing to a large production program. In parallel, inspect sales and customer-call recordings for mentions of ChatGPT, Gemini, or other answer engines. Compare those mentions and visibility trends with meaningful business indicators such as sales-cycle speed, close rate, qualified demand, and customer source descriptions. Control for obvious unrelated campaigns and avoid treating correlation as proof. At the end of the window, choose among three outcomes: invest more because the signals align, continue low-cost monitoring because evidence is inconclusive, or deprioritize because there is no material customer connection.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain when Kipp proposed how Hampton's marketer could justify or reject AEO as a priority.
Core principles
- 01Measure before assigning a major team
- 02Use visibility and customer evidence together
- 03Run a bounded test without forcing immediate content investment
- 04Look for business correlation rather than vanity movement
- 05Escalate only when the signal justifies resources
How to run it
- 1
Fund a small baseline
Approve a limited monthly amount for an AEO monitoring tool and staff time rather than immediately assigning a full team.
Pro tip Define the spending and decision date before the test begins.
Watch out A supposedly small pilot can expand without a cap or owner.
- 2
Build the prompt set
Track questions representative of the company's customers, products, and buying stages.
Pro tip Include prompts gathered from real customers and sales conversations.
Watch out A weak prompt set makes the entire test unrepresentative.
- 3
Instrument customer evidence
Use call recording, CRM fields, surveys, or notes to capture when prospects mention AI-assisted discovery or research.
Pro tip Search existing transcripts before changing the sales workflow.
Watch out Do not rely solely on referral analytics.
- 4
Observe for 30 to 90 days
Track visibility, customer mentions, sales-cycle changes, and close behavior over a bounded period while recording other marketing changes.
Pro tip Review weekly but reserve the resource decision for the agreed checkpoint.
Watch out Daily answer volatility can provoke premature strategy changes.
- 5
Assess the relationship
Look for consistent alignment between AI visibility or mentions and qualified demand, faster sales, or stronger conversion.
Pro tip Compare cohorts and preserve uncertainty when samples are small.
Watch out Correlation alone does not prove that visibility caused the business outcome.
- 6
Make the priority decision
Lean in, continue monitoring, or deprioritize based on the predefined evidence standard.
Pro tip If investing, assign an owner and a focused first playbook rather than launching every tactic.
Watch out Do not let excitement about an early channel override the company's existing effective channels without evidence.
In the wild
After seeing meaningful ChatGPT referral traffic, Sam planned to set up the tool, track the data for 30 days, estimate the revenue opportunity from increasing visibility, and then decide whether assigning one person was justified.
→ Hampton converted initial excitement into a bounded measurement and staffing decision.
A small marketing team spends a few hundred dollars on monitoring, adds an AI-discovery field to call review, and observes results for 90 days while leaving its two proven channels intact.
→ Leadership receives enough evidence to expand AEO, maintain passive monitoring, or decline the investment.
Common mistakes
Launching tactics before a baseline
Without initial prompt visibility and customer evidence, the team cannot tell whether later movement is meaningful.
Using visibility alone
More mentions may not matter commercially unless they connect with customer behavior, conversion, or sales velocity.
Changing strategy every day
Answer-engine outputs fluctuate, so reacting to individual runs undermines the bounded test.
Is it for you?
Best for
Small businesses already running one or two effective growth channels and uncertain whether to divert resources into AI search.
Not ideal for
Companies that need an immediate acquisition intervention or cannot access basic CRM, analytics, or customer-call evidence.
From the transcript
“I want to get a set of prompts we just track to understand how our visibility is trending.”
“I then want us to use some call recording for any sales calls and customer calls to understand how they're mentioning finding us on Chat…”
“You need to have some baseline and some tracking here.”
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