--- title: "How to strengthen your brand story to improve AEO visibility" url: https://adtech.lol/articles/5c933b6b-784a-4382-bb67-fd2d0fdfaf02 source_url: https://martech.org/how-to-strengthen-your-brand-story-to-improve-aeo-visibility/ source_site: martech author: "Tamara Scott" published: 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 tags: ["AEO visibility", "Brand story", "SEO", "Marketing", "Content strategy"] publisher: AdTech Radar --- # How to strengthen your brand story to improve AEO visibility > What others say about your brand can influence how it appears in AI answers. Learn how to audit, update, and reinforce your brand story across the web. ## How to strengthen your brand story to improve AEO visibility ## What others say about your brand can influence how it appears in AI answers. Learn how to audit, update, and reinforce your brand story across the web. By [Tamara Scott](https://martech.org/author/tamara-scott/), Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer, Overqualified Agency Published on October 6, 2026 ### Table of Contents - [Identify and state the real ‘why’ behind your story](#h-identify-and-state-the-real-why-behind-your-story) - [Run a brand audit](#h-run-a-brand-audit) - [Update your boilerplates, bios, and repeated messaging](#h-update-your-boilerplates-bios-and-repeated-messaging) - [Update key organic traffic pages to support via SEO and RAG](#h-update-key-organic-traffic-pages-to-support-via-seo-and-rag) - [Update your calendar and documentation to serve the story and AEO best practices](#h-update-your-calendar-and-documentation-to-serve-the-story-and-aeo-best-practices) - [Control what you can while moving forward](#h-control-what-you-can-while-moving-forward) How a brand’s story shows up next to brand mentions across the web directly influences how a company is perceived and whether it shows up in AI-driven search at all. A 2025 AirOps study of 21,311 brand mentions found that [85%](https://www.airops.com/report/the-influence-of-offsite-signals-in-ai-search) of mentions in AI answers came from third-party sites, not the brands’ domains. To become visible to LLMs and the customers who use those tools, companies must identify, repair, and distribute a consistent, clear brand story. ## Identify and state the real ‘why’ behind your story This feels like a pre-step to some extent, but many companies skip defining their message and wind up muddying their brand with every campaign. When you get really clear on what you do and why, define your core messaging, and speak directly to the audience, you have a place to tie all your marketing back to. Your company story should go beyond company history or a sales-defined elevator pitch by speaking to the audience’s wants and needs. Get that right before moving on and build that story into your boilerplate messaging. ## Run a brand audit The next logical step is to run an audit of your campaigns, customer touchpoints, and mentions of your brand across the web. In both of these instances, you’re looking for places where the company story isn’t reflected or the story told reflects poorly on the company. At minimum, the product of this audit is a list of places your brand appears and assets you can use as-is or with updates. As an added bonus, the brand audit exercise can uncover new communities, competitors, and audiences to target. ## Update your boilerplates, bios, and repeated messaging Armed with your handy spreadsheet of assets and mentions, you can begin updating your messaging across the customer touchpoints you control. That means updating your website copy, sales and PR templates, email newsletter templates, and any existing pitch decks. There may be some resistance within the company, and you’ll have to convince Susan in Sales to finally revise her secret pitch deck. Next, reach out to publishers and sites where brand mentions occur and ask for them to update the wording. You’re not necessarily going to be able to influence that one guy posting in a Reddit thread, but there’s no harm in requesting edits. Most editors want their site to reflect updated information and are willing to make small changes, even to older pages. Your update work should quickly show results. In AEO terms, you’re updating your entity wording in the knowledge graph of your industry. Your company is the “entity,” and the knowledge graph is the combined data the LLM knows or can access about your industry. If you’re not in the knowledge graph because your messaging is inconsistent, you pretty much don’t exist for the AI tool. The knowledge graph is open to marketer influence. Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro software ran an experiment in 2025 to see what LLMs knew about his company. His team had used the term “makers of fine [audience research software](https://sparktoro.com/blog/weve-learned-more-about-how-to-appear-in-ai-answers/)” in every bio, boilerplate, and description of Sparktoro. Fishkin found that AI chat tools included the phrase in descriptions of Sparktoro, and when it appeared in results for other queries. ## Update key organic traffic pages to support via SEO and RAG Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is when the LLM uses an internet search, just like you would do in Google, to surface recent updates or information that’s newer than the training data. Update your key organic traffic content to the latest SEO guidelines and add AEO-friendly elements like FAQs and key takeaways to increase your likelihood of appearing high in the SERPs, and therefore in RAG searches. You need to make a meaningful update for the search engines to recognize your changes. Add or refresh stats, insert more detail, or make a change in the structure that enhances the information that’s already there. Think of SEO updates as preventative maintenance. You need to do them for key organic traffic pages repeatedly, and probably more often than you’d like. The actual frequency of your updates depends on page type and industry, so watch your traffic and rankings to define your own cadence. Here are some general guidelines: - News and emerging trends need updates every 30-60 days or more often as information evolves. - Comparison and product overview pages should be updated every 30-90 days to keep pace with industry changes and competitors’ moves. - Evergreen informational pages should be updated every 6-12 months, although many of these TOFU pages have already lost significant traffic to AI chat or search. ## Update your calendar and documentation to serve the story and AEO best practices Whether you wrote your content calendar for SEO or you’ve incorporated AEO best practices from the start, review and update your calendar with your brand story in mind. That may mean replacing or cutting some assets that don’t align with your story or adding new ideas to address fan-out queries. Consider the questions your buyer is asking now, and write content that answers them. Remember your audit spreadsheet? Use it to define an update cadence for key pages. Don’t forget to update your employee handbook and recruiting assets as well. Your brand should be consistent throughout the organization and tell the same story to all employees and your audiences. Remember, current and former employees also post on third-party sites and mention your brand. Act in ways that make their perceptions of your company match your brand story as well. ## Control what you can while moving forward LLMs run by consensus. They take the most-often-cited answer as authority, which means that if your company’s boilerplate, bio, and messaging don’t align while your competitors have a more cohesive message, you risk dropping out of the conversation completely. It’s easy to run a brand audit and message revision that then gets forgotten in the dark corners of your company document store. Don’t let the bitrot set in while you’re busy getting back to the daily business of marketing. Instead, reinforce your brand story by building it into your calendar, CTAs, and audience profiles. Source: [https://martech.org/how-to-strengthen-your-brand-story-to-improve-aeo-visibility/](https://martech.org/how-to-strengthen-your-brand-story-to-improve-aeo-visibility/)