How to Show Up in ChatGPT: HubSpot's Winning AEO Playbook | GROW EUROPE 2025 | HubSpot Live

Summary

In this insightful talk, Asia Frost, Senior Director of Global Growth at HubSpot, discusses the transformative impact of AI and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) on digital marketing. Frost outlines how businesses must adapt to the shift from traditional search engines to AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT. She emphasizes the importance of creating hyper-focused content, optimizing technical structures, and building off-site authority to thrive in this new landscape. With HubSpot's own success in AEO, she highlights key strategies and metrics for brands aiming to dominate AI-driven traffic by 2028.

Takeaways

• 🤖 AI-driven answer engines (like ChatGPT) are rapidly overtaking Google as the primary source of discovery and traffic, creating a major tectonic shift in demand generation.
• 📉 Broad educational SEO content (e.g., 'Ultimate Guides') has been commoditized by AI and now drives far less demand than before.
• 🎥 Human-first, creator-led, personality-driven content (YouTube, newsletters, influencers) is now the dominant driver of top-of-funnel demand.
• 🧠 Buyers are increasingly using AI to build their shortlists and arrive at vendor sites more informed, more confident, and with much higher conversion rates.
• 📊 Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is now essential: brands must optimize content, structure, and off-site mentions to appear in AI-generated responses.
• 🧩 Effective AEO content focuses on exact buyer questions, not broad topics—using persona-specific, stage-specific grids to map high-intent queries.
• 🔍 Query fan-out and memory shape how AI formulates answers: AI breaks questions into sub-questions and personalizes results based on user history.
• 🛠️ AEO-optimized pages must put the answer first, go one click deeper, include original data, add structured FAQs, use strong formatting, and tie every point back to the product.
• 📣 Off-site authority now depends on positive brand mentions across the web—especially in sources AI cites, review sites, Reddit, LinkedIn, and creator content.
• 📈 New AI-era measurement metrics include AI visibility, AI share of voice, AI citations, and AI referral demand, all used to monitor AEO performance.
• 🚀 HubSpot’s AEO strategy led to major gains: highest share of voice, 433% increase in AI citations, and nearly 2,000% growth in demand.
• 🌟 Companies that invest early in AEO will dominate answer engines by 2028 as they become the primary source of customer demand.

Q & A

What major shift in user behavior does the speaker highlight regarding traffic sources by 2028?

The speaker emphasizes that by 2028, the majority of answer-engine traffic will come from ChatGPT, overtaking Google as the primary source of discovery and demand generation.

Why has traditional educational content, such as ‘Ultimate Guides,’ become less effective?

AI-generated summaries and overviews on platforms like Google now siphon traffic away from long-form educational content, making broad 101-style articles commoditized and less visible.

What is the key principle behind creating AEO-optimized content?

Instead of broad topics, brands must answer highly specific, persona-driven questions directly and concisely, mirroring how answer engines retrieve and synthesize precise subqueries.

What role does ‘query fan-out’ play in answer-engine optimization?

Query fan-out refers to how AI breaks a single user query into many related subquestions, then finds and synthesizes answers—so brands need content that addresses these granular subqueries.

How does memory influence AI-generated responses?

AI uses contextual data about the user—past questions, clicks, connected apps, and personalized information—to produce highly tailored responses, making visibility dependent on persona relevance.

How does HubSpot determine which content to create for AEO?

They use a 3×4 grid for each product, mapping highly specific buyer personas against buyer journey stages, then populating each cell with real questions sourced from keyword tools, social listening, and CRM transcripts.

What are the essential technical best practices for structuring an AEO-optimized page?

Key practices include placing the direct answer first, adding contextual depth, referencing original data, including FAQ sections tied to subqueries, using highly skimmable structure, ensuring each section stands alone, and tying every point back to the product.

Why are mentions more important than backlinks in the AI era?

Answer engines prioritize brand mentions—especially contextual, positive ones—over hyperlink-based authority, because AI models learn from text references rather than link signals.

What off-site channels are most valuable for boosting brand visibility in AI?

Platforms frequently cited by AI—such as Reddit, LinkedIn, review sites like G2 and Capterra, and creator-driven channels like YouTube and newsletters—hold disproportionate influence on AI recommendations.

How does HubSpot measure AEO success?

They track AI visibility (whether they appear in answers), AI share of voice (how often they’re mentioned versus competitors), AI citations (use of HubSpot content in answers), and AI referral demand (traffic and conversions originating from AI interactions).

What insight does the speaker give about platform volatility in AI visibility?

The speaker notes that ChatGPT reduced brand visibility in September and October, and that tracking share of voice alongside visibility helps determine whether drops are caused by platform changes rather than brand performance.

What results has HubSpot achieved from its AEO strategy?

HubSpot has attained the highest share of voice in its space, improved citations by 433%, and increased demand attributable to AI by nearly 2,000%.