- \n
- Building Our AEO Measurement System <\/a><\/li>\n
- How We Built Our Three-Pillar AEO Strategy<\/a><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/a> <\/p>\n
Building Our AEO Measurement System<\/h2>\n
Defining the Buyer\u2019s Journey Across Answer Engines for Prompt Tracking<\/h3>\n
The first question we needed to answer was: When a potential customer asks an answer engine about a problem our products solve, is HubSpot in the answer? To find out, we defined the buyer\u2019s journey across answer engines:<\/p>\n
Product-Led AEO<\/h3>\n
We set up XFunnel containers for each product line.<\/p>\n
The AEO measurement architecture included:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Top-level \u201cHubSpot\u201d brand container for overall brand monitoring<\/li>\n
- Eight dedicated product containers: CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Data Hub, and Breeze<\/li>\n
- Feature-specific views within each product container (example: \u201cEmail Automation\u201d within Marketing Hub)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This structure meant sub-teams could run experiments, track improvements, and optimize for their specific product\u2019s AEO performance, while giving us a bird\u2019s eye view across our entire AEO strategy.<\/p>\n
![\"xfunnel](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nAEO KPIs We Measure<\/h3>\n
Once we had defined the prompts, we could see and start to improve our four core AEO KPIs:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Answer engine visibility (%): <\/strong>how often HubSpot appears for target queries.<\/li>\n
- Answer engine share of voice (%): <\/strong>how often HubSpot appears for those same queries relative to competitors.<\/li>\n
- Answer engine citations: <\/strong>how often HubSpot pages are cited as a source in AI answers.<\/li>\n
- Answer engine citation share (%): <\/strong>how often HubSpot\u2019s pages are cited for those queries relative to our competitors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/a> <\/p>\n
How We Built Our Three-Pillar AEO Strategy<\/h2>\n
After analyzing the data, we determined that a successful AEO strategy relies on:<\/p>\n
- \n
- AEO-friendly content on your own website with all the information you need answer engines to have about your business and its products.<\/li>\n
- A strong external presence across the key sources that answer engines are training and pulling information from.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
We used this foundation to build a three-pillar strategy:<\/p>\n
- \n
- On-site content optimization.<\/li>\n
- Off-site amplification.<\/li>\n
- Community engagement and forum growth.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Pillar 1: On-site content optimization<\/h3>\n
Our AI visibility scores were strong from the jump, but Xfunnel showed our citation scores were weak. Answer engines weren\u2019t often referencing the pages on HubSpot\u2019s website. Brand awareness is the priority, but being cited increases the likelihood of influencing the answer (and driving direct traffic from AI).<\/p>\n
After our Growth team analyzed the Xfunnel data, we realized we needed more ultra-specific content to match the hyper-personalized answers that AI generates for users.<\/p>\n
When answer engines got buying questions or industry fit assessments, they struggled to surface HubSpot content worthy of citation. We needed to create content tailored to our key buyer personas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill HubSpot work for my<\/em> business?\u201d Personalization comes down to being able to answer this question.<\/p>\n
Industry-Specific Content<\/h4>\n
Many prospects want to understand if a solution is right for their <\/em>industry. We created industry solutions pages<\/a> at scale using an AI content system. We used AI to generate the content from HubSpot\u2019s library of case studies and reviewed it with humans before it went live.<\/p>\n
Because we know AI likes structured data, we used Breadcrumb and FAQ schema on these industry solutions pages.<\/p>\n
92% ended up being cited by answer engines, generating a 49% lift in AI visibility.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nWe also published software comparison articles for target industries (e.g., \u201c5 best CRMs for construction businesses<\/a>\u201c). We saw a 642% increase in citations for those posts and 58% increase in overall mentions.<\/p>\n
FAQ Glossary for CRM, Marketing & Sales Terms<\/h4>\n
- Answer engine share of voice (%): <\/strong>how often HubSpot appears for those same queries relative to competitors.<\/li>\n
- Answer engine visibility (%): <\/strong>how often HubSpot appears for target queries.<\/li>\n
- How We Built Our Three-Pillar AEO Strategy<\/a><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"xfunnel](\"http:\/\/fliegewiese.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CRM-in-AI-search-1-20260414-7418567.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"hubspot](\"http:\/\/fliegewiese.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CRM-in-AI-search-2-20260414-1844703.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"hubspot\u2019s](\"http:\/\/fliegewiese.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CRM-in-AI-search-3-20260414-2808960.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/track.hubspot.com\/__ptq.gif?a=53&k=14&r=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing%2Fhubspot-aeo-case-study&bu=https%253A%252F%252Fblog.hubspot.com%252Fmarketing&bvt=rss\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"