Brand Messaging in the Age of ChatGPT
How B2B Companies Can Shape What AI Says About Them
The "Clean Design" vs. SEO Copywriting Dilemma
Last week, I had one of those conversations that perfectly captures where marketing is headed. My client was working with a 3rd-party web designer who was pushing back on all the SEO copywriting we'd carefully crafted for her new site. "You don't need all that body text," the designer insisted. "All those words are going to clutter up our clean design."
I'll be honest—this is the kind of moment that makes every SEO copywriter's eye twitch a little.
And not because designers are wrong about aesthetics (they're usually spot-on), but because they're missing a seismic shift that's happening right under our noses.
We'd spent weeks on that SEO copywriting. Keyword research, competitive analysis, multiple rounds of revisions—the whole nine yards. And yes, traditionally, all that work was about getting Google to notice the site and rank it well. But here's what that designer didn't realize: those words aren't just for Google anymore.
They're training ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and every other AI tool on how to talk about your brand.
*Don’t have time to read this article? Jump to the end for a practical Pro Tip you can use right now to control your brand messaging in LLMs.
Your Website Just Became an AI Spokesperson (Whether You Planned It or Not)
Think about the last time you used ChatGPT to research a company or ask about a service. Maybe you typed something like "What's the best CRM for small businesses?" or "Tell me about [Company X]'s approach to data security."
Where do you think that AI got its answer?
It didn't make it up (well, hopefully not). It learned about those companies from their websites, blog posts, case studies, and every other piece of content they've published online. In essence, your website copy is now training AI tools to be your sales team.
The wild part? Most companies have no idea this is happening.
How AI Actually "Reads" Your Website (And Why It Matters)
Let's break down what's really going on when AI tools interact with your content, because understanding this process is crucial for marketing teams.
The Training Phase: Large language models like ChatGPT were trained on enormous amounts of text from across the internet. Think billions of web pages, including yours. During this training, the AI learned patterns about how language works, what different companies do, and how to talk about various industries and services.
The Real-Time Lookup: But here's where it gets interesting for marketers: many AI tools don't just rely on their training data. They also do something called "retrieval-augmented generation" (RAG)—which is a fancy way of saying they search the web in real-time to find current information before answering questions.
So when someone asks, "What does [Your Company] specialize in?" the AI might:
Pull from what it learned during training
Search for your current website content
Synthesize both sources into a response
The Synthesis Process: This is where your messaging strategy becomes critical. AI doesn't just copy and paste your content—it interprets, summarizes, and reframes it based on what the user is asking. If your messaging is clear and consistent, the AI will reflect that clarity. If it's scattered or vague, well... the AI's description of your company might be too.
The Good News: You're now in the Driver's Seat
Here's what's exciting about this shift: you have way more control over your brand narrative than you might think.
In the "old days" (aka two years ago), getting your brand mentioned accurately online meant:
Hoping journalists would cover you correctly
Paying for directory listings
Praying that review sites got your service description right
Investing heavily in PR to shape public perception
Now? The most important factor in how AI describes your brand is the content you publish on your own website. You're literally training these tools to be your spokesperson.
What Happens When You Don't Take Control
But here's the flip side—if you don't intentionally craft your narrative, AI tools will create one anyway. And it might not be the story you want to tell.
I've seen AI tools describe companies as "focused on enterprise solutions" when they actually specialize in small business services, simply because their website copy was unclear about their target market. I've watched chatbots recommend competitors because those companies had clearer, more compelling descriptions of their services.
The Hallucination Problem There's also the issue of AI "hallucinations"—when these tools confidently state things that aren't true. Recent studies suggest that up to 40% of AI-generated citations contain some form of inaccuracy. If your own content isn't comprehensive enough, AI might fill in the gaps with assumptions or outdated information it found elsewhere.
Real Examples of AI Brand Representation
Let me give you some concrete examples of what this looks like in practice.
Company A: Clear Messaging Their homepage clearly states: "We help mid-market SaaS companies reduce customer churn through predictive analytics and automated engagement workflows."
When asked about them, ChatGPT responds: "Company A specializes in churn reduction for mid-market SaaS businesses, using predictive analytics to identify at-risk customers and automated systems to re-engage them."
Company B: Vague Messaging Their homepage says: "We provide innovative solutions to help businesses grow and succeed in today's competitive landscape."
ChatGPT's response: "Company B appears to offer business consulting services, though their specific areas of expertise and target market aren't clearly defined."
See the difference? Company A gets a compelling, accurate elevator pitch. Company B gets a polite way of saying "I'm not really sure what they do."
Your Step-by-Step Action Plan
Ready to take control of how AI represents your brand? Here's your roadmap:
Step 1: Audit Your Current AI Presence Before you can improve anything, you need to know where you stand. Try these prompts in different AI tools:
"What does [Your Company] do?"
"Tell me about [Your Company]'s approach to [your main service]"
"How does [Your Company] compare to [main competitor]?"
"What are [Your Company]'s main strengths?"
Test this across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's Bard. Take notes on what they get right, what they get wrong, and what they miss entirely.
Step 2: Map Your Core Messages Based on your audit, identify the key messages you want AI tools to communicate consistently:
What you do (in plain English)
Who you serve (specific target market)
How you're different (unique value proposition)
What results you deliver (specific outcomes)
Step 3: Optimize Your Key Pages Focus on the pages AI tools are most likely to reference:
Homepage: Lead with a clear, one-sentence description of what you do and for whom. Follow up with specific benefits and outcomes.
About Page: Share your story in a scannable format. Use clear headings and break up text with subheadings that an AI can easily parse.
Service Pages: Be specific about what each service includes, who it's for, and what results clients can expect. Avoid marketing fluff—AI tools prefer concrete information.
Case Studies and Blog Posts: These provide context and proof points that AI can reference when discussing your expertise.
Step 4: Use Information Architecture That AI Can Understand AI tools love organized content. Help them help you by using:
Clear headings and subheadings
Bullet points for key benefits
FAQ sections (bonus: these often appear in AI responses)
Schema markup (the code that helps search engines understand your content structure)
Step 5: Keep It Current AI tools prioritize recent content, so regularly update your:
Case studies with fresh examples
Service descriptions with new capabilities
Team pages with current expertise
Blog with relevant industry insights
Step 6: Monitor and Adjust Set a monthly reminder to test how AI tools are describing your brand. As these tools evolve and learn from new content, their responses about your company will change too.
The Technical Stuff (Made Simple)
Let me break down a few technical concepts that matter for marketers:
Schema Markup: This is code you add to your website that helps search engines (and AI tools) understand what your content is about. For example, you can mark up your FAQ section so AI tools know "these are frequently asked questions about this company." Your web developer can help implement this.
Internal Linking: When you link between pages on your own site, you're helping AI tools understand the relationship between your different services and content areas. Think of it as creating a roadmap of your expertise.
Content Freshness: AI tools often prioritize recent content over older material. That blog post from 2019 might not carry as much weight as your case study from last month.
Looking Ahead: Your Website as Brand Narrator
Here's the shift every marketer needs to understand: your website isn't just a destination anymore—it's a source document. It's the primary place AI tools go to learn about your brand, and those tools are increasingly where your prospects go to research solutions.
This means every piece of content you publish is potentially training AI to represent your brand. That's a huge responsibility, but also a massive opportunity.
Companies that understand this shift and optimize their content accordingly will have a significant advantage. They'll be the ones AI tools recommend. They'll be the ones whose value propositions get clearly communicated in AI-generated summaries. They'll be the ones who maintain control over their narrative in an increasingly AI-driven world.
The Bottom Line
Remember that conversation I mentioned at the beginning? The one about "all those words" cluttering up a clean design?
I eventually helped my client find a compromise with her designer—we kept the essential copy that would help AI tools understand her business, and we found creative ways to present it that maintained the visual appeal. Because here's what I've learned: in 2024, those words aren't just about ranking on Google.
They're about making sure that when someone asks ChatGPT about companies in your space, your brand gets mentioned—and gets mentioned correctly.
The age of AI-driven research is here. The question is: are you ready to make sure AI tells your story the way you want it told?
💡 Pro Tip: All this talk about "optimizing for AI" might sound complicated, but here's the secret—AI tools prefer conversational English. That's basically what we used to call semantic search, just with a fancier name.
Not sure if your website copy passes the conversational test? Try this: Read your homepage out loud. Would anyone actually talk like that at a networking event? Or does it sound like you swallowed a corporate buzzword dictionary?
If phrases like "leverage synergistic solutions to optimize stakeholder value" are rolling off your tongue, you've got some rewriting to do. AI tools (and humans) prefer "We help companies increase revenue by improving customer retention."
Same message, but one sounds like a real person explaining what they do. Guess which one AI is more likely to recommend?
P.S. - If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I'd recommend starting with a simple audit of how AI currently describes your brand. You might be surprised by what you find.
