Home › HubSpot

HubSpot: latest insights

Updated 2026-10-19 11:43 UTC · RSS · Archive

HubSpot marketing blog in one feed: SEO, AEO, content, GTM and inbound marketing guides, updated every hour. Showing the 151 most recent of 151 articles.

The marketing automation model that drove 9x qualified lead growth in a secondary market

HubSpot ·

When we reviewed our Japan marketing automation programs last year, the picture wasn’t pretty. Our automated emails were generating about 12 qualified leads per month against a goal of 160. That’s a huge gap.

Transactional email: What it is and how it works

HubSpot ·

Transactional emails are automated messages triggered by a specific action a customer takes, sent to help that person complete or follow up on something already in progress. An order receipt, a password reset confirmation, or a shipping notification are all examples of transactio

Tracking AI Overviews: What the data actually shows

HubSpot ·

AI Overviews have shifted how audiences discover brands. Gone are the days when users would click through multiple search results until they found what they’re looking for. Now, AI Overviews answers questions directly on the results page, meaning brands are either cited or ignore

Claude skills vs. plugins vs. MCP connectors: A simple guide

HubSpot ·

If you’ve opened Claude’s Customize settings and weren’t sure whether a task called for a Skill, a connector, or a Plugin, you’re not alone.

AEO for digital PR: How to build earned media presence that shows up in AI results

HubSpot ·

Digital PR has always been about earning coverage that influences the audience you can’t reach through paid channels. While the value proposition of digital PR hasn’t changed, the definition of “showing up” has.

AEO for marketing agencies: How to deliver measurable AI visibility results for every client

HubSpot ·

Clients are asking about AEO. Some have seen competitors show up in AI results and want to know what it means. Others have read that AI is changing how buyers find vendors and want to know what their agency is doing about it.

Enterprise AEO: How to manage brand visibility at scale across products, segments, and markets

HubSpot ·

Enterprise brand teams face a complex version of AEO that most tools weren’t built for. A single brand might span a dozen product lines, operate in multiple languages, and compete in markets where local answer engines have their own citation patterns.

AEO for marketing operations: How to build scalable processes that connect AEO to revenue

HubSpot ·

Buyer behavior has changed since the advent of artificial intelligence. Now, before ever filling out a form or clicking an ad, prospects are likely asking AI for recommendations, comparing vendors, and gathering answers. Those interactions shape which companies make the shortlist

AEO for demand generation teams: How to generate qualified pipeline as AI reshapes buyer discovery

HubSpot ·

Demand generation has been built around the assumption that buyers will come to a brand when they are ready to learn about its category, whether through search, ads, content, or other channels. The funnel starts when a prospect arrives somewhere the business can see, measure, and

AEO for product marketing teams: How to ensure your positioning shows up accurately in AI results

HubSpot ·

Product marketing’s core job is positioning: Deciding how a product should be described, what category it competes in, and which differentiators matter most to buyers. The results are deployed through sales, content, and campaigns. But now there’s a channel that interprets and re

AEO for marketing leaders: How to stay ahead of the shift to AI-driven discovery

HubSpot ·

Marketing leadership decisions used to be about where to allocate resources between known channels like paid, content, events, and email. Each of these channels has established performance benchmarks and predictable customer acquisition cost (CAC) ranges. But now, that framework

AEO for growth marketing teams: How to find scalable acquisition channels when paid and organic plateau

HubSpot ·

Growth marketing is all about finding the next channel opportunity before the current one gets crowded and expensive. Paid search got crowded. Content took time. Email got filtered. The teams that found a new lever early on took advantage of lower competition, cost, and dispropor

AEO for digital marketing teams: How to ensure your brand is visible across every channel

HubSpot ·

Digital marketing teams have spent years building integrated measurement, connecting paid, organic, social, and email into a single picture of how buyers move through the funnel. That picture now has a gap. A growing share of buyer discovery happens in AI interfaces that don’t sh

AEO for content strategists: How to move the needle on citations

HubSpot ·

Content strategists already know how to build for search. They understand how to map topics, connect related pages, and create enough depth to establish authority. But answer engine optimization (AEO) begs the question: When buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your ca

The best enterprise email marketing software in 2026

HubSpot ·

Enterprise email marketing software is built for high-volume programs that span teams, brands, and regions. With so much software available, the hard part comes before and after the send — whether governance keeps every team within the rules, CRM-native data surfaces the right co

How AI search optimization works for modern marketers

HubSpot ·

Today, when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Mode a question, they rarely see a list of suggested links. They see one synthesized answer that cites a handful of sources. If your brand is one of those citations, you win attention, traffic, and trust. If it isn’t, y

AI agents for digital marketing: How to scale campaign execution without scaling headcount

HubSpot ·

Digital marketing is one of the most process-intensive functions in marketing, and AI agents for digital marketing are changing how teams handle that load. Every campaign involves the same chain of tasks. Building audiences, setting up nurture sequences, writing follow-ups, and m

AEO for outreach: How to earn citations and placements that build AI visibility

HubSpot ·

Link-building and content outreach were built for search engines. Domain authority, anchor text, and referring domains were the signals that moved search rankings, and they translated directly into an SEO playbook you could run at scale. Answer engines don’t work the same way.

AEO for content marketers: How to capture awareness and drive revenue with content

HubSpot ·

Content marketers are used to publishing consistently, earning trust, and measuring how content contributes to demand. But now, buyers also do their research in AI assistants and answer engines, sometimes without clicking through to a website.

AEO for brand marketing: How to ensure your brand narrative shows up accurately in AI results

HubSpot ·

Brand marketing has always been about controlling the narrative, so that the story your company tells about itself is the one the market hears. That job has gotten harder.

AEO for SEO: How to maintain search visibility as buyers move to answer engines

HubSpot ·

Search engine optimization (SEO) teams have long used rankings, organic traffic, and conversions to understand how people find and engage with content. Those signals still matter, but they don’t show whether a brand appears in AI-generated answers.

AEO for founders: How to get your brand in front of AI-assisted buyers without a marketing team

HubSpot ·

As a founder, your attention is on pipeline, retention, and the next 90 days rather than how AI engines describe your company. But your buyers are already asking AI which vendors to consider — including you.

GTM tech stack: What it is and how to build one

HubSpot ·

A GTM tech stack is the set of tools a company uses to run go-to-market activities across the customer lifecycle. These platforms can make it easier to connect marketing, sales, and customer teams. But, if the pieces aren’t compatible, a business’ GTM tech stack is just another l

Diagnosing AEO gaps: A content audit guide

HubSpot ·

If you’ve been asked to diagnose and fix AEO gaps, the first step is to conduct an audit. For most brands, an AEO gap is any reason an AI answer engine can’t (or won’t) use its page as a source.

How to use vector embeddings in AEO

HubSpot ·

A vector embedding is a numerical representation created by an embedding model. The model converts text into a list of numbers that can be compared with other vectors, helping a retrieval system find passages with similar meaning even when they use different words. Semantic retri

AI search optimization tools: What actually works in 2026

HubSpot ·

AI search optimization tools help marketers understand where a brand appears in AI-generated answers, which sources earn citations, and what to improve next. They complement traditional SEO tools rather than replace them: SEO measures rankings, clicks, and organic traffic, while

Profound vs. Athena AI for AEO: How the tools compare

HubSpot ·

If you’ve searched “Profound versus Athena AI for AEO,” you’ve probably already hit a wall: every comparison you find is written by a competitor, an affiliate, or the vendors themselves.

AEO checker tools that measure answer engine visibility [2026]

HubSpot ·

An AEO checker tells you whether the AI answers your buyers rely on actually mention your brand. People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini a question and act on the reply without clicking a link, so visibility that once showed up in your rankings can vanish into an

The psychology behind why AI shows it's working

HubSpot ·

In 2025, most of the major answer engines made an almost identical update. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and many others started to show what they were thinking.

Inside the creator economy’s AI reckoning

HubSpot ·

Few phenomena within the creator economy have moved as fast as AI’s embrace. What was once treated with anxious suspicion is now more widely viewed as a necessary strategy.

Enterprise email marketing shortfalls and the upmarket features to avoid them

HubSpot ·

Most email marketing teams know the basics. Authenticate your domain. Clean your list. Write a compelling subject line—test before you send.

AI search tools marketers should know in 2026

HubSpot ·

Something big just shifted in how people find answers online. More buyers are skipping the investigation and deliberation of clicking through blue links on Google, in favor of asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the like for one direct answer.

How to optimize your website for AI search

HubSpot ·

Learning how to optimize your website for AI search is one of the hottest skills for marketers right now, because the audience for these tools is growing fast. Monthly unique visitors to the major answer engines climbed from 634 million in Q1 2025 to 904 million in Q1 2026, up mo

How much does AEO cost? Pricing by agency, tools, and software

HubSpot ·

How much does AEO cost? The short answer is roughly $30 a month for a monitoring tool you run yourself to over $15,000 a month for a full-service agency program that handles everything for you — with a wide middle in between.

What high-citation brands do differently in AI search: The 2026 AEO playbook

HubSpot ·

Answer engine optimization is disrupting search as we know it. What once was predictable — add a keyword, focus on high-quality backlinks, increase your domain rating — has become a new game that doesn’t play by the same rules.

Using LinkedIn for AEO: How marketers can use social media to improve their AI visibility [experiment]

HubSpot ·

Over the past few months, I noticed a pattern while researching for clients. When I searched Perplexity for B2B reports or insights that I could cite for a project, the source list would look like this: Gartner, McKinsey, peer-reviewed paper, then … John Smith on LinkedIn?

How to turn data thought leadership into a growth channel, according to Semrush’s marketing lead

HubSpot ·

For years, we ran data studies at Semrush the way most similar companies did: whenever someone had a good idea and whenever there was time to spare. Mostly, though, our efforts were limited to one or two major reports a year.

AEO mentions vs. citations: Key differences explained

HubSpot ·

If you’ve been tracking your brand’s presence in AI-generated answers, you’ve probably noticed something confusing: your brand name shows up all the time, but that traffic isn’t materializing. The reason is usually the gap between an AEO mention and an AEO citation, and if you’re

Best Marketo alternatives worth evaluating in 2026

HubSpot ·

Adobe Marketo Engage has long been the go-to for enterprise demand generation teams. But over the past few years, a growing number of marketing operations leaders have started asking a harder question: Is Marketo actually the best tool for us, or are there Marketo alternatives we

Peec AI alternatives for AI visibility monitoring in 2026

HubSpot ·

Peec AI alternatives are AI visibility platforms that go beyond monitoring to help marketing teams close citation gaps, connect AI search data to CRM attribution, and run programs across multiple regions and content workflows.

Tech stack consolidation: The business case for unified systems & how to build them

HubSpot ·

Tech stack consolidation is the process of reducing the software tools your organization runs and standardizing work on a smaller, more integrated set of systems.

AEO audit tools — the best options on the market

HubSpot ·

AEO audit tools have become essential for any team that needs to know whether answer engines are citing their brand, and whether those citations are accurate. While traditional SEO audits track rankings and crawl health, AEO audit tools measure answer engine visibility across the

How to write a CRM RFP (with free template)

HubSpot ·

CRM buying decisions go sideways in a predictable way. Sales wants pipeline automation, IT wants an on-premise option, marketing wants native email, and finance wants to know why there’s a $200K line item with no defined ROI. By the time procurement gets involved, you’ve got four

Running TikTok campaigns with impact — missed opportunities that make all the difference

HubSpot ·

Before Invisalign ever captured a lead on TikTok, it generated pre-qualified interest with a Smile Quiz built right into the ad. The payoff: nearly a third more people finished the form, at a lower cost per lead. The campaign aimed and succeeded at going far beyond the vanity KPI

CRM for insurance companies: What it does and why it matters

HubSpot ·

Insurance is a business built on relationships, but agents can’t manage all their contacts and communications alone. A CRM for insurance companies helps agencies to manage customer relationships across the policy lifecycle, including follow-up, nurturing, customer service, and re

Pardot alternatives: What B2B marketers are choosing now

HubSpot ·

Seventy percent of marketers believe the marketing industry has changed more in the past three years than in the past 50. That means that marketing automation platforms need to change, too. Pardot is a longtime fixture of the B2B landscape, but the lack of development has left ma

HubSpot AEO vs. Profound: Features, pricing, and use cases

HubSpot ·

HubSpot AEO vs. Profound is a comparison between two answer engine optimization tools that take different approaches to AI search visibility. HubSpot AEO tracks how a brand appears in AI-generated answers and connects those insights directly to content creation and campaign execu

Ahrefs Brand Radar alternatives for marketing teams

HubSpot ·

G2’s 2026 Answer Economy research found that 51% of B2B software buyers start their research with an AI chatbot more often than Google. That shift means marketing teams need to track not only traditional search performance but also how AI assistants and answer engines mention, ci

Scrunch AI alternatives compared: Features, pricing, and fit [2026]

HubSpot ·

If you’re comparing Scrunch alternatives, start by separating monitoring from execution. Monitoring tools show how brands appear in AI-generated answers. Optimization tools add recommendations, content briefs, or workflows that help teams act on those findings.

Top B2B SEO tools that actually grow your pipeline in 2026

HubSpot ·

The bar for B2B SEO tools has shifted. SEO strategy is no longer just about ranking on page one, because buyers are increasingly discovering vendors through AI-generated answers. A strong Google ranking still matters, but so does visibility in AI search, and B2B teams need traffi

AI search visibility ROI: How to measure what matters (& ignore what doesn’t)

HubSpot ·

As long as there has been commerce, there have been questions. First, those questions were only for salespeople. Then, it was search engines. Now, AI has been thrown into the mix. But how do you know if your AI search efforts are even working?

AI search performance KPIs every marketer should track

HubSpot ·

As long as I’ve been in marketing, people have warned against focusing on “vanity metrics,” or those flashy, high numbers that don’t translate to real results or profit. Fast forward a decade, I never expected traffic and search rank to be part of that conversation.

The simple way to make your marketing claims 42.9% more believable

HubSpot ·

A few weeks back, I stumbled across a Reddit post that talked about the first measurement ever taken of Mount Everest. Rather than listing the exact measurement of 29,000 feet, the British Royal Geographical Society declared Mount Everest’s elevation to be 29,002 feet. It’s one o

What is enterprise marketing automation? Features, platforms, and best practices

HubSpot ·

Enterprise marketing automation is how large organizations scale personalized marketing across multiple teams and channels without disrupting their data or workflow. If you’re evaluating platforms or trying to modernize a fragmented stack, this guide covers everything you need to

HubSpot AEO vs. Scrunch: Which tool fits your workflow?

HubSpot ·

If you’re evaluating answer engine optimization tools, here’s the short version: HubSpot AEO is an insight-to-execution platform that connects AI visibility data directly to your CRM and content workflows. Scrunch is a focused monitoring and benchmarking tool that excels at multi

HubSpot AEO vs. Ahrefs Brand Radar: Features compared [2026]

HubSpot ·

As more buyers skip search entirely and go straight to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for recommendations, marketers are realizing they need a new kind of tool — one that shows them how their brand appears in AI answers and what to do about it. That’s what both HubSpot AEO and Ah

CRM deployment: A step-by-step process for growing teams

HubSpot ·

There’s an irony at the heart of most failed CRM rollouts: the technology almost never lets you down. The deployment does. More than 60% of CRM failures trace back to people and process challenges, not the software, and most of those failures are preventable with the right plan.

Brand tracking tools for scaling companies

HubSpot ·

Brand tracking tools help growth marketers gauge what people say about the brand, whether it’s good or bad, and why they choose competitors, all at scale. Brand monitoring also reveals AI share of voice and what you should improve to be cited more by LLMs.

Scrunch vs. Peec AI: Which tool fits your AEO strategy? [2026]

HubSpot ·

If you’re comparing Scrunch versus Peec AI, you need to know your buyers are already forming opinions about your brand in answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode before they ever reach your website.

Omnichannel customer service: What it is and how to do it

HubSpot ·

In today’s digital world, customers want to access support quickly via their preferred communication channel. In response, more companies are looking to deliver seamless, personalized support experiences via omnichannel customer service models.

CRM change management: A practical guide for leaders

HubSpot ·

CRM projects don’t fail at the technical level — they fail because the people expected to use the system never bought in, the training was too generic to stick, and nobody owned adoption after go-live. The result is a CRM that costs money to maintain but doesn’t deliver the pipel

HubSpot AEO Grader vs. Peec AI: Features, pricing, and use cases

HubSpot ·

If your buyers are asking ChatGPT for vendor recommendations instead of scrolling through Google results, your brand’s visibility in AI search engines matters as much as your organic rankings … maybe more. That shift is what’s driving the rapid adoption of answer engine optimizat

5 Semrush AI visibility alternatives worth testing

HubSpot ·

For many, Semrush is the gold standard for tracking traditional SERP rankings, and the tool has recently added AI visibility features to its suite. However, there are plenty of Semrush AI visibility alternatives on the market worth exploring.

What happened when 6.8m people were told real Monet art was AI

HubSpot ·

AI content is polarizing. When users spot that AI was used in art, backlash often follows. So, let’s run a quick experiment.

HubSpot AEO vs. Otterly: Platform or standalone tool?

HubSpot ·

Here’s the question most teams are actually trying to answer: do you need a standalone tool to monitor how your brand shows up in AI search, or do you need something that connects that monitoring to the content and CRM workflows that let you act on it?

Profound vs. Semrush AEO: What each tool actually does

HubSpot ·

Profound and Semrush have both staked out positions in the answer engine optimization space, but they’re built for different teams with different goals. This post breaks down what each tool actually does, where they differ on engine coverage, prompt research, dashboards, and pric

SEO tools marketers rely on (free & paid options)

HubSpot ·

SEO might feel like it’s under threat with the rise of AI. But the data tells a different story — SEO tools are still a must-have for marketers. In a HubSpot survey, 27% of marketers agreed that the biggest ROI channel of this year was the website, blog, and SEO.

HubSpot AEO vs. Rank Prompt: Which AI visibility tool should you choose?

HubSpot ·

AI search is no longer a niche experiment. According to HubSpot’s own research, 42% of buyers now use AI search as part of their evaluation process — and it’s the top predictor of purchase intent. Brands that show up in those answers earn the conversation before a prospect even c

What is a CRM data model? Objects and relationships

HubSpot ·

At some point after a CRM goes live, someone pulls a pipeline report and the numbers don’t add up. Marketing and sales end up using different definitions for the same term. A new integration breaks three sales pipeline reports that nobody knew shared the same data source.

How AEO drives higher-intent site visitors than other channels

HubSpot ·

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of creating content for AI like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to reference in their outputs. AI-referred traffic is small but growing fast and has an outsized impact on conversions. Traffic from AEO makes up less than 1% of overall t

HubSpot AEO vs. Semrush AI Visibility: Which is right for your team?

HubSpot ·

If you’re comparing HubSpot AEO vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, I tested both for you as a marketing and AEO practitioner myself and will share my detailed review.

AI SEO tools that fit your growth stack

HubSpot ·

AI SEO tools have matured quickly. What started as a novelty layer atop existing keyword tools has become a full-fledged category, helping improve everything from research to AI search visibility.

Which SEO tools are worth it for small businesses?

HubSpot ·

There are an abundance of SEO tools for small businesses. But, with limited resources and budget, small businesses can face an added challenge: finding the right tech stack that does everything they need to maintain a competitive edge in search, without breaking the bank.

Scrunch vs Ahrefs: AI visibility tracking comparison

HubSpot ·

Scrunch and Ahrefs Brand Radar both track brand visibility in AI answers, but they solve different problems. Scrunch is purpose-built for AEO: it monitors AI citations, audits AI crawlability, and actively optimizes how AI bots experience your site. Ahrefs Brand Radar is an add-o

AI SEO tools small businesses actually use

HubSpot ·

AI SEO tools for small businesses are essential to keep up with marketing trends and stay competitive. Yet most small businesses are trying to figure out which AI tools are actually worth their time and which ones are necessary, especially when there is an abundance of tools prom

Do backlinks matter for AEO (answer engine optimization)?

HubSpot ·

Roughly 58% of consumers now use AI answer engines in their product research each week — and that number is rising fast. As AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews become primary discovery surfaces, content and SEO teams are asking the right qu

SEO tools for SaaS: 13 best options to scale your content ops

HubSpot ·

B2B SaaS businesses achieve an average ROI of 702% from SEO, yet most teams are still using a SaaS SEO tool stack built for a different era of search.

HubSpot AEO vs SE Ranking: Features, pricing, and fit

HubSpot ·

You’ve probably noticed it yourself: buyers aren’t just Googling anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity questions and trusting whatever answers they get. If your brand isn’t named in those answers, well, you may not even be a consideration.

The top content formats & types that earn AI search citations

HubSpot ·

There’s no denying it: Search behaviors have changed. As more queries are answered directly by AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, the shifts reshaping search are forcing marketers to rethink ranking and, just as crucially, learn how to write for AI search rather than just for

CRM data migration: A practical process overview

HubSpot ·

CRM data migration is the process of moving data, workflows, and assets from one CRM to another. It matters because your CRM is the operational backbone of your revenue team, and when the data inside it is wrong, every process built on top of it breaks too.

Best enterprise rank tracking software for high-traffic websites

HubSpot ·

The best enterprise rank-tracking software goes far beyond checking positions for a handful of keywords. At scale, it means monitoring millions of data points across devices, locations, and search features, including AI Overviews, featured snippets, and local packs. Then that int

Profound vs. Peec AI: Which AEO tool supports your growth strategy?

HubSpot ·

According to McKinsey, 50% of consumers now use AI-powered search, and more than 70% rely on it to ask questions and gather information. This shift in search behavior means SEO leaders must evolve. Modern workflows need to incorporate Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies s

Best content optimization tools for ROI-focused teams

HubSpot ·

Organic search still delivers some of the strongest returns in marketing, and the right content optimization tools make it easier to capture.

6 best CRMs for wholesalers in 2026

HubSpot ·

Wholesale businesses require more than a generic customer relationship management (CRM) system. A CRM for wholesalers must support account-specific pricing, large product catalogs, repeat orders, and sales workflows that integrate with inventory and fulfillment systems. When thes

11 social media trends every marketer should watch in 2026 [new data]

HubSpot ·

The data doesn’t lie. According to HubSpot’s 2026 State of Social Media Report, 67% of marketers believe social media to be more important in the next two years, while 73% say it’s harder than ever to stand out.

Growth experimentation: A guide for growing marketing teams

HubSpot ·

Growth experimentation is a structured approach to testing ideas across the full customer journey to discover what drives measurable business growth. Experiments improve channel-by-channel optimization as marketing teams push for measurable, repeatable growth under tight budgets.

What are semantic keywords? Here's how to find & use them

HubSpot ·

Every content marketer seems to be asking the same question: Do semantic keywords still matter in SEO in 2026, especially now that AI engines influence traffic and buying decisions?

How to track your brand’s presence in AI search

HubSpot ·

As any marketer or SEO knows, there’s a special satisfaction in seeing your hard work pay off in the form of snagging a top result on the SERPs. But in the age of answer engine optimization (AEO), search results don’t tell the full story. To gauge success, you need to learn how t

Campaign optimization strategies that actually work in 2026

HubSpot ·

Recent data shows that 88% of marketers now use AI every day to guide their biggest decisions, and for good reason. Marketing automation has been shown to generate 80% more leads and drive 77% higher conversion rates. With global ad spend now topping $1 trillion, there’s simply t

What is AI search optimization? (& why marketers should care)

HubSpot ·

AI search optimization is the practice of improving brands’ odds of being cited and mentioned by answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overviews. The traffic it earns is small but high-intent. Across more than 1,200 publisher and news sites, visitors referred by AI tools si

Scrunch vs Semrush: AI visibility or traditional SEO?

HubSpot ·

Scrunch vs Semrush comes down to one question: Do you need a dedicated AI visibility tool, or a full SEO suite that now tracks AI answers too? Scrunch is an AEO specialist built to monitor how your brand appears in AI-generated answers, while Semrush is a traditional SEO platform

CRM administration: Roles and best practices guide

HubSpot ·

After years of working alongside CRM administrators, I’ve learned the single biggest difference between CRM platforms that drive revenue and ones that collect digital dust. The difference isn’t the software nor the budget, but the quality of the administration behind it.

Profound vs. Bluefish AI for AEO: Which tool wins for marketers?

HubSpot ·

If a brand is not visible in answer engines, it’s missing critical early-stage influence. According to McKinsey, 50% of consumers now use answer engines, and more than 70% rely on it to ask questions and gather information. That means a growing share of discovery occurs within AI

8 top Profound alternatives your marketing team can actually use

HubSpot ·

As AI search reshapes how customers discover and evaluate brands, tools like Profound are gaining attention for helping marketers measure visibility within AI-generated answers. But, as budgets tighten, new AI visibility features emerge, and integration demands increase, many tea

CRM compliance: What it is and how to nail It with your team & tech

HubSpot ·

A CRM is like a teenager’s journal – full of sensitive information. But instead of school stories and secrets, it holds contact records, purchase history, support conversations, and for some, health information or payment data, too.

How to rank in AI search results: Expert best practices

HubSpot ·

Knowing how to rank in search engines and how to rank in AI search results are two different games now.

How to get your website indexed by ChatGPT [2026]

HubSpot ·

If you want to know how to get your website indexed by ChatGPT, I’ll show you, but first, I want to clarify: Other articles on this topic conflate “getting indexed by” with “showing up in” ChatGPT — and they are not the same thing. Getting indexed by ChatGPT means OpenAI’s search

FAQs for AEO: How to structure answers that rank in answer engines

HubSpot ·

AI search interfaces are reshaping how content gets surfaced and cited. Pew Research data from 2025 found that around one in five Google searches produced an AI-generated summary, with 88% of those summaries citing three or more sources. Bain’s 2025 research found that roughly 80

AI email marketing tools: Our top picks for 2026

HubSpot ·

Marketers are turning to AI-powered tools to scale relevance without increasing manual effort as inbox competition increases and performance expectations rise. AI email marketing tools are rapidly reshaping how teams execute and measure email campaigns. AI advances now support ev

Schema markup for AEO: How to implement it to boost answer engine visibility in 2026

HubSpot ·

Schema markup for AEO helps answer engines understand a website. Schema is readable by AI crawlers because it’s added to a site’s HTML. It allows SEO professionals to add additional context and map entities without overwhelming the website’s front end or users. This additional co

Keyword research for AEO: A guide for winning answer engine traffic in 2026

HubSpot ·

Keyword research for AEO can feel overwhelming because audiences are searching for almost everything in AI search, and queries are nuanced and personalized.

How to use your CRM for smarter email marketing campaigns

HubSpot ·

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems have become foundational to effective email marketing. For teams learning how to use a CRM for email marketing, the key is connecting contact data, segmentation, automation, and measurement into a single, cohesive workflow.

On-page content formats answer engines actually favor [new research]

HubSpot ·

It seems like every brand is scrambling to get a piece of the pie in this new answer engine optimization (AEO) world. But what if you could get ahead of the curve by knowing the best on-page content formats for AI as verified by research? I pored over results from the new HubSpot

The AI Perception-Reality Gap

HubSpot ·

There’s a widening gap between what the market says about AI and what we actually hear from customers. The media, the VCs, the AI labs, and influencers have all talked about AI replacing humans, ripping out trusted software, and token-maxxing as ends worth pursuing. But the leade

6 top answer engine optimization benefits for growth and enterprise marketers

HubSpot ·

The AEO benefits that matter most to marketing leaders have shifted from theoretical to measurable. As more buyers discover brands through AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity, the teams investing in AEO now are seeing real returns in conversions and long-te

AI search behavior: What it means for your marketing strategy in 2026

HubSpot ·

AI search behavior may be causing a dip in your traffic, but it’s also sending higher-quality leads your way. For marketers, that second part is a massive win. AI search was the number one predictor of purchase intent for CRM software buyers, according to HubSpot’s State of AEO 2

The role of citations in AEO: Why citations matter more than backlinks for AI visibility

HubSpot ·

For years, the SEO playbook was straightforward: earn backlinks, climb rankings, capture clicks. But as AI reshapes how traditional SEO works, a different mechanism is determining which content gets seen — and it’s not backlinks. It’s citations. The role of citations in AEO is fu

Introducing the HubSpot Agent CLI

HubSpot ·

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our vision for the agent era: agents should be able to run on HubSpot, and to run HubSpot. I want to go a level deeper on what “run HubSpot” actually means, and our latest step in bringing this vision to life.

A master class in persuasion from an unlikely place

HubSpot ·

Walk down a suburban street, and you might stumble across a following sign. It’s probably messy with poor formatting and inconsistent font size. Here’s one that I saw in Houston.

What AI Overviews mean for SEO & website traffic

HubSpot ·

If you’re worried about what AI Overviews mean for SEO, let me remind you of the panic over featured snippets circa 2017. Remember how that turned out? At first, bloggers and SEOs bristled over these quick-glance summaries at the top of the Google SERPs, fearing they’d steal all

How to optimize for AI overviews (AIOs): A complete 2026 playbook

HubSpot ·

Google AI Overviews appear in Google Search results for a growing share of queries, and if your content isn’t structured to earn a citation, you’re losing visibility to competitors who’ve already adapted. Unfortunately, the challenge isn’t awareness. Most SEO leaders know AI Over

How to rank in AI Overviews on Google and beyond

HubSpot ·

Growing up, the only “top 10” I cared about was MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL). When I started working, that became the top 10 results in the Google SERP. Now, my eyes are set even higher as we marketers explore how to rank in AI Overviews.

Best AI search analytics tools for marketing teams

HubSpot ·

I’ve spent the last year watching marketing teams scramble to understand why their organic traffic reports tell one story while their pipeline tells another. The missing link is almost always a need for AI search analytics tools.

AI citation tracking tools to monitor and increase visibility

HubSpot ·

The brand tracking dashboard says awareness is up. Social listening tools show steady mention volume. The PR platform logged a dozen media hits last quarter. But, none of those tools show how a brand shows up when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini for a recommendation.

Brand mentions: How to track and measure visibility

HubSpot ·

Brand mentions aren’t a new concept, but answer engine optimization (AEO) is giving them a different weight. Brand mentions are any online reference to your brand, product, spokesperson, or company name; right now, they’re happening in more places than most teams can track.

6 generative engine optimization benefits every marketer should know

HubSpot ·

You’ve seen it with your own eyes, reader. The way buyers discover brands is changing faster than most marketing teams realize.

Digital Marketing Optimization: 10 Best Strategies to Increase Marketing ROI

HubSpot ·

Digital marketing optimization plays a major role in whether a marketing program grows or remains stagnant. Most teams are running campaigns, tracking metrics, and still scratching their heads, wondering why the pipeline isn’t moving. Honestly? The problem usually comes down to p

5 science-backed pricing tips from the U.K.’s top marketing podcast

HubSpot ·

In 2007, Coulter and Coulter showed two advertisements to two random groups of customers. Each advertised £10 discounts on flights to Turkey. One listed the tickets at £188. The other showed a higher price: £233.

Brand Visibility: How to Increase It in the Era of AI

HubSpot ·

Brand visibility determines whether your business gets found or gets passed over — in search results, on social feeds, and increasingly, in AI-generated answers. It’s one of the highest-leverage investments a marketing team can make, and also one of the most commonly mismanaged.

Product SEO: 8 Strategies That Drive Demand for B2B & SaaS

HubSpot ·

Product SEO is one of the highest-leveraged — and most overlooked — strategies in B2B and SaaS marketing. While most teams pour resources into top-of-funnel content, the pages that actually drive pipeline decisions, such as feature pages, comparison pages, and pricing pages, ofte

Our Vision for Building an Open Ecosystem for the Agent Era

HubSpot ·

For years, HubSpot invested in making our platform the best place for marketing, sales, and service teams to do their work. With AI, we’ve been building it to do the work for them – through agents that qualify leads, resolve tickets, save deals, and drive outcomes across the busi

Keyword clustering: How to create a strategy for topic authority in 2026

HubSpot ·

As a content writer with over 7 years of SEO experience, I can confidently say that keyword clustering is a critical technique—even in a world where the SEO landscape has changed significantly.

AEO prompt tracking for marketing teams

HubSpot ·

You already track and analyze your SEO strategy — keyword rankings, organic traffic, SERP positions. But when a prospect asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews a buying question and your brand doesn’t appear in the answer, traditional rank tracking can’t tell you that.

AEO Competitor Analysis: Track AI Answer Engine Rivals

HubSpot ·

Every company’s competitors are showing up in AI-generated answers, but do marketers know which ones, for which queries, and why? That’s exactly what AEO competitor analysis is designed to tell teams.

Share of Voice Tools for Growing Companies

HubSpot ·

When tracking share of voice for marketing teams, it’s often assumed to be a vanity metric — a number executives like to include in board decks but one that rarely influences strategy. In practice, that assumption doesn’t hold up.

Zero-click searches and the future of your marketing funnel

HubSpot ·

Search results used to be a doorway. A brand ranked, someone clicked, and they landed on a website. But today, that model is eroding faster than most marketing teams are equipped to move.

Free Answer Engine Optimization Tools to Benchmark LLM Visibility

HubSpot ·

I’ve spent considerable time testing free answer engine optimization tools across dozens of brand audits, and the verdict is clear: you don’t need a five-figure tech stack to get meaningful AEO data.

How to do keyword research for AEO (+ Tools)

HubSpot ·

When I first started auditing content for answer engine visibility, I assumed the keyword research process was roughly the same as traditional SEO — just with a few tweaks. I was wrong.

Is AI Killing Web Traffic? How AI Overviews Impact Organic Website Traffic

HubSpot ·

Every few years, marketing headlines announce the demise of one foundational strategy or another. First, email, then blogging, then search engines. Now, with the rise of AI comes the question, “Is AI killing web traffic?” But the curiosity is actually warranted.

15 Competitor Monitoring Tools Teams Actually Use (2026)

HubSpot ·

Your competitors are adjusting pricing, launching new ad creative, publishing content that outranks yours, and showing up in AI answers you didn’t know existed — often all in the same week. Competitor monitoring tools exist to catch those moves early, but most teams end up with f

Answer engine optimization vs. traditional SEO: What marketers need to know

HubSpot ·

Understanding answer engine optimization (AEO) vs. traditional SEO has become mission-critical for content managers and marketing leaders as search shifts toward AI-generated responses, voice results, and zero-click experiences. While page ranking on Google is still important (fo

AI visibility score: How to summarize your AI visibility

HubSpot ·

Your brand’s AI visibility score covers the part of the search landscape that traditional SEO rank tracking can’t see. Tracking it is becoming as essential as monitoring Google rankings — and a lot harder to pin down.

Best practices for answer engine optimization (AEO) marketing teams can't ignore

HubSpot ·

Search behavior has changed dramatically, and teams need to learn answer engine optimization (AEO) best practices to keep up. While traditional search engines still dominate, people increasingly turn to AI tools like ChatGPT to answer their questions. Heck, with 79% of those who

How to Optimize Content for ChatGPT: An AI Discovery Guide

HubSpot ·

A lot is going on in search today. Google still reigns supreme, but the competition and evolution coming from AI alternatives have many marketers wondering how to optimize for ChatGPT.

AI citation tracking: How to track (and grow) AI engine citations

HubSpot ·

AI search engine citation tracking helps measure brand visibility and authority in AI-powered search results. As AI-powered search experiences reshape how people discover information, evaluate vendors, and build shortlists, visibility inside AI answers is no longer a vanity metri

Generative engine optimization KPIs that actually matter for marketing teams

HubSpot ·

Generative AI is changing how people discover brands, products, and information. Because it disrupts the buyer journey, it requires new metrics, specifically GEO KPIs, that accurately reflect performance within these AI engines.

AEO metrics every marketer should track in 2026

HubSpot ·

According to Adobe Express, 77% of Americans have used ChatGPT as a search tool. Although Google still owns a large share of traditional search, it’s becoming clearer that discovery no longer happens in a single place.

AEO Strategy for B2B: 9 Tactics to Increase B2B Answer Engine Visibility

HubSpot ·

Research shows that 32% of buyers discover new B2B vendors using generative AI chatbots. This is why an answer engine optimization (AEO) strategy for B2B businesses is essential. AI-driven answer engines help buyers discover, evaluate, and shortlist vendors. The same research fou

The future of generative engine optimization: How 5 GEO trends reshape loop and inbound marketing

HubSpot ·

​​GEO — or, as HubSpot refers to it, AEO — has found its place in the search landscape, and it’s reasonable to think that the future of generative engine optimization is guaranteed. According to Datos’s State of Search report, Q4-2025 saw some interesting changes. For the first t

8 Ways to Elevate Your Brand as a Creator or Entrepreneur (& Close the Pay Gap)

HubSpot ·

While many are still skeptical, the global creator economy is expected to reach $1.18 trillion USD by 2032. And for minority creators and entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups, this moment is especially significant.

Answer engine optimization case studies that prove the ROI of AEO in 2026

HubSpot ·

Answer engines are already influencing how buyers discover brands — and the results are measurable. According to the 2026 HubSpot State of Marketing report, 58% of marketers say visitors referred by AI tools convert at higher rates than traditional organic traffic. As platforms l

AEO vs. GEO explained: What marketers need to know now

HubSpot ·

More customers are turning to answer engines when searching for products. ChatGPT alone has 900 million active users. Marketers are building new disciplines like AEO to create content that appears in these answer engines.

SEO audits: How to conduct one that drives traffic growth [+ checklist]

HubSpot ·

At its core, an SEO audit is a step-by-step review of your website’s technical health, content quality, and search visibility. An SEO audit identifies technical, on-page, content, and link issues on a website. It helps SEO teams identify, prioritize, and fix the issues that block

8 Generative engine optimization best practices your strategy needs

HubSpot ·

Despite what the headlines would have you believe, artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t new. The term and early technology date back to the 1950s, but generative AI (which emerged in the 2010s) is undeniably new terrain.

How HubSpot became the #1 CRM in AI search [A case study]

HubSpot ·

Today, more and more buyers are beginning their journey with an AI-search. They may ask ChatGPT to compare products or use an AI-powered platform like Perplexity. Or, they're just Googling an offering and reading the AI Overview, all without clicking a link.  HubSpot realized

What AEO rank trackers measure and why marketers need them

HubSpot ·

If you’re asking yourself, “How can I measure AEO success?”, AEO rank trackers should be your next investment. They gauge your brand visibility in AI-generated answers, considering metrics like citations, mentions, share of voice, and sentiment.

AEO Insights: Building an Informed Answer Engine Strategy

HubSpot ·

By now, you know that everyone’s buzzing over answer engine optimization (AEO). So, just what is AEO in marketing? It’s a new way of ensuring your brand shows up in the places your prospects are using more and more: AI tools like Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. These AEO insight

How to Show Up in ChatGPT Results and Get Noticed by Customers

HubSpot ·

There’s a lot of conjecture out there about how to show up in ChatGPT results, but if you want advice from a practitioner who’s actually done it, keep reading.

The FSA framework explained: Why AI engines cite certain brands (and how marketers can use it)

HubSpot ·

Most marketing teams I talk to are doing genuinely good SEO, and yet when they open ChatGPT or Perplexity and type in the prompts their buyers are actually using, their brand is nowhere to be found. This is the exact problem the FSA Framework was built to solve.

AEO strategy for SaaS: 6 tactics that convert prospects into trials

HubSpot ·

An AEO strategy for SaaS won’t stray too far from a good SEO strategy, but some tactics benefit AI search more than others, and it helps to know what these are. We all know that AI has shifted how brands earn visibility, and how visibility doesn’t equal clicks. But for SaaS, the

Loop Marketing vs. traditional marketing: What’s the difference?

HubSpot ·

Two-thirds of marketers say that marketing has changed more in the past three years than in the past 50. Understanding Loop Marketing versus traditional marketing has become essential for marketers in 2026. The two frameworks differ fundamentally in how brands reach, engage, and