How brands must adapt their competitive positioning for AI-driven discovery

As AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews shape buyer discovery, companies must recalibrate their positioning strategies—focusing on consistent, trustworthy mentions across channels and targeted content—to stay visible in the evolving landscape.

Competitive positioning remains a cornerstone of effective product marketing, ensuring that buyers swiftly grasp what a product offers and why it stands out against alternatives. Traditionally, this involved crafting messaging frameworks, research, landing pages, and sales enablement materials. However, the digital landscape is shifting dramatically. Increasingly, potential buyers are beginning their discovery process within AI-driven platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Google’s AI Overviews. According to data from SparkToro, over 20% of Americans now use AI tools ten or more times a month—a figure set to rise—a trend signalling that product visibility within these AI-generated results is crucial for inclusion in buyers’ shortlists.

The challenge lies not only in appearing in AI responses but in ensuring that your product’s positioning is accurately and favourably represented. Incorrect or misaligned positioning can lead to detrimental comparisons or a failure to communicate unique strengths. This evolution demands active distribution of positioning through a carefully constructed campaign designed to secure presence in AI-driven discovery channels, associate the product with the right benefits, and succeed in competitive comparisons. Ideally, well-informed buyers arrive at sales meetings having already encountered and understood your product’s benefits during their AI-powered research, driving higher conversion rates.

Large language models powering these AI tools do not rely on scraping owned content alone. Instead, their responses are drawn from a mosaic of trusted third-party sources, including comparison articles, public forums such as Reddit, review sites like G2 and Capterra, and social media mentions. Therefore, brands must strategically increase positive mentions and references across multiple such trusted channels to influence AI training data effectively. The frequency and consistency of mentioning your product, particularly alongside recognised market leaders, improves the chances AI tools will surface your solution accurately in response to user queries.

Optimising for AI discovery involves addressing two key prompt types: category exploration and direct comparisons. Category exploration prompts typically represent broad, top-of-funnel searches such as “best project management tools” or more segment-specific queries like “best CRM for small startups.” To capture attention here, a concise, clear positioning statement emphasizing what the product does best or whom it serves is essential, with variants created using synonyms to avoid repetitive phrasing. Repetition of this messaging across reviews, articles, and social mentions strengthens recognition, even if you are not the category leader overall.

Direct comparison prompts, meanwhile, indicate deeper buyer engagement with queries like “how does Ahrefs differ from Semrush?” or “which is better for dev teams, Monday.com or Asana?” Winning such comparisons requires articulating a primary benefit differentiating your product from competitors, backed by supporting benefits and evidence such as features, customer success stories, and third-party reviews. This dual approach—targeting inclusion through category exploration and winning head-to-head through comparisons—reflects the nuanced buyer journey influenced by AI.

To enhance discoverability in these contexts, it is vital to ensure your owned digital assets remain accessible and AI-friendly. Avoid blocking AI crawlers such as GPTBot or PerplexityBot, and use schema markup to make your product data machine-readable. Competitors that restrict AI access may inadvertently cede visibility. Distribution tactics should include maintaining updated profiles on review platforms, running review campaigns to gather fresh customer feedback, and pitching third-party publishers for inclusion in “best for” lists that reflect your strengths. Creating honest, data-backed “You vs Competitor” content can provide valuable framing for writers and content creators who reference your product.

Partnerships and influencer relationships also need management to echo your key differentiators authentically. While control over partner messaging may be limited, providing a clear narrative framework and openness about your product’s strengths and weaknesses fosters credibility. Active, respectful engagement in public communities like Reddit, Slack, or Hacker News can further reinforce your positioning, although marketers must navigate these spaces carefully as users often discount overtly corporate posts.

Consistent measurement and iteration are critical, given the rapidly evolving nature of AI tools. Manual testing using incognito mode across multiple platforms, alongside AI visibility tools like Profound or Ahrefs Brand Radar, can help monitor how your product is cited and positioned. Referral traffic analyses from AI sources can also shed light on conversion quality. If AI descriptions stray from your core messaging, a reassessment of your distribution strategy and consistency is necessary to safeguard your product’s reputation.

For companies not leading their category, a practical approach to improving AI visibility in competitive prompts involves publishing well-researched comparison content showcasing clear advantages, activating review campaigns targeting recent switchers, reaching out to third-party content creators with supporting evidence, and sustaining these efforts over several months to influence AI training data. This ongoing process acknowledges that AI models update periodically and respond to refreshed data over time.

While the principles of competitive positioning—clarity, consistency, and differentiation—remain unchanged, the means and channels via which buyers discover positioning have transformed. Today, the initial shortlist often forms within AI environments like ChatGPT before a prospect even visits a company’s website. Success demands optimising messaging for distinct AI-driven prompt types, strategically seeding consistent positioning signals across reviews, partners, and communities, maintaining AI-readability on owned channels, and continuously monitoring and refining how AI platforms portray the product. In this new era, competitive positioning transcends traditional sales messaging to become a pervasive, AI-indexed signal that determines market relevance.

Moreover, the broader strategic significance of competitive positioning in marketing is well recognised. Strong positioning shapes customer perception and fosters a unique brand identity that drives growth by simplifying purchasing decisions, as demonstrated by iconic brands such as Apple and Volvo. In fast-moving sectors like FMCG, effective positioning streamlines marketing and operations, enhances competitive advantage by closely aligning with consumer needs, and sparks brand loyalty. Companies like Netflix and Spotify illustrate how continuous innovation within competitive positioning leads to strengthened brand loyalty and resilience.

AI’s role in the buyer journey is not just limited to surfacing product options but transforms how buyers engage with content. AI-powered recommendation systems provide highly contextual and personalised search results, shifting focus from static keyword searches to dynamic, intent-based discovery. This elevates the impact of micro-influencers and niche thought leaders whose specialised content drives awareness in specific vertical markets, underscoring the importance for brands to orchestrate their positioning campaigns across diverse digital ecosystems beyond traditional marketing channels.

Ultimately, competitive positioning in the age of AI requires a holistic and agile approach that integrates traditional marketing fundamentals with innovative distribution strategies tailored for new technologies and buyer behaviours. It is an evolving discipline where sustained effort and strategic alignment across marketing, product, SEO, PR, and partnerships can secure and amplify a product’s voice in increasingly AI-mediated market conversations.

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Source: Noah Wire Services