Semrush has expanded its AI Visibility Index for 2026 to 126 million AI search prompts. Strip away the press-release framing and what's arrived is something your business has been missing: a category-level benchmark for AI answers. The AI equivalent of share of voice.
That changes what you can sell, and how you prove it.
What actually changed for your clients
Prompts are not keywords. A keyword was two or three words. A prompt bundles four or five requirements into one sentence: "Which dental practices in Manchester take nervous adult patients on a payment plan and have evening appointments?"
An AI assistant answers that by assembling details, not by ranking pages. Practice, city, patient type, finance, hours — five things to match. Most client websites give it one.
So the client who's been "doing fine on Google" can be entirely absent from AI answers, and there's nothing in their analytics telling them so. That gap is your opening, and unlike most AEO conversations, it's now backed by public industry data you can point to rather than a hunch.
Packaging it as billable work
The deliverable that sells best is a prompt set — the AEO replacement for a keyword list, and something a client can hold in their hand.
Phase one, one-off fee: prompt set build and baseline audit. Interview the client, mine their call logs and enquiry inbox, and write 30–50 real customer questions. Run each one against the assistants. Report three things: mention rate, which competitors are being recommended instead, and the specific missing detail behind each miss.
Phase two, monthly retainer: track and close the gaps. Re-run the same prompt set every month, report movement, and produce the answer content that fills the holes — pricing ranges, service areas, availability, exclusions, comparison pages. This is the part clients renew, because the report visibly moves.
Two notes on positioning. First, sell it as an addition to search work, not a replacement — you're not asking anyone to abandon SEO. Second, resist selling "AI rankings." Answers vary between sessions. Sell mention rate across a fixed prompt set over time; it's honest, it's measurable, and it survives a client asking hard questions.
What it means for your own shop
Your buyers use the same assistants. Right now someone is asking "which marketing agencies specialise in AEO for multi-location retail?" and getting three names.
Build your own prompt set before you build anyone else's. Write down the 20 questions prospects ask on discovery calls — sector, size, retainer range, contract length, what you don't take on — and answer each one plainly on your site. Publish your minimum engagement. Name the industries you serve. Say who you're a bad fit for.
Agencies that can point to their own AI visibility win the AEO pitch. It's the same argument as showing your own website ranking well: proof beats claims.
A shortcut for both
SimpleAIO runs the audit end to end — prompt sets, mention tracking, and plain-English fixes you can hand to a client or drop straight into a monthly report. Use it to baseline your own agency first, then bring it into your next three pitches. It's a fast way to turn this week's industry news into a signed scope.