How Top AI Tools Market Themselves
A Research Guide into the Marketing Tactics of Top AI Tools...
We wanted to ask ourselves: What is it that drives the marketing of AI tools and platforms? Are there any new patterns beyond what SaaS platforms, for instance, may utilise? And if so, what is working to deliver the results for AI tools specifically right now?
Here is our pinch of salt caveat… now of course, we are not entirely fully in-the-know. Our research has analysed as many digital marketing aspects as is wholly possible to record and survey. From Digital PR to Affiliate Marketing. They all have traces to uncover, and patterns between companies to make conclusions from. But there is of course the unmeasurable, the unknown, and the aspects of marketing (like Out-of-Home!) that simply remain as the intellectual property of the wizard utilising these channels effectively.
Contents
- Methodology ▾
- Key Takeaways ▾
- Case Studies ▾
- General Findings ▾
- Marketing for AI ▾
- Future of AI Marketing ▾
… and as for that final bonus section, well, you might as well know this right now: we at Honed are SEOs at heart!
Methodology
The main idea for this research, a thesis if you like, was to give air and light to the relatively new and evolving sector of AI platforms. By AI platforms, we don’t yet mean effectively any bolt-on to existing legacy SaaS, for instance, nor the chatbots themselves. But instead, the cutting-edge AI tools that are built from the ground up as a revolution for niches… if you pardon our hyperbole. Things like AI agents for specialist tasks.
Our argument here is that, broadly speaking, the AI sector is building a different level of interactions and tooling altogether. So surely then the marketing has to be different to some stretch? It must be that as natives to AI, there are interesting components of AI marketing being used? If so–what do these look like!?
Figure 1: An overview of AI platform marketing tactics
Approach
We wanted to log as many aspects of digital marketing for each and every AI platform in our remit of SEO, both from a qualitative and to a degree quantitative point of view. This allowed us to build case studies to examine real-world practices, alongside an analytical element that you would expect for drawing conclusions with.
To do this we built an analysis that was capable of logging our observations in a way that allowed us to compare platforms and marketing mixes.
Our belief was that by starting with SEO AI platforms and tools, we could also see the best of AI SEO techniques along the way too. But of course, in doing this, we also have a potential bias. But then SEO is our own bread-and-butter. So hopefully that explains our biasing, of which we are very aware. Unapologetically, of course!
Obstacles
Along the way, we did face obstacles. Time being the most pressing of them. For this project to be funded, it would have cost upwards of £3,000+VAT in hourly rates. Luckily a client of ours had a senior team switch, so in that complexity we found more time to follow our pursuits, but it still of course comes nonetheless with responsibilities being stretched to make the best of this. So for this we say that here is our imperfect version-one, and from there we look to release a part-two after feedback is collected!
Tooling
The tools that we used for this project might sound familiar. We used Semrush, web crawlers, some prompting in AI (I mean, come on, that’s the nature of the beast here!), Ahrefs, and good old-fashioned mechanical turk.
Key Takeaways & Statistics
- Statistics wise, 57% use AI copy
- Blogging and articles remain important
- 44% are using passive link building techniques
- Digital PR is a fundamental
- Search and social targeting is vital
- Paid search is being used by the majority
- Online reviews are key
- 62% have affiliate marketing
- Email marketing is overlooked
- Influencer marketing remains challenging
- 37% have an app
- Videos over podcasting is common now
- Branding is a hidden success for some
Case Studies
In total, we analysed the marketing tactics of eight SEO AI platforms. From the technical fronts of SEO AI SaaS to the popular realm of content SEO, as well as both rank tracking and link building.
Figure 2: An overview of SEO AI tools used for this research
Three AI platforms stood out in particular for marketing. They were SE Ranking, Surfer SEO, and Jasper:
(1.) SE Ranking Case Study
SE Ranking is an SEO AI multi-tool that assists in research, analysis and tracking.
A regularly updated blog, stocked with articles, allows for them to rapidly develop a healthy array of passive inbound links that boost SEO ranking authorities.
Reviews are well developed, and the website is well styled and bustling with keyword targeted landing pages for product offerings. An affiliate marketing programme is live, as is a decent social media following.
The PPC appears to target traditional SEO tool brand searches. Events for them are well attended. Podcasts are regular' however, no email subscription service appears to be available at the time of writing, and DPR appears to be well funded.
(2.) Surfer SEO Case Study
Surfer SEO is an AI content research, auditing, creation and optimisation tool. They practice what they preach - with a healthy blog, full of 101 SEO articles, and handy video explainers. Being featured in online publisher lists of tools in SEO is a main priority for their DPR efforts.
Social media is a big deal to Surfer SEO. They do offer an affiliate marketing program, as do they have good reviews online.
(3.) Jasper AI Case Study
Jasper is a dedicated content AI assistant that understands the complexity of content copy needs and addresses the issues you face in scaling corporate content well.
A lot of thought goes into their website. Services are well elaborated on and well drawn out. Brand mentions are a big link earner to them, especially as an alternative tool to running content tasks through ChatGPT, for instance.
A well-stocked blog is present, with online reviews also building, on top of a growing active follower count on social media.
They had been offering affiliate partnerships, but that is no longer live. Newsletter emails are available, and PPC is well posed for targeting content writer queries particularly.
Other AI SEO Tool Case Studies
We also took a deep dive into analysing the marketing efforts of an AI content SEO platform known as Frase, the AI web speed optimisation platform of Uxify, an AI content translation platform that is called Lokalise, and Lumar, an AI platform that allows SEO’s to perform some technical SEO crawling and analysis.
From this we also collectively saw that content marketing based articles are vital to AI platform marketing. So too is PPC, and to a degree - affiliate marketing and email marketing as well as trade shows, social media marketing, online reviews, and video marketing.
Lumar, for instance, has a big social following, a great focus on reviews. Their website is well laid out and to the point. Backlinks to Lumar are decent; they have built contextual content resources and PPC is well targeted towards SEO issues. Email marketing is present, as are event attendances. DPR for them is good after a recent company acquisition. Ebooks for Lumar are present, allowing for great thought leadership, alongside a YouTube channel that is brimming with similarly positioned content.
What Marketing Works for AI Platforms?
Generally, we were disappointed to see some aspects of marketing for AI tools being ignored in places, especially in email marketing, influencer marketing or podcasting.
Figure 3: An overview of popular AI platform marketing types
Although we did see a lot of work taking place in blogs, passive link building, and content generation… this is potentially a habit of the AI sector when it comes to content generation via AI tooling. 57% of the AI platforms we assessed have used AI copy in their content.
Paid search was almost an absolute essential, as was Digital PR, a good social following, sky-high review volumes, and to a lesser degree - video content, trade show/event attendance, and affiliate marketing.
It goes without saying that branding is also a hidden marketing factor, as are more factors that of course go undetected.
Some of these factors above are easier than others to develop with a bit of help off the line; things like mentions and links in AI directories, or bloggers. We found a buoyant volume as you would expect of AI directories such as Toolify and Popular AI Tools.
What Marketing Works in the AI Assistants themselves?
Figure 4: An overview of marketing types for improved AI brand mentions
Specifically in the realms of the chatbots themselves, for trained data platforms like Claude - you see marketing efforts reward legacy AI SEO tools the most. For example, the likes of Surfer SEO and Frase. We saw this when performing chats like ‘What are the best SEO AI tools?’.
For hybrid chatbots like ChatGPT that are trained on web data crawls and search data, you also see Surfer SEO and Frase appear in chats. But for solely search data focused chatbots like Perplexity and Google's Gemini, you actually see broader tool mentions much higher up e.g. Semrush mentions as a result of new AI additions to their platform, as well as much more complex chat responses that include the likes of Jasper and SE Ranking.
So what’s going on here? From a traditional ranking factors point of view... if you excuse the noughties trend of summarising complex algorithmic decisions based on a top five list! Ohh dear, apologies. Well, mentions and lots of relevant mentions to boot, that appears to be a key tell-tell opportunity. Whether that is your brand featuring on as many top 10 online lists as possible, or merely the creation of highly ranking top 10 lists of your own, then utilising passive link building. The mention of your brand alongside others is more likely to trigger mentions from what we can see, especially for traditional transactional/informational searches such as ‘What are the best SEO AI Tools’.
There are of course other ways to scale brand mentions, be that via affiliate marketing, improved awareness via performance marketing channels, or general upticks in awareness on social media e.g. with sector influencers. We have seen too that ChatGPT is crawling Google Business Reviews more so than others.
The Future of AI Marketing?
From this research it is clear to see that more marketing workflows are certainly being delegated in part to AI. some of this shows worrying signs of turbulence. For instance, we know that AI driven content is a danger to Google traffic, and ranks. As algorithms move to eliminate 'spam' in search results, so too might your traffic be eliminated to a degree.
But beyond worries like AI content, brand mentions really do seem to be an important growth area. As might paid AI ads that will undoubtedly arrive shortly. Something we noticed that was surprisingly growing is the use of more difficult content formats, like video content. And it's a very compelling offering when you consider that AI crawls closed caption transcripts of video content. Whilst also, AI supports the scaling of quality videos by improving edits and the inclusion of stock content.
Doing more to converge areas of marketing for improved AI mentions may be a pivotal transition in 2025 e.g. allowing for video product reviews, or using affiliates more to improve Digital PR, and brand mentions alike. Finally, using passive link building opportunities to grow chatbot mentions is a valid strategy, and indeed something to consider as typical formats of content marketing, like 'how to' content, reducing in effectiveness with the arrival of Google AI Overviews (AIO).
A Final Word
Thanks so much for reading this post, it was a pleasure to put together. And if you have any feedback, ideas for included commentary, or just any general questions then do please get in touch! Here are our contact details below:
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