You’ve built the course. You’ve recorded the content. Maybe you’ve even launched an app or created an online academy. After months of hard work and investment, it’s finally live. And then… nothing. Or at least, not the traction you expected.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many coaches, consultants, and educators who have traditionally relied on referrals or word-of-mouth are finding it harder to gain visibility online today. And it’s not because your offer isn’t valuable, it’s because the way people search for and discover expertise has changed.
In a world increasingly powered by generative AI, the old rules of discoverability don’t apply the way they used to.
Why Visibility Has Changed in the Age of AI
Until recently, if someone was looking for help (a business coach, a leadership trainer, a problem-solver), they’d typically:
- Ask a trusted colleague
- Google it
- Visit a platform like LinkedIn or YouTube to look for relevant experts
Today, more and more people are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude to ask those same questions. And the responses they get aren’t just lists of links, they’re synthesized answers. They receive curated, confident suggestions and advice, often with no need to click anything at all.
If your content, service, or name isn’t included in that answer, it’s as if you don’t exist.
Why Traditional SEO Alone Won’t Help
Search engine optimization has always been about ensuring your content ranks well on platforms like Google. But generative AI tools don’t “rank” results in the same way. They pull from various sources, summarize, paraphrase, and present what they perceive as the most relevant response.
This new paradigm requires a shift from traditional SEO to what some are now calling Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), a new approach focused on visibility within AI-generated content. What does that look like in practice?
The Mistakes That Limit Visibility (Even for Great Offers)
Several recurring challenges are keeping even highly experienced professionals from gaining visibility in the age of generative AI. Here are a few we see often:
1. Lack of a Clear Message
You may offer multiple services or operate in a hybrid model (coaching + consulting + training). While that’s fine in practice, it becomes confusing online. If people can’t quickly identify what you actually do, or what you want to be known for, they won’t know how to engage with your content or recommend you.
Solution: Anchor your messaging around one clear, repeatable concept. Think of this as your “trunk”, the central idea or expertise that all your communications, services, and content branch out from.
2. Over-Investing in Delivery, Under-Investing in Discovery
Many entrepreneurs launch digital products, courses, platforms, apps, before building an audience. These tools are valuable for delivery, but they don’t attract traffic by themselves.
Solution: Prioritize visibility first. Content creation, email marketing, partnerships, or AI discoverability tactics should begin before building the tech stack. If people aren’t aware of your offer, it doesn’t matter how polished your delivery is.
3. Assuming Education Equals Interest
If your offer requires too much explanation before it makes sense, it won’t convert. Your audience might not even realize they have the problem you’re solving—or they’re not using the same language to describe it.
Solution: Speak to the pain or aspiration your audience already knows they have. You can expand their perspective later, but your initial message needs to connect with their current mindset.
Tactics That Are Working Right Now
Despite all the noise online, some visibility strategies are still working well, especially when they’re part of a cohesive system. Here are a few worth noting:
1. Custom GPTs and AI Agents as Lead Magnets
Some service providers are uploading their knowledge into custom GPTs, designed to help users solve a specific problem (e.g., “optimize a LinkedIn profile” or “write a cold outreach email”). These tools are then indexed by AI platforms and occasionally recommended in chat responses.
Why it works: You meet users inside the AI tools they’re already using. It also showcases your expertise while building early trust.
2. Specific, Value-Rich Lead Magnets
Generic downloads, like “Top 5 Tips”, aren’t converting well anymore. Instead, successful lead magnets tend to do one of the following:
- Offer immediate utility (templates, frameworks, assessments)
- Give a preview of paid content (free access to one or two video modules)
- Personalize the user’s journey (interactive quizzes, diagnostics)
Why it works? These tools shorten the distance between “awareness” and “action” by delivering quick value while pre-qualifying leads.
3. Targeted Outreach with Personal Context
Whether you’re using AI tools or manual methods, personalized outreach is still highly effective, especially when it leads to a real conversation, not a cold pitch.
Pro tip: Tools like Linked Helper or Apollo can automate personalized outreach sequences on LinkedIn or email, but only if you include relevant context. One message and no follow-up? That won’t cut it.
4. Using AI for Market Research Before Outreach
Want to know how your ideal customer would respond to a certain message or what kind of events they attend? Ask AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity to simulate that audience and give feedback.
Example prompt:
“Act as 100 ideal buyers for executive coaching services. How would they respond to the message: ‘Unlock your team’s potential with strategic coaching?’ What alternative language would better reflect their real pain points?”
This is a low-cost way to test language, tone, and positioning before spending time or money on ads or outreach.
Visibility Requires Strategy, Not Just Tools
The mistake many entrepreneurs make is chasing tactics without a foundation. Posting more on LinkedIn, launching an app, creating another course, these things can be useful, but only if they tie into a clear, consistent strategy.
Ask yourself:
- Can someone explain what I do in one sentence?
- Is my message showing up where my audience is actually looking?
- Am I focusing enough on discovery, not just delivery?
If not, that’s your starting point.
Generative AI isn’t the enemy. But it is changing how people search for answers, how they evaluate expertise, and how they decide who to trust.
Being visible today means being findable in the places, and formats, where people are asking questions. That might be in a LinkedIn search, inside an AI-generated answer, or through a custom GPT that carries your voice.
If your offer is valuable (and it likely is), visibility is simply about making sure the right people can see it, understand it, and trust it, before they ever book a call.
And in case you’re wondering whether it’s too late to adapt: it’s not. In fact, most people are still figuring this out.
Start small. Choose one message, one audience, and one channel. Test, adjust, learn. Visibility isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being unmistakable where it counts.
Looking to learn more? Join our upcoming webinar on AI Lead Generation from Your Current Website, where we’ll explore practical ways of using AI to convert website traffic into leads.
