Forget What You Know About Search. Optimize Your Brand for LLMs

Increasingly, consumers are turning to LLMs (not search engines) to answer their questions about products and services. This shift calls for marketers to reevaluate their strategies to figure out how to sell not just to potential customers but also to LLMs. In this piece, the authors detail the growing importance of “Share of Model” (SOM) a new concept that helps marketers gauge how prominently their brand appears before consumers in LLM searches. SOM is assessed through a three-pronged lens: mention rate, human-AI awareness gap, and brand and category sentiment. Understanding where your brand falls along these three metrics can help you determine how to craft a successful strategy, tailored to your company’s strengths.