GEO in Practice: 5 Takeaways for CMOs and Digital Leaders
GEO is starting to show up in real ways. Not as a future trend or something to keep an eye on, but as a shift that is already changing how decisions get made.
We recently hosted a webinar with leaders from search, media, and digital to talk about what this actually means in practice.
We were joined by:
Ron Amram, Media Executive (Mars, Heineken)
Adam Edwards, Chief Product Officer – Brainlabs
Forget theory and frameworks, the discussion focused on what people are seeing on the ground and what they are doing about it. A few themes came through clearly.
1. GEO is not a channel. It’s a system.
One of the easiest traps right now is trying to solve GEO in one place.
Your website. Retail. Creators. PR.
The reality is that none of these work in isolation.
Your owned content defines your brand’s truth. Retail environments package that truth in a way that is easy to surface. Creators show how it holds up in the real world. Earned media reinforces credibility.
What matters is how consistent you are across all of it.
The brands that are starting to break through are not doing something magical. They are simply more aligned across the system.
What to do next:
Take a step back and look at your core claims. Are they showing up consistently across your site, retail pages, creator content, and earned media? If not, that is the first problem to solve.
2. The fastest way to learn is to ask the models
Several panelists came back to the same point. If you want to understand how GEO is impacting your brand, start by asking the platforms the same questions your customers are asking. What comes back is often revealing.
In some cases, brands are not showing up at all. In others, they are present but not positioned the way they would expect. And in many cases, the sources being cited are not the ones brands would prioritize.
One panelist described the shift well. Consumers are no longer looking for an information desk. They expect a concierge. A direct, synthesized answer.
What to do next:
Run your highest-value customer questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms. Document the answers, the sources, and how your brand is represented. Use this to identify gaps and define where you need to show up differently.
3. Focus beats coverage right now
There is a clear tendency to overcomplicate GEO. Teams are trying to reverse-engineer how models work or chase every possible surface. Others are reacting to traffic declines without stepping back to rethink the approach. What is working looks much simpler.
Clear claims. Consistent language. Content that is easy to extract. Focus on the questions that actually matter to the business.
One panelist put it simply: start with the business, not the channel.
What to do next:
Prioritize the small set of questions that drive the most value in your category. Then go deeper. Strengthen how your brand shows up across the system for those questions instead of spreading effort too thin.
4. Measurement is evolving, but a few signals are already useful
Measurement came up often, and there was healthy debate. Not about whether it matters, but about how to approach it right now.
Answer Share is a useful starting point. It shows whether your brand is appearing for the questions that matter.
Confidence and representation add another layer. It is not just about presence, but how clearly and credibly your brand is described.
Mentions and citations are strong signals of influence. They reflect how often your brand is being referenced as part of the answer.
These are leading indicators. Their value is in how well they translate into business outcomes over time.
What to do next:
Build a simple scorecard that tracks presence, representation, and influence. Use it to understand whether you are gaining ground, and pressure-test it against downstream performance where possible.
5. Progress depends on ownership, but it only works with orchestration
This came up repeatedly across the discussion.
GEO cuts across SEO, media, brand, retail, content, and data. That makes it easy for it to fall between teams.
In many organizations, no one fully owns it. Or multiple teams assume someone else is handling it. The result is fragmentation.
At the same time, GEO does not fit neatly into a single function. It requires coordination across all of them.
The distinction is simple. You need ownership for accountability. You need orchestration for execution.
The teams making the most progress tend to have both. A clear owner who is responsible for driving it forward, and a cross-functional group that aligns how the work gets done.
What to do next:
Assign a clear owner who is accountable for GEO progress. Then bring together the teams that influence how your brand shows up and align them around a shared set of priorities. Treat this as a coordinated system, not a siloed effort.
Final thought
There is still a lot that is evolving.
At the same time, the pattern among the brands making progress is clear.
They are not waiting for perfect answers. They are testing, learning, and adjusting in real time.
And they are moving faster than everyone else.
If you’d like some hands-on practical help to get you started, book a slot using the scheduler below.
You can still read our GEO whitepaper – to request access click here (available for client-side brands only).