How to Show Up in AI Search: AEO for B2B Software
Hosted by Austin Heaton and Will Leatherman
Learn directly from Austin Heaton and Will Leatherman
Go deeper with a course
AI Gets Things off your Plate: A Course for Founders
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Victoria Mariscal and Will Leatherman
People-first AI for founders who'd rather grow than grind.. Founder at Catalyst Content, building content systems for B2B GTM teams
Go deeper with a course
AI Gets Things off your Plate: A Course for Founders
Victoria Mariscal and Will Leatherman
People-first AI for founders who'd rather grow than grind.. Founder at Catalyst Content, building content systems for B2B GTM teams
What you'll learn
Why brand mentions matter more than backlinks in AI search
Understand the shift from PageRank-style link signals to entity-based AI citations.
How to earn brand mentions on the sites AIs read most
Learn the publication tiers, anchor strategy, and budget benchmarks for AEO-grade mentions.
A repeatable system to compound brand mentions monthly
See the workflow Austin used to outrank Rise's competitors in AI search for high-intent keywords.
Why this topic matters
Most fintech marketers spend 80% of off-page budget on backlinks. But ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity weight entity recognition and citation context, not link equity. DR-70 fintech sites lose AI search to challengers with high-quality unlinked brand mentions. Austin scaled Rise from 35K to 250K monthly visits by inverting the priority — mentions over links. He shows fintech operators the system.
You'll learn from
Austin Heaton
Head of Content / SEO / AEO at Rise
Why trust me?
- Led Rise's content and SEO program from 35K → 250K monthly visits (Mar 2024 – present)
- 7,000+ Rise keywords ranking in the top 3 on Google Search; controls every featured snippet for Rise's most important keywords
- Outranked all primary Rise competitors in AI search for high-intent purchase keywords across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini
- Previously SEO/AEO Specialist at CoinsPaid (2.5 years) — captured competitive citations in the payments niche
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Will Leatherman
Founder, Catalyst GTM Agency
Why trust me?
- Built 50+ B2B content engines — clients consistently see 3–5x content output with higher pipeline conversion, because the content is rooted in real domain expertise, not researched talking points
- Former CMO at Parcl (blockchain real estate): drove a 300% increase in user acquisition through content strategy
- Creative strategist for Primark, Campari, Kate Spade, WeWork, PepsiCo, and BMW before founding Catalyst
- Built Catalyst's entire client pipeline on LinkedIn
