Optimise for AI Search by starting with real customer demand: the needs, situations and questions that prompt people to enter a category and consider possible brands.
The way people search is changing, increasing the importance of Category Entry Points, or CEPs. These are the cues, occasions, needs and problems that trigger buying decisions. They are becoming just as important for visibility in AI search as they are for consumer recall.
Search is moving beyond ranked lists of links towards AI-generated answers. ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and other AI tools can now interpret a question, retrieve information from multiple sources and synthesise an answer around the user’s apparent intent.
This shift is sometimes described as Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO. However, the practical objective is simpler: optimise for AI search by making it clear what your brand is relevant for, which customer problems it helps solve and in which buying situations it should be considered.
AI systems retrieve information in context. This means marketers need to think beyond individual keywords and consider the wider associations surrounding their brand.
That idea of contextual retrieval is precisely where Category Entry Points and Mental Availability come together. To surface at the right moment—whether in a buyer’s memory or an AI-generated answer—a brand needs to be credibly linked with the needs and situations that shape purchase decisions.
What Is Mental Availability and Why Does It Matter for AI Search?
Mental Availability is the propensity for a brand to be thought of in buying situations. It is concerned with recall at the right moment, rather than awareness in the abstract.
A brand may be widely recognised without being strongly associated with the situations that trigger category buying. For example, someone may know an insurance brand but fail to think of it when planning a family holiday abroad. A food brand may be familiar but absent from memory when a parent needs a quick breakfast before school.
Brands build Mental Availability by connecting themselves with a broad and relevant set of Category Entry Points.
These might include:
- When I need something quick before leaving the house.
- When I want an easy alternative to cooking.
- When I am planning a family holiday.
- When I need to replace something urgently.
- When I want a more affordable option.
- When I am looking for a gift at short notice.
AI search works in a similar contextual way. Users rarely type only a category keyword. They ask complete questions that contain needs, qualifiers and situations.
For example:
- “What is the best breakfast for children before school?”
- “Which insurer is suitable for a family travelling abroad?”
- “What is a reliable electric car for long motorway journeys?”
- “Which accounting software is easiest for a small UK business?”
- “What can I cook quickly for a family on a weeknight?”
These questions resemble Category Entry Points because they describe the context surrounding a decision.
The same customer cues that help people recall a brand can therefore help AI systems understand when that brand may be relevant. Strengthening these associations can make a brand more retrievable both in consumer memory and in AI-generated outputs.
Why Real Customer Demand Should Guide AI Search Optimisation
Traditional SEO remains important. Technical accessibility, useful content, authority, internal linking and relevant backlinks all help search engines discover and evaluate a website.
However, optimising for AI search requires more than placing a target keyword on a page. AI systems attempt to interpret the meaning of a query and identify information that addresses the user’s underlying need.
A page about travel insurance may rank for the phrase “travel insurance”, yet still provide little useful content for questions such as:
- Which travel insurance is suitable for older travellers?
- What cover do I need for a skiing holiday?
- Which policies include pre-existing medical conditions?
- What should a family policy include?
- Do I need travel insurance for a UK cruise?
The category is the same, but the buying situations are different.
This is why real customer demand should be the foundation of an AI search strategy. Marketers need to understand what prompts buyers to enter the category, what questions they ask and which factors shape the choice.
Category Entry Point research provides a structured way to identify these moments. It helps brands move beyond generic keyword lists and organise content around situations that genuinely matter to category buyers.
Category Entry Points Improve AI Discoverability
Category Entry Point-led content improves discoverability because it mirrors the language and context people use when seeking advice.
Imagine a breakfast brand that wants to become associated with “when children need something filling before school”.
A generic product page may describe ingredients, flavours and nutritional content. A CEP-led content system would go further and address the wider situation through pages such as:
- Healthy breakfasts for children before school.
- Quick breakfasts for rushed weekday mornings.
- Filling breakfast ideas that take less than five minutes.
- Breakfast options children can eat on the way to school.
- How to prepare a balanced school-day breakfast.
The brand is then repeatedly presented in relation to a recognisable customer need.
This creates two potential benefits.
First, it strengthens the brand’s association with that buying situation in human memory.
Second, it gives search engines and AI systems clearer evidence about when the brand, product or expertise may be relevant.
The same logic applies across categories.
An insurer could build content around:
- When travelling with young children.
- When taking part in winter sports.
- When travelling with a medical condition.
- When planning a long trip.
- When valuables need additional protection.
A software company could focus on:
- When a growing business needs better pipeline visibility.
- When teams are spending too much time on manual reporting.
- When customer data is spread across several systems.
- When a small business needs to prepare for VAT.
- When managers need more accurate sales forecasts.
The content becomes more useful because it reflects real demand rather than simply repeating product features.
Not All Category Entry Points Are Equal
At SmilingCFO, we help brands identify and prioritise Category Entry Points through Mental Availability Assessments.
Our research across a wide range of categories consistently shows that some CEPs are used significantly more often than others when buyers access a category. These high-frequency situations will often deserve greater strategic attention.
However, frequency is only one consideration.
Marketers should also assess:
How competitive is the Category Entry Point?
A valuable buying situation may already be strongly associated with several large competitors. Entering that territory could require considerable investment.
A less competitive CEP may provide more achievable room for growth, even where its overall usage is slightly lower.
Is the brand image congruent with the intended association?
The brand needs credibility.
A budget brand may struggle to build an association with specialist luxury craftsmanship. A heritage brand may have limited permission to suddenly present itself as a disruptive technology company.
The target CEP should fit with what buyers already know about the brand, or with a credible direction the organisation can support through its product and experience.
Is the CEP currently an area of strength?
A brand may already possess a relative advantage in a valuable buying situation. In this case, the priority may be to defend and strengthen that association.
Alternatively, the research may reveal a strategically important CEP where the brand underperforms relative to its size. This could become an expansion opportunity.
The correct decision may therefore be to:
- Defend an existing strength.
- Strengthen a weak but credible association.
- Explore a less contested opportunity.
- Step back from an area where the brand lacks relevance or permission.
These choices provide greater focus for content, creative development and media investment.
Turning CEP Insights into AI Search Content
Once priority Category Entry Points have been identified, they can be translated into a structured content programme.
The first step is to express each CEP in the language a buyer might naturally use.
An internal statement such as:
“Convenient weekday nutrition”
could become:
- What can I eat when I do not have time for breakfast?
- What is a quick but filling breakfast before work?
- Which breakfasts can I take with me?
- What can I give children on a rushed school morning?
This language is more useful because it resembles how real people formulate questions.
The second step is to develop content that answers those questions clearly and substantively. This may include:
- Explanatory articles.
- Comparison guides.
- Product-selection pages.
- Frequently asked questions.
- Case studies.
- How-to content.
- Expert commentary.
- Research findings.
- Video transcripts.
- Structured product and service information.
The objective is not to produce hundreds of thin pages containing slight variations of the same keyword. It is to build a credible body of evidence around the situations where the brand can genuinely help.
The third step is to connect that content across the website.
A strong internal-linking structure should make the relationship between the category, the CEP and the relevant brand solution clear.
For example:
Travel Insurance
→ Insurance for family holidays
→ Cover for winter sports
→ Insurance for pre-existing conditions
→ Long-stay travel insurance
This helps both visitors and search systems understand how the content fits together.
Building AI Availability
Andrew Holland has described AI Availability as the likelihood of an AI model recommending a brand in a buying situation.
The concept closely mirrors Mental Availability. Both focus on whether a brand is retrieved at the critical moment of choice: one by a human buyer and the other by an AI system.
However, AI Availability should not be treated as something marketers can manufacture through content alone.
AI systems may draw upon websites, independent reviews, media coverage, product data, public discussion and other sources. A brand therefore needs a wider evidence base.
This may include:
- Clear and useful first-party content.
- Consistent product descriptions.
- Independent media coverage.
- Expert citations.
- Reviews and customer feedback.
- Structured data.
- Authoritative research.
- Consistent information across third-party sites.
- Evidence that supports the brand’s claims.
The stronger and more consistent the relationship between a brand and a buying situation across these sources, the easier it becomes for an AI system to understand the association.
This is why brand-building and search optimisation should not be managed as completely separate activities.
Creative campaigns, public relations, product experience, customer reviews and website content can all reinforce the same Category Entry Points. Together, they increase the amount of credible evidence linking the brand to a relevant situation.
How to Optimise for AI Search Using CEPs
A practical process can be organised around six steps.
1. Identify real buying situations
Research the needs, occasions and problems that prompt category purchase. Avoid relying only on internal assumptions or keyword tools.
2. Prioritise the strongest opportunities
Assess each CEP according to frequency, competitive intensity, brand credibility and current performance.
3. Translate CEPs into natural questions
Use the language buyers are likely to use when speaking to an AI assistant or typing a detailed search query.
4. Create authoritative answers
Develop content that addresses the situation properly, includes relevant evidence and makes the brand’s role clear without forcing it into every answer.
5. Reinforce the association beyond the website
Use product information, PR, reviews, social content, campaigns and third-party coverage to build consistent evidence.
6. Measure human and AI retrieval
Track whether the brand is increasingly recalled in priority Category Entry Points and whether it appears accurately in relevant AI-generated answers.
Measuring Progress
AI search visibility should be monitored, but individual outputs can vary by platform, wording, location and time. A single prompt should not be treated as definitive evidence.
A practical measurement system can include:
- Presence in AI answers for priority questions.
- Accuracy of brand descriptions.
- Citation or source inclusion where visible.
- Share of relevant prompts in which the brand appears.
- Organic visibility for CEP-led queries.
- Website visits to situation-based content.
- Branded search growth.
- Mental Penetration.
- Network Size.
- Brand association strength by CEP.
- Commercial performance in relevant products or occasions.
This combines search indicators with Mental Availability and commercial measures.
The objective is not simply to appear in more AI answers. It is to become more likely to be retrieved in the situations that matter and to ensure that this visibility reflects a credible reason to choose the brand.
Optimise for AI Search by Building Relevant Associations
AI search may feel new, but the underlying brand-building principles are familiar.
Brands become easier to retrieve when they are clearly and consistently associated with relevant customer needs. Category Entry Points identify those needs and provide a practical foundation for content, communication and experience design.
To optimise for AI search, marketers should therefore begin with real customer demand rather than the technology itself.
Understand why buyers enter the category. Identify the situations with the greatest value. Create content that answers the questions arising from those moments. Reinforce the same associations across the wider market.
This builds a stronger connection between what customers need, what the brand can credibly provide and what AI systems can understand.
At SmilingCFO, we use Mental Availability Assessments and Category Entry Point research to help brands decide where to focus. We identify the buying situations that matter most, show where competing brands hold an advantage and reveal where credible opportunities exist for growth.
These insights help marketers align content, creative and media around the contexts used by both customers and AI search systems.
Optimise for AI Search by making your brand easier to understand, easier to retrieve and more relevant to the buying situations that drive real customer demand.
To support marketers, SmilingCFO now offers a free Mental Availability Review: a practical starting point for assessing how well a brand is prepared to benefit from a CEP-orientated strategy.
https://mentalavailability.smilingcfo.co.uk
References
[1] See Andrew’s insights on LinkedIn: Andrew Holland SEO
[2] Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow (2010), Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. See: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
