How to package an AEO service line agencies can actually sell
A sellable AEO retainer has four components: a fixed prompt set and competitive set agreed at kickoff, monthly citation-share reporting with intervals, evidence on demand, and a content workstream aimed at third-party sources rather than only the client's own site. Price it on prompts and engines, not on hours.
Scope it as a measurement retainer with a content arm
The mistake is selling AEO as content production with an AI label. The durable version is the reverse: measurement is the spine, content is one of several interventions the measurement justifies.
A workable monthly scope:
- 30–50 prompts, four intents, agreed at kickoff and frozen for the quarter.
- 3–5 competitors declared in the competitive set.
- 4–6 engines, weighted to the client's actual markets.
- 25 samples per prompt per engine on head terms, 10 on the tail.
- Monthly reporting with intervals; alerts in between.
Price it on inputs you control
Prompts × engines × samples × cadence is a multiplication. That makes cost predictable and makes scope changes a conversation about numbers rather than about effort.
Bill data as a pass-through line or bundle it, but know the unit cost either way. Agencies that price AEO on hours end up absorbing collection costs when a client asks for another market.
Three promises not to make
Don't promise a position. There isn't one. Promise measured share with an interval and a plan to move it.
Don't promise a timeline shorter than the data supports. Median time to first citation for a new page was nine days in our testing, with a 90th percentile past a month, and a third of cited pages dropped back out within three weeks. A 30-day guarantee is a refund waiting to happen.
Don't promise coverage you can't collect. "We track every AI platform" collapses the first time a client asks about Doubao. Name the engines.
The deliverable that renews the retainer
Four things, in this order: citation share per engine with an interval; the raw answers as evidence; alerts when share moves beyond the interval or a new competitor appears; and per-client history long enough to prove the retainer moved something.
What to leave out
Where the margin is
Not in collection — that's a cost line that will commoditise. It's in prompt design, interpretation, and the content work the data points at. Let the tool handle the measurement; sell the judgment.
See this for your brand
Nostimates shows you how your brand shows up across twelve AI engines and search — in a dashboard, or as data in your own tools. Tell us what you want to measure.