The challenge
Every high-intent question in the spend-management category — "best spend management software", "corporate card alternatives for mid-market" — returned the same handful of heavily funded US names, in Google and in AI assistants alike. When Canadian finance teams asked ChatGPT or Gemini for recommendations, the platform simply didn't exist. Outbound was carrying the entire pipeline at a cost per demo north of C$900, and the team knew the buying journey had moved somewhere their brand had no footprint.
The strategy
MindJek's answer: stop trying to outspend the giants and instead become the most citable source in the category — the brand AI models and featured snippets reach for when they need a clear answer or a hard number.
- Answer-first comparison & alternatives pages — honest "X vs Y" and "alternatives to [category leader]" pages that lead with a direct, extractable verdict
- Original benchmark data — a proprietary spend-management benchmark report packed with citable stats no other source had, giving LLMs and journalists a reason to reference the brand
- Founder thought-leadership with Person schema — bylined analysis tied to a structured founder entity, building the expertise signals AI systems weigh
- llms.txt + AI-crawler access — explicit crawl permissions and a curated llms.txt so GPTBot, Google-Extended and friends could read the best content cleanly
- Digital PR in fintech media — placed the benchmark findings in the fintech publications LLMs cite most, compounding the entity's authority
The results
Within six months the platform was being cited by ChatGPT and Gemini for nine-plus priority category queries and had captured 19 featured snippets — parking itself at the top of the buyer journey without matching a single competitor's ad budget. Demo signups grew 2.4×, and 41% of new signups now arrive organic or AI-assisted, at a fraction of the old outbound cost per demo. The clearest signal came from the sales floor: prospects began opening calls with "we saw you recommended by ChatGPT."
Figures above are representative of typical engagement outcomes and are illustrative of the results we aim for, not guarantees.
"We assumed AI visibility was something only the US giants could win. Six months later prospects tell us ChatGPT recommended us. That's a channel we didn't know we could own."