Orange Marketing, a B2B agency and HubSpot Diamond Partner, won a Platinum Pinnacle Award for AI-Powered Marketing Innovation on September 8, 2026. The award recognizes the agency's work in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), a method for ensuring brands appear in AI-generated answers as traditional organic search traffic declines.
The agency began investigating the problem when it noticed a drop in traffic across its own site and client accounts in 2024. It traced part of the decline to AI-mediated discovery, where buyers use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini instead of conventional search engines.
Building a repeatable AEO methodology
Orange Marketing developed a framework around three tools. AI Trust Signals assess how clearly AI systems can read and verify a website. Monthly prompt testing on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity uses real buyer language to check visibility. HubSpot's AI referral-source tracking connects results to specific actions across client portals.
"We wanted to decode what these AI systems reward, not guess at it," said Rebecca Gonzalez, CEO of Orange Marketing. "Once we proved the process worked on our own site and our clients', the next job was making sure smaller B2B companies were not shut out of that knowledge."
Measurable results across B2B clients
The numbers backed up the approach. At B2B sales training firm Funnel Clarity, six targeted AEO changes lifted the AI-referred contact-to-customer conversion rate to 15%, compared with 3% for organic search. That fivefold improvement took roughly one month without additional ad spend.
At data infrastructure company Amberdata, proactive AEO implementation helped maintain organic performance during a period when 73% of B2B websites lost traffic and average declines reached 34% year over year. Orange Marketing's own site became a case study, with AEO practices turning AI-referral visitors into qualified leads.
Education as a distribution strategy
Rather than keeping the framework proprietary, the agency has published two AEO-focused playbooks and a guide titled Marketing to AI: Your New Audience, which won a Gold MarCom Award. In the last 12 months, it hosted four live AEO briefings for B2B marketers and maintains a weekly blog tracking AI and AEO developments.
"AEO is not a topic you cover once and move on from," said Monica Cavanagh, Senior Consultant at Orange Marketing. "The platforms change every few months, and so does our advice."
For marketers adapting to how AI reshapes search, structured approaches to AI for SEO Specialists are becoming part of the required skillset. Orange Marketing's work shows that appearing in AI-generated answers demands a different playbook than traditional keyword optimization.
Why this matters for marketers
The traffic shift Orange Marketing documented is not hypothetical. When 73% of B2B sites lose organic traffic and AI-referred visitors convert at five times the rate of organic search, the economics of ignoring AEO stop making sense. Marketers who wait for AI search to stabilize before acting will cede visibility to competitors who are already testing, measuring, and refining what these systems reward.
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