How to explain AI visibility to a client without jargon: 5 analogies that work
You can explain to your client what an LLM is, how retrieval-augmented generation works and what training data is. They'll half understand it, nod out of politeness and buy nothing from you, because nobody signs a retainer for something they haven't fully grasped.
Or you can tell them with a well-chosen analogy, watch their face light up and go straight to the quote. We've sat through enough meetings with SME owners and marketing directors to know which ones work. Here are the five, developed so you can use them as-is: when each one fits, how it's told and the closing line that connects with the client's business.
1. The waiter everyone now asks
For whom: any local business — restaurants, clinics, garages, shops. The universal analogy; if you only learn one, make it this.
Imagine you arrive in a city you don't know and ask the hotel waiter where to eat well. The waiter doesn't read you the whole phone book: he recommends two or three places, with confidence, and you go to one of them. It wouldn't even occur to you to argue.
ChatGPT, Gemini and the rest are that waiter, except now a huge share of the population asks him: frequent ChatGPT use in Spain has gone from 4% to 28% in two years (Funcas, III AI Survey, 2026). And here's what matters for your client: the waiter doesn't recommend the best restaurant in the city. He recommends the ones he knows. If he's never heard of you, for him you don't exist, however good your cooking is.
Closing line: "AI visibility is about making sure that, when the waiter talks about your sector, your name is among the two or three he mentions. We can check today whether it is."
2. The adviser who replaced the shelf
For whom: clients who already understand (and pay for) SEO. Explains what changes relative to what they already do.
Classic Google was a shelf: you searched, it showed you ten boxes in order and you chose which one to open. SEO was about being on the shelf at eye level. AI isn't a shelf: it's a shopping adviser. You tell it your case ("I need an accountancy firm that understands e-commerce, in Seville, that isn't expensive") and it answers with two or three names and a reasoned recommendation. You no longer choose among ten boxes; you choose among the two or three the adviser decided to show you.
That changes the game: on the shelf you could be seventh and still exist. With the adviser, either you're in the answer or you're nowhere. And more and more decisions go through the adviser: 69% of searches already end with no click to any website (May 2025 figure cited on stucom.com) — people stay with the answer.
Closing line: "We've spent years working to get you well placed on the shelf. Now we also have to work to get the adviser to keep you on its shortlist."
3. The rumour going around about you (that nobody is listening to)
For whom: clients worried about their reputation, or cases where the AI gives wrong data about the business.
The AI doesn't invent its answers from nothing: it builds them from what it finds published about you — your website, your reviews, directories, forums, press. It's like the rumour going around a village: a mix of things you said, things others say and things someone wrote down five years ago that nobody corrected. If your website has the old opening hours and a directory has your old address, the rumour will say old hours and old address, with total confidence, to thousands of people.
The difference from the village rumour is that this one can be audited and can be corrected: not by calling ChatGPT, but by fixing the sources it draws on. But first you have to listen to it, and almost nobody does: your client has no idea what the AIs are saying about them this week.
Closing line: "Right now there's a rumour about your business circulating in the AIs and nobody on your team has ever heard it. The first thing we'll do is listen to it; the second, correct it."
4. The shop window on a street where fewer people now walk
For whom: clients seeing their web traffic fall and not understanding why. Pairs well with the conversation about the organic traffic drop.
Your website is a magnificent shop window on the main street. The problem is the council has opened a new avenue and more and more people stroll along it: questions to the AI. The shop window is still just as good; there's simply less footfall in front of it. The data on the new avenue: traffic reaching websites from AI tools grew 527% in a year in Spain (ismajimenez.com), and whoever arrives from there buys much more — converting at 14.2% versus 2.8% for the classic visitor (sector data collected by roymo.es) — because they arrive with the decision almost made.
The solution isn't to close the shop window, which still brings clients in: it's to open up a presence on the new avenue while almost nobody in your sector has.
Closing line: "It's not about choosing a street: it's about being on both while the new one is still half empty of competitors."
5. The oral exam nobody studied for
For whom: competitive clients, obsessed with their competition. And to close: it's the analogy with the strongest data behind it.
Every time someone asks an AI "which company would you recommend for X?", your whole sector is sitting an oral exam in real time, in front of a prospect, without knowing it. The AI answers for everyone: some it names, others it ignores, of some it gives wrong data.
We measured it with 9,865 Spanish SMEs across 30 sectors and 10 cities: 91% only appear in 1 of the 4 main AIs (the full study, here). In hotels, only 1 in 4 is visible in several; in garages, 1 in 50. Translation: almost nobody has studied for this exam, and whoever studies first scores well with very little effort compared with what a Google ranking costs.
Closing line: "The exam is already happening every week. The question is whether you want to know your grade or carry on not looking at it."
After the analogy: show, don't tell
An analogy opens the door; the screenshot closes it. The sequence that works best in a meeting: an analogy chosen to fit the client, and immediately a live demo or screenshots of what the AIs say today about their business and their competition. If the result hurts — and 91% of the time it hurts — the commercial conversation runs itself; the full script for that moment is in what to answer when a client asks if they appear in ChatGPT.
To avoid building that demo by hand every time, in Surfeo for agencies you have each client's measurement across the 4 AIs every week and a PDF report that tells the story for you; the first check is free with the AI visibility test.
Frequently asked questions
Do I use the word GEO with clients or avoid it?
Use it only after the analogy and define it in one sentence: "this is called GEO, Generative Engine Optimization: getting the AIs to recommend you, the way SEO gets Google to find you". The concept first, the acronym after. Starting with the acronym is the fastest way to lose an SME owner.
Which analogy do I pick if I don't know the client well?
The waiter. It works with any sector and any profile, because everyone has asked for a recommendation at some point. The rest are refinements: the adviser for whoever already pays for SEO, the rumour for whoever fears for their reputation, the shop window for whoever watches their traffic, the exam for whoever watches their competition.
What if the client says their customers don't use ChatGPT?
Data, gently: 37.9% of the Spanish population used generative AI in the last quarter of 2025 (INE), and 76% of Spanish SMEs already use AI daily (II Hiscox Report, Dec 2025). And the practical punchline: "your lifelong customers may not use it; the ones who don't know you yet do. Those are exactly the ones who come through a recommendation".
Don't the analogies oversimplify? Then the client expects magic.
That's why each one carries its dose of built-in honesty: the waiter recommends who he knows (you can't bribe him), the rumour is fixed at the sources (not by calling the AI), the exam repeats every week (you don't pass it once and for all). A good analogy manages expectations; a bad one promises miracles.
Pick the analogy, and bring the proof: run the free visibility test on your client's site and walk into the meeting with the story and the screenshots.
