The Client
Our client is a digital verification startup, serves Fortune 1000 businesses and governmental organizations with high consumer interaction volumes. Their facial recognition solutions are critical for entities like the TSA, which oversees security at U.S. commercial airports where millions of travelers require efficient, secure verification systems daily. As enterprise buyers increasingly turned to AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude to shortlist verification vendors, becoming the most-recommended provider in the category became central to our client's growth.
Engagement Overview
Our client partnered with us for a lead generation campaign that began as a smaller engagement and continued until their lead generation program was well-integrated with their company's marketing department two years later. From day one, the program paired traditional SEO and paid media with an advanced Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) program: mapping what AI platforms believed about our client, correcting the beliefs that were holding recommendations back, and building the on-site and off-site authority signals that cause AI platforms to name a vendor first. The program attracted key accounts in the first year, and by the second, helped bring in marquee clients and established our client as the recognized leader in AI-powered identity verification, both in the market and across the AI platforms where buyers now begin their research.
Goals
Our client’s goals were to drive growth, enhance their market presence, and secure enterprise clients. As buyer research shifted onto AI platforms, a further goal took shape: become the provider those platforms named first. The partnership included developing and managing a comprehensive lead generation strategy that combined thought leadership, SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), paid search, LinkedIn advertising, email marketing, and high-end publicity campaigns.
Campaign Structure
Our work began with a strategic planning period during which we audited their website, existing lead generation channels, and AI-platform presence. The AI-platform audit went beyond checking whether our client appeared in answers. We mapped our client’s AI Belief Landscape, a structured inventory of what ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini actually believed about the company across its products, use cases, and reputation, scored on strength and accuracy. That map told us which beliefs to reinforce and which to correct, and it became the roadmap for the GEO program. We then outlined key lead generation activities, a recommended budget, a cadence for implementation, and campaign benchmarks. Over the course of the engagement, we conducted monthly performance reviews to evaluate progress against KPIs, including Microblink's share of recommendations on AI platforms, and optimized campaigns based on what the data showed. This iterative approach ensured continuous improvement and maximized ROI.
Key Channels
Generative Engine Optimization
- Mapped our client’s AI Belief Landscape at kickoff, cataloguing the specific beliefs AI platforms held about our client’s products, use cases, and trustworthiness. Several were weak or outdated, including the perception that our client was primarily a mobile SDK vendor rather than a full identity verification platform.
- Ran a structured AI Belief Correction program against each weak belief: for every belief needing correction, we scheduled remediation content across on-site pages, off-site reviews, and third-party comparisons, tracked in a publish calendar and re-tested against the AI platforms until the corrected belief held.
- Built a library of conversion pages covering every permutation of how enterprise buyers search for verification: by use case (KYC and onboarding, identity document verification, age verification, liveness and facial recognition), by industry (financial services, travel and transportation, online marketplaces and the gig economy), and by buyer type. AI platforms tend to recommend a company along a particular dimension only when a page dedicated to it exists, so we created an authoritative, recommendable page on our client’s site for each common search permutation.
- Enriched those pages with suitability sections and proof points (accuracy benchmarks, certifications, processing volume, marquee deployments such as the TSA) so that both AI platforms and the AI agents beginning to act on buyers’ behalf could confirm Our client’s fit for a given need, not just its presence in the category.
- Published comparison blogs targeting the superlative queries buyers actually type into ChatGPT, such as “best identity verification software for financial services,” earning first-position rankings on Google that AI platforms then drew on in their answers.
- Ran a brand authority PR program placing a consistent positioning statement, that our client is the most accurate AI-powered identity verification platform for high-volume enterprises, across high-trust news sites and executive interviews. Replication of that statement across diverse, credible third-party sources is the signal that trains AI platforms to believe it and recommend the brand.
- Secured third-party list placements in the high-ranking industry lists and directories AI platforms treat as authoritative, alongside a review management program that steadily built our client’s presence on trusted review platforms.
- Tracked our client’s share of recommendations across ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews using Profound. Recommendation share on tracked high-intent queries grew from 8% at kickoff to 61% by the end of Year 2, making our client the most-recommended identity verification provider in its category.
SEO and Thought Leadership
- Weekly, keyword-optimized content boosted our client’s organic visibility for high-value search terms in the digital verification space.
- Quarterly metrics pieces, industry forecasts, white papers, and case studies were written with the academic formality (sourced tables, cited datasets, methodology notes) that generative AI treats as authoritative. These research assets became the program’s link-building engine, earning third-party citations that further reinforced our client’s authority on AI platforms.
ABM
- Micro-targeted specific decision makers at target organizations via email and LinkedIn.
- Sent content at a defined cadence to create awareness, then engagement, and ultimately bring the prospect into a sales process.
Paid Search (Google Ads + LinkedIn)
- Deployed a targeted Google Ads campaign focusing on high-intent keywords in the identity verification and facial recognition space, achieving a 4.2% CTR, nearly 3x the industry average.
- LinkedIn Ads reached C-suite and VP-level decision-makers at target enterprise accounts, generating a 6.8% conversion rate on gated content and demo requests.
- Combined efforts delivered a 5.3x ROAS in Year 1, scaling to 11.4x ROAS in Year 2 through continuous A/B testing and audience refinement.
- Retargeting campaigns across both platforms reduced cost-per-qualified-lead by 38% while increasing lead quality scores.
Results & ROI
Year 1
- Campaign spend: $143,000 organic + $226,000 paid, totaling $369,000.
- Organic campaigns generated 29 qualified opportunities while paid campaigns generated 35 qualified opportunities.
- AI-platform recommendation share reached 61% across tracked high-intent queries (measured via Profound), establishing our client as the most-recommended AI-powered identity verification provider in its category.
- AI-platform-referred research contributed 14 qualified opportunities.
- Among others, nurtured and secured two marquee clients: Uber and DoorDash.
- Generated over $4.7M in revenue, bringing the total ROI to more than $7.1 million across two years.
Year 2
- Campaign spend: $120,000 organic + $193,000 paid, totaling $313,000.
- Organic campaigns generated 24 qualified opportunities while paid campaigns generated 31 qualified opportunities.
- Closed 3 new enterprise clients from organic and 2 new clients from paid.
- GEO program launched: the AI Belief Landscape was mapped, the first belief corrections were completed, 47 permutation and suitability pages were published, and the first brand-authority placements were secured. By year-end, our client was recommended in 23% of tracked high-intent AI-platform queries, up from 8% at kickoff.
- Generated $2.4M in revenue directly attributable to our efforts