Someone just asked ChatGPT: "What's the best project management tool for small teams?"
The answer included three products. Yours wasn't one of them.
That person signed up for a competitor five minutes later. No Google search. No comparison site. No chance for your retargeting pixel to do its thing. They asked, AI answered, and they bought.
This is happening across every SaaS category, hundreds of times a day. The question is whether your product is in the answers.
Discovery has shifted
The old SaaS discovery path was messy but predictable. Prospect searches Google. Clicks on a G2 comparison. Reads a few reviews. Maybe hits your pricing page through an ad. Eventually signs up for a free trial.
That path still exists. But a new one is growing alongside it.
Prospect asks AI a specific question: "What's the best CRM for freelancers?" or "I need an invoicing tool that integrates with Stripe." AI gives a direct answer with two or three recommendations and reasons behind each one. Prospect goes straight to the recommended product.
The new path skips your SEO. Skips your Google Ads. Skips the comparison sites you worked so hard to rank on. It goes from question to recommendation to signup.
If you're in the recommendation, your CAC for that customer is essentially zero. If you're not, you never even knew they were looking.
Why your product is probably invisible
You have a marketing site with all the right pages. Features, pricing, integrations, a few customer logos. Maybe a blog with weekly posts targeting long-tail keywords.
That's table stakes for Google. It's not enough for AI.
AI recommends products it can confidently match to specific use cases. "Best project management tool" is too broad for a strong recommendation. "Best project management tool for remote teams under 10 people" is specific enough.
Most SaaS websites describe what they do. Few describe who they're specifically built for and why. Your features page says "task management, time tracking, team collaboration." That describes dozens of competitors. AI has no reason to pick you.
The SaaS companies getting AI recommendations have done something different. They've made it unmistakable what specific problems they solve for specific people.
The "best X for Y" prompts are gold
In SaaS, the prompts that matter follow a pattern: "best [category] for [specific use case or audience]."
"Best email marketing tool for Shopify stores." "Best CRM for real estate agents." "Best accounting software for freelancers." "Cheapest alternative to [big competitor]."
These aren't casual questions. These are people with buying intent and a specific need. When AI matches your product to that need, you get a qualified prospect delivered for free.
Track these prompts. Know which ones mention you. Know which ones mention competitors. That's your competitive intelligence.
What makes AI recommend SaaS products
Category content that AI can extract.
AI answers questions by synthesizing information from multiple sources. If the only source about your product is your own marketing site, that's thin. If you've created genuinely useful content about your category, comparison pages, how-to guides, honest alternatives breakdowns, AI has more to work with.
"[Your tool] vs [Competitor]" pages are particularly powerful. AI constantly answers comparative questions. If you've written an honest, detailed comparison, AI is more likely to reference it.
G2, Capterra, and review site presence.
AI leans heavily on review platforms for SaaS recommendations. Your G2 profile isn't just for SEO anymore. The number of reviews, the ratings, the specific things reviewers mention about use cases, all of this feeds into AI recommendations.
If you have 12 reviews on G2 and your competitor has 400, AI will have more confidence recommending them. Invest in building review presence. Not just quantity. Specific, detailed reviews that mention use cases.
Integration and ecosystem content.
"What's the best project management tool that integrates with Slack?" People ask these questions constantly. If your integrations page is a grid of logos with no detail, AI can't determine how deep those integrations go.
Create content about each key integration. What it does. How users benefit. Real workflows. This helps AI match your product to integration-specific queries.
Clear positioning for a specific segment.
This is the hardest one for SaaS founders to accept. You want to serve everyone. Your product technically works for any team size, any industry.
But AI recommends products that clearly fit specific needs. The SaaS company that positions as "project management for creative agencies" wins the creative agency prompts. The one that positions as "project management for everyone" wins nothing specific.
You don't have to narrow your actual market. But your content strategy needs specificity. Create pages targeting specific use cases. "Project management for marketing teams." "Project management for software teams." Give AI the context to recommend you for something concrete.
Building SaaS AI visibility
Audit your current visibility. Before changing anything, know where you stand. Which prompts mention you? Which mention competitors? Where are the gaps?
Sharpen your positioning on key pages. Your homepage, features page, and pricing page should make it crystal clear who you're built for. Not "teams of all sizes." Tell AI exactly what kind of teams you serve best.
Create comparison and category content. Honest comparison pages. "Best [category] for [use case]" articles. Alternative pages. This is the content AI references when answering high-intent questions.
Invest in review platforms. G2, Capterra, TrustRadius. Not just getting listed, but actively generating detailed reviews from happy customers. Ask reviewers to mention their specific use case and what problem your product solved.
Build integration content. Detailed pages for your key integrations. Not just "we integrate with X" but "here's how our integration with X helps you do Y."
Track and iterate. AI visibility isn't a one-time project. The recommendations change as AI models update and as competitors adjust their strategies. Ongoing tracking tells you what's working and what's slipping.
The window is open
Most SaaS companies are still fighting the same battles. Google Ads with rising CPCs. Content marketing competing against thousands of blog posts. Sponsoring newsletters and podcasts for brand awareness.
AI recommendations are a channel where the competition is thin and the payoff is high. A user who comes to you through an AI recommendation has already been told you're the right fit. They're pre-qualified. Conversion rates on these visitors tend to be significantly higher than paid traffic.
The SaaS companies building AI visibility now will own their category recommendations. By the time competitors catch on, the advantage will be entrenched.
Sign up for Mentionable. Enter your SaaS website. See which prompts mention you and which ones are sending users to competitors. Then build the visibility strategy that makes AI recommend you first.