From Invisible to Cited: The 90-Day ROI of Managed AEO vs. In-House Efforts

Updated December 10, 2025

Nearly half your prospects now ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for vendor recommendations before they ever reach your website. Your traditional SEO rankings look solid, but when buyers query AI about solutions in your category, your competitors get cited while you remain invisible.

The question facing every VP Marketing is not whether to fix this gap, it's how, and how fast.

Build an AEO function in-house, or hire a specialized partner?

On paper, the DIY route looks cheaper. You already have a content team. You can subscribe to some tools. The real answer is more expensive than most marketing leaders expect. When you calculate the full cost of personnel time, tool fragmentation, the learning curve, and most critically the delayed revenue from slower execution, the managed service model often delivers better ROI within the first 90 days.

Let me show you the actual math.

The hidden costs of "figuring it out"

You look at the agency retainer and think you can save margin by keeping the work in-house. This calculation probably ignores the infrastructure required to actually move the needle in AI search.

To run a viable AEO program internally, you need more than a ChatGPT Plus subscription. You need a stack that mimics what an agency provides.

The essential toolkit costs $300-$500 per month. You need premium LLM access to test content: ChatGPT Team at $25-$30 per user, Claude Pro at $20, and Perplexity Pro at $20. Add core SEO platforms like Ahrefs at $129/month minimum or SEMrush at $139.95/month, plus content optimization tools like SurferSEO at $89-$129/month. Over 90 days, that's $900-$1,500 in subscriptions.

Tracking infrastructure is where DIY hits a wall. Traditional rank tracking tools measure Google positions, not whether ChatGPT cited you or whether Perplexity mentioned your brand. You'll need custom scrapers or manual testing of hundreds of queries, requiring engineering time or specialized enterprise tracking tools.

The labor tax nobody calculates

Demand Generation Manager salaries average $101,463 annually, roughly $48.78 per hour. SEO specialists earn $31-$46 per hour on average. If someone spends 10-20 hours per week on AEO learning and execution, you're allocating $4,160-$11,960 in labor over 90 days before considering benefits or overhead.

The real cost isn't the salary. It's the opportunity cost. Those 10-20 hours per week are time not spent on pipeline reviews, campaign optimization, or the dozen other initiatives fighting for attention. Time spent learning AEO diverts resources from core revenue-generating activities.

The learning curve compounds the problem

AEO is not just "SEO for AI." Your team needs to understand how large language models retrieve information, how entity recognition works, what third-party signals AI systems trust, and how to structure content for passage retrieval rather than page rankings.

Training costs typically range from $100 to over $1,000 per person for quality courses and certifications. But even after training, your team will spend months experimenting to figure out what actually works.

Total 90-day DIY cost: $4,560-$14,460 before you publish a single optimized piece of content that drives a citation.

Several brands have already cracked the AI visibility code to understand the scope of investment required.

Speed to market: daily vs. weekly execution

A typical in-house content team at a mid-market B2B SaaS company publishes 8-12 blog posts per month, weekly or bi-weekly cadence. This worked for traditional SEO. AI search operates differently because answer engines synthesize from multiple sources based on query context, favoring brands with higher content volume.

The content volume math

At Discovered Labs, clients get 20+ optimized articles per month using our CITABLE framework. Over 90 days, that's 60+ pieces versus the 24-36 from an in-house team, 2.5x more content covering more variations of buyer questions.

That volume gap directly impacts citation rate. More content means more surface area for AI systems to reference your brand. More answers mean you capture more variations of buyer queries.

AI models favor recency. If your last publish was three weeks ago while a competitor published yesterday, the AI model treats the competitor's content as more current. An in-house team might achieve weekly publishing after the learning curve. A managed service ships daily from day one.

Over 90 days, that velocity difference means the managed approach can generate measurable results in weeks 8-12 while a DIY effort is still in the foundation-building phase.

Watch how to optimize content for AI search engines to understand the technical complexity involved.

The technology gap: you can't manage what you can't measure

Here's the existential problem with DIY AEO: standard SEO tools don't track what matters.

Your Semrush dashboard shows keyword rankings. Your Google Analytics reports organic sessions. But neither tells you whether ChatGPT cited you when a prospect asked "What's the best project management software for distributed teams?"

The citation tracking problem

AI visibility is fundamentally different from search visibility. In Google, you either rank on page one or you don't. In AI search, you might be cited directly in the main answer, mentioned in a bulleted list of alternatives, included in an "also consider" section, or completely invisible despite ranking well in traditional search.

Research shows only 12% overlap between traditional SEO rankings and AI citations. You can rank number three on Google and never appear when someone asks ChatGPT the same question.

Without specialized tracking, you're flying blind. You don't know which content gets cited. You can't measure share of voice against competitors. You have no data to inform your content strategy.

The managed service advantage

At Discovered Labs, we built proprietary AI visibility tracking. We test thousands of buyer-intent queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot. We measure citation rates, position in AI responses, and share of voice versus competitors.

This tracking infrastructure isn't something you can assemble from off-the-shelf tools. It requires engineering resources, ongoing maintenance, and constant adaptation as AI platforms update their retrieval systems.

Building this capability in-house would cost tens of thousands in engineering time. Or you can access it through a managed service where the infrastructure cost is amortized across multiple clients.

Cost comparison: managed AEO vs. DIY (90-day view)

Let's put actual numbers to the decision you're facing.

The financial comparison reveals three key insights.

First, the DIY cost is closer to managed services than most VPs expect. When you properly account for personnel time and tools, the $4,560-$14,460 DIY investment over 90 days is not dramatically cheaper than a managed service, before considering the opportunity cost of delayed results.

Second, traditional SEO agencies offer poor AEO value. They charge premium rates ($17,500-$29,000 over 90 days) but lack specialized AEO methodology, deliver lower content volume, and can't track AI citations.

Third, the cost-per-result equation favors managed services. With 60+ pieces of content over 90 days versus 24-36 from a DIY effort, the managed approach delivers 2.5x more content at roughly the same total cost, meaning your cost per optimized article is 60% lower.

For a detailed breakdown of how AEO investments translate to pipeline, explore our ROI calculator.

Case study: from 550 to 3.5k+ trials in 7 weeks

Here's what a managed AEO strategy looks like in practice.

A B2B SaaS company in the project management space ranked well in Google for core category keywords but was completely invisible when prospects asked ChatGPT or Perplexity for recommendations. They were generating about 550 AI-referred trials per month, far behind competitors.

The measurable results

By week 7, AI-referred trials jumped from 550 per month to over 3,500. The full case study details how we achieved this, but the core driver was systematic coverage of buyer questions combined with third-party validation signals AI systems prioritize.

Over 90 days, the client generated an additional 6,200 trials directly attributable to improved AI visibility. Their investment was three months at our standard package rate.

Could they have achieved this in-house? Possibly, but not in 90 days. Not while their team was managing existing campaigns, supporting sales, and handling the dozen other marketing initiatives competing for attention.

Making the decision

The financial analysis points to a clear framework.

For most VP Marketing leaders at B2B SaaS companies in the $2M-$50M ARR range, the managed service model delivers better financial returns within the first 90 days. The marginal cost savings of DIY evaporate when you factor in slower execution and delayed revenue impact.

Speed matters in AEO. Every week competitors get cited while you remain invisible is a week of lost pipeline. Industry analysts predict a 25% decline in traditional search volume by 2026 due to AI chatbots and virtual agents. The shift is happening now, not in six months when your DIY program finally gains traction.

We're not suggesting DIY AEO never works. For small businesses in niche categories with tight budgets, a focused in-house effort can be cost-effective. But for growth-stage B2B companies where speed to market determines whether you capture or miss the shift in buyer behavior, the ROI equation favors specialists.

This isn't a long-term commitment. Our month-to-month pricing means you can test the managed approach for 90 days, measure actual citation improvements and pipeline impact, then scale based on results.

The hidden cost of DIY isn't the money you spend. It's the revenue you don't capture while you're learning. Over 90 days, that opportunity cost typically exceeds any savings from avoiding an agency retainer.

Request an AI Visibility Audit to benchmark your citation rate across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. We'll show you the exact queries where competitors get cited while you remain invisible, giving you the data to make an informed build-versus-buy decision.

FAQs

What's the minimum budget needed for effective DIY AEO over 90 days?
Budget at least $5,000-$6,000 for tools, training, and the realistic value of 10+ hours per week of personnel time. Most teams underestimate the true cost by focusing only on subscriptions.

Can traditional SEO agencies deliver AEO results comparable to specialists?
Most lack AEO-specific methodology and can't track AI citations, making them poor fits despite premium pricing. They optimize for rankings, not citations.

How long before a DIY AEO effort shows measurable citation improvements?
Expect 4-6 months minimum as your team learns, experiments, and builds sufficient content volume. Managed services typically show results in 4-6 weeks.

What percentage of my content budget should go to AEO versus traditional SEO?
Start by allocating 30-40% to AEO and adjust based on your industry's AI adoption rate. If competitors dominate AI citations in your category, shift faster.

Do managed AEO services require long-term contracts?
Not at Discovered Labs. We operate on month-to-month terms so you can scale based on results without commitment risk.

Key terms glossary

Citation Rate: The percentage of times your brand appears in AI-generated answers for specific buyer-intent queries, measured across platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

CITABLE Framework: Discovered Labs' proprietary methodology for structuring content to improve LLM retrieval, covering Clarity, Identity, Third-party validation, Authority, consistency, freshness, and Entity structure.