PondralPitching the work
Lead with the audit, not the deck. A free baseline audit on the prospect's actual brand (three engines, ten queries, real findings) closes faster than any case study. The audit is the pitch.
Frame AEO as adjacent to SEO, not a replacement. Most prospects already have an SEO retainer; positioning AEO as a complement (different methodology, different deliverables, different KPIs) avoids the "are you saying my SEO agency is wrong?" derailment.
Scoping the retainer
Per-brand pricing scales cleanly. Most agencies land at $3–8K/month per brand for a Growth-tier scope: monthly audit, prioritized gap list, four pieces of source content per month, and a quarterly methodology review.
Build the deliverable around the score trajectory, not the activity log. Clients care that their grade went from C+ to B+, not that you wrote four blog posts. Lead every report with the chart.
Reporting
Use white-labeled exports. Your clients should see "[Agency] AEO Report" not a Pondral logo. Every plan above Free supports this.
Report on three numbers: overall score, citation share-of-voice, and gap-closure rate. These map cleanly to traffic, brand, and execution, the three things every CMO actually cares about.
- The audit is the pitch.
- Score trajectory > activity log.
- Three KPIs: score, share-of-voice, gap-closure.