During my recent family trip to Japan, I had a few experiences where I thought companies could have done a better job of providing easy-to-find and relatively straightforward answers to my questions. Since I did not get the answers I wanted from their website or Google, I often tried Chatgpt and other AI tools to get precisely what I was looking for. On the train from Nagoya to Tokyo, I started writing a rant about how poorly companies answer the most common questions people ask. In many cases, they are aware of these questions and the need to answer them, but there are many barriers, from legal requirements to brand teams to aesthetics, that keep them from actually providing the answers. This is when I started to modify an old article on having a Keyword Czar to “Do you need a VP of Answers?”
Getting writer’s block on how to position this argument, I was scrolling through LinkedIn when I came across Pete Blackshaw’s article on how AI is transforming search and powering an Answer Economy. Pete references the “Great Answer Divide,” stating that brands are “stuck with rigid, campaign-driven content structures that cannot keep pace with consumer expectations for immediate, accurate, real-time and contextual information.”
Pete is dead on with his statement about brand content, precisely what I have experienced. I have ranted for years that the more “creative and brand forward” the company is, the less likely it will have the content consumers need to make decisions. Pete argues that this is not a technology issue but rather a “response capability,” with many brands “relying on static FAQ and outdated content strategies.” Beyond just the campaign focus of content, various sales prevention teams (legal and creative) prevent adding this tedious or potentially liability-triggering content or try to bury it in the depths of customer support areas. In one case, I found more effort was put into the multiple disclaimers beneath a company’s size chart in case something was not to exact dimensions than making the size chart helpful.
Featured Snippets and AI Answer Engines
Consumers increasingly seek quick, accurate, and tailored responses to their queries, not wanting to sift through marketing copy, ads, and non-related calls to action. Google was the first to try to capitalize on this need for quick answers and launched featured snippets. Featured snippets, also called “rich snippets, are those short paragraphs, carousels, or results of calculations that directly answer someone’s question without requiring them to click.
This created a new opportunity and challenge for SEO teams as brands wanted to capture these new “end caps” and ensure they were at the top of the search results pages. While some companies spent millions of dollars creating pages of definitions and quick answers to leapfrog to the top of the search results, others did not want to simply give the answer and lose that traffic, and others wrestled with adding that content to their websites.
For example, one multinational spent over $1 million creating tens of thousands of pages representing every possible concept related to their business to capture this coveted spot. Conversely, a former client was frustrated that spam sites were answering some of their most popular questions, yet the product and legal teams would not add content to the website to allow them to answer the questions about their products. Ultimately, they said it was buried in their customer service pages, prefixed with more than a dozen disclaimers, preventing it from being considered the answer.
Over the past few years, Search engines like Bing and Google have attempted to leverage AI to power more robust answers to their question as well as what they may ask next. These enhancements to the traditional search results coupled with the growth or true AI Answer engines like Chatgpt, Perplexity, Gemini, and others. Companies must adapt to this new environment to remain competitive. Creating a VP of Answers role can be a strategic move to capitalize on this trend and drive business growth.
The Business Opportunity of the Answers Economy
The best breakdown of the Answers Economy and how it differs from the Recommendation Economy that preceded it comes from Ashish Bhatia of Microsoft in his LinkedIn article Welcome to the Answer Economy. The most significant change, Ashish argues, is that previous Search Engines and others recommended various answers sourced through links and ads to other websites. With the new Answer approach, these tools, and new ones, will attempt to “reduce friction” to answer these questions directly, often using the information from their aforementioned link sources, bypassing the need to visit them. This has resulted in yet another disclaimer that SEO is dead and the need to focus on top-of-the-funnel awareness advertising.
A hot-off-the-press report from SEMRush analyzed 80 million click stream records to understand the impact of ChatGPT Search results. They argue that Chatgpt Search is reshaping how people search for information. An interesting takeaway was that only 30% of the queries fell into the traditional searcher intent buckets, and 70% were classified as having “unknown intent.” The authors suggest that “users are finding new ways to solve problems and gather information.” This could be why the average prompt length of 23 words enables consumers to ask a more detailed question, hoping to get better and more complete answers than just a list of links to overly optimized pages. The research also found that 46 percent of users enabled the Search GPT function to pull external search data. If consumers can ask more complex questions and hope to get better and more detailed answers, who in the organization will drive the needed organizational changes to ensure that the brands are adequately represented?
Setting the Stage for a VP of Answers
The need for more detailed answers and richer information will require companies to rethink their content and web strategies. Some I have spoken to are unsure of a focus on answer engines, citing a lack of traffic and sales potential discourages them from “wasting resources” on this new “black hole.” Companies need to focus on the business impact of not being presented in these new results, especially if they are a major player. What is the risk to the business of not being in the consideration set of results? I give an example of this later in this article.
Many years ago, at my former agency, Global Strategies, we recommended the unique role of Keyword Czar to our CPG clients. This person’s job would be to collect and mine every keyword and concept related to their portfolio of products. They would then classify them into various categories, opportunities, and consumer interests and align them to relevant content. We argued that by centralizing this insight, you could understand the “voice of the consumer,” their needs and wants, and how they made product purchase decisions.
None followed our recommendation for an internal role but gladly paid us to do the work for them. Creating what we called Consumer Interest Models. The analysis identified numerous content gaps across product lines. During my time at GSI, this analysis identified nearly a dozen product spinoffs and highlighted unique consumer needs and wants that justified the creation of focused online communities that still exist with these brands today. Despite the volume of insights and the growing client investments in the analysis, we had constant pushback from brand teams to keep the content and messages related to campaign talking points.
As noted in Pete’s article, not much has changed, and still, brands do not do a good job of answering questions, and for them to be successful, this must change. By having a person who focuses on the entire buyer’s journey, understands the questions, and knows how to answer them in an AI-driven environment, we can be sure that the answers needed by prospects and customers will be easily found.
Due to these sensitivities and the complexities of brand companies, the new VP of Answers must be in a senior and global role, reporting to the C-Suite, similar to a Growth Manager in tech companies. This role will be the central knowledge point about the company’s products and services. This level and executive mandate will empower them to work across the organization to identify consumer needs and related questions and develop compelling content that will be easy for Answer Engines to ingest, process, and present to consumers.
Key Responsibilities of a VP of Answers
So what precisely does its never-before-seen role do? This is why this person should come from inside the organization. Their institutional knowledge of the products and how the company works will give them an advantage in wrangling all the key players. In my vision, they would be the knowledge keeper with the key responsibilities of collecting, managing, refining, and distributing the information. This will require them to focus on these key responsibilities.
- Content Curation: Oversee creating and managing high-quality, relevant content that addresses customer questions and needs.
- Data Analytics: Utilize advanced analytics to identify trending topics, customer pain points, and emerging opportunities for content creation.
- Cross-Departmental Collaboration: Work closely with marketing, sales, customer service, and product development teams to ensure consistent messaging and accurate information across all channels.
- Technology Integration: Implement and manage AI-powered tools and platforms to catalog and enable easy updates, leverage this information repository for website integration, and ultimately enable personalized answers at scale.
- Performance Metrics: Develop and track KPIs related to customer engagement, satisfaction, and conversion rates tied to answer-based content. Use these insights for product improvement, content creation, and further communication enhancements.
Benefits of a VP of Answers
- First-Mover advantage: By getting ahead of this growing trend, brands can make the changes necessary to be included in not only Google’s AI answers but also the proliferation of AI-driven search, recommendation, and answer tools.
- Improved Customer Experience: Companies can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing quick, accurate answers.
- Increased Efficiency: Centralized management of answer-based content can reduce redundancies and streamline information delivery across the organization.
- Competitive Advantage: Companies that excel in providing answers will stand out in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Insights gathered from customer queries can inform product development, marketing strategies, and overall business direction.
- Revenue Growth: Companies can increase conversions and drive sales by addressing customer needs more effectively.
Selling the Role to Stakeholders
Pete’s article also inspired John Sclokla’s article on How Businesses should prepare for this Answer Economy where he outlines key initiatives that companies must undertake not to get left behind.
- See how or if your products or services appear in popular models
- Map the trends for your consumers. Are they using them?
- Understand how and why you align with the answers.
Most companies will be shocked at how they are presented in the AI search results. John’s third action suggests asking the source to “choose one and defend your choice.” If your product or service was not selected, I recommend a follow-up, if you dare, “Why was “X Brand” not considered?
For example, I was looking for a travel C02 detector and had already picked a model based on size, reviews, and price. For this article, I asked Perplexity for its recommendation. It recommended a different model, so I asked why. In the screen capture, the five reasons were all related to a lack of information on the model’s features and performance.
For the model Perplexity selected, the primary source was an overly detailed webpage written for Google ranking, which was also the source referenced for the other pages cited. I had considered this product but went for the additional features of the different product. I may have chosen the other product if I had only relied on Perplexity’s detailed recommendation. That simple question of “Why was brand X not selected?” presented with a lack of information to make an informed decision is the perfect example of why companies need to ensure that all the required information is available, indexed, and in the consideration set of the recommendation engines. This is far more than just the need for aggressive Search Engine Optimization.
A few other elements will be needed to sell in this new role that no one has ever considered.
- Pilot Project: Propose a pilot program or phased implementation to test the concept and gather data on its effectiveness.
- Showcase ROI Potential: Leverage the pilot and projections demonstrating how improved answer management can increase customer engagement and revenue.
- Address Pain Points: Identify current challenges in managing customer queries and explain how a VP of Answers can solve these issues, especially across brands and markets.
- Align with Business Goals: Demonstrate how this role supports broader organizational objectives, such as digital transformation or customer-centric initiatives.
By framing the VP of Answers role as a strategic response to the evolving answer economy, companies can position themselves at the forefront of customer engagement and drive long-term success in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
