What should the CMO approve now?

Approve a question and an evidence standard before approving a new category of spend. For a US B2B software team, our recommended sequence is:

1. Inspect existing native reporting and account entitlements.
2. Define a commercially relevant, buyer-owned prompt panel.
3. Test measurement quality using the same brief across shortlisted providers.
4. Diagnose technical, factual, editorial and external-source issues separately.
5. Fund bounded implementation with an accountable owner.
6. Review comparable evidence before expanding the programme.

A monitoring tool can be the right purchase without being an implementation solution. An agency can be the right delivery partner without being the sole judge of its own results. And “no new supplier yet” can be the correct decision when the evidence or delivery capacity is missing.

The best AI search visibility option is the one that resolves the buyer’s next decision with inspectable evidence—not the one that produces the largest prompt count or most flattering score.