AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) Manager

(Hybrid | Chicagoland candidates only)

Marcel Digital is an award-winning digital marketing and software development agency established in 2003. Based in Chicago, we partner with mid-market B2B organizations to drive measurable business outcomes through AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), SEO, paid media, web development, and analytics.

We've built a culture of high performers who value authenticity, integrity, accountability, and insight. We invest heavily in learning, collaboration, and craftsmanship, supporting our team with conference attendance, internal training, and daily knowledge sharing.

The annual salary range for this role is $80-$100K.

Position Summary

As an AEO Manager at Marcel Digital, you'll play a critical role in generating qualified leads and driving revenue for B2B clients by making sure they show up — and show up well — inside AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Copilot, and Gemini. Your work will go far beyond visibility for its own sake; you'll build and execute strategies that map directly to bottom-line business outcomes.

This role calls for a blend of strategic acumen and technical implementation, including structured content architecture, entity and schema optimization, and content development built for retrieval and citation by large language models. You'll analyze how brands are currently represented (or missing) in AI-generated answers, identify growth opportunities across the funnel, and implement tailored AEO strategies that align with each client's broader marketing and sales goals. As part of our integrated team, you'll collaborate across paid media, analytics, and development to deliver unified, revenue-driving solutions.

Reports to: Director of SEO & AEO

Role Description

Performance & Strategy Own AEO performance with a revenue growth mindset. You'll drive strategies designed to increase how often, how accurately, and how favorably clients are cited, summarized, or recommended by AI answer engines — and convert that visibility into qualified leads. Every recommendation you make, from entity optimization to structured data, will be rooted in business value and geared toward growth.

Strategic Client Partnership Be a strategic thought partner to our clients. You'll participate in client conversations as an expert and advisor, uncovering the "why" behind the "what," aligning AEO strategy with business objectives, and evolving tactics as answer engines and their retrieval behavior continue to change.

Technical & Content Execution Deliver full-spectrum AEO solutions. From technical audits of AI-bot crawlability and structured data (schema markup, llms.txt, content architecture) to content gap analyses built for direct-answer and citation-worthy formats, your work will be both precise and strategic. You'll blend modern AI-visibility tools, prompt-based testing, and manual expertise to create smart, scalable outcomes.

Client Engagement & Storytelling Make AEO results meaningful. You'll compile insights and reports that not only inform but inspire action, connecting AI-answer visibility and citation performance directly to pipeline growth, sales conversations, and strategic goals.

Innovation & Thought Leadership Lead with curiosity and courage. You'll help push AEO forward, both for our clients and for the agency. From experimenting with new AI platforms to tracking how LLMs source and cite content, you'll keep your finger on the pulse of what's next and make sure our strategies evolve ahead of the curve.

Prioritization Effectively manage multiple client engagements with competing priorities and timelines. You'll evaluate opportunities based on business impact, align efforts to what will drive the greatest return, and clearly communicate tradeoffs both internally and with clients. Your ability to prioritize strategically will ensure consistent progress across accounts without sacrificing quality or performance.

At Marcel we work in teams. Each account will have multiple team members helping drive success. Some may act as thought partners and some will be asked to delegate work to. A strong candidate will know how to leverage their whole team to get results.

Qualifications & Ideal Fit

• 1-3+ years of hands-on experience in AEO / AI search optimization, ideally within a B2B agency or demand-gen environment. A background in technical SEO or content strategy is a valuable foundation, but this role is focused on AI-answer visibility rather than traditional organic search.
• Proven ability to connect AEO performance, citation frequency, AI-driven referral traffic, share of voice in AI-generated answers, with lead gen and revenue outcomes.
• Deep understanding of how AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini) retrieve, summarize, and cite content, including entity optimization, structured data, and content architecture built for LLM readability.
• Proficiency with AI-visibility and citation-tracking platforms (e.g., Profound, Otterly.ai, Peec AI, or Semrush's AI visibility toolkit), plus GA4 and Looker Studio for measuring AI-referral traffic and downstream outcomes.
• Comfort navigating CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce is a plus.
• Experience using AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.) both as the platforms you're optimizing for and as working tools to accelerate content creation and workflow.
• Strong strategic thinking and storytelling ability — you know how to frame AEO success in the language of business.
• Independent, self-motivated, and comfortable managing multiple projects across industries.
• Experience working on a team, for both thought partnership and delegation.

Benefits

In exchange for your contributions, Marcel offers a competitive salary, great benefits, and a casual, laid-back, and fun work environment. But more than that, you get the autonomy to work independently and solve the problems that get in your way. You get a voice in the development process and an environment that encourages you to master the latest trends.

Are you curious, committed, and adaptable with a passion for learning quickly and finding creative solutions?

If the answer is yes, and your skills and career aspirations are in line with ours, we very much want to hear from you right now! We have a friendly and transparent hiring process!