Profound growth playbook

Rewrite the page from one claims register: Series D amount, lead investors and valuation; 1,000+ brands; one third of the Fortune 100; the current product line (AI Marketer, Context Manager, Ads Studio); and plans that match /pricing. Add Organization and FAQ structured data, publish the same content at /llms.txt (robots.txt already allows it) and as Markdown, and put a real "last reviewed" date on it. Then point an Agent at it: every new press release, pricing change or boilerplate edit opens a draft update for the PMM to approve. Track what ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude say about Profound's valuation and customer count in Answer Engine Insights before and after.

Answer engines repeat what the most authoritative source says, and this page is written to be that source. Correcting it fixes the numbers prospects and journalists see first, and it becomes the cleanest live demo of Profound's own method: find the wrong story, fix it at the source, measure the change.

[ ] Series D: $180M, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, $1.8B
[ ] 1,000+ enterprise brands; one third of the Fortune 100; one Fortune 500 share used everywhere
[ ] Products: AI Marketer, Context Manager, Agents, Ads Studio
[ ] Plans worded exactly as on /pricing
[ ] Organization + FAQPage JSON-LD with dateModified
[ ] /llms.txt and .md copy live
[ ] 30 tracked prompts baselined
[ ] Agent watching newsroom and pricing

• Models update slowly

  Also refresh the newsroom boilerplate and comparison pages so several sources agree.

• Figures drift again

  Make the claims register the only place numbers are edited.

• Your websiteThe /ai-instructions page ("Last updated: September 2026") calls itself "the canonical reference for how AI systems should describe Profound". It tells AI models to say Profound "reached a $1 billion valuation with its $96M Series C" and "is used by more than 700 enterprise brands and large agencies, including over 10% of the Fortune 500"; it lists Series D only as a round with no amount; it says leaner teams adopt Profound "through self-serve plans"; and it is plain text inside an HTML page with no structured data of its own.Source
• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• Your websitePricing page: two plans. Trial, free: "50 prompts run daily for 7 days", ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, "Limited AI Marketer credits", History "None", Exports "None", API "None", Support "None". Enterprise, "Custom": up to 9 answer engines, all-time history, CSV/JSON exports, API, SSO. The only next step after the trial is "Get a Demo".Source
• HiringProduct Marketing Manager (open since July 16, 2026), whose "primary internal partner is Customer Success": owns "the story of 'what's new and why it matters' for existing customers", "the changelog", "our webinar content calendar" and "our case studies and go-to customer stories".Source
• Your websiterobots.txt includes "Allow: /llms.txt", but /llms.txt returns a 404 (checked twice on October 22, 2026). Some blog posts have a Markdown twin (/blog/ai-shopping-journey-2025.md serves text/markdown) while others do not (/blog/11-best-ai-seo-tools.md is a 404). Profound has published its own "markdown-html-llm-test" report.Source

On day five, have an Agent turn the trial's own data into the "custom report of your brand's visibility" that the contact-sales page promises: share of voice, top missing prompts, cited competitors. Email it, offer a 20-minute review with the AE who owns that segment, and let trial users keep read-only access to their week of history for 30 days. Score trials by usage and company size so the busiest enterprise trials get a call the same day.

A trial user who has seen their own gaps is the warmest lead Profound has. Losing their data on day seven throws that away; handing it to an AE turns it into the opening of the sales call.

• Report feels automated

  Have the AE add one line of their own before sending.

• Small teams flood the queue

  Route low scores to a self-serve sequence.

• #1 Your AI-instructions page still tells ChatGPT that Profound is a $1 billion, 700-brand company

• Your websitePricing page: two plans. Trial, free: "50 prompts run daily for 7 days", ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, "Limited AI Marketer credits", History "None", Exports "None", API "None", Support "None". Enterprise, "Custom": up to 9 answer engines, all-time history, CSV/JSON exports, API, SSO. The only next step after the trial is "Get a Demo".Source
• Your websiteProfound's own "Profound vs. Peec AI" article lists as a Profound con: "The free trial covers 50 prompts on three engines for seven days; full engine coverage and Prompt Volumes come with an Enterprise plan."Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source
• HiringMarketing Operations (open since July 9, 2026): "campaign taxonomy and UTM standards", "lead routing that doesn't slip through CRM gaps", "Support the lead flow process to ensure leads are picked up quickly by sales", "Help build out our AB testing framework", HubSpot or Marketo plus Salesforce.Source
• Your websiteFree entry points: the AEO Report ("Get your free AEO Report today", three engines), the Profound Index ("a free, publicly available leaderboard that ranks brands by how often they appear in AI Search across their category", "50+ industries", "updated weekly") and /try-agents ("Try out one of our most popular agents for free today"). The contact-sales page promises a "Custom report of your brand's visibility".Source

For each target account, pull its Index category rank, the rival ranked just above it and the top prompt it misses. Put those three facts in the first email and link to its Index page. Accounts not in the Index get a free AEO Report link instead. Track replies by whether the brand is above or below its main rival.

Marketers react to being behind a named competitor, and the data is already public, so the opener is both personal and verifiable.

• Rank changes weekly

  Pull the facts on the day each email is sent.

• Your websiteFree entry points: the AEO Report ("Get your free AEO Report today", three engines), the Profound Index ("a free, publicly available leaderboard that ranks brands by how often they appear in AI Search across their category", "50+ industries", "updated weekly") and /try-agents ("Try out one of our most popular agents for free today"). The contact-sales page promises a "Custom report of your brand's visibility".Source
• HiringSales and success build-out, all open now: a Sales Development Manager (NYC, London or SF) to run "personalized, structured, high-volume outreach"; a GTM Enablement Program Manager (posted October 9, 2026); a Manager, Scaled Engagement (September 10); Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Managers and Account Executives; and a Value Consultant (August 25).Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source

Generate /llms.txt from the CMS (products, pricing, customers, research, comparisons), serve a .md twin for every blog post, article and report, and link each twin with a rel="alternate" tag. Add a build check that fails if a page has no twin.

It closes a visible gap on the site of the AEO category leader and gives AI crawlers clean copies of the pages Profound most wants cited.

• Duplicate content

  Canonical the .md twin to the HTML page.

• Your websiterobots.txt includes "Allow: /llms.txt", but /llms.txt returns a 404 (checked twice on October 22, 2026). Some blog posts have a Markdown twin (/blog/ai-shopping-journey-2025.md serves text/markdown) while others do not (/blog/11-best-ai-seo-tools.md is a 404). Profound has published its own "markdown-html-llm-test" report.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your websiteThe /ai-instructions page ("Last updated: September 2026") calls itself "the canonical reference for how AI systems should describe Profound". It tells AI models to say Profound "reached a $1 billion valuation with its $96M Series C" and "is used by more than 700 enterprise brands and large agencies, including over 10% of the Fortune 500"; it lists Series D only as a round with no amount; it says leaner teams adopt Profound "through self-serve plans"; and it is plain text inside an HTML page with no structured data of its own.Source

Pick one current figure for each claim, update the job-post intro, newsroom boilerplate, homepage, pricing, comparison articles and the AI-instructions page, and add a footnote or "as of" date. Make the claims register from idea 1 the single source and let the PMM own it.

Consistent figures read as credible to buyers, investors and models; conflicting ones invite the "which is it?" question in an enterprise review.

• Numbers go stale again

  Use an "as of" month next to each figure.

• #1 Your AI-instructions page still tells ChatGPT that Profound is a $1 billion, 700-brand company

• HiringSales and success build-out, all open now: a Sales Development Manager (NYC, London or SF) to run "personalized, structured, high-volume outreach"; a GTM Enablement Program Manager (posted October 9, 2026); a Manager, Scaled Engagement (September 10); Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Managers and Account Executives; and a Value Consultant (August 25).Source
• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• Your websiteThe /ai-instructions page ("Last updated: September 2026") calls itself "the canonical reference for how AI systems should describe Profound". It tells AI models to say Profound "reached a $1 billion valuation with its $96M Series C" and "is used by more than 700 enterprise brands and large agencies, including over 10% of the Fortune 500"; it lists Series D only as a round with no amount; it says leaner teams adopt Profound "through self-serve plans"; and it is plain text inside an HTML page with no structured data of its own.Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source

Feed the Community page from the same Luma calendar as Zero Click, partner events and webinars, show the next three events with city and date, and add "host a meetup" for ambassadors. Add a monthly online session so the list is never empty.

An empty calendar on a community page signals a quiet community; a full one turns curious marketers into attendees and attendees into pipeline.

• Ambassador quality varies

  Give a starter kit and review each event.

• Your websiteThe Community page ("the home for Marketing Engineers") shows "No upcoming events yet. Check back later" while the site banner promotes the Zero Click World Tour in London, Sydney and Singapore. The navigation links to Profound University and to an external Marketing Engineer Job Board at marketingengineer.jobs; an Ambassador program "is open".Source
• HiringEvent Marketer, London (posted October 7, 2026): owns "tradeshow and Tier 1 event presence across Europe", reports "meetings held, pipeline influenced, cost per lead", sets up "lead capture" with Marketing Ops for "clean, fast post-event follow-up", and will "Adapt materials and communications for local audiences, in the local language where you can"; a second European language is "strongly preferred".Source
• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source

Build /solutions/financial-services: the money-questions report, Plaid, Aleph and CRS stories, compliance and accuracy tooling (fact checking, sentiment, SSO, SOC 2), and a prompt list for banking, cards and fintech. Run LinkedIn ads to it for finance marketing leaders.

Regulated buyers want proof from their own industry and a vendor that talks about accuracy and review, which Profound already has.

• Compliance claims

  Have legal review every line about regulation.

• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your websiteThe /ai-instructions page ("Last updated: September 2026") calls itself "the canonical reference for how AI systems should describe Profound". It tells AI models to say Profound "reached a $1 billion valuation with its $96M Series C" and "is used by more than 700 enterprise brands and large agencies, including over 10% of the Fortune 500"; it lists Series D only as a round with no amount; it says leaner teams adopt Profound "through self-serve plans"; and it is plain text inside an HTML page with no structured data of its own.Source
• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source

Publish /solutions/b2b-software: pipeline from AI referrals, comparison-page defence, documentation visibility and agent templates for SaaS marketing, with the SaaS stories as proof and a "what buyers ask AI about your category" sample.

Software buyers research vendors in AI assistants heavily, and Profound has the proof to show it; a dedicated page turns scattered stories into a segment.

• Overlap with AEO Teams page

  Link both ways and keep the industry angle.

• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source

Make a case study part of every forward-deployed engagement plan: baseline at kickoff, measured result at 90 days, approval path agreed upfront. Publish anonymised "Fortune 100 retailer" stories when names are not allowed.

Enterprise buyers want peers at their scale, and the people who can document that proof are being hired now.

• Approvals take months

  Start with anonymised versions.

• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• HiringProduct Marketing Manager (open since July 16, 2026), whose "primary internal partner is Customer Success": owns "the story of 'what's new and why it matters' for existing customers", "the changelog", "our webinar content calendar" and "our case studies and go-to customer stories".Source

Each month, publish the best workflow from a customer engagement as a template with the outcome it produced (hours saved, pages fixed, citations gained), a short video and a "deploy this" button for trial and Enterprise users.

Templates with proven results sell the outcome, help trial users find value in seven days and make the team's work scale beyond its headcount.

• Results vary by brand

  Show ranges, not promises.

• #2 Turn the last day of the 7-day trial into a handoff, not a dead end

• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source
• Your websitePricing page: two plans. Trial, free: "50 prompts run daily for 7 days", ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, "Limited AI Marketer credits", History "None", Exports "None", API "None", Support "None". Enterprise, "Custom": up to 9 answer engines, all-time history, CSV/JSON exports, API, SSO. The only next step after the trial is "Get a Demo".Source

Publish /features/ads-studio: how paid and organic AI visibility work together, design-partner results, the pixel and a waitlist form that asks spend, engines and current AI-visibility gaps. Use the answers to order onboarding and to plan the beta-to-paid move.

A clear page captures demand from the launch coverage and gives the one solutions manager a ranked queue instead of an inbox.

• Demand outruns capacity

  Set expectations on the waitlist page.

• HiringAds Solutions Manager (posted September 23, 2026): "Ads Studio, our paid visibility product built on top of our core organic visibility platform", "is in its design-partner phase: a small group of committed advertisers are live, and a much larger pipeline is waiting to come on next"; the role covers "pixel implementation, bidding, campaign setup, reporting, and the broader ad ecosystem inside ChatGPT" and will "manage the beta-to-paid transition"; "There is no established playbook for this yet."Source
• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source

Join those signals at the account level in the CRM, weight them by later pipeline, and trigger 1:1 plays (AE note with the account's report) and 1:many plays (LinkedIn audiences) above a threshold. Review weights monthly against closed deals.

First-party signals of a brand checking its own AI visibility are more predictive than bought intent, and they already exist.

• Noisy signals

  Require two signals before a 1:1 play.

• #2 Turn the last day of the 7-day trial into a handoff, not a dead end

• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source
• Your websiteFree entry points: the AEO Report ("Get your free AEO Report today", three engines), the Profound Index ("a free, publicly available leaderboard that ranks brands by how often they appear in AI Search across their category", "50+ industries", "updated weekly") and /try-agents ("Try out one of our most popular agents for free today"). The contact-sales page promises a "Custom report of your brand's visibility".Source
• HiringMarketing Operations (open since July 9, 2026): "campaign taxonomy and UTM standards", "lead routing that doesn't slip through CRM gaps", "Support the lead flow process to ensure leads are picked up quickly by sales", "Help build out our AB testing framework", HubSpot or Marketo plus Salesforce.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source

Test a card-paid plan (for example 150 prompts, five engines, history and exports) for teams under a set size, with in-product upgrade to Enterprise. Route large companies that sign up to an AE.

It captures teams who will never take a demo, gives the scaled team a pool to grow, and keeps smaller rivals from owning the entry point.

• Enterprise deals downgrade

  Cap seats and engines; keep Enterprise features exclusive.

• Your websiteThe /ai-instructions page ("Last updated: September 2026") calls itself "the canonical reference for how AI systems should describe Profound". It tells AI models to say Profound "reached a $1 billion valuation with its $96M Series C" and "is used by more than 700 enterprise brands and large agencies, including over 10% of the Fortune 500"; it lists Series D only as a round with no amount; it says leaner teams adopt Profound "through self-serve plans"; and it is plain text inside an HTML page with no structured data of its own.Source
• Your websitePricing page: two plans. Trial, free: "50 prompts run daily for 7 days", ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, "Limited AI Marketer credits", History "None", Exports "None", API "None", Support "None". Enterprise, "Custom": up to 9 answer engines, all-time history, CSV/JSON exports, API, SSO. The only next step after the trial is "Get a Demo".Source
• Competitor researchRivals' own sites: Peec AI, "AI Search Analytics for Marketing Teams", sells Starter, Pro and Advanced monthly plans by sign-up and says "Trusted by 3500+ brands and agencies"; Scrunch, "The AI Customer Experience Platform", which will "deliver content directly to AI agents"; AthenaHQ, "Agents to Win on AI Search"; Evertune, "Own the AI customer journey".See the research Source
• HiringSales and success build-out, all open now: a Sales Development Manager (NYC, London or SF) to run "personalized, structured, high-volume outreach"; a GTM Enablement Program Manager (posted October 9, 2026); a Manager, Scaled Engagement (September 10); Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Managers and Account Executives; and a Value Consultant (August 25).Source

Rank partners by sourced deals, give the top five co-branded AEO Reports and joint case studies, list Profound on AWS Marketplace for committed-spend buyers, and sign one GSI practice with a joint offer.

Agencies and integrators already advise the brands Profound sells to, and marketplace listings remove procurement friction for enterprises.

• Channel conflict

  Clear deal registration rules.

• HiringVP, Strategic Partnerships (open since June 19, 2026): "direct accountability for partnership-sourced pipeline and revenue"; build "a Global Systems Integrator (GSI) program" ("Accenture, Deloitte, Bain, Cap Gemini"), grow the agency ecosystem with "holding companies and independent digital agencies", and run "cloud marketplaces including AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, and Azure".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source

For each European event, publish a local-language landing page and a country Index snapshot, scan badges into the CRM, and have an Agent send a personal follow-up with the visitor's AEO Report within 24 hours.

Local language and fast follow-up raise meeting rates, and the event budget then shows pipeline.

• Data privacy rules

  Consent at badge scan.

• HiringEvent Marketer, London (posted October 7, 2026): owns "tradeshow and Tier 1 event presence across Europe", reports "meetings held, pipeline influenced, cost per lead", sets up "lead capture" with Marketing Ops for "clean, fast post-event follow-up", and will "Adapt materials and communications for local audiences, in the local language where you can"; a second European language is "strongly preferred".Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• HiringMarketing Operations (open since July 9, 2026): "campaign taxonomy and UTM standards", "lead routing that doesn't slip through CRM gaps", "Support the lead flow process to ensure leads are picked up quickly by sales", "Help build out our AB testing framework", HubSpot or Marketo plus Salesforce.Source

Replace a generic changelog with a weekly email per account: one new feature, one finding from that brand's own data it could act on with that feature, and a one-click template. Flag accounts that open but never act for their engagement manager.

Personal relevance gets features used, and feature use drives renewals and upsell.

• Email fatigue

  Let users choose weekly or monthly.

• HiringProduct Marketing Manager (open since July 16, 2026), whose "primary internal partner is Customer Success": owns "the story of 'what's new and why it matters' for existing customers", "the changelog", "our webinar content calendar" and "our case studies and go-to customer stories".Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source
• HiringSales and success build-out, all open now: a Sales Development Manager (NYC, London or SF) to run "personalized, structured, high-volume outreach"; a GTM Enablement Program Manager (posted October 9, 2026); a Manager, Scaled Engagement (September 10); Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Managers and Account Executives; and a Value Consultant (August 25).Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source

Make a short certification part of onboarding for mid-market accounts, track it against usage, award badges for LinkedIn, and give certified users early access to templates.

Trained users use more of the product and become internal champions, without adding headcount.

• Low completion

  Keep the course under an hour.

• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source
• Your websiteThe Community page ("the home for Marketing Engineers") shows "No upcoming events yet. Check back later" while the site banner promotes the Zero Click World Tour in London, Sydney and Singapore. The navigation links to Profound University and to an external Marketing Engineer Job Board at marketingengineer.jobs; an Ambassador program "is open".Source
• HiringSales and success build-out, all open now: a Sales Development Manager (NYC, London or SF) to run "personalized, structured, high-volume outreach"; a GTM Enablement Program Manager (posted October 9, 2026); a Manager, Scaled Engagement (September 10); Mid-Market and Enterprise Account Managers and Account Executives; and a Value Consultant (August 25).Source

Track every company that posts on the board (and on major job sites) a Marketing Engineer role, alert the account owner, and offer the hiring manager a free certification seat for the new hire and a template pack for their first 90 days.

Hiring for the role is a budget and intent signal, and helping the new hire succeed makes Profound their first tool.

• Feels intrusive

  Lead with the free seat, not a pitch.

• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source
• Your websiteThe Community page ("the home for Marketing Engineers") shows "No upcoming events yet. Check back later" while the site banner promotes the Zero Click World Tour in London, Sydney and Singapore. The navigation links to Profound University and to an external Marketing Engineer Job Board at marketingengineer.jobs; an Ambassador program "is open".Source
• HiringMarketing Engineer, Demand Generation (posted October 1, 2026): "Close the gaps in conversion. Find and fix funnel leaks. Systematize how leads get scored, routed, and handed to Sales so nothing sits waiting on a human"; "Build a proprietary intent model from scratch and support the automation of 1:1 and 1:many campaigns"; "Build lifecycle systems that onboard customers and drive NDR"; owned channels "LinkedIn, Meta, Google, CTV".Source

Release the benchmark openly with a public leaderboard of frontier models and agent setups, invite rivals and labs to submit, and publish quarterly results with methodology.

Benchmarks earn press, citations and credibility with technical buyers, and place Profound at the centre of the category beyond AEO.

• Results embarrass partners

  Pre-brief model providers.

• Your newsroomPress release, September 15, 2026: Profound raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; "Profound now serves over 1,000 enterprise brands"; "over one third of the Fortune 100"; the boilerplate says "used by 16% of the Fortune 500". Ads Studio is named as "Profound's latest product", and the money funds an applied AI lab building "a benchmark to test how far AI can go in complex marketing assignments".Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source
• Competitor researchRivals' own sites: Peec AI, "AI Search Analytics for Marketing Teams", sells Starter, Pro and Advanced monthly plans by sign-up and says "Trusted by 3500+ brands and agencies"; Scrunch, "The AI Customer Experience Platform", which will "deliver content directly to AI agents"; AthenaHQ, "Agents to Win on AI Search"; Evertune, "Own the AI customer journey".See the research Source

Package agency mode into a product: client workspaces, white-label AEO reports, partner billing and margins, and a certified-agency directory that sends leads to partners.

Each agency brings many brands, and a directory gives Profound a referral engine it controls.

• Agencies want lower prices

  Tie discounts to volume and certification.

• HiringVP, Strategic Partnerships (open since June 19, 2026): "direct accountability for partnership-sourced pipeline and revenue"; build "a Global Systems Integrator (GSI) program" ("Accenture, Deloitte, Bain, Cap Gemini"), grow the agency ecosystem with "holding companies and independent digital agencies", and run "cloud marketplaces including AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, and Azure".Source
• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• HiringForward Deployed Marketing Engineer (posted October 7, 2026) and Manager, Forward Deployed Marketing Engineers (posted October 8): the team "brings Marketing Engineering to the world's biggest brands and our agency and consulting partners", embeds "often onsite", is "accountable for: adoption driven through use cases your customers find useful", and must "Turn successful applications into templates, training and playbooks that customers, partners and colleagues can reuse". Profound "named this role" at Zero Click San Francisco in April 2026 and "hundreds have been certified through Profound University".Source

Set budgets for HTML size, JavaScript and largest-content time, check them on every deploy, slim the animated homepage demo and lazy-load the lower sections.

The site keeps getting heavier as features ship; a budget keeps it fast for buyers and crawlers alike.

• Design pushback

  Keep the demo, load it later.

• PageSpeed testGoogle PageSpeed / Chrome UX Report for tryprofound.com (October 22, 2026), real Chrome visitors at the 75th percentile: main content in 2.4 s, taps respond in 151 ms, layout shift 0.04, so all three Core Web Vitals pass, but the main-content time is 20% slower than a year ago and sits just under the 2.5 s limit. The homepage HTML alone is about 500 KB.Source
• Your websiteHomepage: H1 "The AI marketing platform to win in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini..."; "Enterprise capabilities trusted by a third of the Fortune 100"; "200+ Integrations"; no hreflang tags. The customers page reports "235,000+ Unique Agents built", "120,000+ Hours saved" and "4x More referrals from Answer Engines".Source

Repeat the format for back-to-school, travel season and the new year, send each category's results to retail target accounts, and turn the series into a recurring retail webinar.

Seasonal, category-level data gives retail sellers a reason to call four times a year.

• Data repetition

  Add one new angle per season.

• Your websiteSitemap (682 URLs, checked October 22, 2026): 217 blog posts, 51 articles including 14 "profound-vs" comparisons (Adobe, Ahrefs, AirOps, AthenaHQ, Bluefish, BrightEdge, Conductor, Evertune, Otterly, Peec AI, Rankability, Scrunch, Semrush, Writesonic), 62 agent templates, 48 integration pages, 34 webinars, 21 customer stories (tagged mostly Mid-market; Enterprise stories are MongoDB and Optro), 19 partner pages, seven solution pages (Agencies, Retail, AEO Teams, Content Teams, PR Teams, Travel & Hospitality, Pharma) and no page for financial services or B2B software; a 10-page Black Friday Index; one Portuguese-language report on prompts in Brazil; no Ads Studio product page.Source
• Your websiteFree entry points: the AEO Report ("Get your free AEO Report today", three engines), the Profound Index ("a free, publicly available leaderboard that ranks brands by how often they appear in AI Search across their category", "50+ industries", "updated weekly") and /try-agents ("Try out one of our most popular agents for free today"). The contact-sales page promises a "Custom report of your brand's visibility".Source
• HiringProduct Marketing Manager (open since July 16, 2026), whose "primary internal partner is Customer Success": owns "the story of 'what's new and why it matters' for existing customers", "the changelog", "our webinar content calendar" and "our case studies and go-to customer stories".Source