Helping a forward-thinking digital agency start conversations with UK SMEs about the future of search

AddPeople is a full-suite digital marketing agency helping small and medium-sized businesses grow through SEO, PPC, paid social, digital PR and lead generation. As the search landscape shifted, with AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity increasingly influencing how buyers discover and shortlist suppliers, AddPeople developed a specialist offer around Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): helping businesses become visible in AI-driven recommendations, not just traditional search results.

The challenge was education as much as outreach. Most SME decision-makers hadn’t yet recognised the gap between their Google visibility and their AI visibility, let alone the commercial risk of being invisible when a buyer asks an AI tool to recommend a supplier in their space.

Harper built a consultative multichannel outreach campaign designed to introduce AddPeople’s AI search offer to the right decision-makers by:

• Targeting SME growth decision-makers: Outreach focused on Founders, MDs, Marketing Directors, Heads of Digital and Heads of Growth at UK SMEs: businesses likely spending on PPC or SEO already, but unaware of the AI visibility gap.
• Leading with insight, not a pitch: Messaging opened with the shift in how buyers research and shortlist suppliers, helping prospects understand the problem before introducing AddPeople’s solution. A consultative tone throughout.
• Using a low-friction CTA: Every touchpoint offered a free AI Visibility Review, a personalised look at how the prospect’s business currently appears in AI search, making it easy to say yes without any immediate commitment.
• Running email and LinkedIn in parallel: A structured dual-channel sequence reached decision-makers across both channels, with consistent messaging reinforcing AddPeople’s positioning as a specialist in this emerging space.

Harper designed a campaign that reframed AI search visibility as a business-critical issue, not a future consideration, for SMEs already investing in digital marketing. Rather than leading with services, every message asked a simple, relevant question: when someone asks AI who to use in your industry, does your business come up?

The free AI Visibility Review served as the entry point, giving prospects a tangible reason to engage and giving the AddPeople team a warm, informed conversation to walk into. Harper handled all prospecting, list building and outreach execution, allowing the AddPeople team to focus on discovery calls and converting interest into clients.

The campaign generated a strong pipeline of qualified conversations with Founders, Marketing Directors and Heads of Digital across UK SMEs. Across email and LinkedIn, the outreach produced dozens of interested responses and active prospects: decision-makers who engaged with the AI visibility message and requested more information or a visibility review.

The campaign reinforced AddPeople’s positioning as an early mover in GEO and AI search, opening doors with businesses beginning to think seriously about how the shift from keyword search to AI recommendation will affect their visibility and growth.

By combining AddPeople’s expertise in AI search with Harper’s targeted outreach, we put a genuinely differentiated offer in front of the SME decision-makers most likely to act on it.