HubSpot increased leads by 1850%, and we asked them how: The AEO playbook

I caught up with Aja Frost to get her thoughts on how other businesses can benefit by optimizing their websites for AEO

by · TechRadar

Features By Owain Williams Published 6 July 2026

(Image credit: Future)

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For over a decade, driving profit from your website was relatively simple. Find the right keywords, optimize your site to rank for them, then convert as many visitors as you can.

But as AI overviews and conversational answer engines continue to replace search engines, traditional clicks from SERPs are rapidly dropping.

Fortunately, this shift isn't a death sentence for websites; in fact, it could be a big opportunity.

I caught up with Aja Frost, Senior Director of Global Growth and Paid at HubSpot, to get some insight into how HubSpot has reshaped its marketing strategy, helping it achieve a massive 1,850% increase in qualified leads from AI and a 3x higher conversion rate compared to traditional search.

Interview with:

Interview with:Aja Frost

Interview by:

Interview by:Owain Williams

With organic sessions and clicks sharply dropping for many websites, how can marketers continue to prove ROI? What are the new baseline metrics businesses should be measuring?

Traffic volume is no longer the right North Star metric. When AI answers a question that includes your brand, you might not see any clicks — but you’ve successfully generated awareness that could convert later that day, week, or month.

The metrics that matter most now are AI search visibility and branded search (awareness), as well as conversion rate, pipeline quality, and revenue. LLM-referred traffic converts around 3x better than traditional search for HubSpot.

With long-form ‘ultimate guides’ now struggling to compete with AI answers, how should teams be pivoting their content strategies to remain competitive?

Start writing for AI search. If an LLM answers the question “What is a CRM” and cites your CRM in the response — because you’ve structured your content in an AI-friendly way, included original data, etc. — you will still ultimately reach the buyer.

Additionally, HubSpot diversified where we showed up, including YouTube, newsletters, and podcasts. Not only do humans still spend a lot of time here, but LLMs train and cite from these sources. Today, 90% of HubSpot’s leads come from non-blog sources, with YouTube leads up 100% and newsletter leads up 90%.

What other things should brands be doing to optimize their websites for conversational AI questions?

Your content needs to answer conversational queries directly and authoritatively.

Think about how your buyers will ask questions to an answer engine, not how they’d type keywords into Google. Your content needs to answer conversational queries directly and authoritatively.

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