Most business websites explain what the business does.
An accountant might have pages for:
- Accounts
- Corporation Tax
- Payroll
- Bookkeeping
- Management Accounts
A solicitor might have pages covering different areas of law.
A marketing agency might have pages for SEO, PPC, social media and web design.
Those pages are useful. Customers need to know which services a business provides.
But there is another way of looking at website content that I think could become increasingly important as people use AI systems such as Google AI Mode and ChatGPT to find businesses.
Instead of only asking:
What services do we provide?
Ask:
What situations cause somebody to need those services in the first place?
I call these Business Problem Scenarios.
What Is a Business Problem Scenario?
A Business Problem Scenario is a page built around a realistic problem or situation faced by a potential customer.
Rather than simply saying:
We provide management accounts.
an accountancy firm might publish something such as:
My Business Is Profitable, So Why Am I Constantly Short of Cash?
The page could explain:
- how a profitable business can still experience cash-flow problems;
- the effect of slow-paying customers;
- how increasing stock levels can absorb cash;
- why rapid growth can make the problem worse;
- what information the accountant would examine;
- how management accounts and cash-flow forecasts might help;
- what practical steps could follow.
The service being offered hasn’t changed.
But the business has explained that service through the eyes of somebody experiencing an actual problem.
That distinction could be important.
Customers Don’t Always Search for the Name of a Service
Traditional website structures tend to reflect how businesses organise their services.
Customers don’t necessarily think that way.
Someone might not ask an AI system:
Accountants providing working-capital advisory services in Birmingham.
They might ask:
My company is profitable and growing but we never seem to have enough cash. Customers take two months to pay us and we’re holding more stock. Can an accountant help with this?
Those two questions could ultimately relate to the same professional service.
But one describes the service.
The other describes the customer’s situation.
Conversational AI makes it particularly easy for people to search in the second way.
People can explain what is happening, add constraints, ask follow-up questions and request recommendations based on quite detailed circumstances.
That makes me think businesses should consider whether their websites explain not just what they do, but when and why somebody might need them.
Why Might This Matter for AI Visibility?
There is a simple logic behind the idea.
An AI system cannot magically know every circumstance in which your business would be suitable.
It needs information from somewhere.
Imagine two accountancy firms.
Accountant A
Its website says:
We provide accounts, tax, bookkeeping, payroll and management accounts for businesses throughout Birmingham.
That tells us broadly what the firm does.
Accountant B
Its website says the same things, but it also contains detailed pages about situations such as:
- a profitable manufacturer continually running short of cash;
- a growing company unsure whether it can afford another employee;
- a business owner whose management accounts arrive too late to be useful;
- a director whose loan account is becoming overdrawn;
- a company using Xero but struggling to understand which products are actually profitable.
Accountant B has given considerably more information about the circumstances in which its expertise might be useful.
If somebody then asks an AI system a highly specific question relating to one of those problems, there is at least more information available connecting that business with the customer’s situation.
That does not mean publishing a Business Problem Scenario guarantees that an AI system will recommend the business.
I don’t think anyone can responsibly make that promise.
There are many other factors involved, including what exists elsewhere on the web, how established the business is, third-party references, reviews, location, relevance and the way the particular AI system retrieves and interprets information.
But there is a more basic question:
If you never explain that you can solve a particular problem, how easy is it for an AI system to understand that you can?
That is why I think Business Problem Scenarios are worth exploring.
Your Website Explains. Other Sources Can Corroborate.
There has been a lot of discussion around AI visibility about the importance of what other people say about your business.
That makes sense.
A business saying:
We are excellent at helping manufacturing businesses improve cash flow.
is a claim.
A customer independently saying:
They helped us understand why our growing manufacturing business was constantly running out of cash.
provides external evidence.
Ideally, a business eventually develops both.
Its own website explains in detail:
This is what we do and these are the circumstances in which we can help.
Reviews, case studies, directories, articles and other third-party sources can then provide additional evidence that:
Yes, they really do this.
I don’t see those things as competing with each other.
I see them as complementary.
Your website can provide the specificity.
The wider web can provide corroboration.
Isn’t a Case Study Better?
Yes.
If you have a genuine case study showing how you solved the exact problem being discussed, that can be extremely powerful.
Instead of writing hypothetically:
Here is how we would approach this situation.
you can say:
Here is what happened when one of our clients faced this situation.
You can explain the problem, what you discovered, what you did and the outcome.
But small businesses don’t always have dozens of suitable case studies ready to publish.
There can also be confidentiality issues.
Some clients simply don’t want their circumstances discussed publicly.
That doesn’t mean the business has to remain silent about the problems it knows how to solve.
A Business Problem Scenario can demonstrate the business’s thinking without pretending that the scenario is a real client case.
The distinction should always be clear.
Don’t invent a fake customer.
Don’t manufacture results.
Simply say, in effect:
If a business came to us with this problem, here are the things we would want to understand and here is how we might be able to help.
That can still be genuinely useful content.
This Isn’t an Excuse to Produce Hundreds of Thin Pages
There is an obvious danger with this idea.
Once you start thinking about customer problems, you can potentially think of hundreds of them.
That could lead straight back to an old SEO habit:
Create a separate page for every imaginable variation of essentially the same search.
That isn’t what I’m suggesting.
A useful test is:
Would I give materially different advice to somebody experiencing this problem?
If the answer is yes, it may deserve its own page.
If you are simply changing a few words while giving essentially the same answer, it probably doesn’t.
For example:
Good distinction:
- My manufacturing company is profitable but constantly short of cash.
- I don’t know which of my products are actually profitable.
- We’re growing rapidly and I don’t know whether we can afford to recruit.
Those are genuinely different business problems.
Each could require a different explanation.
Poor distinction:
- Accountant for manufacturing company cash flow.
- Manufacturing cash-flow accountant.
- Accountant helping manufacturers with cash flow.
- Birmingham manufacturing business cash-flow advice.
Those are primarily wording variations around the same subject.
They don’t need four articles.
The objective isn’t to make the website bigger.
The objective is to make the business better understood.
Business Problem Scenarios Should Be Specific
The more specific the scenario, the more useful it can potentially become.
Compare:
How can an accountant help my business?
with:
My manufacturing company is growing quickly and making a profit, but cash is getting tighter because customers are paying slowly and we’re carrying more stock. What should I be looking at?
The second question contains much more information.
A genuinely useful page could address:
- profitability versus cash flow;
- debtor days;
- inventory;
- working capital;
- growth;
- cash forecasting;
- financing requirements;
- management information.
That gives the business an opportunity to demonstrate genuine expertise.
And importantly, the page can still be useful even if AI search never sends a single visitor to it.
A potential customer arriving through Google, LinkedIn, an email or another page on the website could read it and think:
That’s exactly the problem I’m experiencing.
That’s a good test for any AI visibility strategy.
Would this content still be worth publishing if AI search didn’t exist?
If the answer is no, I would question whether it should be created.
I’ve Used the Idea on This Website
I’ve recently written my own Business Problem Scenario for AI Visibility Testing.
The person I imagined was not an AI-search expert.
Quite the opposite.
The scenario was:
I run a small business and know almost nothing about AI visibility. What should I do first?
That is a real problem I think many small-business owners will increasingly face.
They hear about ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, GEO, AEO, AI visibility monitoring and a growing collection of software tools.
They may reasonably wonder:
Where on earth do I begin?
My answer wasn’t:
Buy an AI visibility platform.
Nor was it:
Hire an agency immediately.
Instead, I suggested spending an afternoon experimenting with AI search.
Ask some realistic customer questions.
Save the responses.
Read them.
Follow the cited or linked sources.
Change parts of the questions.
Repeat some searches.
Then ask AI systems questions about your own business and see whether their understanding matches reality.
The purpose is simply to get enough practical experience to understand the basic concepts before deciding whether to continue manually, use software or seek outside help.
That article is a Business Problem Scenario in practice:
A particular type of customer + a particular situation + a detailed explanation of how I think they should approach it.
Read: I Run a Small Business and Know Almost Nothing About AI Visibility. What Should I Do First?
How Could You Find Business Problem Scenarios for Your Own Website?
Start with questions your customers already ask.
Think about conversations you have had before somebody buys from you.
What was happening in their business or their life?
What were they worried about?
What prompted them to start searching?
What did they misunderstand?
What alternatives were they considering?
What made the problem urgent?
Those situations can be much more revealing than simply opening a keyword research tool.
An accountant might hear:
We’re making money but I never know how much cash we’ll have next month.
A dentist might hear:
I haven’t been to a dentist for ten years because I’m terrified of treatment.
A commercial cleaner might hear:
We’ve opened a dental practice and I’ve discovered our normal office cleaner doesn’t understand the hygiene requirements.
A software consultant might hear:
We’ve got five different systems and our staff are entering the same customer details into all of them.
Behind each service is usually a problem that caused somebody to go looking for it.
That’s the scenario.
Then Explain How You Think About the Problem
A good Business Problem Scenario shouldn’t simply identify the problem and finish with:
Contact us today for a free consultation.
It should demonstrate something useful.
Explain:
What could be causing the problem?
What questions would you ask?
What information would you want to examine?
What options are available?
When might one solution be more appropriate than another?
What mistakes should the customer avoid?
Where does your service fit into the solution?
That is far more informative than repeatedly telling readers that you are experienced, professional and customer-focused.
Show what your expertise looks like in practice.
The Bigger Idea: Build Around the Problems You Can Solve
I don’t think the future of business websites is simply about producing more content.
Nor do I think the lesson from AI visibility research should be:
Your own website doesn’t matter because third-party mentions matter more.
The more useful question is:
Does the web contain enough accurate and specific information to understand when my business is relevant?
Your own website is one place where you can directly improve that information.
A Business Problem Scenario gives you a structured way of doing it.
Instead of publishing another generic article because a keyword tool says people search for it, document something real:
A genuine problem.
A genuine type of customer.
Your genuine expertise.
And exactly how that expertise could help.
If you eventually have 30 genuinely different problems worth explaining, perhaps your website will contain 30 detailed scenario pages.
If you only have five, write five.
The number isn’t the strategy.
Coverage of the problems you genuinely know how to solve is the strategy.
And if AI search increasingly tries to match complicated customer questions with businesses capable of helping them, making those capabilities clear seems like a very sensible place to start.