How should an early-stage startup budget for AEO?

We'd build the budget from two things you can state exactly: what a piece of work costs, and how much cash the company has. AEO is sold in units that fit that comparison. You can buy a subscription, a one-time package, or a monthly program with a stated term.

We wouldn't start from a percentage of revenue. For an early-stage company it gives a figure that moves whenever revenue does and names no scope. The prices below are from published rate cards. They're examples to plan with, and each keeps its own unit and term.

Lean Labs' free AEO Baseline Score reports where a brand stands in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. It gives you a starting picture before you spend.

A tracking subscription is the next cheapest line. Otterly's Lite plan is $29 a month for 15 prompts. It covers four engines, and Gemini is a paid add-on. If you plan to keep it for a year, that's $348.

Choose the tracker's prompts before any work starts, and keep them fixed. Readings on those same prompts, taken before and after the work, are the measurement we'd use to judge the spending. The baseline score comes from a different tool, so keep its reading separate from the tracker's.

The first sizable spend we'd make is work with a fixed price and a defined scope. Lean Labs' GrowthRocket Visibility Suite is an example. For $9,000 it covers question pages, entity markup, a review-collection system and an entity listing.

A one-time package gives a startup a known initial charge. The card says the first year is included, so ask what year two costs before you sign and put the answer in the plan.

Suppose your company has $720,000 in the bank and a net burn of $60,000 a month. That's 12 months of runway if nothing else changes. With a planned year of the tracker, the first stage comes to $9,348 in listed charges. Taxes and anything outside the listed scope would be on top.

Dollars aren't the whole budget. Someone at your company answers questions, approves facts and reads results, even when an outside team does the production.

We work through an assumed example in how much internal time AEO requires. There, a small monthly workload comes to about 8 company hours a month with an agency producing and about 20 without one. Those are allowances for that example, so make your own estimate for the scope you're buying, and name the person who will give the hours.

A monthly program is a larger commitment, so add up the term before you compare anything. Lean Labs' Authority System is off-site work: expert articles and brand mentions on other sites, with citation tracking. AEO Complete adds the Visibility Suite, conversion rate optimization, a dedicated strategist and monthly strategy sessions.

We prefer staging because of the cash model. In the example, a startup that buys the one-time package has committed $9,000, and it can decide on the off-site program later with tracker readings in hand. Bought that way, the two list at $59,000. Going straight to Complete lists at $90,000 and brings the extra services with it.

While a program runs, it raises the monthly burn. In the example, the off-site program takes it from $60,000 to $65,000.

For a second price point, OutreachBloom's AISEO service starts at $3,400 a month for 10 pillar content pieces, 30 Reddit engagements and 10 citation targets. Confirm the term before you compare it with anything. Assuming ten months, the total would be $34,000. We compare monthly programs in how much a monthly AEO retainer costs for a startup.

A price buys work, and the AI engines decide whether to cite it. So decide before you sign which tracker readings you'll judge the program by. We set out what's reasonable to expect in what AEO results a SaaS startup can expect and how long AEO takes to show results.

Stage one is $9,348 in listed charges, out of $720,000, plus the staff hours you estimated. Stage two, if you choose the off-site program, is $50,000 over ten months.

Two checks come out of the cash model before stage two. The runway left should be longer than the program's term by a margin you're comfortable with. And the burn with the program added should be a figure you'd accept for the whole term.

Run those checks on the example. Suppose the program starts right after the one-time package. Ten months at $65,000 is $650,000. With the $9,000 package and ten months of the tracker, cash falls by about $659,000. That leaves about $61,000 of the $720,000, roughly one month at the old burn, so the margin on the first check is about a month. The second check is the $65,000 burn itself, held for ten months.