1 September 2026
Two new Tilio services: fractional AI search leadership, and hiring support
We've added two services, both for teams trying to get experienced AI search capability into the business.
They exist because of a problem we keep running into. We're sent a lot of GEO and AEO job specs, and almost all of them ask for five years' experience in AI search. Generative search has been a serious marketing concern for about three years. ChatGPT arrived at the end of 2022 and AI Overviews landed in 2024, so anyone claiming five years is either counting their SEO career or telling you what they think you want to hear.
That leaves marketing leaders in a difficult spot. Years won't tell you who's good. Neither will titles, since the same job gets advertised as AI Search Lead, GEO Manager, Content Strategist for AI Visibility and SEO Manager (AEO). Salary won't either, with advertised ranges for similar seniority running a six-figure spread. So you end up assessing on instinct in a discipline where nobody internal has a reference point.
Meanwhile the pressure to act keeps building. Conductor surveyed more than 250 enterprise marketing leaders in the US this year: 94% are increasing AEO and GEO investment in 2026, and 97% saw a measurable effect on their funnel in 2025. That's US enterprise data and the UK sits behind it, but the direction isn't in question.
Fractional GEO & AEO
You can't hire five years of something that's existed for three, but you can bring the experience in without a permanent hire.
A Tilio specialist works inside your team for a few days a month. They run the roadmap, own the questions you're tracked against, handle the reporting and brief whoever's producing your content, with the rest of our team behind them. They're in your planning sessions and your Slack rather than appearing for a monthly call.
Two options: a Fractional Specialist from £1,450 a month, or a Fractional Director, which our founder handles personally, from £2,350. Tracking and reporting are included in both, so there's no software for you to buy.
Hiring for AI search
If you're recruiting anyway, the risk is that the role gets scoped by people who've never done it.
Before you advertise, we scope what the job actually needs to do in your business and give you a spec, an interview question bank with model answers, and a practical task with a marking rubric, so your panel is scoring something real. Once someone's in, there's a structured training programme and a monthly review of their work, which matters because a first hire is usually the only person in the business doing this.
From £950. We're not recruiters, so we don't source candidates and take no placement fee.
FAQs
- How much AI search experience should we be asking for?
- Two years of hands-on work is a strong candidate today and three is exceptional. Asking for five filters out the best people available and attracts the ones willing to overstate. Ask for evidence of what someone has actually run instead.
- Should we hire someone or use a fractional specialist?
- It depends on how fast you need to move and whether you can find the right person. Fractional gets experience into the business in weeks rather than months, and plenty of businesses use it while they recruit, then keep it as senior support once their hire is in.
- How do we test a candidate properly?
- Give them a real task rather than a conversation. Ask them to look at your brand across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and tell you what they'd do first and why. The reasoning tells you more than the answer.
- Do these replace your monthly plans?
- No. The plans are still how most clients work with us, with Tilio delivering the work from outside the business. These two are for teams who want the capability sitting inside their own team as well.
Building AI search capability this year?
We'll give you an honest read on the role, the market and what good looks like.