Jonathan Kiekbusch Perception Engineering Framework.pdf

The Perception
Engineering Framework™
How SaaS Companies Win Before Prospects Ever Visit the Website

March 2026

swishdm.com

Jonathan Kiekbusch

Who Am I?
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Jonathan Kiekbusch, CEO of SwishDM Ltd.

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12+ Years Transforming Online Retail and SaaS

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Work with mid and enterprise-level brands to boost visibility
and conversion rates through smarter SEO & GEO

2

In the next five years, some of
the companies in this room
will stop growing.
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Why?
Not because your product got worse.
Not because your competitors built something
better.
But because you were silently removed from
consideration…

By a machine.

4

Most of you believe you control how your company is perceived.
●

You control your homepage.

●

You control your brand’s messaging.

●

You control your owned media.

5

But you no longer control
your first impression.
AI does.
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In the past…
Every road led to one destination…
Your website.
You owned the narrative because you
owned the destination.

7

Now we see…
By the time they reach you…
The decision is already formed.

8

Your brand is no longer what you say it is.
It is what AI compiles about you.
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Design disappears.

●

Emotion disappears.

●

Persuasion disappears.

What remains is flattened consensus.

9

Search
1.
2.
3.

Sends users to sources
Lets them compare
Lets you persuade

AI
1.
2.
3.

Collapses sources
Removes exploration
Outputs conclusions

This is not a channel shift.
This is a structural shift.

10

The old game: get traffic.

The new game:
control consensus.

Because in an AI-mediated world, consensus determines visibility.
Visibility determines survival.
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You’re either…

Mentioned

Invisible

There is no page 2.
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The real estate for consideration has collapsed.
Traditional Search
●

Many SERP features available to win additional real estate.

●

Users compare at least 5–10 options.

AI Synthesis
●

2-3 Brands dominate the narrative.

●

AI makes strong recommendations towards a top pick.

So brand storytelling becomes bullet points.
Unique positioning becomes: "Also offers…"
If you are not optimised for machine interpretation, you will be lost.

13

The Invisible Quality Score
Your AI reputation is a quiet, invisible metric shaping buyer trust before you ever enter the conversation.

●

Better AI reputation → higher recommendation probability → lower effective CAC.

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Worse AI reputation → higher friction → slower growth.

14

Where Do LLMs Start?
LLMs Do Not Begin With Your Homepage
Or your latest product release…
Your new positioning…

They begin with distributed signals across the internet.
Your website is just one node of the total picture.
Not the single source of truth.

15

AI Does Not Begin With Your Homepage
AI heavily synthesizes third-party platforms.
Third-party sources are treated as more neutral
than owned media.
And controversy generates:
●
●
●
●

More Discussion
More Replies
More Backlinks
More Repetition

And repetition strengthens the signal.
A single negative Reddit thread with 400 upvotes
and comments may carry more narrative weight
than 20 polished case studies.
16

AIs Checks and Balances
If two years ago someone wrote, "Not ideal for
agencies…"
And you never counterbalanced that with
authority…
AI may still describe you that way today.
You’re labelled by historical content until
new consensus outweighs it.

17

Where Does AI Pull Information?
AI compiles information into a clean paragraph from the
following places:
●
●
●
●

Old reviews
Reddit threads
Comparison posts
Missing use cases

And it’s this paragraph that becomes becomes your first
impression.
You didn’t write it.
But it defines you.

18

Where Are SaaS Companies Dropping the Ball?
Most SaaS leadership teams have never:
●

Run structured prompt audits

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Sorted AI outputs by sentiment

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Tested how their features are described by AI

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Examined what AI says in a comparison

Yet those outputs are shaping buyer perception every
single day.

19

Does Your SaaS Show Up?
If this was the only thing they read…
Would you win?

20

AI Sentiment Analysis
●

No homepage

●

No demo

●

No pricing page

Just a machine-generated summary.
Shaping expectation, trust, and willingness to pay.

Before you ever enter the conversation.

21

The Perception Engineering
Framework™
This is not a one-time campaign. It’s an operating foundation for machine-era reputation.

22

Discover

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Discover
You cannot fix what you cannot see. Start with prompt audits.
Most companies have never done this.
Create a project on ChatGPT and set its memory option to
“Project-only”

Write grounding messages and ask targeted questions first.
Become your client persona:
"I run a 40-person marketing agency scaling
internationally…"

Then, in the same project, ask the questions your real
prospects ask.
24

AI Sentiment Analysis

Who sounds replaceable?

Have you ever tried to correct it?

Being described as you were two
years ago?
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Discover (cont.)
●
●
●
●

Best tools for [use case]
[Your brand] vs [Competitor A] vs [Competitor B]
Is [your brand] good for [segment]
Does [your brand] support [feature]

Export responses and sort by sentiment.

Patterns will quickly start to emerge.

26

Discover - Scale It Up
Use a prompt tracking tool. Scrunch AI do this well

Download all outputs and sort by sentiment.
Ask your new feature questions to see how AI
currently responds.

You'll see exactly where the narrative is broken.

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Diagnose

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Diagnose
Map where you’re losing narrative control.
Then prioritize by pipeline impact.
Ask: Which of these is actively costing us conversions right
now?

Fix the ones that influence buying decisions.
Start there.

29

Design

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Design
If AI synthesises comparisons, you must structure them first.
Build content around:
●
●
●
●

X vs Y
Best alternative to…
Clear differentiation
Clear use-case segmentation

If you do not define the comparison, AI will.
For every segment where you’re currently
mislabelled or absent:
●
●
●

Create targeted use-case content
Get it placed on third-party platforms
Encourage updated reviews from that
segment

31

Design - Review Strategy

Old reviews don't disappear.
But they can be outweighed.
A proactive, ongoing review strategy that
surfaces your current product is not a
nice-to-have.
It’s a must have.

32

Distribute

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Distribute
Publishing on your own site isn’t enough. AI pulls from:
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Your website

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Review platforms

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Industry publications

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Reddit and community forums

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Developer and documentation ecosystems

Your website is just one signal. Authority is distributed.
You want presence in places that accumulate, such as:
●
●
●
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Links
Discussions
References
Citations

Ten strong distributed mentions beat fifty weak blog posts.
Signal density matters more than volume.

34

Defend

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Defend - What Ongoing Defence Looks Like
Perception is dynamic.
●

Competitors publish

●

Reviews update

●

Threads resurface

●

New features change positioning.

So, what should your continued defence look like?
●
●
●
●

Persistent content creation to control the
narrative
Regular prompt tracking cadence
Sentiment monitoring across platforms
Quarterly audit cycle to catch new gaps

Reputation drift is real. Your competitors aren't standing
still.
36

The Perception Engineering Framework™
See how AI currently describes you.

Identify where the narrative is broken.

Engineer the content and authority to fix it.

Place those signals where AI pulls from.

Continuously monitor and reinforce the narrative.
37

Want to see this in action
immediately?

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Jonathan Kiekbusch

Bing Webmaster Tools → AI Performance Section

See the grounding queries AI is actually
running against your site.
This shows you exactly where the signal is
weak.
Start there.

39

5 Year Forecast - What Will
This Look Like?

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Today… AI Summarizes & Humans Decide
It feels assistive. Advisory. Low risk.
Right now, we’re in Phase 1.

This progression is not speculative. It’s already happening.
41

How Will This Progression Look in Real-Time?
You say to your home AI device:
"Organise a princess-themed birthday party for my daughter next
Saturday."
The AI orders decorations, books entertainment, confirms
catering…
●
●
●

Did you compare 12 vendors?
Did you read reviews?
Did you browse websites?

No. The AI chose.

42

How Will This Progression Look For SaaS?
And in the world of SaaS… a founder says…
"Set up a collaboration platform for our new marketing team.
Mid-market pricing. Integrates with HubSpot. Invite everyone."
The AI:
●
●
●
●

Evaluates tools
Reads sentiment
Selects a vendor
Creates the account

If you're not in machine consensus, you're never considered.
In the old world → you could lose the game.
In the new world → you may never enter the court.
You won't lose. You'll simply not exist. And you won't know why.

43

How Will This Progression Look For SaaS? (cont.)
When AI agents buy, differentiation must be
machine-readable.
●
●
●

Authority must be distributed.
Reputation must be structured.
Consensus must be engineered.

If your narrative is ambiguous, you will be flattened.
If your narrative is weak, you will be excluded.

44

Before we close, an important
reminder…

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Jonathan Kiekbusch

SEO is Still King
SEO is still the highest-volume, highest-intent channel in existence with 3,000,000,000,000 searches per year…
The shift isn't SEO or AI. It's understanding that the journey now starts before the search. The companies that
win will do both.
Win the search. Win the synthesis.

46

Which SaaS Will Be Left Standing?
The SaaS companies that win over the

Perception is no longer a branding exercise.

next five years will not be those with the

It is an infrastructure layer of competitive survival.

best homepage.

Engineer it. Before it engineers you.

They will be the ones who understood
that the decision happens before the
visit.
And increasingly… that the decision
happens without the visit.

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Key Takeaways

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Jonathan Kiekbusch

Key Takeaways - AI & Control
●

Over the next five years, SaaS companies will live or die in the dawning age of AI.

●

AI controls your brand's first impression, not you.

●

Search sent users to sources for comparison and persuasion.

●

AI removes sources and exploration in favor of definitive conclusions, ushering in a structural
shift.

●

SaaS brands must control consensus in the AI-mediated world because that determines visibility
and survival.

●

SaaS must be optimised for machine interpretation, otherwise they'll be lost.

49

Key Takeaways - The Invisible Quality Score
●

AI reputation is determined by invisible metric that shapes buyer trust before ever entering conversation.

●

A better reputation results in more recommendations across LLMs and lower effective CAC.

●

LLMs will look at signals distributed across the internet to determine reputation, not just your website.

●

Third-parties are weighed more heavily and treated as more neutral. More conversations generate more discussion,
replies, backlinks, and repetition, which strengthens the signal to LLMs (ex: single Reddit thread w/ 400 upvotes
weighs more than 20 polished case studies).

●

AI weighing system is a balance of authority, consensus, and frequency. Historical content will be what you're labelled
by until new consensus outweighs it.

●

AI pulls it's information from → Old reviews, Reddit threads, comparison posts, missing use cases.

●

Most SaaS companies have never done prompt audits, sorted AI outputs by sentiment, tested how features appear in
AI, examine AIs comparison responses.

●

AI Sentiment Analysis ensures brands appear to AI exactly how they want to be seen when stacked up against
competitors and when their own brand is being measured.
50

Key Takeaways - The Perception Engineering Framework™
See how AI currently describes you.

Identify where the narrative is broken.

Engineer the content and authority to fix it.

Place those signals where AI pulls from.

Continuously monitor and reinforce the narrative.
51

Key Takeaways - Five Year Forecast
●

Currently in Phase 1 → AI summarising options

●

Overtime we will enter Phase 2 (AI shortlist options) then Phase 3 (AI recommending one option) and then Phase 4
(AI executing the purchase)

●

These phases are not speculative. They’re already happening.

●

SaaS thought leaders and decision makers will use AI to execute subscriptions and purchases based on their unique
needs. If your brand isn't being mentioned for those unique cases, it simply will cease to exist.

●

Authority, reputation, and consensus must all be primed to position SaaS companies as machine readable, so your
brand's narrative must be strong and intentional.

●

SEO still highest volume and intent channel with 3,000,000,000,000 searches per year

●

It's not AI OR SEO. Companies must do BOTH to win the search and synthesis.

●

SaaS companies that do well will understand that the decision happens before a visit and even more, without a visit.

●

Perception isn't part of branding, it's the foundation for your brand in LLMs and will be the determining factor for a
survival.
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Thank You!
Message me on wechat for a copy of the slides!

2025

swishdm.com

Jonathan Kiekbusch



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