SMB walkthrough: AEO for manufacturers and exporters

Who this is for: a small-to-mid manufacturer that sells two ways: wholesale/export to distributors and retailers, and direct to consumers online. If AI answer engines are the new front door for both a procurement manager overseas and a home buyer searching “best solid wood dining table,” this walkthrough is for you. For the strategic overview first, see Zicy for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses.

This walkthrough follows one real setup, step by step, so you can see what the product actually returns rather than a description of it.

Step 1: Create your brand profile

The exporter’s website URL was pasted in and “Analyze” was run — from the first-run setup screen, though Add Profile on the Select Brand list takes the same URL and runs the same crawl. Zicy read the site and pre-filled the profile automatically: brand name, category, product list, target audience, brand tone, and writing style, all in the business’s own words. In this run, a Malaysian solid-wood furniture exporter, the auto-fill correctly identified:

Category: “Home furniture manufacturer, wholesaler and exporter”
Products: Dining room furniture, Living room furniture, Bedroom furniture, Occasional/accent furniture, Kitchen furniture
Primary Location: Malaysia, with Secondary Location: Australia auto-detected from the site’s own export and market language
Brand Tone: “Elegant, professional, reliable and trade-focused”

What you actually confirm on screen is short. The review step, headed Is this you?, shows four fields — Business name, Category, Main Products/Services and Primary Location — above an expander marked Review the rest of your profile (optional). Everything else the crawl filled in lives inside that expander, Secondary Location included, so it is worth opening rather than trusting unread: the auto-detected Australia above is exactly the sort of detail that shapes every prompt generated in the next step.

The Unique Selling Proposition field, also inside that expander, was left blank by auto-fill and needed to be filled in by hand. It is the one field that captures what makes the business different (for example, “family-run since 2011, both wholesale export and direct consumer sales”), and it shapes every prompt, article, and fact-check Zicy generates downstream.

If the profile was created at Business size, Site Audit also appears in the sidebar: see the Site Audit module article for what it checks.

Step 2: Set up your tracked prompts (the most important step)

In Prompt Manager → Manage Prompt → Generate More Prompt, Zicy wrote roughly ten to fifteen buyer-intent prompts from the brand profile automatically. Fifteen were auto-generated for the exporter, including “Which manufacturer specializes in rubberwood furniture for export to Australia?” and “Who is the best supplier for contract furniture in Australia?”

A real finding worth knowing: because this brand had a Secondary Location (Australia) set, every single one of the fifteen auto-generated prompts targeted Australia and was flagged “Market mismatch.” None covered the Primary Location (Malaysia) at all. If a business sells into more than one market, the auto-generated list should not be assumed to balance them. Check the location tag on each prompt, and use “+ Add custom Prompt” to add prompts for the home market too. See how to write tracked prompts that actually work for more on building a balanced list.

The prompts to track were ticked, “Start Tracking” was clicked, and Zicy showed exactly what it would cost before confirming: “Tracking these 12 prompts uses 60 analyses — 1 per AI engine (5 engines per prompt). It also uses 12 tracking slots for this billing period.”

The rule that matters most: a good tracked prompt is one a real buyer with no brand in mind would type, such as “best wholesale supplier for home furniture in Australia,” not “what is solid wood furniture?” (too educational, no brand gets named) and not “tell me about [your brand]” (inflates every number).

Step 3: Read your AI Visibility Dashboard

Right after tracking started, the dashboard showed 0% across every metric with a “Needs work” tag. This is normal; it is not a bad score, it simply means no data yet. A banner read “N prompts are currently being analyzed. Results appear as each engine finishes.” Results populated progressively over the following minutes and hours, not instantly.

Step 4: Use GBP Optimizer

Not every Take Action tool appears for every profile type. GBP Optimizer is the one that stays in the sidebar for a Micro SME profile like this exporter’s. Content Generator, Content Optimizer, Schema Generator, and LLMs Generator are on enterprise plans, so you will not see them here.

GBP Optimizer only earns a look here if the business actually has a Google Business Profile listing, for a showroom, factory or office, since a wholesale-only exporter with no public-facing location may not have one at all. Where a listing exists, GBP Optimizer reads whatever a GBP Audit turns up and turns two of its findings, a thin business description and a mismatched category, into an AI-written suggestion you copy across to Google Business Profile yourself; it has nothing to generate until a GBP Audit has actually completed.

Step 5: Brand Intelligence: catch what AI gets wrong about you

This module answers the exporter’s real fear: not “am I mentioned,” but “is AI telling buyers the wrong thing about us.” In Brand Intelligence → Run Analysis, Zicy pre-filled most of the setup form from the brand profile (offerings, aliases, location). The auto-detected Company Size was confirmed, at least one named competitor was added, and the analysis ran, taking around two to three minutes and querying ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews.

The completed report for this exporter returned an AI Perception Score of 70%, a Coverage Score of 80%, and an Alignment Score of 63%. The Perception Summary was the clearest, most specific output in the whole product:

“WHAT AI THINKS YOU’RE KNOWN FOR: AI platforms know Meridian Wood Furniture as a Malaysian manufacturer and global exporter of solid wood, particularly rubberwood, home furniture for dining, living, and bedrooms, with a focus on contemporary, space-saving designs and B2B/OEM capabilities.

WHAT AI IS MISSING OR GETTING WRONG: AI misses the ‘family-run’ aspect and largely misinterprets the ‘direct to consumer’ element, portraying the brand almost exclusively as B2B. Google AI Mode also incorrectly identifies it as a commercial furniture supplier. Crucially, specific named competitors are not surfaced, and one offering (Kitchen furniture) is entirely absent.“

That is the exact problem a dual B2B/B2C manufacturer needs caught early: AI had quietly erased the entire consumer side of the business. The Platform Perception table broke this down per engine: ChatGPT and Gemini both scored 90%+ coverage and alignment, while Google AI Mode scored only 10% alignment, the specific source of the “commercial supplier” misclassification.

The Gaps tab is the fact-check triage layer. It found 12 gaps for this exporter, each with a “what the model said” versus “what’s actually true” comparison and a source count, for example: Year Founded (Google AI Mode): the model said “unknown,” ground truth is “2011,” 1 source. Each gap can be confirmed as wrong, which adds a fix to the Action Plan, or marked correct, which dismisses it.

The Action Plan tab turns every confirmed gap into a specific, written fix. This run generated 19 items. The top one: “Directly Address Commercial Furniture Misclassification — Create explicit content on your website and marketing materials that clearly defines Meridian Wood Furniture exclusively as a ‘home furniture manufacturer,’ specifically stating that the brand does not produce commercial, office, or school furniture to correct Google AI Mode’s misperception, targeting Malaysian B2B buyers and consumers.” One click on “Add to fix list” sent it straight to the Opportunities backlog.

What’s next

Site Traffic (“Prove”) connects GA4/Search Console once you are ready to see whether AI visibility is turning into real visits and inquiries.
Re-run Brand Intelligence periodically (there is a one-click Rerun Analysis), especially after acting on Action Plan items, to confirm AI’s perception actually shifted.
For the companion walkthrough covering a hyperlocal business instead of an exporter, see the local shops walkthrough.