AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) Manager

Aeo Manager

(Hybrid | Chicagoland candidates only)

Marcel Digital is an award-winning digital marketing and software development agency established in 2003. Based in Chicago, we partner with mid-market B2B organizations to drive measurable business outcomes through AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), SEO, paid media, web development, and analytics.

We've built a culture of high performers who value authenticity, integrity, accountability, and insight. We invest heavily in learning, collaboration, and craftsmanship, supporting our team with conference attendance, internal training, and daily knowledge sharing. The annual salary range for this role is $80-$100K.

As an AEO Manager at Marcel Digital, you'll play a critical role in generating qualified leads and driving revenue for B2B clients by making sure they show up — and show up well — inside AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Copilot, and Gemini. Your work will go far beyond visibility for its own sake; you'll build and execute strategies that map directly to bottom-line business outcomes.

This role calls for a blend of strategic acumen and technical implementation, including structured content architecture, entity and schema optimization, and content development built for retrieval and citation by large language models. You'll analyze how brands are currently represented (or missing) in AI-generated answers, identify growth opportunities across the funnel, and implement tailored AEO strategies that align with each client's broader marketing and sales goals.

As part of our integrated team, you'll collaborate across paid media, analytics, and development to deliver unified, revenue-driving solutions.

Reports to:

Director of SEO & AEO

Performance & Strategy Own AEO performance with a revenue growth mindset. You'll drive strategies designed to increase how often, how accurately, and how favorably clients are cited, summarized, or recommended by AI answer engines — and convert that visibility into qualified leads. Every recommendation you make, from entity optimization to structured data, will be rooted in business value and geared toward growth.

Strategic Client Partnership Be a strategic thought partner to our clients. You'll participate in client conversations as an expert and advisor, uncovering the "why" behind the "what," aligning AEO strategy with business objectives, and evolving tactics as answer engines and their retrieval behavior continue to change.

Technical & Content Execution Deliver full-spectrum AEO solutions. From technical audits of AI-bot crawlability and structured data (schema markup, llms.txt, content architecture) to content gap analyses built for direct-answer and citation-worthy formats, your work will be both precise and strategic. You'll blend modern AI-visibility tools, prompt-based testing, and manual expertise to create smart, scalable outcomes.

Client Engagement & Storytelling Make AEO results meaningful. You'll compile insights and reports that not only inform but inspire action, connecting AI-answer visibility and citation performance directly to pipeline growth, sales conversations, and strategic goals.

Innovation & Thought Leadership Lead with curiosity and courage. You'll help push AEO forward, both for our clients and for the agency. From experimenting with new AI platforms to tracking how LLMs source and cite content, you'll keep your finger on the pulse of what's next and make sure our strategies evolve ahead of the curve.

Prioritization Effectively manage multiple client engagements with competing priorities and timelines. You'll evaluate opportunities based on business impact, align efforts to what will drive the greatest return, and clearly communicate tradeoffs both internally and with clients. Your ability to prioritize strategically will ensure consistent progress across accounts without sacrificing quality or performance.

At Marcel we work in teams. Each account will have multiple team members helping drive success. Some may act as thought partners and some will be asked to delegate work to. A strong candidate will know how to…