In this episode of Generative Engine Optimization in the AI Era: Decoding SEO 2.0, hosts Gail and Guy Goole explore one of the most important questions facing brand leaders today: how do you get AI to understand and recommend your brand?
With answer engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing Copilot now shaping customer journeys from awareness to purchase, traditional SEO isn’t enough. It’s no longer just about ranking—it’s about being recognized by machines as the trusted, authoritative solution.
That’s where two powerful frameworks come into play.
First: StoryBrand, a proven narrative strategy that makes your messaging resonate with human audiences by positioning your brand as the guide, not the hero.
Second: The Kalicube Process, the go-to framework for teaching machines how to understand, trust, and amplify your brand. This isn’t surface-level SEO—it’s deep-structure optimization for search and AI, with brand-first thinking and marketing baked into the foundations.
Gail and Guy unpack how these two frameworks work together across every stage of the buyer’s journey:
- Awareness: StoryBrand says, “Be clear. Be helpful.” Kalicube makes sure the machines can find you and show you off with the Deliverability pillar.
- Consideration: StoryBrand focuses on trust and authority. Kalicube’s Credibility pillar makes sure AI systems see your credibility in real data—trusted reviews, expert mentions, consistent signals.
- Decision: StoryBrand guides the human. Kalicube’s Understandability ensures the machine gets a clear, consistent version of your brand—so it can support the conversion.
The result? Lower acquisition costs. Faster sales cycles. Bigger deals. And a brand that’s built for both people and the AI that connects them.
If you’ve ever Googled your name and winced, or asked ChatGPT a question and watched it recommend your competitor, this episode is for you.
You’ll learn:
- Why your brand needs to be readable and recommendable by AI
- How StoryBrand gives your message emotional clarity—and Kalicube makes it machine-ready
- Why search rankings are no longer the end goal
- How brands can build long-term equity through Understandability, Credibility, and Deliverability
- Why SEO 2.0 (generative Engine Optimization) is really about entity control, not keyword stuffing
Sponsored by Three Steps Digital Brand Management, this episode is your playbook for becoming irresistible to people—and undeniable to machines.
Search is changing. The funnel has moved. And the brands that win are the ones that know how to speak AI fluently.
Based on this article How StoryBrand + The Kalicube Process Unlock Revenue in an AI-Driven Funnel
Transcript of Combining StoryBrand with The Kalicube Process: How to Get AI Like ChatGPT and Google to Recommend Your Brand
[0:00] Gail Goole here, and you are listening to Generative Engine Optimization in the AI era, Decoding SEO 2.0. I’m Guy Goole. Welcome to the show, proudly sponsored by Three Steps Digital Brand Management. Okay, Guy. Now, let’s dive right in and decode. Let’s do it. So, Gail, today we’re tackling something really crucial based on the material we’ve looked at. It’s about how brands, how you can navigate this new world of AI-driven search. Right. It’s not just about appealing to people anymore. is it? The sources highlight this big shift. We now have to guide the machines too, like Google’s AI overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini. They’re making decisions for users in many cases. Exactly. And if those machines don’t understand your brand correctly, your message just gets lost. So the source material brings up two powerful frameworks working together. Yeah, it’s fascinating. First, there’s StoryBrand. Lots of people know this one. It’s all about crafting that clear narrative where the customer is the hero and your brand. You’re the helpful guide solving their problem. It’s, you know, fundamentally human. It really resonates with people. Absolutely. But then the material introduces the Kalicube process as the operational counterpart. It takes that compelling story brand narrative. And basically translates it, makes it make sense for the machines. Precisely. It structures the information about your brand, clear, verifiable facts, so that AI systems can actually understand who you are.
[1:23] Trust what you say, and confidently recommend you. Okay. So how does this combo actually work like day to day for a brand? The sources map it onto the buyer’s journey, right? I do. Yeah. Let’s start at the top. Awareness. StoryBrand’s mantra here is be there, be clear, be helpful. Makes sense. Totally. But how do you ensure you are there for the machines? That’s where the source mentions the deliver visibility pillar from the Kalicube process. Right. It’s about making sure your brand entity, the core thing that is your brand is consistently visible and understandable across the web. So machines can actually find you and, crucially, recommend you reliably. And the payoff. The material suggests this leads to, well, lower customer acquisition costs and more organic leads because the machines are doing some of that initial filtering and recommending for you. Pretty powerful. Definitely.
[2:13] Okay, moving down the funnel to consideration. People are weighing their options. StoryBrand stresses that authority matters here. You need to be seen as credible. And again, how do you prove that authority to an algorithm? The source links this to the credibility pillar. Exactly, Guy. This is about ensuring machines see corroborating evidence.
[2:34] Consistent information about you across trusted sources, positive reviews, links from authoritative sites, it’s building that digital proof. So the machines see this verified credibility, and according to the source, that can actually help speed up the sales cycle and even increase deal size. That’s the idea.
[2:50] The trust factor gets established earlier, even before a deep human interaction sometimes. Which brings us to the decision stage. Right, the finish line. StoryBrand says, give people clarity, a clear plan, make it easy to buy. And for the machines, the force points to the understandability control pillar. This is about making sure all the signals about your brand, your brand to sir, maybe a knowledge panel, are aligned and accurate. Ah, so the machine sees one consistent, verifiable truth about what you offer and how you held. No confusion. Precisely. That clarity for the machines, as the source suggests, translates directly into higher close rates for humans, and it builds that solid, long-term brand equity. It removes friction.
[3:32] You know, Guy, we’re talking about generative search optimization in the AI era, decoding SEO 2.0, and this really feels like a core part of it. It absolutely is, Gail. So the bottom line from the material we reviewed is really this. StoryBrand crafts the why and how for humans. And the CaliQ process builds the what and where for machines. It’s the infrastructure that lets that human story scale effectively across the AI ecosystem. Makes sense. Perfectly put. But you need both to be, well, irresistible to humans and completely intelligible to the machines that increasingly connect them. We dive depoted and deciphered SEO two-point management. Oh, thanks to our sponsor, Three Steps Digital Brand Management. And thank you for listening. Here’s a final thought to mull over.
[4:14] In this world where AI is increasingly the first point of contact, how truly confident are you that machines understand your brand accurately and can reliably recommend you for who you are and what you genuinely offer? See you next time for another new Necessary Nugget of Knowledge.