A CMO was horrified by how ChatGPT described her company. Here’s how she’s fixing it.

Ameresco CMO Leila Dillon has been shaking up the energy solutions provider's AI visibility strategy.

Ameresco A version of this post appears in CMO Insider.

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When Ameresco CMO Leila Dillon asked ChatGPT and other AI answer engines to describe what her company did, she was shocked by the results.

The publicly traded company is an energy infrastructure provider, helping power the rapidly growing AI buildout, as well as military bases and municipal facilities.

But the AI chatbots were outdated in their responses, frequently referring to it simply as a cleantech or renewable energy business — areas it still operates in, but are less of a focus — or citing smaller projects it worked on years ago.

"It was quite horrifying," Dillon told CMO Insider.

"We were like, 'That's not at all who we are.'" Dillon set about overhauling the company's messaging and how it structured its marketing content to better reflect its business.

The work has begun to take effect.

Ameresco tracked how often AI chatbots mentioned the company in response to 50 questions that potential customers and investors might ask.

It appeared in 61% of those answers in 2026, up from 43% in 2025, according to the company.

As more consumers turn to platforms like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude , and Microsoft's Copilot to research companies and products, marketers are racing to hone their generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies to ensure their brands appear prominently and accurately in AI-generated answers.

"I used to Google everything that I wanted to know about," Dillon said.

"I barely use Google anymore.