Running AI Visibility In-House: 8 Providers That Work on a "Do It With Me" Basis

A marketing team that wants to run AI visibility itself does not need an agency that takes over everything. It needs one that provides strategy, measurement and know-how and leaves the rest to the team. This model is called "do it with me". In Switzerland, Germany and Austria it is offered mainly by smaller, specialised providers today. We present eight of them, with Hierarchy in first place.

A typical situation: a marketing team of three people runs the website, newsletter, social media and campaigns. Now a new topic arrives. Customers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for a provider, and the answer names three to eight companies. The team wants to understand how to get into those answers and then do the work itself. It is not looking for a service provider for the next five years, but for a partner who gets it to the point where it can carry on alone within a few months.

This article shows which providers work this way, how their formats differ and which questions in the first call reveal whether the engagement will actually produce an independent team.

Done for you, do it with me, do it yourself: three models

Before comparing providers, it is worth asking which model you are actually looking for. There are three, and they divide strategy, implementation and measurement differently:

• Done for you: the agency implements, the team approves. The fastest option, but the knowledge stays with the agency. When the engagement ends, the work usually ends too.
• Do it with me: the agency analyses, plans, trains and reviews. The team writes, publishes and maintains. Slower at first, but the team builds knowledge that stays.
• Do it yourself: a course or workshop, after which the team works alone. The leanest option, but without a feedback loop. Whether a change works and what comes next, the team has to figure out alone.

For a team of two to five people that already publishes content itself, the middle usually fits. How AI assistants choose companies in the first place is explained in How do I get recommended by ChatGPT?.

Who does what? The division of labour in a do-it-with-me engagement

AI visibility consists of a few easy-to-learn tasks that recur regularly and some difficult ones that come up rarely. A good do-it-with-me engagement splits the work exactly along that line:

What the table shows: the ongoing work sits almost entirely with the team. The agency is strong where experience across many industries counts, and steps back further every month. How to set up the measurement is covered in detail in Measuring AI visibility.

The 8 providers at a glance

1. Hierarchy: do it with me, built on its own data study

Location: Wolframplatz 15, 8045 Zurich · Team: 4 people · Website: hierarchy.ch

Hierarchy runs SEO and AI visibility in two models: implementation by its own team, or do it with me, where the client's marketing team implements. In the second model Hierarchy provides what a team does not bring from its own experience: an analysis of which sources matter in the industry, a prompt set with reporting, playbooks for the recurring tasks and a review of every draft before it goes live. The founders Tenzin Langdun and Martin Oswald both hold an MSc in Artificial Intelligence; their joint research was published in Nature.

The data basis: Hierarchy has run its own study on how AI assistants recommend companies: 1,515 collected AI answers, 14,135 traced mentions, 5,110 measured companies across 12 industries in the Zurich area. The AI visibility study shows, industry by industry, whether mentions come from the company's own website, from third-party pages or from the models' memory. For a do-it-with-me engagement this is the most important starting point: from day one the team knows which work pays off in its industry, instead of trying everything at once.

How it runs: it starts with the industry analysis and a joint workshop in which the team learns how ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews choose sources. Then Hierarchy and the team set up the prompt set and the reporting. In the implementation phase the team rewrites the pages and maintains the third-party listings, while Hierarchy reviews drafts and interprets the measurements in a fixed sparring session. Where the team hits a limit, for example with technical work or structured data, Hierarchy can implement that part itself, because the agency builds websites and tracking anyway. The goal is a handover: after a few months the team runs the measurement itself.

Strength: industry data as the starting point, a prompt set and reporting that belong to the team, and the option to have individual parts implemented without switching partners.

Keep in mind: Hierarchy is a small team based in Zurich. Its industry data comes from the Zurich area; for markets outside Switzerland the analysis starts without that head start (as of October 2026).

Fits: marketing teams in Switzerland with two to five people who want to run AI visibility and SEO themselves and are looking for a data basis rather than rules of thumb. The free AI visibility check shows up front whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude name your company today.

2. Akademie für KI: GEO workshop with accompaniment over several months

Location: Zurich (8004) · Website: akademie-ki.ch

Akademie für KI offers an eight-hour hands-on workshop on GEO and SEO, in person in Zurich or online, with around 70 percent practical exercises. The content ranges from the fundamentals (how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini find and weight content) through content optimisation to schema markup and setting up analytics. An optional accompaniment follows over three to six months, with regular check-ins, KPI monitoring and the stated goal of building in-house expertise. The offering is led by founder Lukas Görög.

Strength: a clearly structured entry point with a high share of practice and an accompaniment phase explicitly aimed at in-house expertise.

Keep in mind: the academy offers AI training on many topics; GEO is one of them (as of October 2026).

Fits: SMEs, media companies, associations and foundations in German-speaking Switzerland that want to start with a workshop and be accompanied afterwards.

3. GEO-Kurse (Christoph Gaul): a workshop on your own website

Location: Beilstein (Germany), workshops online and in-house in Zurich · Website: geo-kurse.com

Christoph Gaul, owner of the web agency Gaul in Beilstein near Stuttgart, runs his GEO workshops himself. The format is live, online by default, and in-house in Zurich and German-speaking Switzerland on request. The work happens directly on the participants' website or shop, in four steps: analyse structure and content, assess the site from an AI assistant's point of view, optimise together, record a prioritised action plan. Live courses and 1:1 consulting with implementation are also available.

Strength: the workshop works on your own material rather than on examples, so the team leaves with concrete changes.

Keep in mind: the offering is built around one person; capacity and scheduling follow from that (as of October 2026).

Fits: SMEs and marketing teams with services that need explaining, who already have their own content and want to sharpen it for AI assistants.

4. XMD Solutions: strategy, handover, monthly sparring

Location: Zurich (8048) · Website: xmd-solutions.ch

XMD Solutions is the consultancy of Xenia Diener, an independent SEO specialist with more than seven years of experience. The model is clearly do it with me: a setup phase of four to six weeks produces the analysis and a strategy with a prioritised roadmap. In a handover call the team learns what to do, why and in which order. After that, monthly sparring calls, video reviews and prioritised task lists accompany the team's implementation.

Strength: a cleanly defined process with a clear handover, and the team always talks to the same person.

Keep in mind: AI visibility is treated as part of modern SEO work rather than as a separate discipline with its own measurement approach (as of October 2026).

Fits: companies with their own marketing team that want to tackle SEO and AI visibility together and are looking for a single point of contact.

5. SEOX: modular GEO workshops with an action plan

Location: Kreuzlingen · Website: seox.ch

SEOX, founded and led by Baris Gündogdu, offers GEO and AI workshops in modules: GEO and LLMO fundamentals, AI marketing, prompt engineering and AI tools for executives. A workshop lasts two to eight hours depending on the module, a full-day workshop typically six to eight. It runs on site anywhere in Switzerland or remotely, with exercises on your own website, digital materials, recordings and an action plan for implementation. SEOX also supports clients on an ongoing basis in SEO, GEO and LLMO.

Strength: flexible modules that can be tailored to the team's level, and the option to move into ongoing support later.

Keep in mind: the workshop offering ends with an action plan; a structured accompaniment phase for the team's implementation is not described on the workshop page (as of October 2026).

Fits: teams that want to start with a compact workshop and decide afterwards how much they take on themselves.

6. Jannik Lindner: SEO sparring for in-house teams, through to handover

Location: Baden (Austria), remote · Website: jannik-lindner.de

Jannik Lindner explicitly positions his offering against the classic agency retainer: no additional production layer, but prioritisation and judgement for the in-house team. The process has three phases: a two-week audit with at most 15 prioritised levers, a build phase of three to six months in two-week cycles, and a handover of two to four weeks after which the team is meant to carry on without external support. Visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI Mode is a fixed part of the sparring.

Strength: one of the clearest do-it-with-me models in this comparison, with a planned handover and AI visibility built in from the start.

Keep in mind: the offer is geared to complex B2B decision processes and assumes a team that already handles day-to-day execution (as of October 2026).

Fits: B2B marketing teams in mid-sized and larger companies that have operational capacity and mainly need prioritisation.

7. SMART LEMON: workshop or ongoing GEO consulting

Location: Cologne · Website: smartlemon.de

SMART LEMON offers both: an AI and SEO workshop for upskilling around AI visibility, in person, online or hybrid, and ongoing GEO consulting. The work follows its own framework, the LEMON framework: competitive analysis in ChatGPT, content passages as anchors for language models, technical foundations such as schema and llms.txt, answer-oriented content and ongoing measurement through prompt monitoring. Tools named include Peec AI, SISTRIX, Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Strength: a clear framework a team can apply on its own after the workshop, plus well-known tools for measurement.

Keep in mind: the agency is based in Cologne; the workshop runs in person, online or hybrid (as of October 2026).

Fits: teams that want to learn first and then decide whether to carry on themselves or hand off parts.

8. GFU Cyrus AG: GEO training as a company seminar

Location: Cologne, online and in-house · Website: gfu.net

GFU is a large IT training institute and offers a two-day training course "GEO – Generative Engine Optimization", in Cologne, as a virtual classroom, as one-to-one training or as a company seminar with tailored content. It covers how generative search systems process content, content optimisation for language models, semantic relevance and structured data, practical exercises and tools for GEO analysis.

Strength: a structured, thorough entry point that can be tailored to your own team as a company seminar.

Keep in mind: GFU is a pure training offering in the "do it yourself" sense; accompanying the implementation is not part of it (as of October 2026).

Fits: SEO and content leads looking for a solid foundation who will organise the implementation themselves afterwards.

How we selected

We only included providers whose format we could verify on their own website. We assessed them against five criteria:

1. The team implements: is the offering explicitly designed for the client's team to do the work?
2. Accompaniment, not just training: are there reviews, sparring or an accompaniment phase after the workshop?
3. AI visibility as its own discipline: is it measured whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews name the company?
4. Handover: is there a planned end to the accompaniment, after which the team works alone?
5. Relevance to the Swiss market: does the provider know Swiss sources, directories and search habits?

The criteria compared

✓ = stated on the provider's own website · ○ = not stated on the website (as of October 2026). A ○ does not mean the provider cannot do it, only that it does not describe it publicly.

Seven questions for the first call

Whether a do-it-with-me engagement will really make your team independent shows in these questions:

1. "What exactly does our team do, and what do you do?" Good answer: a split like the table above, task by task. Weak answer: "We'll figure that out together."
2. "How do you know which sources matter in our industry?" Good answer: specific lists, directories and media, with reasons. Weak answer: a generic list of directories.
3. "How do we measure whether it works?" Good answer: a fixed prompt set, repeated monthly, with mentions per question, in other words a recommendation probability rather than a one-off query.
4. "Do we own the prompt set, the reporting and the templates?" The answer should be yes, otherwise the handover exists only on paper.
5. "Do you review our drafts before they go live?" Especially in the first months, a review stops the team from building habits that later have to be corrected.
6. "When does the accompaniment end, and how will we know we are ready?" Good answer: a time frame and a criterion, for example that the team runs and interprets the monthly measurement on its own.
7. "What happens if we get stuck somewhere?" Good answer: the provider takes over that part or arranges it, without a new project having to be set up.

What the first 90 days look like

To make the engagement tangible, a typical sequence for a team of three:

• Weeks 1 to 2: analysis. Where does the company stand today in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews? Which competitors are named, which sources cited? Plus a workshop for the whole team.
• Weeks 3 to 4: set up the prompt set and reporting. The team adds questions from its own customer contact; the first measurement sets the baseline.
• Month 2: rewrite the homepage and service pages, add schema. The team writes, the agency reviews. This is the part that works fastest, because assistants with web search re-read the page the next time they retrieve it.
• Month 3: work through third-party sources, second measurement, sparring on the results. The team runs the measurement itself for the first time, with the agency checking.

After three months the team has revised its most important pages, knows the sources in its industry and measures on its own. From then on the accompaniment thins out: sparring on call instead of fixed sessions. Which pages AI assistants prefer to read is described in From SEO to GEO.

Conclusion

A marketing team of three people can run AI visibility itself. The ongoing work is learnable, and it belongs where the content is created anyway. What a team needs at the start are three things it does not bring on its own: knowledge of which sources matter in its industry, a measurement that shows whether the work is paying off, and someone to review the first drafts.

If you only want an introduction, a workshop serves you well. If you want to work independently afterwards, look for an accompaniment phase and a planned handover. A broader comparison of agencies that take over SEO and GEO completely is in The 5 best SEO, GEO & AEO agencies in Zurich; providers of general AI training are in The 5 best AI workshop providers in Zurich.

How Hierarchy runs the model is described on the SEO & AI visibility page. Where your company stands today is shown by the free AI visibility check.