How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT: A Derbyshire SMB Guide
A few months ago a shutters company got in touch with us out of the blue. When I asked how they had found us, the answer was not Google, not a referral, and not an advert. They had asked ChatGPT who the best marketing agency in Derbyshire was, and we came up.
That moment is why this post exists. How to get recommended by ChatGPT is quickly becoming one of the most important questions a Derbyshire or East Midlands business owner can ask, because more and more of your customers are asking AI tools before they ever type anything into Google.
I have spent 18 years in marketing, the last several of them running Optimise Your Marketing from Cromford Mills in Derbyshire. I have watched search behaviour shift more in the last two years than in the previous ten. People used to Google a problem and scroll through ten blue links. Now a growing number ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's own AI Overviews, and they get one answer with a short list of names attached to it.
In this guide I will explain exactly how those tools decide which businesses to mention, walk through the real client story that proves it works, and give you a practical set of steps you can start this week. No theory for the sake of theory. Just what is actually happening and what to do about it.
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Check my AI visibilityWhy getting recommended by ChatGPT matters now
ChatGPT has well over 100 million weekly users, and a meaningful share of them are using it the way people used to use a search engine. They ask it to recommend a plumber, a dentist, an accountant, or a marketing agency, and they take the answer at face value far more readily than they ever trusted a paid advert.
For a Derbyshire or East Midlands SMB, this is both a risk and an opportunity. If ChatGPT does not know you exist, you simply are not in the conversation. If it does know you, and knows you well, you can end up being recommended to someone who never saw your website, your Google Business Profile, or a single piece of your advertising.
This is not a replacement for traditional SEO. It sits alongside it. But it is a new battleground, and right now most small businesses in this region are not even aware it exists, which means the ones who move early have a genuine advantage.
This is not the same game as traditional SEO
Ranking on Google and getting recommended by ChatGPT draw on some of the same raw material, but the mechanics differ. Google ranks pages. ChatGPT and tools like it build an understanding of your business from everything it can find about you across the web, then synthesises that into an answer.
That means consistency, clarity, and genuine third-party validation matter more than clever keyword placement. You cannot trick a language model the way some people used to try to trick a search algorithm.
The ChatGPT recommendation that actually happened
Design Shutters, a shutters company we now work with, found us because a prospective customer of theirs asked ChatGPT who to use for marketing in Derbyshire and our name came up. They got in touch, we had a conversation, and they are now a client. This is not a hypothetical. It is the clearest proof I have that AI visibility converts into real business.
See how we approach AI marketingHow ChatGPT actually decides who to recommend
ChatGPT does not have a live index of every business in Derbyshire sitting ready to query. What it has is a broad understanding built from training data plus, increasingly, live web browsing when it needs current information. When someone asks it a recommendation question, it draws on whichever of those sources are available and tries to give a confident, specific answer.
Four things consistently influence whether your business gets mentioned.
1. Clear, consistent information across the web
If your business name, what you do, and where you operate are described consistently on your website, your Google Business Profile, directories, and press mentions, that consistency makes it easier for an AI model to form a confident picture of you. Mixed messaging across different sources does the opposite.
2. Genuine third-party mentions
Reviews, press coverage, podcast appearances, and other businesses or publications talking about you all feed into how visible you are to AI tools. This is one of the reasons we talk about local marketing and brand building as connected disciplines rather than separate boxes to tick.
3. A website that explains itself plainly
Language models read your website much like a very literal, very thorough new employee would. If your homepage is full of vague claims and no specifics, there is nothing concrete for the model to repeat back when someone asks for a recommendation. Clear, specific copy about who you serve and what results you get performs far better.
4. Structured, specific proof
Case studies with real numbers are gold here. When we talk to prospects, we are happy to point to Balance and Beam going from 3 enquiries a week to 32, a 500 percent increase, or Etta Plumbing in Osmaston, Derby reaching page one for "plumbers Derby" and "plumbers near me". Specific numbers tied to a specific business and location give AI tools something concrete to latch onto.
The businesses getting recommended by ChatGPT right now are not necessarily the biggest. They are the ones who have been boringly consistent and specific about who they are and what they do, everywhere, for long enough that it has sunk in.
— Stuart Baddiley
Practical steps to improve your chances of being recommended by AI
None of this is complicated, but it does take consistent effort, which is exactly where most Derbyshire SMBs fall down. Here is where I would start.
Audit what AI tools currently say about you
Before you change anything, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google directly what they know about your business. Ask it to recommend a business like yours in your town and see whether you appear. This single exercise tells you more than any theory could.
Tighten your website's core pages
Your homepage, about page, and service pages should say plainly who you serve, where you operate, and what outcome you deliver. Vague mission statements do nothing for an AI model trying to summarise you. Specifics about your website and your service offer do.
Keep your Google Business Profile accurate and active
Your GBP listing feeds into the wider web of information AI tools pull from. Keep your categories, services, and location details current, and keep collecting reviews. This connects directly to how we think about Google visibility generally.
Publish genuine proof, not just claims
Case studies with real figures, like AEGIS Engineering's 51 percent increase in yearly sales or Inn Farm Dairy's 366 percent jump in daily revenue, do double duty. They convince human visitors and they give AI models something specific to repeat. If you have real results sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere, turn them into a page.
Build genuine third-party mentions over time
This is slower work, but it compounds. Press mentions, podcast guest spots, partnerships, and reviews all add to the web of signals AI tools draw on. Croots Farm Shop in Duffield built up 3 million social media impressions in a year partly through this kind of consistent, varied presence.
Why most Derbyshire businesses are missing this opportunity
I talk to a lot of SMB owners across the East Midlands, and almost none of them have checked what ChatGPT says about their business. Most are still entirely focused on traditional Google rankings, which still matter enormously, but it means there is a genuine first-mover advantage sitting here right now.
The businesses who get this right early are not doing anything exotic. They are the ones treating their online presence as one connected system rather than a pile of separate tasks, which is exactly the thinking behind the algorithms pillar of BIG12 and how platform behaviour changes over time.
A legal sector client we work with saw roughly 10x growth in web traffic over time, not from one clever trick but from steady, consistent work across SEO, content, and local signals. The same discipline applies here. AI visibility rewards consistency, not shortcuts.
How this connects to the BIG12 framework
I built BIG12 around 12 pillars because marketing a small business properly means pulling several levers at once, not obsessing over one. AI is one of those 12 pillars, sitting inside the Get Leads cluster alongside social media, algorithms, and lead generation.
Getting recommended by ChatGPT is not a standalone project. It depends on your website pillar being solid, your Google pillar being accurate, your brand pillar being clear, and your test and measure pillar telling you whether any of it is working. That is the whole point of thinking in a framework rather than chasing single tactics.
If you want to see exactly where AI visibility sits alongside the other 11 pillars, our online marketing training walks through the full BIG12 system in plain language.
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Everything in this post is genuinely simple to understand. Keep your information consistent, make your website specific, collect real proof, and build genuine third-party mentions over time. None of it is a secret and none of it needs a huge budget.
The gap is not knowledge. It is the fact that most business owners in Derbyshire and the East Midlands are already stretched thin running the business itself, and this kind of steady, unglamorous work rarely gets prioritised until a competitor shows up ahead of you in a ChatGPT answer. I have watched this pattern play out for 18 years across every channel that has come along, and AI visibility is no different.
This is exactly where we come in. We take the BIG12 framework, apply it to your specific business, and do the consistent work that actually moves the needle, including making sure AI tools have a clear, accurate, well-supported picture of who you are.
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We will look at your current marketing, benchmark it against the BIG12, and give you a practical set of actions to take. No sales pitch. No fluff. Just 18 years of honest advice applied to your business.
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