Key takeaways
- A pitch project is a free or low-cost workspace for auditing a prospect's AI visibility before they sign, without paying for a full client seat.
- The strongest pitch shows a prospect's gap against named competitors on at least two AI engines, not a single score.
- Small brands produce noisy numbers. Don't promise score improvements before you have a baseline.
- Platforms differ on pitch limits, white-label reporting, and whether they help you do the work after the sale. Check vendor pricing pages, because the figures change.
- The audit is a sales tool. The close comes from a clear plan for fixing what you found.
Why pitch projects matter for agencies in 2026
Pitching an SEO retainer used to mean a keyword gap spreadsheet and a few ranking screenshots. Prospects now ask a different question: "What does ChatGPT say about us?" If you can answer it live, with real data, in the first meeting, you are ahead of most agencies in the room.
The problem is cost. Running a prospect through a full client workspace means paying for prompts, responses and seats before any revenue exists. Pitch projects solve that. Most agency-oriented platforms now offer some free or cheap way to show a prospect their numbers, and the get3rd comparison of agency platforms puts it bluntly: pitching is mostly a solved problem. What differs is everything around it.
This guide covers what to audit, how to run it, which platforms are built for the job, and how to turn the output into a signed engagement.
What an agency platform has to do
The get3rd comparison breaks agency needs into seven jobs. Four matter most for pitching and early delivery:
- Win the pitch: show a prospect where they stand against competitors before they sign.
- Run many clients: separate projects or workspaces per brand, with sensible pricing as the roster grows.
- Report in your brand: white-label dashboards, scheduled PDFs, or a Looker Studio connector.
- Help with the work: content briefs, action lists, or publishing, so you are not only selling charts.
A tool that nails the first job and fails the fourth gets you a signed contract and a delivery headache.
What to put in a free visibility audit
A useful audit is small and pointed. Think one page of findings, not forty.
Pick prompts the prospect's buyers actually use
Start with 15 to 30 prompts: category questions ("best payroll software for small teams"), comparison prompts ("X vs Y"), and a few branded prompts. Pull ideas from the prospect's Search Console data if they share it, from People Also Ask, and from sales calls.
Show competitors side by side
A visibility number alone means nothing to a CMO. "You appear in 4 of 25 category prompts, Competitor A appears in 17" does. Name two or three real competitors the prospect already worries about.
Audit each engine separately
Don't blend ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity into one score. They behave differently. According to Promptwatch Data on sources per response, ChatGPT cites about 5 sources per web-search answer, while Google AI Overviews cites about 10 and Perplexity almost exactly 10. With only about 5 slots in ChatGPT, every citation is contested, so a prospect's absence there is a stronger gap to show than the same absence in a 10-source engine.
Social sources differ too. In Promptwatch's social citation data for Sep 28 to Oct 4, 2026, social platforms were 0.46% of ChatGPT citations but 12.2% of Google AI Overviews citations, with YouTube at 4.28% there. A pitch that says "get on Reddit" for ChatGPT is out of date. The Reddit decline report shows reddit.com falling from roughly 4% to 0.5% of ChatGPT citations on August 14, 2026.
Classify the prospect's content
Check what kinds of pages the prospect has. In Promptwatch's content type data (Sep 28 to Oct 4, 2026), product pages were 22.4% of ChatGPT citations and landing pages 16.8%. For commercial prompts, product pages, landing pages, listicles and comparisons made up almost 70%. If the prospect has no comparison pages or listicle coverage, that is a concrete, fixable finding.
Add a technical check
Can AI crawlers read the site at all? A blocked robots.txt or a JavaScript-heavy page that returns nothing is a quick win that makes your pitch look sharp. Promptwatch's AI crawler traffic data is useful context for which bots matter.
Beware small samples
This is where agencies embarrass themselves. The get3rd analysis found that for the smallest third of brands, 30% of days were more than 5 points off their own monthly average. A prospect with little AI presence can swing wildly day to day.
Practical rules:
- Run the audit over several days, not one afternoon.
- Show the gap against competitors on at least two models.
- Describe ranges, not precise scores.
- Don't promise a score improvement before you have a baseline.
Selling a number that moves randomly and then explaining why it dropped in month two is a retention problem you created yourself.
Platforms with pitch workspaces
Pricing below is vendor-reported from the sources I reviewed. Verify on each pricing page before you quote anything, since pitch limits and plan prices change, and sources disagree on some of them.
| Platform | Pitch approach | Agency pricing reported | Strength for agencies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | Pitch projects on Agency plans, unlimited projects and prompts | Kick-off $199/mo, Growth $399/mo, Scale $799/mo | Crawler logs, visitor analytics, Agent Chat, white-label reporting |
| Peec AI | Free pitch projects (sources cite 3 to 7, so check) | Essential $245, Growth $495, Scale $795 per month | Credit pool across client brands, wide model coverage |
| Profound | Pitch environments inside Agency Mode | Agency Growth $99/mo reported, Enterprise custom | Large-agency workflows, nine engines on Enterprise |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Not an agency feature | $99/month per domain, 25 prompts | Fits agencies already living in Semrush |
| Otterly.AI | Low-cost entry | Check vendor page | Small agencies starting out |
| Rankability | Agency-focused analytics | Check vendor page | Agencies bundling SEO and AI visibility |
Promptwatch
Promptwatch has agency plans with unlimited projects, pitch projects and prompts, 10 seats, and every model included. It tracks the real interfaces of ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and others, which matters because UI answers can differ from API outputs. For pitching, the useful extras are IP-verified AI crawler logs (so you can show a prospect which AI bots hit their site and fail), query fan-outs, and Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn citation reports. Agency plans also include white-label PDF reports and branded read-only client access. Note that Agency plans don't include the Content Agent or Knowledge Base; those sit on Business and Enterprise.
Peec AI
Peec AI is the name that comes up most in agency roundups. Its pitch projects let you share AI visibility reports with prospects, and Zapier's roundup picks it for smart suggestions. Semrush's agency comparison notes Essential and Growth users can track up to six AI platforms, with higher plans reaching 11. Treat the free pitch-project count as unverified until you check the pricing page.
Profound
Profound targets agencies running AEO as a scaled service. Its own agency comparison highlights client workspaces and pitch environments, and Semrush notes that Agency Growth tracks three engines while Enterprise reaches nine. Expect a higher budget than the lightweight options.
Semrush and Otterly
If your team already runs on Semrush, the AI Visibility Toolkit keeps everything in one login, though pricing is per domain and it isn't built around pitch workspaces.
Otterly.AI is the budget pick for solo marketers and small agencies, though it lacks real prompt-volume data.
Agency-focused options worth a look
A few others in our catalog are explicitly built around agency workflows: Rankability, Cairrot, OpenLens and Wellows. Compare them on pitch limits and white-label output.
For a wider scan, the GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com lists many more.
Running the pitch step by step
1. Qualify before you audit
Don't audit everyone. Pick prospects with a competitive category, existing content, and a buyer who already asks about AI. A pitch workspace is free, but your analyst time isn't.
2. Set up the project
Create a pitch project, add the brand, add two or three competitors, and load your prompt set. Choose at least two engines, ideally ChatGPT plus Google AI Overviews or Perplexity.
3. Let it run for several days
Give the data time to settle so you aren't quoting noise.
4. Build a one-page summary
Include: prompts where the prospect is absent but competitors appear, which sources AI cites for those prompts, content types the prospect lacks, and any crawler or technical blockers. Skip the vanity score.
5. Show the sources, not just the score
The sources AI cites for a prompt are your plan. If the cited pages are competitor comparison articles and third-party listicles, the fix is clear: get included in those, or publish better ones.
6. Close with a 90-day plan
Name the first five actions. Prospects sign when the path looks concrete.
Pricing the engagement
Model the platform cost per client brand, add delivery and reporting hours, and set your price on top. The tool is a minor line item. As one source put it, the platform provides the data, but the strategy behind it wins and retains clients. Packages that tend to work: a one-off audit and roadmap, a monthly monitoring and reporting retainer, and a full delivery retainer that includes content production and citation work.
If you would rather not build the delivery side yourself, an agency such as 1001 SEO Media covers technical SEO, content, and generative engine optimization, and agencies sometimes partner on delivery.
Reporting after the sale
The pitch is the start. Clients stay when reports connect AI visibility to business outcomes. Look for:
- White-label PDFs or a Looker Studio connector
- AI-referred traffic and conversions, not only mentions
- Trend lines over months, since content has a lifespan. Promptwatch's half-life data shows news losing half its cited pages within 36 days while landing pages and docs last longest
Common mistakes
- Pitching a single blended score across engines.
- Promising a ranking position. AI answers vary by response.
- Auditing too few prompts, then drawing conclusions from noise.
- Ignoring the technical layer. If crawlers can't read the site, content advice is premature.
- Choosing a platform on the pitch allowance alone, then discovering it can't report in your brand.
Which platform for which agency
Small agency testing the market: Otterly.AI or a low-tier Peec AI plan. Agency that already uses Semrush: stay there for the first clients. Agency that wants pitch projects, white-label reports and technical data such as crawler logs and AI traffic in one place: Promptwatch's agency tiers. Large specialist shop with enterprise clients: Profound is built for that profile. Whatever you choose, confirm pitch limits, seats and reporting on the vendor's page first.
For more tracker options, browse the AI rank tracking directory at ai-rank-tools.com.
Bottom line
A free visibility audit works because it replaces opinion with a prospect's own gap against their own competitors. Keep it to two or more engines, a handful of named rivals and a short list of fixable findings. Use a pitch project to run it, avoid over-precise scores on small brands, and bring a 90-day plan to the meeting.