Remington BeggFor decades, sales and marketing teams relied on frameworks like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) to qualify leads. But their prospects had their own selection criteria, and fast-forward to today, in an era where buyers come to a sales meeting with up to 80% of their information, after conducting deep, independent investigations using sophisticated AI tools, the old playbook is obsolete. The traditional buyer's journey is shifting.
Today, your potential customers can condense weeks of research into a single, powerful query, outsourcing their initial discovery and analysis to AI. This creates a new challenge: you must now address two very different audiences simultaneously. First, the human decision-maker, driven by emotion, trust, and a compelling "Why." Second, the AI agent, which operates on logic, verifiable data, and structured information about the "How" and "What" of your solution.
How do you create content that speaks to both the heart and the algorithm? The answer lies in the CLEAR Framework, a new model for a your Go-To-Market in an AI Era.
The Human vs. The AI: A Tale of Two Journeys
If you're a fan of Simon Sinek, you understand the power of the "Golden Circle." Humans start with Why. They connect with your purpose and mission before they care about How you do what you do, or What you ultimately sell. This is about building trust and emotional resonance.
AI agents, however, don't have emotions. They can identify sentiment, but they don't feel it. They are tasked with a job: to analyze information based on a user's prompt and return the most logical, factual, and relevant solution. They care about verifiable data, technical specifications, and structured content that directly answers the "what" and "how."
Focusing only on the human narrative risks being invisible to AI. Focusing only on the AI's needs results in dry, sterile content that fails to connect with the person making the final call. We created the CLEAR Framework bridge this divide.
Introducing the CLEAR Framework
CLEAR is an acronym that provides a comprehensive checklist for assessing your marketing content, page by page, to ensure it effectively serves both humans and AI.
C - Credibility & Clarity
The goal is to establish trust and ensure your value proposition is instantly understood.
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For the Human: We seek social proof and established authority. This means a detailed "About Us" page with your company story, clear mission and values, and showcasing industry awards, certifications (like SOC 2 or HIPAA), and strategic partnerships. We need jargon-free language to understand what you do and how you can help.
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For the AI: The agent needs verifiable data points. It looks for certifications, mentions in reputable sources, and consistent terminology. It requires structured content (like schema.org markup for your organization and products) to easily categorize your "what" and "how."
L - Leverage & Logic
You must demonstrate the tangible impact of your solution (Leverage) and its practical fit within the buyer's environment (Logic).
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For the Human: We want to see quantifiable benefits. This is where case studies shine, showing results like "increased sales by 35%." We also need to understand the process, perhaps through an ROI calculator or a "How It Works" section that explains the logic of your solution and its integrations.
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For the AI: Metrics are paramount. The agent analyzes structured data, technical specifications from your documentation, and compatibility details to match your solution against the requirements in the user's prompt.
E - Evidence & Emotion
Provide verifiable proof to back up your claims while connecting with buyers on an emotional level.
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For the Human: We are profoundly influenced by the emotion tied to a company's "why" and the human impact of the solution. Authentic customer stories and video testimonials that express genuine satisfaction are far more powerful than a simple list of results. Evidence like data sheets and security pages serves to validate these initial feelings.
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For the AI: The agent prioritizes factual evidence about your "what" and "how." It processes emotion as quantifiable sentiment data from sources like reviews and testimonials, which must be properly formatted with schema to be recognized.
A - Alignment & Accessibility
Show that your vision aligns with the buyer's long-term goals and that the necessary support and resources are readily accessible.
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For the Human: We need to see how your product's roadmap and company values fit into our strategic future. We also need assurance that support is accessible, with clear details on support tiers, training programs, and customer success initiatives.
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For the AI: The agent identifies alignment through documented roadmaps and integration lists. It evaluates accessibility by processing structured information about support plans, FAQs, and links to knowledge bases or community forums.
R - Responsiveness & Relevance
Engage promptly and tailor your messaging to the buyer's specific needs and context.
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For the Human: Responsiveness is a direct indicator of future customer service. If we fill out a form, what is the expected response time? Relevance means seeing content tailored to our industry or role, making us feel understood.
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For the AI: The agent evaluates your potential responsiveness by identifying clear contact methods (like a phone number or contact form with schema markup). It assesses relevance by seeing if content is segmented by industry, use case, or role.
Putting CLEAR into Action: From Theory to Strategy
Consider this: a single query like this in Google's AI mode "How is search going to change in the AI era?", kicks off six simultaneous searches, reviews over 70 websites, and synthesize a comprehensive answer in seconds. Your customers are doing the same for their purchasing needs. The entire top and middle of the funnel are being compressed into one moment.
To ensure you show up effectively, you need to think strategically. A practical first step is to conduct a CLEAR Ai-Readiness Audit of your key web pages. Evaluate each page against the five components of C.L.E.A.R
If your website isn't CLEAR, your message will be lost, misinterpreted, or ignored completely by the AI agents doing the heavy lifting.
Take the Next Step
Adapting to this new reality is no longer optional—it's essential for survival. The CLEAR Framework provides the blueprint for building a marketing presence that is robust, resilient, and ready for the future of discovery.
Want to see how to apply this framework and conduct an audit of your own website?
Watch our full, in-depth webinar on the CLEAR Framework, available on demand now!
