Vital One Health: In-House AI Engine Optimization Practice
A capability transfer engagement for Vital One Health — the holding company behind Smart Health Dental and FreshTips — that built an internal AEO practice tied directly to their products, brands, and existing operating workflows, instead of outsourcing the work indefinitely.
The Challenge
The way customers find dental and vision insurance is changing. People used to type queries into a search engine and click a link. Now they ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and the answers they get back are synthesized — sometimes citing sources, often not. For a multi-brand insurance holding company like Vital One Health, with consumer-facing brands across dental, vision, and discount plan markets, AI Engine Optimization (AEO) is becoming as important as traditional SEO ever was. The team had already started receiving customers who said, "I asked an AI which plan to use and it recommended you" — or worse, "it recommended your competitor."
Vital One Health had two options. They could outsource AEO to an agency forever, paying a monthly retainer to a third party who would never fully understand their plan portfolio, their brand voice, or their internal operating processes across Smart Health Dental and FreshTips. Or they could build the capability in-house, with their own marketing team, attached to the workflows they were already running. They chose the second path — but they needed a partner to teach them how, set up the foundation, and make sure the practice was tied to the rest of their operation rather than living off to the side as a marketing experiment.
Our Approach
We delivered an AEO enablement engagement: we taught the internal Vital One Health team how to manage AEO across their consumer brands, set up the tools and processes they would use day to day, and made the entire practice specific to their plan portfolio, their brand voice, and their existing operating workflows.
Implementation Phases
Audited the existing visibility of Smart Health Dental and FreshTips across the major AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — for the queries that actually matter to a consumer comparing dental and vision plans. Identified which questions surfaced the brands, which surfaced competitors, and which surfaced nothing at all.
Hands-on training for the Vital One Health marketing, content, and operations team. Covered how AI engines select sources, what makes content citation-friendly, how to structure plan pages and assets for synthesis, and how to measure visibility over time. Trained on the real Smart Health Dental and FreshTips plan portfolio, not generic examples.
Built AEO into the existing operating processes — content calendar, plan launches, sales enablement, support documentation. The point was never to create a new department. The point was to bake AEO into the workflows the team was already running across both brands.
Documented the playbook so the practice survives turnover and continues without external support. The internal team owns the visibility scorecard, the content templates, the competitive monitoring routine, and the iteration loop.
System Architecture
Smart Health Dental & FreshTips plan content, customer questions, competitive landscape, internal team capacity
- AI engine visibility audit across major models for high-intent dental and vision queries
- Hands-on training for the internal team using real Smart Health Dental and FreshTips assets
- Plan-page and content structuring for citation-friendly AI synthesis
- Workflow integration into existing content, launch, and support processes
- Measurement scorecard for ongoing internal ownership across both brands
Trained internal team, integrated AEO workflow, owned measurement scorecard, documented playbook
The deliverable is not a monthly retainer. The deliverable is a team that can run AEO on their own, tied to the operating processes they already use across Smart Health Dental and FreshTips.
Results & Impact
The Vital One Health team runs AEO themselves, with no ongoing external dependency
AEO is built into existing content, launch, and support processes — not a side project
A written playbook and measurement scorecard the team can keep using indefinitely