How we used our own Croatian LLC (IGROW MARKETING d.o.o.) as a test laboratory for AI visibility and what that means for your B2B company.

I, Edin Cerimagic, Founder of iGrow, share the journey with you in my own words.

Here you can find the summarized IGROW MARKETING Croatia Case-Study.

The most honest self-experiment we have ever done

If you help clients get found in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, you should be able to prove it yourself. Not with PowerPoint slides. Not with theoretical frameworks. But with real numbers, a real company, and a real starting position: almost zero visibility.

That is exactly the story of iGrow Marketing in Croatia.

In August 2025, we founded IGROW MARKETING d.o.o., our Croatian company based in Mali Lošinj. A new company, a new market, a new domain (igrow-marketing.hr). No existing SEO authority. No backlink profile. No brand awareness. And therefore: 0% AI visibility - for our newly defined prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overview and Co. Our new location in Croatia was deliberately chosen as a test laboratory for AI Search Visibility.

What we had: 1x article, which brought us an average of 33.3% AI visibility for a prompt “digital marketing agency”.

As of June 6, 2026, the RankScale dashboard for iGrow HR shows the following figures:

• 67.6% average Visibility Score across all tested prompts and engines

• +34.3% growth within the last 7 days alone

• 75 Brand Mentions, 133 Citations

• 70.9% Detection Rate (the percentage of tests in which iGrow was found at all)

• 65.0% Top-3 Visibility (how often we appear in the top three results)

• 1.8 average rank, when found

• The nearest competitor: 9.0%
  
  

That is no coincidence. That is methodology.

The Croatian market: different from DACH, but no less interesting

Anyone working in the DACH region must understand: Croatia operates under different rules.

The Google Ads CPCs are significantly cheaper. Inquiries come faster. The total number of leads is higher. But: the market is more price-sensitive. Many prospects are still in an early decision-making phase. Large companies with real budgets research more thoroughly and often make decisions based on price rather than positioning-based criteria.

For us, this means: Google Ads was a good starting point to generate inquiries in the first place. The ads were running. The leads were coming in. But qualified pipeline from organic and AI channels: zero.

Anyone working in the Croatian market without a strong organic and AI presence is constantly fighting against the price. On the other hand, anyone who is perceived as an authority, who appears as a recommendation from ChatGPT, or who ranks first for relevant searches on Google, fundamentally changes their negotiating position – this is exactly where a strategic AI Search and GEO positioning comes in.

That was the motivation for me, as Founder, to start the project.

The starting position: One article triggered everything

Back then, I had written an article myself. In Croatian, meaning: “Agencija za digitalni Marketing” (Digital Marketing Agency) focusing on the keyword. No sophisticated SEO concept behind it. No strategic editorial plan. Just a well-written, informative article about a relevant topic.

The result surprised me: the article started to generate organic traffic. It appeared in AI Overviews. It brought iGrow HR into the visibility of AI systems for the first time.

That was the proof moment. Not theory. Not another company's case study. But our own experiment, live.

The problem: our focus was on clients. We had no content team available to take care of igrow-marketing.hr exclusively. New positions were filled later, capacities built up. Our own content had to wait.

Until we made the decision: if we pull this off for clients with 100% focus, we have to pull it off for ourselves too. Systematically. With a clear strategy.

The strategy: Funnel-first, not traffic-first

The most common mistake in content projects: starting at the top of the funnel. General information articles. High volume. Low intent. Lots of traffic, few leads.

We turned that around.

Bottom of Funnel first. Prompts and keywords that are directly linked to a purchasing decision. Anyone searching for “Google Ads Agencija Hrvatska” or asking ChatGPT who the best digital agency in Croatia is, is not an information seeker. They are a potential buyer.


Mid Funnel next. Content that builds authority, shows references, presents case studies, and positions iGrow as a provider that delivers. That is what we are doing right here, with this article.

Top of Funnel as support. General topics around SEO basics and proven SEO tactics, Google Ads, AI Search, digital marketing in Croatia. These articles are published as supplementary material, link to bottom-funnel pages, and strengthen the thematic authority of the domain. Classic search engine optimization remains important, but is complemented by Generative Engines Optimization and AI optimization for new answer systems.

The Prompt Framework: We asked ourselves how Croatian companies would formulate their purchase intent. Not how SEO experts think people search. But how a CEO in Zagreb asks Google or ChatGPT when looking for a marketing agency. Exactly this changed user behavior in AI searches determines a relevant part of the content strategy today.

The results of this analysis were directly translated into article titles and content focus. In doing so, we formulated questions along the industry lines in which systems name specific options, making artificial intelligence tangible for real purchase moments.

The implementation: 22 articles, 24 hours, top 1 position

The first articles went online at the end of May 2026. Some of them only went live on June 5, 2026.

What happened next surprised even us:

Within 24 hours, our articles appeared in organic Google search results. Several of them directly in first place. In parallel, we were cited as a relevant source in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Mode – that is, in artificial intelligence systems where users ask complex questions directly to AI assistants and content is served as AI answers or recommendations.

A total of 22 articles have been published so far. All 22 generated AI visibility. The goal is to be named as a relevant option in your own industry, so that AI tools know your company.

This is not a claim. It is documented in the screenshots embedded throughout this article. AI optimization does not replace classic search engine optimization, but is a growing part of the strategy.

AI Visibility Croatia Website

Best SEO Agency for Marketing

How to improve Google Ranking

Google Advertising Croatia

How to improve Google Ranking

How to make an SEO Strategy

How to measure the success of marketing campaigns

Google Advertising Croatia

Google Ads for small businesses (because of budget :P)

Google Ads Agency

Digital Marketing for B2B companies

Content Marketing Croatia

ChatGPT Brand Recommendation (how to get recommended)

AI Search Optimization and SEO for Web

SEO Agency Croatia

Local SEO Croatia

How to increase online sales + How to attract ideal clients online

The numbers in detail

Overall Performance (as of June 6, 2026)

Competitor Comparison (Visibility Score)

For context: At the start (June 1, 2026), iGrow HR was at 33.3%. Kala Presence led with 35.9%, 404 agency was at 29.0%. In less than a week, we overtook and more than doubled all competitors.

Performance by Topic Cluster

Our articles cover several thematic pillars. AI visibility by topic:

Google Ads and AI Search Optimizacija lead with 100% and 92.3% visibility respectively. These are exactly the topics we defined as Bottom-of-Funnel priorities.

Performance by AI Engine and ChatGPT SEO

AI Overview, ChatGPT, and Perplexity show the strongest growth because we only went live a few days ago and these engines picked up our articles quickly. Gemini and AI Mode had indexed us earlier and therefore show smaller delta values, although the absolute scores are high.

Share of Voice and Citations

In terms of citations, we dominate with a 70.4% market share (from 0% to +70.4% in one week). The next competitor comes in at 4.8%.

In Share of Voice (Mentions), we are at 42.4%, also coming from 0%.

The Prompts and Prompt Research: Not a single one is branded

A crucial point of this case study: AI visibility was not generated by branded searches. Nobody asked for “iGrow”. The prompts represent genuine purchasing intent from Croatian business owners.

Here are the tested search queries (translated from Croatian):

SEO topics:

• “SEO Agency Croatia”

• “Best SEO for Marketing”

• “Local SEO Croatia”

• “How to build an SEO strategy”

• “How to improve Google rankings”

Google Ads:

• “Google Ads Agency”

• “Google Ads for small businesses”

• “Google Advertising Croatia”

AI & Digital Marketing:

• “AI Search Optimizacija i SEO za Web” (AI Search Optimization and SEO for Web)

• “AI visibility Croatian website”

• “ChatGPT brand recommendation”

• “Digital marketing for B2B companies”

• “B2B Marketing Croatia”

• “B2B Lead Generation”

Decision Phase:

• “How to choose a digital agency”

• “How to measure the success of marketing campaigns”

• “How to attract ideal clients online”

• “How to increase online sales”

• “Content Marketing Croatia”

• “Digitalni Marketing” (general)

These prompts reflect how Croatian business owners, according to our research, actually search. Anyone recommended by ChatGPT or Google for these questions is already on the shortlist, even before a discovery call has taken place.

Google Search Results: Not only AI, but also organic Top 1

AI visibility is one side of the coin. The other: our articles rank in parallel on top positions in organic Google search results.

Documented examples (as of June 5/6, 2026, in some cases less than 24 hours after publication):

“AI Search Optimizacija i SEO za Web” (AI Search Optimization and SEO for Web): igrow-marketing.hr ranks at number 1, directly above the AI Overview, which also cites our page as the primary source.

“Kako odabrati agenciju za digitalni marketing” (How to choose a digital marketing agency): iGrow HR ranks as the first organic source in the AI Overview, with a direct quote from our article.

“Kako Napraviti SEO Strategiju” (How to build an SEO strategy): igrow-marketing.hr at number 2 in organic results, and number 1 in AI Overview with our article as the primary source, out of 11 referenced websites in total.

“Google Ads Agencija” (Google Ads Agency): iGrow HR ranks organically on the page, competing against established providers like Redbrick, IGNIS, and Radionica, all of which have a significantly longer market presence.

“Digitalni Marketing za B2B Tvrtke” (Digital Marketing for B2B Companies): Number 1 in organic results, with an AI Overview quote directly below.

“ChatGPT Preporuka Brenda” (ChatGPT Brand Recommendation): Number 1 organically, with AI Overview citing igrow-marketing.hr as the primary source.

“B2B Marketing Hrvatska” (B2B Marketing Croatia): Number 1 organically, with AI Overview featuring iGrow HR as the main reference.

“Kako Napraviti SEO Strategiju” (How to build an SEO strategy): In the AI Overview, igrow-marketing.hr appears as one of 11 referenced sources, with our article as the second thumbnail.

The prompts represent real purchase intent and should be tested across various thematic contexts, not just for a single search term. Classic rankings remain useful as a benchmark, even if AI answers increasingly serve results based on a different logic.

Some of these articles were published on June 5, 2026. It didn’t even take 24 hours for them to rank at the top of AI search and Google.

Why it worked so quickly

The question everyone asks: How is this possible? A new company, a young domain, hardly any backlinks, and yet Top 1 rankings within 24 hours?

The answer lies in the combination of several factors:

1. Market maturity of the topic in Croatia

AI visibility and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are still largely untouched territory in the Croatian market. Classic SEO is primarily based on stable rankings and keywords. On the other hand, what counts here additionally is whether content also appears in AI answers. Most local agencies do not publish structured, high-quality articles on these topics. This creates a gap that can be filled quickly.

2. Strategic Prompt Selection

We did not optimize for traffic, but for purchase intent. This means that the articles we write are directly aimed at questions that AI systems are frequently asked. Whoever answers the exact question a user is asking is cited preferentially by the AI.

3. Content Quality and Structure

AI systems prefer content that is clearly structured, provides direct answers, addresses specific questions, and is factually correct. Clarity is also crucial so that content can be categorized more easily by machines and incorporated into answers. We don’t write generic agency copy. We write articles that provide real value to the reader, have a clearly recognizable author, and are simultaneously optimized structurally for AI systems.

4. Technical Foundation

The website igrow-marketing.hr is set up cleanly from a technical perspective: fast, mobile-first, with correct schema markup, clear page structure, and internal linking. This significantly speeds up indexing.

5. Funnel Logic in Content Architecture

Bottom-funnel articles link to service pages. Mid-funnel articles link to bottom-funnel. Top-funnel articles complete the picture and strengthen the thematic depth of the domain. This structure signals authority in a specific topic area to search engines and AI systems and follows a strategic roadmap for AI visibility in B2B.

What this means for your B2B company

The question is not whether AI search is relevant to your business. The question is when you will stop waiting for it to resolve itself.

In Croatia, it took less than 30 days to go from 0% to a 67.6% Visibility Score. Yes, while 33.3% was the starting point for one prompt – our newly defined prompts logically had 0% since the AI had no content of ours to measure yet. In the DACH region, the market is more mature and competition is stronger. But the basic principle is identical.

We have also achieved a high Visibility Score for other companies in a very short time, whether in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, or the USA – we built our framework to work in any country, with any language, even in Croatian.

What you can do today:

Ask yourself: If your ideal customer asks ChatGPT right now who they should recommend for [your service], what does the AI reply? Are you mentioned? Are you recommended? Or does the inquiry go directly to your competitor?

If you don’t know the answer, that is already a problem. Because your customers are already asking these questions.

The main priority is therefore not just ranking, but a measurable presence in AI answers – ideally based on a structured GEO Visibility Audit for your AI visibility.

Ensure your content provides clear, direct answers and visible author information as a trust signal.

Establish technically clean foundations with schema markup and structured data like JSON-LD.

Strong content, genuine backlinks, and positive customer reviews increase the likelihood of AI recommendations.

Brands should be described consistently across different websites to gain visibility.

When AIs cite your brand, it strengthens trust and your status as an expert.

The iGrow Methodology: What lies behind the result

What we implemented in Croatia is the exact same methodology we apply for our clients in the DACH region – as a specialized B2B Growth Partner. It is based on three pillars:

In 2026, visibility in AI will become more important for many companies than pure Google ranking.

Pillar 1: AI Visibility through Structured Content Not all content is weighted equally by AI systems. We optimize for what ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity classify as a reliable source: clear answers, structured information, factual depth, thematic consistency.

Pillar 2: Intent-based Keyword Strategy We start with the questions that buyers who are ready to make a decision ask. Bottom-of-Funnel first. This ensures qualified visibility instead of vanity-metric traffic numbers.

Pillar 3: Measurement and Optimization With tools like RankScale, we track AI visibility across all relevant engines. Classic tracking quickly reaches its limits here because answer engines cite, weight, and display results differently. That is why we define clear KPIs and robust metrics that go beyond clicks and are actionable for marketing teams. These include citation frequency, citation rank, or additional signals such as reading time when classic rankings lose their expressiveness. Crucial is how AI models select sources and how early a brand appears in responses. Therefore, the most important question before the next optimization decision is which tool is truly reliable for this monitoring. What is measured can be optimized. What is not measured remains speculation.

This is already relevant in the market: 37% of Austrians already use AI tools for recommendations. How strongly this affects a real pipeline is shown in our SoWork Case Study on AI visibility, where we increased visibility from 16.6% to 100% within 90 days – an approach we documented in detail in the English SoWork AI Visibility case study.

Reference Points: Our next piece of evidence

This case study is not the first time iGrow has documented measurable AI visibility.

For SoWork, one of our DACH clients, we increased AI Visibility from 16.6% to 100% in 90 days. That was the starting point of our positioning as an AI visibility agency and highlights how vital a specialized Digital Marketing Agency for B2B SaaS in the DACH region is for a measurable pipeline.

Most recently, also in another Case-Study on MiniFinder, an IoT company from Sweden, where we measure ourselves against major providers like Tractive and Garmin in Germany.

iGrow Croatia is another piece of evidence. Our own company. Our own budget. Our own skin in the game.

From 0% (in the newly defined prompts) to 67.6% in less than 30 days. From a newly founded company with no organic presence to market leadership in AI visibility within the Croatian agency market.

Further client results are, by the way, in progress and will be covered separately in new articles.

Conclusion: Visibility in AI is no longer a question of the future

Every third person searching Google today gets an AI Overview answer. ChatGPT has over 500 million weekly users. Perplexity is growing faster than any other search platform in recent years. Gemini is integrated directly into Google.

Those who are not visible in these channels lose inquiries they never even see. Those who are visible win inquiries before the potential customer even writes the first email.

iGrow Marketing in Croatia proved this in less than 30 days. With 22 articles. In a new market. Without existing domain authority.

If it works in Croatia, it will work for your B2B company too.

Do you want to know how visible you already are in AI search?

We will create a free AI Visibility Check for you, showing where you stand today and what that means for your pipeline. If you would also like to speak with a specialized GEO agency for AI search results, you can reach out directly via our iGrow contact page.

Request your AI Visibility Check now

iGrow is a revenue marketing agency for SaaS, Tech, and B2B companies in the DACH region. Our core services: SEO, Google Ads, AI Search Visibility / GEO, and LinkedIn Thought Leadership. All results in this article are based on measured data from RankScale and Google Search Console (as of June 2026).