How top RIA marketers are adapting to the AI search shift.

Diana Cabrices (0:00): Welcome everyone to today's webinar. We are so excited for this conversation and very excited that you've joined us today. You've decided to take an hour out of your day, your week, your month, and spend some time with us to talk about this topic, this shift that we're seeing in the industry with AI and how advisors are getting found and evaluated and compared to other advisors now that we're stepping into 2026. And it feels like all we hear is chat GPT or perplexity or Claude or Google AI overviews. So that's a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today. And while some of you come in, cause it looks like the numbers are climbing. Some of you are probably hopping off another meeting or you're just getting situated. What we're gonna do is we're gonna start by doing some introductions cause we have some fabulous women here in this room, a very powerful female panel that we've assembled here today for you and some very smart marketers and leaders in this space. And so I'll kick off and just quickly introduce myself and then I'll pass the baton over to Kim and Michelle and Samantha. And they'll share a little bit with you about who they are and what they currently do in their role. So hello everyone. My name is Diana Cabrises. I'm the chief evangelist here at WealthTender and I love advisor marketing. It's just something I'm really passionate about. I've spent the last 10 years in the industry supporting advisors from the solution side. My husband is a financial advisor. So my whole world has really been how to help financial advisors grow at the intersection of both marketing and also technology and scalability. So you'll hear a little bit more about that today and what WealthTender is and how we help advisors but our main focus is certainly giving you insights on how RIA leaders, marketing leaders are operating their firms right now from the perspective of, all right, things are changing with AI and visibility and searchability. So I'm gonna pass the baton over to you, Kim because you're right here next to me on the camera. I'd love for you to take a moment, introduce yourself to the audience who may not know you yet.

Kim Campagna (2:06): Thanks, Diana. I'm Kim Campagna. I'm the marketing manager at Berkshire Money Management. We're an independent RIA in the Berkshires of Massachusetts all the way out to the West end of the state. We're a smaller team. So I am the singular full-time marketing person on our team. I have a lot of support. And for anybody who's listening from a smaller firm we've got about $1.1 billion in assets. We've got a team of about six advisors and a staff of 20. So that's kind of where I'm coming at today with how I'm gonna talk about how we're using AI. Wonderful. Thank you, Kimberly.

Diana Cabrices (2:46): All right, Michelle.

Michelle Winkles (2:48): Hi, thanks, Diana. Hi everyone. I'm Michelle Winkles. I'm a partner and the chief marketing officer at Mission Wealth. We were founded in 2000 and we are a national registered RIA and we manage over 13 billion in client assets today. I've been with the firm about nine years. When I first joined, we were around the same size as your firm, Kimberly. We were around 1 billion. And today we've grown to be 13, like I mentioned. I work closely with all of our department leaders. I'm on the leadership team. And my goal is to really ensure that all of our marketing efforts align seamlessly with our business goals across all different segments. So B2B, B2C and mergers and we call it integrations. My focus really is on all different types of comms but primarily lately a lot on digital growth and optimizing our marketing technology stack.

Diana Cabrices (3:43): Amazing. Thank you, Michelle. And Samantha.

Samantha Allen (3:46): Of course. Hello everyone. My name is Samantha Allen. I'm the Executive Vice President of Marketing at Merit Financial Advisors. We're a pretty large RIA based out of Atlanta, Georgia but we have offices all across the country and I'm coming to you remotely from my home in Omaha, Nebraska. So we also have a couple of remote employees scattered around as well. We've got a little over 20 billion in assets on the platform now. So a good size and growing really, really fast. So my focus is I lead the entire marketing team and a good collection of support agencies and freelance partners that we work with and oversee very similar to Michelle and Kimberly, all of our digital client comms, investor marketing and advisor marketing, B2B, B2C, all of that. So a lot of hats and really exciting work that as a self-proclaimed marketing nerd, I just love to do. So very happy to be here.

Diana Cabrices (4:49): Thank you so much. So as you hear, like these ladies are, they're in the trenches. They're doing a lot of the work in their firms and they're learning along the way. And that's exactly why we're here. We wanna take some of what they're experiencing now. And we also wanna be upfront and honest and say, this is all moving so quickly, right? In a year from now, if we were to host the exact same webinar and talk about the same things, our answers might look differently. But right now, this is what we're all experiencing. And this is what these fabulous panelists are experiencing in their leadership of these RIAs. And hello to everyone in the chat. I asked that in the chat, feel free to drop where you're dialing in from. We've got Philly, we've got Tennessee, we've got Austin, Texas. So thank you everyone. Thank you for being here. Okay, so a quick few housekeeping items and then we're gonna roll right into this. And we've got something a little unique today for you. We wanted to change it up, make it fun, spice it up, as I like to say. So this call is being recorded. So for any reason you can't stay the entire way, we'll send you a recording. We hope you can stay. We've got some really good content from the beginning to the all the way to the very end. We also have two different ways that you can communicate with us on this webinar. We have some balloons. We have a chat box where you can type comments, any thoughts that you have that you wanna share, concerns. But there is a Q&A box and that is where we encourage you to drop questions. If you can drop your questions there, it's more likely that we'll be able to get to them throughout the session. And we're gonna do that in two ways. We have got someone on the line here, specifically Brian Thorpe, CEO of WealthTender. He is helping manage the chat box. So if you have specific questions on AI, marketing, advisor marketing, visibility, he's gonna be there to help you that we may not be able to get to live. And then we're gonna do our best to save five minutes at the end to do a live Q&A. Some of you submitted questions in the registration form. I have those questions all bundled together. So my promise is that I'm going to try my best to make sure I get through those questions. All right, and just quickly looking at the chat, we've got some more people in here, San Diego, Houston, Long Beach. We have Omaha, Josh Passer. Hey Josh, Athens, Georgia, go dogs, love it. Okay, now to introduce exactly what we're gonna be doing here today. When you think of AI discoverability for advisors, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of different pathways, there's pillars, there's different strategies that one could take. And so what we thought we would do is make it fun and sort of set this up into a little bingo board. So this bingo board has five pillars that make up truly AI discoverability for advisors. And I'm just gonna flip some cards and ask this group, this panel, some questions along the way about these topics. What are the pillars? What really matters in AI discoverability? Credibility and trust signals, advisor authority, on-site SEO and AEO, that's what we're calling on-site, meaning your website, off-site SEO and AEO, other pages that feature you, and then clear and consistent positioning. So we're not gonna be super competitive here, but our goal is really collective. As an audience, as a panel, we wanna get through and we wanna answer as many questions as we can because we know if we check off as many boxes as we can, then we're probably gonna be doing pretty good with our AI discoverability for advisors. Okay, all right, so we're gonna start here actually with a poll for you, for our audience, because we wanna hear from you. And this is a good way to just kind of get started on the topic. So I'm gonna launch this poll here, and it should pop up on your screen. It's optional, feel free to engage with us. We'd love to hear from you. But what percentage of affluent Americans do you think are using AI tools like ChatGPT to find financial advisors? All right, answers are rolling in. I'll give it about 10 more seconds, and then I'm gonna stop and show you what your peers are thinking about this topic right now. Okay, all right, you should be able to see those results. So actually, most of you said more than 30%, and you're very close. The answer is C, so it's 20 to 30%. It's an interesting topic. Right now, we are hearing from advisors who are in the WealthTender community telling us, hey, I have prospects who have set up calls with us through WealthTender because they found us on our WealthTender profile that popped up in ChatGPT or Perplexity or even like a Grok search. So we're hearing it a little bit around the board. One thing I like to say is, people are still using Google. That's not going anywhere. We talked about this yesterday when we prepped for this call, but it feels like, and some data is showing that the folks using Google are more browsing, and the folks who are using AI tools to put in more lengthy search questions and have conversations about what they're looking for, those seem to be a little bit more of your buyers, so more higher intent. Ladies, anything you'd add to this before we roll into that first question about how are you seeing this at your firm? And totally fine if not. Okay, we'll move on. Nothing for me. Okay, totally good. All right, so what's our first card here we're gonna pick? We're gonna do positioning pivot under clear and consistent positioning. So I'm gonna open this question up to all the panelists here. Have you noticed any changes in how prospects are finding your advisors or what they already know about them before they reach out to your advisors? Maybe we'll start with Samantha.

Samantha Allen (10:43): Yeah, perfect. Okay, yeah, I think that we've, in the last year, seen a bit of a change as we've leaned into our multimedia strategy. Our content strategy is really based around core pillars, and then we use those pillars to inform how that content shows up across all of the medias and platforms. But specifically for our YouTube channel, that is something that has consistently driven traffic directly from YouTube. But in the last probably like six months, we've also noticed traffic coming from the AI tools and also from Google that is YouTube qualified traffic. And when they get on the phone with us, they immediately reference, oh, I've been following your YouTube channel, and I really like the content. And that's, I'd really like to, they even like, they wanna talk specifically to the advisor that is our kind of talent for our YouTube channel. But that wasn't something we were seeing before. And I think that that is directly tied to those AI tools and even the way that Google's AI is indexing YouTube content and video content and utilizing it to really have kind of a multifaceted search experience.

Diana Cabrices (11:54): Yeah, I love that. It's like amplifying what you've been doing on Google and now new avenues, new channels for people to find you. Love that. Yeah, it makes tracking a little difficult, but yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about tracking too. Yeah, and yesterday when we had a panel prep call, I know Sam, you mentioned like, you guys really drill down on your prospects. Like, hey, how did you find this? Well, what happened when you did that? Where did you click into? And I think that is more important than ever right now. Yes, definitely. Michelle, anything you would add?

Michelle Winkles (12:24): Yeah, I definitely add that we are still seeing a lot of referrals from Google. I think people are using Chat, GPT, Perplexity, Claw, these other tools. They're starting to use them, but maybe they don't trust them because they've kind of grown up with Google, if that makes any sense. YouTube is owned by Google. So I still personally believe Google is king, but that it's gonna shift. I definitely think that we need to prepare for the future and how prospects are gonna be looking for us. So, I mean, I did some industry research just kind of looking at statistics and 80% of high net worth individuals, according to Investment News, are utilizing Google still, but it is definitely a mix. So having a multi-channel strategy for how you position your firm or yourself as an advisor is very important.

Diana Cabrices (13:15): I'll just add one thing to that too. I do agree with your statement on both sides, right? This is the reality now, but this will continue to grow. It does feel like more affluent people are the more early tech adopters as well, right? So think about who is getting their hands on these tools and how quickly. And so I agree, I think it's gonna shift. Thank you for that answer, Michelle. Kim, anything that you would add?

Kim Campagna (13:40): Yeah, I'll just add at Berkshire Money Management, we're largely focused on people who are nearing retirement. So our average prospect and client age might be a little bit higher than other firms. And so while we're starting to see some AI traffic show up in our analytics, we haven't yet had anybody call up and tell us they heard about us from AI. We don't, it's not a client source for us yet. So that's, like Michelle said, like Google search and SEO, it's not going away just yet. You're starting to see some traction with AI, but it's not all going to happen all at once. We're still seeing tremendous growth in old school SEO.

Diana Cabrices (14:22): Yeah, and for me, this is like, okay, you're ahead of the game, right? You're gonna learn some tactics today and you're getting ahead of the game. And if you take action now, imagine in one year from now, when we regroup on this, where you'll be at, right? It's like the early adopters of things. So thank you all for those answers and for sharing a little bit about what's going on inside your firm. Let's move along now. And the next I wanna pull is the power of the niche. So let's go into this one here. Now, how are you ensuring that AI tools understand your firm's differentiators, ideal client profile and specialized expertise? We know that AI elevates expert, it elevates niches or niches, whichever way you say it. It definitely outperforms the generalist. So ladies, I'd love to hear from you. Maybe Kim, we'll just pick right back up from you.

Kim Campagna (15:14): Sure, one of the things that we've been doing probably over the last year and especially in the last six months is trying to really narrow down what each of our individual advisors is passionate about and where their ideal clients are. Separately from, of course, we talk about the firm as a whole, but with AI out there, people are looking for that one very specific fit for the individual and each of our team members has specific strengths. And I've been very deliberate about making sure that those strengths and specialties are highlighted. For example, I was just getting into it with one of my colleagues a couple of weeks ago about his bio for the website, because we said, he focuses on helping parents in their 50s and 60s. And he said, well, let's take the age range out. I think it's too limiting. And I said, well, who do you wanna work with? And well, it's people in their 50s and 60s. And so that's exactly the point is that you want to be specific and you want people to know that you're talking to them and about them. And that's something that AI really picks up on is finding the person who fits your profile.

Diana Cabrices (16:17): Could not agree more.

Samantha Allen (16:18): Sam, anything you would add? I mean, I 100% agree. I actually think that in the next couple of years, we're really gonna see digital in general start to level out, like take away some of the importance of the local side of matching with an advisor and what advisor you work with, especially knowing the next generation and that they are so comfortable with meeting people on Zoom. Sometimes they prefer that versus traveling to an office and meeting in person. And I actually think that on the digital side, it's gonna make it more important than ever that our websites and our processes really include like a digital pre-qualification, something that's open to getting to know and connect with an advisor that matches you and not just based on your location, but also like maybe you're someone who's, you're a veteran, you wanna work with an advisor who's a veteran or a woman wanna work with a female advisor, someone who specializes in something really specific. So I think absolutely can like break, baking those into not only your content strategy, but then on the middle to lower kind of side of the marketing and sales funnel, having that process built in to help them self-identify what they're looking for, that way you can quickly get them to the right advisor is gonna be really important too.

Michelle Winkles (17:39): It's a great strategy.

Samantha Allen (17:40): Michelle, anything you would add?

Michelle Winkles (17:42): I would just say Samantha and Kimberly nailed it. So I love that for the next one. Love that.

Diana Cabrices (17:49): Okay, let's move along. Real quick check. I know some of you are in the chat and I can't totally see the chat unless I pull it up. So Brian just dropped a link to the 2025 Consumer Research Report, How Americans Find and Hire Financial Advisors. Highly recommend you check that out if you haven't already, there are tons of insights in that study. Okay, next up, we are gonna go here, we're gonna do the credibility and trust signals pillar, and we're gonna talk about social proof, which if you've been on any of our webinars, you know we talk about this a lot because it's very important. And now more than two years ago when I was talking about social proof, it's even more important now than ever before with this AI tool shift. So we know AI tools increasingly look for signals of trust and authority, not just keywords or buzzwords that you're using in your marketing. So ladies, what kind of proof points are you prioritizing to help AI see your firm and your advisors as credible? Maybe Michelle, we'll pick up with you on this one.

Michelle Winkles (18:50): Sure, at Mission, we've prioritized hiring a PR firm. They're an expert in our industry, so they're RIA specific. So they know a lot about like a lot of the media outlets and they have a lot of those connections and they're really helping us showcase our advisors and our leadership team. They've held one-on-one interviews with a lot of them to understand their specific niches and where their expertise lies. And so that they can help connect those experts with the media outlets. We know that media is great for trust and credibility. And then aside from that, we've also invested in a testimonial software program that helps us gather client testimonials because we know that people are researching you and they don't really know you yet. So they wanna learn about you and trust that other people enjoy or like working with you. So using a testimonial program has been a huge uplift for us in promoting our advisors and their expertise.

Diana Cabrices (19:53): That's wonderful. Anytime any firm adopts a testimonial marketing platform, it's always so exciting because usually the feedback is the same, right? Like we weren't sure what to expect and then we rolled it out and asked our clients for reviews and the love we got back was just so grand, like more than we ever thought. And now you have so many different ways you can use those reviews. And we'll probably touch on that today a little bit as well. Kim, anything that you wanna add to that?

Kim Campagna (20:20): I'll second what Michelle said about reviews and testimonials. Our advisors are really great at asking their clients for reviews and our clients love to give them. We have somewhere north of 150, I believe, Google reviews that we import into WealthTender. And I think that's just such a huge strength. We had somebody come in because they looked us up and the first review that they saw on Google was from their neighbor. And so their neighbor didn't refer to them to us, but they saw what their neighbor had to say about us, which was really excellent. And we also were not big on like the huge national awards, but we do compete for a lot of local awards. We were recently named best of the Berkshires for the sixth year in a row. And that's something that carries a lot of weight in the region that we're based.

Diana Cabrices (21:07): Absolutely. And the Berkshires for sure. Like that is wonderful. I love hearing that. And I think there's several different trust signals and authority signals that you can send out to AI tools, testimonials for sure, media for sure. Like Michelle, I love that you brought that up because there was a recent Muckrack study, which is like a PR technology company. And I'm not gonna quote it perfectly, but I wanna say it was like 86% of these sources that AI was grabbing about someone like an advisor were from earned media, right? So media you don't really control, but what other people are saying about you. And so I think any chance advisors can get right now to hop on the testimonial train and getting more in the media, PR, visibility is key right now. All right, ladies. So we're gonna move along to the next question here. And on our board, we're gonna actually hit a quick poll. So this one is about reviews since we were just talking about the topic. I'm gonna hit launch here on the screen for all of you to participate. Let's see. All right. So question, what do 83% of Americans say they will do first after receiving a referral to a financial advisor? Give everyone some time here. We'll check out the chat. Awesome. All right. Okay, five more seconds. I'm gonna end the polls. If you're getting your answer in, feel free to plug it in now. All right. Let's share these results. Okay. So many of you are completely correct. You said, look for online reviews about the advisor. 52% of you said that answer. And that is actually the correct answer followed by visiting the advisor's website. And then a few of you said, schedule an introductory call. Probably because you all know, it's not always that perfect and simple, right? A referral to a call. But yes, many consumers are going to go online first and do their research. Just like any of us would do here, right? If somebody recommends someone, I'm absolutely gonna pick up my phone and do some research, see what kind of reviews they have, what other people are saying about them. So we have found that reviews are among the top three factors that AI uses for advisor evaluation. They are incredibly important. And just a quick shameless plug. This is what WealthTender does really, really well for firms in this space, is we help you scale your review process with technology and with content. And we do it in a beautiful way. We design your testimonials and make sure that they stand out in your marketing, but also in AI as well. Okay. So we're gonna move along to our next question here. Ladies, just a quick like vibe check. How's everyone doing right now? Great. Okay, good. Okay. All right. So our next question is on review schema, and this one's under credibility and trust signals. So as AI puts more weight on social proof and reputation signal, how can advisors showcase client feedback in a way that's both compliant and easily understood by answer engines? And I just wanna maybe take the first stab at this because this is right up our alley at WealthTender. So on WealthTender, advisor reviews are published in a manner to not only be compliant with regulatory disclosure requirements, but also coded with review schema. If you don't know what that means, if it's the first time you're hearing it, you're probably not alone. It is essentially a coding on the back end of a website that signals to the internet, to AI tools, that, hey, this is a review. So there's review schema, there's FAQ schema, there's different types of schemas. And now more than ever, you wanna make sure that you have that plugged in on the back end of your website. It sends those clear trust signals to AI. Ladies, anything that you might wanna add onto this question here?

Samantha Allen (25:23): Well, you know, I always have to weigh in if there's something really techie and nerdy being discussed. I would say, yes, you're exactly right, especially when it comes to like, if you have written reviews, you're already gonna be ahead of the game in the fact that you are using the review schema, of course, but that also these reviews are written by real people. And that is actually a huge advantage when it comes to AI optimization or generative engine optimization. I know it's hard to believe, but these generative engines are actually a little lazy. They're looking for the easiest way to pull answers in. And if they can pull an answer in that is already written in a conversational manner, which a lot of reviews are, they're gonna prioritize pulling that review into their answer for you and showcase that. So I would say something to take away from this question beyond just the how to structure your reviews is a couple other true like ranking signals for AI search, which is the schema, which, Diana, you did a great job breaking that down better than I could have done. Cause I'm always like, I know I'm gonna lose people here. Yeah, have your development team or whoever manages your website, really make sure that they're using that schema. Make sure that you're writing in a way that's natural. Don't use AI to write your website content. You can always use it as a thought partner or review partner, but we've actually found that utilizing AI to write website content, the AI doesn't like that. They're gonna decrease your ranking there. Actually, it impacts you negatively. So write like a human, write it yourself, and then utilize the schema and utilize as much, you know, cite your sources, link out to other websites. It loves to see that you are, you know, engaging in the larger web community and that you're a trusted source of reliable, steady information.

Diana Cabrices (27:14): Oh, so many good tips from you, Samantha. Thank you so much for that. I know our audience is probably taking notes right now as you're speaking. Thank you for weighing in on that. For this next one, it's actually another poll, but I think we're gonna skip just like launching the poll for purposes of time. And many of you might have already been following this type of information, but right now, there's about 60% of Google searches that are not ending in an actual click. Now, when we met yesterday as a group, we talked a little bit about what we thought about this, right, because when you hear that, you might like, your heart might sink a little bit and you might say, oh my God, like, what am I supposed to do? We don't wanna create that feeling here today because truthfully, you know, everyone that's going to Google to search, they have an intent and their intent might be here that they're just looking and browsing and their intent might be all the way here that they're ready to hire somebody. And we're not totally sure that an abandoned click is gonna necessarily represent any specific side of that intense spectrum, if you will, but it is important to know. And it leads me into this next question with the group here on their website. So we're gonna talk about website really quickly because as we know this, right, as we know that maybe traffic, website traffic, is probably coming down a bit now that so many people are getting answers directly from the Google AI overview that pops up or they're going to chat QPT and having conversations and getting answers there. I'm curious, ladies, what you've seen, like what part of your advisors' websites is becoming more important because of this shift in this reduction in clickability? Any one of you feel free to jump in and start.

Michelle Winkles (28:55): I can jump in. In the summer, like around summertime, we saw our website traffic drop and we kind of panicked and we learned that Google had kind of shifted its algorithm. And so we realized we're like, okay, things are really changing and they're changing fast and we need to make a decision. We've had our website for, I'd say, nine years now and we've just developed it and developed it over time. And the front is beautiful. I think it's a great website. The backend is not ready for the future, meaning it's SEO optimized mostly, but not AEO optimized. And so we've made the decision to make it a priority to update our brand, our messaging, and our website. So we're going to have a completely new website next year that really speaks to answer engine optimization and SEO. I think that combination is going to be very important. Yeah, so I would say that really thinking about the future and setting your digital presence up for that and the way people are looking for you and meeting them where they are is going to be key.

Diana Cabrices (30:04): Couldn't agree more. Kimberly, anything you'd add to that?

Kim Campagna (30:07): Yeah, I'll add, I think accessibility is an important part of any website design. And if you didn't really have motivation to make your website accessible before now, know that it makes a big difference for AI. So making sure that text is readable, it's not trapped in an image when you see the text, but it's in a JPEG, AI can't read that right now. Making sure, I know Samantha is really diligent about making sure that when they post to YouTube, they upload an SRT file that allows AI to access the content of the video and read it. So anything that you're doing for accessibility on your site also supports AI visibility.

Diana Cabrices (30:50): That's a good point. Yes, Sam, anything you would add to that?

Samantha Allen (30:54): I would say, a big shift, I guess, the Merit website is actually in a similar situation as the Mission website that Michelle's, they're working on redoing next year, where I think we are also looking at potentially launching a new site in the next year or two. For a lot of reasons, I mean, I don't wanna come out and say like, you have to redo your website because honestly you don't. It's very similar to what Michelle said. Like, I think it's like seven or eight years old and after seven or eight years, if your site's been live that long, then maybe, yeah, you might be thinking about redoing the site. But I honestly think generative engines, they're kind of leveling the playing field in terms of search engine authority. It's an opportunity for every website to rank for the content that matters most to your audience. And so I would say you might see less clicks, but they're likely higher quality clicks, more likely to convert clicks. And to answer this question specifically, what we've done on the Merit website is we've taken a new approach to our location pages. So I mentioned that we've got offices in many of the states, not all of the states, but many of them. So in each local office, you get a completely different flair. We have offices that have specific niches. We have offices that are very connected to their local community. And so when I first started, our location pages were kind of, here's the location, the address, the advisors in that office, and then the same content on every page. And we're actually moving away from that now and allowing the individual teams to really get involved in building that page and making it almost like a small micro-site. Their own personal storefront on the internet that is really personalized to who their audience is. And that has had a significant impact already in search results, because it's kind of solving for that omnipresence. You have to have the global strategy when you're a business of this size, but then you also wanna be able to feel local and connect with the community at a local level. And that's what we're doing on the digital side to achieve that.

Diana Cabrices (32:57): That's wonderful. And I think it's so important that you're giving them these micro-pages, because also right now with the way AI pulls information and what it's looking for, it's very apparent that your advisors, they've become ambassadors of your firm, right? And it's so key to not just have, here's who we are at Mission or Merit or Berkshire Money Management, but here's who our advisors are and here's the information about them and their background, their bios and their credibility and their designations and their reviews individually. We have advisors that we work with at WealthTender that they prioritize reviews on the firm level and on the advisor level for this exact reason, right? So there's many important different pages that you could feature on your website that could all be optimized for AI. And I like to hear that you ladies are thinking about the website refresh. I know it's really hard to do, but I'm excited to see what would be on the other side of that for you. Okay, so let's move along here. What do we have next? We are gonna focus on the same section here, on-site SEO, AEO, your website, and we're gonna talk a little bit about AI-ready content. So the question here is what website updates, FAQs, structured content, schema, clarity, have you made to help AI tools understand your expertise? And when we met yesterday, I know either it was Sam or Michelle that had mentioned that you've started just right now as like, you know, there's this huge project ahead of you, but right now you just started, I think it was advisor bio pages. Did I hear that right yesterday?

Samantha Allen (34:35): I think I talked a little bit about the location pages, but advisor bio specifically has also been a shift for us where we're doing a combination of hosting some of the bio on our page, but also linking out to LinkedIn, because I know we talked about YouTube being part of Google, a huge search engine. LinkedIn is right up there in the world of the search engine rankings of being a massive search powerhouse. And so we're really trying to check all the boxes where we can of interlinking and getting that digital PR.

Diana Cabrices (35:05): Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn, actually one of our questions that came in from one of our audience participants as they registered was on this point. It was like, where does social media fit into this entire thing? And I know this question isn't necessarily about social media, but I think it's a great point to make that you should still focus on optimizing your LinkedIn page specifically. Sam, I know you're so close to data. Are there any other social pages that you think are probably right up there with LinkedIn in terms of AEO, SEO?

Samantha Allen (35:37): And we talked about YouTube. I think YouTube is gonna continue to be a big one when it comes to the generative engine optimization. But like I said, we're seeing LinkedIn as well. Now, I know that when we think about our target audience, like where are they hanging out? Where are they consuming content? That's where we start to see more of like the Facebook and sometimes Instagrams. And at some point we're gonna start hearing about TikTok but not ready for that. But we're not seeing that come up as often in like that kind of step multi-touch attribution funnel like we used to. We used to see Facebook a lot. And I'd love to hear from Kimberly and Michelle on what you guys are seeing, but I don't know if there's been a little bit of shift in mindset and where these users are looking for information and if Facebook's just not up there as much, but it doesn't mean abandon your Facebook strategy. I feel like the buyer journey for anyone who's deciding on who to work with to manage their wealth is so complex and has so many steps that if you're not present on a channel like Facebook, you definitely run the risk of missing out or they go to look for you and your reviews aren't there, your content's not there. So it's definitely probably has a part in the journey, but I wouldn't say it's the one that's driving or indexing a lot of the AI content specifically for us right now.

Kim Campagna (37:07): Yeah, I'd like to chime in on that, Samantha. That's great. The social media, I tell people all the time, like at a certain point, the purpose of being on social media is that you look legit. Like I don't know that anybody is choosing a financial advisor based on a funny meme that they saw on Facebook. But when people start to look you up, they want to see that you're real and they want to see you in a lot of places. And it's also part of the AI algorithms right now is repetition. So if you're saying the same thing on your website, on YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, maybe someday on TikTok, our audience is definitely not there yet. By repeating, you're building that credibility with the AI and it believes you, it believes that that's your story.

Diana Cabrices (37:53): Yeah, that is awesome. Thank you for adding that in as well, Kim. I'm gonna do a quick check here on the chat box and see how that is moving along. And then we're gonna move on to our next question. And I know we are, so we're about 140 Eastern time, of course. So let's take a quick look on this. We're doing good on time. We have a few more questions and then we'll open it up to any of you. I know it looks like a lot of you have put some questions in the chat box and you've been talking with Brian there. And then it looks like there's a lot of AI tools talking about AI that are in our chat box as well. So I didn't ever think I would see that, but it's funny hopping on meetings now. And it's like, hi, I'm so-and-so the AI assistant for Joe. I'm like, okay, hello. All right, so let's move along. This next one is offsite SEO, AEO controllable. So this is again, remember offsite is what other people are saying about you, right? And on their pages. So the question here is, why do AI tools rely so heavily on reputable third-party platforms when surfacing advisor recommendations? And this is very true. If you are an advisor and you haven't gone and done a chat GPT search on you or any general financial advisor in your area, you should, because what you will find is most of the time you're gonna see that it's gonna pull sources from directories that they're featured on, for example, like WealthTender or NAPFA or XY Planning Network. You'll also see your website's likely around in the mix somewhere. And so usually though, it's pulling from these offsite pages. And the reason for that, it just goes back to what we've been saying, right? That AI trusts very structured authoritative databases like directories even over an individual website. So one thing I've been harping on a lot lately is it's not enough to have just a website as an advisor anymore. You should make sure you're focusing on getting other websites to feature you, whether that's through PR or other angles. Getting on a directory is probably one of the more easier things that you can do as an advisor. You kind of instantly step into that domain authority that that directory has. So for example, on WealthTender, all of our advisor pages, and I'll show you an example at the very end of this call, they have review schema, they have advisor level information, they have keywords that AI is looking for, they have the testimonials, the testimonial schema, the FAQ. So directories are one of the fastest, easiest ways that you as an advisor can optimize your AI discoverability is by just literally getting yourself on a directory, something other than your website. If you ladies wanna add anything to this, feel free. Maybe there's something you're doing in the directory space that you'd like to share. Otherwise we'll move on to the next question.

Samantha Allen (40:50): You nailed it.

Diana Cabrices (40:53): I got on my high horse there for a moment. I have to, I'm like so passionate about this.

Samantha Allen (40:58): I'm like, y'all have your soapboxes.

Diana Cabrices (41:00): I get it. Yes. Okay, all right. So next question, advisor brand moment. And this is for you, Kim. I had a special question here for you because you and I recently did an interview together at the Jolt Conference a few months ago back in the summer and just getting to know you has been a joy and you use WealthTender. And so since your firm is on WealthTender, can you share how your team's presence on our directory is benefiting your visibility in AI tools like Chat2BT or Perplexity? Absolutely.

Kim Campagna (41:31): Our team was really quick to adopt Google reviews which can be a compliance challenge. And I was really excited to partner with WealthTender because it allows us to import those reviews, attach the appropriate compliance, disclosures and then use them basically however we wanna see fit. We've printed them, mailed them, put them in ads. We use them on the website. We use them all over the place on social media too. And what it's doing for us specifically in AI tools is that it's crawlable and searchable. So when you go into Chat2BT, for example, and you ask it to find reviews for your business, it's not going to find your Google reviews for whatever reason, Google isn't allowing those to be crawled right now. And even Google's Gemini is not crawling Google's reviews. So not only are they more compliant, but they show up in Chat2BT and other tools. And so when I ask Chat2BT or another tool to recommend to me a financial services firm in the Berkshires, it's probably biased. It pretends that it doesn't. I'm like, use no prior contacts. It's like, okay, I have no idea where you work. You should work with Berkshire Money Management. I'm not a hundred percent sold on this, but it does, the reason it gives is that we have so many positive client reviews and it even says about other firms, well, this other local firm, it doesn't have any reviews. So if you're going to work with them, you should make sure to get referrals. So the reviews are having a huge impact on how we show up in AI.

Diana Cabrices (43:07): Could not agree more. Thank you for that. And we talked a lot about that in the video that we recorded. If you haven't seen that video, we'd be happy to share it with you. Feel free to send me a message in the chat or on LinkedIn or email me if you have my email, which most of you should from this webinar marketing. But thank you for that, Kim. It's been really cool seeing how WealthTender is like working the system for your firm and for your advisors and the outcomes that you're experiencing with that. All right, next one up is actually a poll. This one's on the human advantage. I think this is really important to keep in the conversation when we talk about AI. Let me just quickly launch this before I start talking because multitasking, not the strongest. Okay, there we go. The question is what percentage of affluent households would pay a premium? What do you think of 50 plus basis points for human advice versus a robo advisor? This is an important part of this conversation because we shouldn't obviously lose sight of the human side, but also how do we still like communicate that in a way that will help convince these Americans, these consumers, these prospective clients that, okay, this is the right fit for me. I see the relationship side, whereas everything else is going so digital right now. Ladies, if you wanna add anything to this, I'd love to hear from you on this front too.

Michelle Winkles (44:32): Well, we know AI can surface information, but it doesn't know your values, fears, or like your family history, right? The human advisor is the interpreter, the coach, the accountability partner, and that's where the trust lives. So I just think it's really important for a human to work with a human when it comes to this personal matters.

Diana Cabrices (44:54): Agree, and I think it's important that whatever marketing or positioning you have that reflects this relationship building that your advisors are so good at, I think what's most important right now is that it's just structured in a way that AI can read it, right? I think that's what this really boils down to is structurability. Let me end this poll, share it back, and let's see, most of you said 40 to 60%, and actually it's 60 to 80%. This is a recent McKinsey study that produced this information, this survey, which goes to show they will pay. It matters that much to them. So just make sure that you're doing your part in having that information structured in a way that it's gonna be found, it's gonna be visible in these AI tools. Okay, we are on authority signals here, and this is gonna be a quick fire question. So I wanna hear a little bit from all of you. What specific advisor level authority signals are you finding most important for your AI visibility right now, today? Kim, we'll start with you.

Kim Campagna (46:06): For us, I would have to say it's our reviews. We have a lot of them and they make a big impact for us. Yep, love it. Samantha?

Samantha Allen (46:15): I would have, it's kind of a combination or a tie between a few things. I think that niche expertise is huge. We definitely see a lot of really great performance when we have an advisor that's like specific. This is who I work with, and they've got that very clear, and it comes out in their content. But then I also think like awards, both local and national, and then the PR, like having their thought leadership out there and listed on trusted sources is very, very valuable. Awesome, thank you, Michelle.

Michelle Winkles (46:47): Samantha stole my answer. I'll just say ditto. I'll say it's definitely media, PR, awards, rankings, listings, and testimonials, just combination of all.

Diana Cabrices (47:01): Love it, that is awesome. Two, three very good firms who have very smart leaders right now that are on the front lines of all of this change. And it's so refreshing to have a conversation with other marketers who also like love talking about this stuff and you're doing it in action right now at your firms. I know our audience is very grateful to hear from all of you. I wanna look a little bit into the future right now and talk a little bit about maybe like crystal ball-ish type moment here, but like looking ahead 12 to 18 months, what is maybe your biggest concern about AI and discoverability? What keeps you up at night about this topic? We'll start with you, Kim.

Kim Campagna (47:41): I think that the biggest thing about AI and discoverability right now is just how quickly it's changing. I may know a lot about it today, but tomorrow it may be completely different. So it's really about just keeping up with it and staying on top of the ball and following smart people and learning all the time.

Samantha Allen (48:03): Always. Yep. Samantha. So, because I am like such a, like just self-proclaimed nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff, I actually, I would say concern is more like excitement. Cause like I said, I really do think that AI and generative engine optimization is a massive opportunity for this industry to get in front of the right people at the right time with the right content in a meaningful way where before using more traditional search engine tactics, we just did some smaller RAs, maybe didn't have the domain authority to beat out profession, same profession, but different model. So I think that it definitely gives us, it levels the playing field and kind of gives our profession, the world of the RAA, the opportunity to get in front of people and have the impact that we want to. So I would say not a lot's like keeping me up at night. It's mostly just making sure that we have process in place that when we are putting in the work to create content, to apply for awards and all of that, and things come through that we're doing everything we can to make sure that it's accessible and discoverable for the AI and then tracking the results.

Diana Cabrices (49:16): Love that. We're going to have a question on results cause we do have a question from the audience that I want to get to. Michelle, anything you would add here about how you're feeling and how you're thinking about it in the future?

Michelle Winkles (49:27): With AI, I think one of my concerns is just how it could shoot out misinformation about your firm. And that kind of would keep me up at night. There are so many places that our firms are present online and it's hard to wrangle them all and make sure they have the correct information. And so I think that would be my concern is people could trust incorrect information. And then the other is security. And like we're using these tools but what we're feeding these tools as marketers is important too. I mean, there's a lot of data that could get put into these tools and it could leak. So we have to think about it securely too.

Diana Cabrices (50:05): That is such a good answer. And I'm just proud because that is like a marketer's answer. It's a cybersecurity person's answer. And so you represent yourself and your firm very, very well. And I think that's a very important point. And I'd be curious from you all that are in the audience right now how you're thinking about security as Michelle just talked through. Feel free to drop it in the chat. And I'm looking at the chat and we have a few questions. Before we get to the end here I'm gonna ask one last question. And Kim, I'm gonna give this one over to you because I liked what we had to talk about it yesterday. At the end of the day, what's the simplest, most practical step an advisor or wealth management firm can take to quickly become more visible in AI tools without overhauling their entire marketing visibility strategy?

Kim Campagna (50:49): I think that it's really important to remember that a lot of what's working in AI visibility is working in regular old-fashioned search engine visibility. It's very easy to read all of this new stuff about AI search and how you need to be there, how it's so important, how no one's clicking on Google, all that and panic. But really I like to think that ChatGPT is basically three Google searches in a trench coat. And you can see that happening now when you're using GPT-5, 5.1, whatever you're using, it shows you that it's searching the web and it is using, at least last I checked, it's using Google's search index. So if you've been putting in the work to rank in Google search, doing that SEO work, don't throw it away. Like just keep doing what you're doing and look at some of these smaller things that you can do about structure, about specificity, about showing up in more places, building that social proof and authority. You really don't need to throw everything out and build from scratch what you're doing. If it's been working, it should keep working for you.

Diana Cabrices (51:57): Such a good point. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. It's okay. Everything's gonna be all right. Keep doing it and maybe add in a few new things as well. That's a great ending point for this webinar. Kimberly, thank you so much for that. And Samantha and Michelle, thank you as well. Like I loved all of your insights. I know our audience did as well. And we have some questions. So I wanna make sure we get to that. I promised at least five minutes. I'm kind of, I think we're doing good. So I'm happy about that right now. And we'll just call it a bingo. This is a win for everyone. This is a win for us. This is a win for our audience because we all learned a lot today about the topic. Now, how can you keep learning about this topic? Please connect with all of us on LinkedIn. We are all present on LinkedIn and you can learn more about what we do and the experience that we have going through this as marketers and what we're learning along the way. So I'm gonna drop our LinkedIn profiles. Give me one second in the chat. Feel free to click on those and connect with us. Send us a message, say hi, if you'd like to, don't be shy. There we go. Those are all of our LinkedIn handles in the chat for you to connect with us. And I also want to share one last thing before we get to this question here. There we go, should be popped up here, is on WealthTender. So we talked a little bit about WealthTender today. You've learned that we help advise with testimonials, with collecting, with promoting, with making them beautiful and designing, but we do a lot more. We also have a full media arm where we help advisors get present in the media, get quoted in the media, talk to reporters, build relationships, and so much more. I mean, I'm like not doing us justice, but Kim, that last question I asked you, what's the simplest thing you can do? I love your answer. I would also add signing up for WealthTender. You can sign up in less than two minutes and we build out your profile for you. And I kid you not, we have advisors that have told us from within two hours of putting up a WealthTender profile and importing their Google reviews into WealthTender, they started populating in ChatGPT and on other search engines. I'm blanking on the name of one right now, the one owned by Google Gemini, whereas they weren't before. Even though they have a Google business page and they have Google reviews. So it's really important that you're diversifying, I should say. So feel free to use the code BINGO for 50% off your first two months with us. You do have to sign up by next Tuesday. So you have the weekend to marinate on everything if you need to. Scan this QR code. We'll also drop it in the chat box for you so you can click the link and learn more. Okay, I'm gonna get to the questions because that is super important. We've got some AI takeaways as well. If anybody wants to copy and paste those in the chat box, let's see here. All right, first question that we got in our registration form that I think is important. How are you measuring whether your AI optimization efforts are working? What early indicators should advisors watch to know they're moving in the right direction? Let's kind of make it a free-for-all whoever wants to jump in on these.

Samantha Allen (55:04): Okay, I'll jump in. I was like, I don't wanna be taking up too much time but I'm a big data nerd. So I'll share. Reutilizing, I think, Michelle, in the chat, you mentioned a couple of different tools or services online that are specific for search engine optimization like, well, now it's like blanking out of me. Oh, SEMrush. SEMrush. I was like S-E-M-rush. I don't wanna say it incorrectly. SEMrush.com, S-E-M-rush.com. So we use SEMrush and that is a great tool that has quickly adopted AI. We are also in the middle of a transition to use HubSpot as our marketing automation platform. And HubSpot has answer engine optimization tools and measurement as well. And then if you're not using any of those kind of like third party, like extra services and you're just kind of with the standard Google analytics, you can still measure it in Google analytics as well. There's a lot of places to look, but specifically under search engine and referrals, you can drill in the new universal analytics format and find the number of visits, how long they're on your site, what pages are they looking at? All of that is in Google analytics. And if anyone has questions on how to find that, please reach out to me and I can send you like a short video on where to look.

Diana Cabrices (56:32): Yeah, and this is a great place to mention that Samantha writes a newsletter called the Digital Debrief. And if you love to geek out on this stuff, you have to subscribe to that newsletter because it fills it with good information and like what's happening next. And it's like very ahead of the curve. So just have to shout that out. If you connect with her on LinkedIn, you'll definitely find a way to subscribe to that. Okay, next question. I love this question. What's something that used to work for digital visibility in your firm that is now noticeably less effective because of the AI search shift? Is there anything you guys are abandoning right now?

Michelle Winkles (57:12): I wouldn't say we're abandoning anything because I think AI, it looks at everything. So the more places that you're visible, the better. So I wouldn't say that we've stopped doing anything, but we just prioritized trying to show up for AI more.

Diana Cabrices (57:30): Yep, yep. So you're still doing it. You're just maybe shifting it around. It's priority and focus. Yeah, okay. Next one is, how do you organize your content, specifically video content?

Samantha Allen (57:45): Sam, I don't know if you- That can be a pair, yeah. So I can share. Like I said, we're using very similar kind of old school, in my opinion. It's crazy to say something's old school when it's really been only around for like two years, but that's the speed at which things are evolving right now. But we use like a traditional hub and spoke content strategy. So, and that strategy is specifically built for like traditional search engine optimization, but we're finding it still applies really well to the generative engine world as well. So with that strategy is basically having the center kind of content theme, and then the spokes of sub themes, even things as far as like long tail, like question queries that you're actually creating smaller content pieces around. And it can get look a little crazy on paper, but when it comes to applying and mapping it over to places like YouTube, it really helps the content surface for the right user in search is what we're seeing.

Diana Cabrices (58:47): Those are great tips. Looking at this, we're at the top of the hour. I think we're going to wrap here. Talked about that one. I think we're going to wrap here. There is one question in the Q&A box. Zach, I see your question about reviews. I'll just answer it really, really quickly. You should probably use a tool that's going to like mass, you know, contact your clients about reviews simply because you want to have some sort of tracking of that, like record keeping that you asked all of your clients for a review. So Zach was asking, should I ask them directly or use a tool to automate it? It's probably best to use a tool because you have record keeping. If it's verbally, you don't really have record keeping. But the timing of that is you can be strategic on. And if you reach out to us, we're happy to send you our testimonial marketing playbook where it gives you all of this information and lots of ideas as well on the topic. Okay, ladies, thank you so very much. I am so happy to just wrap my year with this webinar because it has been so enjoyable to like hang out with you and learn from you and talk about all this cool stuff with you. I know, again, our audience is also very grateful. Feel free to connect with all these ladies on LinkedIn, folks, we have that in the chat box. Any last words, Kim, Samantha, Michelle?

Michelle Winkles (1:00:05): Just thank you. Thanks for having us.

Kim Campagna (1:00:08): Yeah, thanks for having us. And I would say like one last takeaway for everybody is like AI is just, it's changing all the time. It's, you know, do what you can and keep rolling with it.

Diana Cabrices (1:00:18): Love it. That's what we're gonna do. Thank you all so much. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.