We focus on four key tenets: technical optimization, content strategy, user experience, and brand signals. Technical optimization involves foundational SEO aspects, like avoiding heavy reliance on JavaScript, which generative AI and LLMs don’t favor. Content strategy and UX are crucial; writing semantic content, snippets, and FAQs in a way that engines will pick up is essential. Brand signals are another significant area where many aren’t investing enough. The reputation of brands is vital, as different engines rely on citations and go to various places for answers. For example, ChatGPT is heavily Wikipedia-focused, while Perplexity leans towards community sources like Reddit. Depending on where you want visibility, your brand’s reputation needs to be strong.

There’s no keyword stuffing or churning out content just for visibility. It’s about doing all these things well while continuing with the foundational aspects of your digital strategy.

Dave Cowing

David, how are you seeing users’, consumers’, and business to business customers’ behavior changing in the search space?

David Bresnahan

From a macro perspective, 60 to 80% of searches result in zero clicks, meaning people find most of their answers without visiting a brand’s website. This is significant. In financial services, AI overviews account for about 10% of AIO search volume. For instance, 77% of the US population uses ChatGPT, with 20% of those searches related to financial services. Among institutional buyers, about 70% use AI for their research. We’ve seen a drastic increase in the use of these tools in everyday life. Google’s search share dropped to about 90% in late 2024 for the first time. Google isn’t going anywhere, but people are finding information in different ways.

If financial services brands don’t focus on maintaining visibility, they will become invisible in these engines. It’s crucial for clients to build strategies that ensure their presence is noticeable in these engines.

Dave Cowing

It’s really about behavioral change. We often think of this as a technology shift, but the fascinating part is how it’s altering behavior. The way we interact with the first platform has changed. It used to be Google, but now it’s Gemini, ChatGPT, or something else. We’re spending more time there, and as marketers, we may never know what a user has learned, which I find fascinating. This brings up the question of how to measure success in this space. How do you promote your brand and engage with your audience when they’re spending so much time on platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude?

David Bresnahan

It’s a great question, and it’s changing all the time. Traditional metrics and click-through rates have decreased drastically year over year. Impressions are becoming more important. Last time I checked, Google saw about a 49 to 50% increase in impressions with AIO reviews. Referral traffic is also critical, even though these engines take over a smaller percentage of the total traffic. Tracking citations, ensuring external brand signals are out there, and focusing on industry best practices across various channels is key.

Impressions are crucial. Even if traffic is down, you might still be getting conversions. It’s also important to focus on creating middle and bottom funnel content, which is more intent-based and transactional. Are you getting better engagement on that content? If you see great referral traffic from these engines, especially on specific pages, it means you’re doing well from an engagement perspective and can track that attribution.

Dave Cowing

This transitions into the ‘where.’ We’re still in the early days, and things are moving fast. Where are financial services organizations seeing early returns, and where do they expect to see returns on their AI search efforts?

David Bresnahan

It’s not just about AI search; it’s also about internal efficiency and productivity. UBS, for example, has shifted about 60% of their AI efforts towards internal efficiency, which is critical. At Chartis, we focus on building internal agents and solutions, but it’s only a part of our services. Larger banks and institutional investment firms are hedging their bets on this.

From a banking perspective, investing in content strategy to align with intent-based signals is key. Instead of trying to solve the entire AI challenge, focusing on specific, micro aspects of the business can lead to success. Being thoughtful about existing strategies to meet the needs of generative engines is the best approach we’ve been working on with our clients.

Dave Cowing

You’ve been alluding to this, but how does Chartis help brands move into the space and gain an advantage?

David Bresnahan

Marketing technologies have been evolving for the last 10-15 years, and we view AI as just another tool. CDPs and DMP solutions were big five or six years ago. CDPs are crucial for understanding customers from a first-party perspective, but they’re just tools. I read that 60-90% of AI initiatives fail, likely because there’s no clear business case for them.

At Chartis, we focus on identifying opportunities and business cases. Depending on the business, we determine the best solution, whether to build or buy, and start with small pilots. We might focus on a specific part of the customer journey or a particular audience. If we find a gap in the market, like outsourced trading, we aim to build authority there.

We help our clients by honing in on small, measurable goals and seeing if we’re making progress. Metrics for success are always changing, so we focus on getting things out there without overthinking. We push content, optimize technically, and enhance citation and reputation. Our pilot approach has worked well, especially for large enterprise brands. They prefer small, focused projects with clear ROI over massive, uncertain ones. We identify needs and figure out how AI can best address them.

Dave Cowing

As we bring this to a close, David, if you were to give organizations one piece of advice on their next move, what would it be?

David Bresnahan

That’s a broad question. I think it’s a few things. First, nobody really knows what’s going on, even though we claim to be experts. Everything is constantly changing. So, don’t be too scared about AI; it’s an opportunity. You don’t necessarily have to change how you operate. Instead, take advantage of how these engines work and how users find information, then tweak your existing processes, governance, and models accordingly.

For example, in the financial services industry, there’s a lot of content created for investors or thought leadership. If you’re already creating this content, how do you turn it into snippets and FAQs? Research what consumers and users are looking for, continue writing the content, but create derivative content for the customer journey. It’s about leveraging existing content in new ways.

On the technical front, if you’re deploying new sites, optimizing, rebuilding, replatforming, or migrating, be thoughtful about the authority of smaller brands you’re integrating. Think about how to migrate from the perspective of agents understanding that authority. You don’t have to create a separate AI initiative. Instead, build AI into your existing processes to be more efficient and gain synergy.

Dave Cowing

I like the practicality of weaving it into existing initiatives. One other thing I would add is, if you haven’t started, get started. Pick something small and start learning. Organizations need to gain traction and comfort with it, and move it forward.

David Bresnahan

When it comes to learning, clients often push back on me. We do a lot of CRO and experimentation tests, and I always say there’s no such thing as a failed test because you learn from it. There might be reasons why a test failed, but at least we learned something, and that’s critical.

You can’t be everything to everyone, especially in the EA world. There are so many different types of intent and portions of the consumer journey that you can’t win in all places. Ask yourself where it’s most important for your business to win. If it’s in the middle or bottom funnel areas that are more niche and less competitive, that’s a great area to focus on.

For example, if someone searches for ‘what’s investment management,’ a large bank doesn’t need to compete with Investopedia or Wikipedia. But if they have an IRA and are looking for something specific, and they are in the Atlanta area, that’s when you might want to be able to have content that’s going to meet that specific need. Or if you’re a retail bank without a strong local strategy, and people are searching for the best mortgage for a first-time homebuyer in a specific area, you need to show up there.

Do the research upfront to identify gaps or areas where you’re not showing up. Build that into your strategy to increase relevance. At the end of the day, if you’re invisible, you won’t get in front of these engines. Think about how people are searching and asking questions, and make sure you’re the answer.