AI, AEO, and the Future of Advisor Marketing with Samantha Russell

[00:00:32] Doug Heikkinen: That's great because you're on so many. Let's start with marketing trends from 2025. What major marketing shifts stood out this year for you for financial advisors and which do you expect to carry the most weight going into the next year?

[00:00:47] Samantha Russell: I think we were all hit over the head with the frying pan where with AI just in general in all aspects, but with marketing, AI content generation on one side then AEO or answer engine optimization, how do you optimize your content for these AI tools on the other side, right? So using AI to make your content and then how do you actually get found by these AI tools?

Those were the two things we could not stop talking about, training people on building into our tool. And I think going forward into 2026, it's just going to to be become even exponentially, a bigger, bigger trend that we're all going to be paying attention to.

[00:01:29] Doug Heikkinen: So let's continue on with the AI thing for one more question. What's one practical step firms can take to future proof their content for these AI search tools?

[00:01:41] Samantha Russell: Such a good question. So when you think about what does an, the search engines before, like Google, they wanted to give us a list of links. AI wants to give us a list of answers. And so when you're thinking about your content or your website, you want to be the most obvious answer to whatever the question is.

So if someone is looking for an answer to a very specific retirement planning question. You need to have your website structured in a way that would allow the chat bot to say, "oh, this financial advisor has the answer right there, and they're trustworthy, and other people have basically vouched for this business."

So to do that, number one, you need to format the content on your site in question and answer formats. We actually added a new widget to FMG websites where on any page you can add an FAQ section. And on the backside, in the code, we added something called schema markup. So I know people listening to this are not themselves coders.

You don't need to worry about it, but just to make sure whatever website platform you're using it has that schema markup so that the AI tools know this is the question and this is the answer. Then you want to make sure you get Google reviews, so it's telling these AI tools this is a legitimate business other people have used and vouched for.

And then you want to get as many quotes or media mentions as you can so that you are being talked about in other places. Because the AI tools really like that. They don't want to just hear that what you have to say about your business. They want to see that other people are also talking about you as an expert in this particular area.

[00:03:20] Doug Heikkinen: should you dump everything you're doing for SEO or do both?

[00:03:24] Samantha Russell: I think the big thing is to think that SEO had certain things that are going to carry forward into AEO and other things that are not going to be as relevant. SEO was all about keywords. With AEO, it's really about what we call long tail questions. So you are going to have less traffic overall, but if somebody is referred to you from one of these AI tools, studies are showing that they convert about three times higher than when you were just listed in a Google result and the person came from Google.

So the buyers coming from AI tools are much more qualified. And so, the more specific we can be, the better our conversion rates are going to be in this AEO world.

[00:04:06] Doug Heikkinen: All right. With so much automation, one thing advisors can really stay on top of is humanizing their marketing. How do they do that with all this digital marketing going on?

[00:04:19] Samantha Russell: Yeah, I think it's such a good question. So really think about what can't AI do right now, right? So, hosting events, whether it's a webinar or a in-person event. You showing up being the face that people are seeing, the voice that they're hearing, that is something that really creates that human connection, that human bond.

And there's been a lot of studies that people are trusting AI to give them recommendations for jeans, for a restaurant, but not nearly as much for going and investing all their money on their behalf. We're still looking for that human to do that for us. So the more you can think about ways to drive home that human connection, I think events is just such a good one.

And we're seeing a lot of advisors have phenomenal success with events. From everything from hosting a client picture day, right? Hey, we're going to hire the photographer. You come in, bring your kids, your grandkids, sign up and we will take everybody's family photos. You can use them on your Christmas card. What a great way to meet multi-generations of the family. Talk about the great wealth transfer. That's a great way to do it. But you can also have maybe a scamming or a fraud expert, a local FBI person come in and do a online event, like a webinar where you say, okay, what are the AI scams or the phone scams, the text scams happening right now? And tell your clients and hey, you can invite a friend. So all of those types of things really go a long way in building that connection and being the person that other people are going to think about when they think about, who can I trust in this situation?

[00:05:55] Doug Heikkinen: How can advisors use social proof, like reviews and testimonials? So first, are they getting more comfortable with reviews and testimonials, and how can they strategically use them in 2026?

[00:06:07] Samantha Russell: Yeah, I think overall I was just on a panel at SIFMA in New York City. So there's a lot of, like the very large banks and firms there who've historically said, absolutely our advisors are not allowed to solicit reviews. And when they heard from a panel of experts that if you want to get found in AI search, you have to have reviews. And the firms that don't have them are just literally not showing up. They have no visibility. They're really rethinking what are the compliance rules around this and what can we do to allow it for our advisors? So yes, a hundred percent, it's shifting. And there are ways to do it compliantly, right?

There's tools out there. There's Testimonial IQ, there's Wealthtender, there's Amplify reviews where they aren't just going to Google and soliciting reviews from clients there, they're doing it in a compliant way. And actually tools like ChatGPT don't have the same access to Google results that they do in some of these third party tools.

So in some cases you're even better in that way depending on where the AI search is starting from. But when it comes from social proof, from not the AI tool, but the eyes of the consumer. I don't know about you, I won't even book a hotel room without reading reviews, let alone if I'm going to choose somebody to hand over my life savings to, I want to read from other people and not just my one friend who's referred me.

So as we see more and more advisors get the reviews, I also think the consumer is going to, at some point, think it's weird if your firm doesn't have any.

[00:07:39] Doug Heikkinen: Let's talk about social media evolution. Has there been any evolution in social media on platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram? And are they now being used as lead generation tools?

[00:07:52] Samantha Russell: A hundred, 110%. I still see a lot of people saying, I don't any leads from social media, so no advisors must be getting leads from social media. But I would argue that the way you're using it is wrong. So typically a lot of people just post. They take content and just post it, and that's all they do. The real lead gen comes from the engagement. And I don't mean connecting with someone on LinkedIn and immediately sending them a dm trying to sell them on your firm. I mean asking questions, providing value, interacting. So the algorithms love that back and forth of comments. And if they see a post gets a lot of comments, they'll show it to more people. The more people who see it and engage with it, the more visible you become. So there was an advisor who, my friend Kendra Wright, who's another marketer, she just posted this story where he got rid of all the other social platforms he honed in on just one, which was LinkedIn because of his particular audience that he was serving, which was lawyers. And every single day he showed up and had a very just easy to read, well-written post that taught something about financial planning, wealth management, investments that would be pertinent to lawyers. And if you look at his actual posts, there's not a lot of likes, not a lot of comments, but he got, I think she wrote, 10 leads in the last year, and I think it was like a 50% close rate from LinkedIn directly.

So they're more lurkers than they are active, but it a hundred percent works if you have the right strategy for your particular audience.

[00:09:24] Doug Heikkinen: All right. Let's talk about short form video and authentic storytelling. What advice do you have for advisors who are hesitant to get in front of the camera, and isn't there a fine line between just getting in front of the camera and doing it well?

[00:09:38] Samantha Russell: A hundred percent. You don't want to do it just to check a box and say, I did it, right? You need to have somebody on there who's going to put your business your best foot forward. So I am such, I'm so bullish on video for lots of reasons. I think again, in this influx of AI written content we have, video really stands out. It also allows for deeper connection. It's why we start to feel like we know celebrities and people we see on TV or in the news all the time. But if you really, really struggle in front of the camera, then maybe you are better off to do an interview series where you're just doing an intro and asking somebody else questions and letting them answer them. Like, shine a light on other people, make them the hero. Or maybe you would rather do a podcast than a video series. I do think video is amazing, but it is not a hundred percent right for everyone. That being said, I do think you would feel more confident if you felt like, I'm just recording a video that I'm going to send to some of my friends to teach them this one thing. And think of one question that someone has and record your answer to it. And just use what you already have. Your phone. You can sit in front of a window that's well lit, you don't need any fancy equipment. Give your answer in 60 seconds in really easy language, using the language they would use. And that's a great place to get started, and see if you can get comfortable doing that. Your first few takes are going to be terrible, and that's the point.

If you don't look back at your first iteration and think that was pretty terrible, then you started too late.

[00:11:11] Doug Heikkinen: All right. Let's talk about content distribution and repurposing. I know there's a lot of people in my space who require contributors to just have their content on their platform only. I always say get it everywhere you possibly can. So how can advisors make their content go farther in 2026? And what's your strategy for repurposing a single idea across multiple platforms without feeling repetitive and allowing them to let you do it?

[00:11:39] Samantha Russell: Which is also so funny that people are still feeling this. Because, what is AI doing? It's scraping everybody's website and regurgitating it. So if you still have that mindset, because I can remember even when content marketing first became popular, you probably remember this. People would say, I'm not going to give away my best strategies and ideas. People have to pay for that. And now we laugh at that and think, of course that's the growth strategy, is to give away your best ideas. People are still going to pay for the implementation. Of course they could figure out how to do it themselves in 2025 if they spent all day watching YouTube and reading articles. But they're not going to, that's why they're going to pay you. And it's the same thing here. When you allow someone to redistribute it, you are tapping into a whole nother audience. So that is a wonderful thing, not a bad thing. I don't know how else to convince people other than just to say it's already happening whether you are explicitly allowing it or not.

[00:12:35] Doug Heikkinen: The power of personalization. How can firms use technology tools delivered tailored personal marketing.

[00:12:45] Samantha Russell: Oh, this is one thing I'm really excited about right now. There's all of these different ways you can build AI agents to connect different workflows that you have, and that might be over the heads of some people listening to this. They're still just trying to figure out the best ways to write an email with AI and I a hundred percent get that. We at FMG have built into our platform. Obviously you can connect your CRM so you can import all of your lists. So imagine when somebody is in the system, they have all these different great articles that they can use for different groups. And they have a list of their clients that just live in California and then they see, okay, there's all these devastating wildfires happening in California. So they go look in the library. They see, hey, here's an article all about insurance and the types of homeowners insurance you need and how it relates to natural disasters. So they take that piece, they put it into our AI system, and they say, rewrite this to be specific to wildfires in California. Now they have a piece and they just send it to just the people that are in that California group. It's just amazing what you can do with just a few clicks of a button right now, if you take the time initially to set up your CRM and your systems with groups so that you're classifying these different groups of people. So most people only really have prospects and clients if you, I really encourage people, get more specific, have people who are currently getting social security and not. People who are in the accumulation stage. People who've got kids that are in high school or lower. Different groups. Maybe it's even people who have second homes or who love to travel, big trips every year. You will be able to send them so much more personalized messages that they will want to read because they feel like they were intended just for them.

[00:14:34] Doug Heikkinen: All right. We'll end with your 2026 playbook, but we're going to have to narrow it down. We talked about a lot of stuff, so I'm going to make you give your top three priorities for 2026 that advisors should focus on most.

[00:14:51] Samantha Russell: I'd say number one, I feel like a lot of people are either scared of AI, overwhelmed by it, or they don't know where to start and they're like a kid in a candy store. They have all these different tools. I think get very, very clear on where are the parts of your business that you can incorporate AI in a way that's going to make you more efficient right now.

And marketing should a hundred percent be one of them. If again, if you haven't checked out FMG in a while, we've got all these great new marketing tools built in, but any provider you're working with should have them in a way to make your marketing more personalized. People are no longer going to read messages that are for everyone.

They want to read ones that feel like they were handpicked just for them. So that's number one. Use AI, and in a way to get more personalized with your marketing. The second one would be, if you remember the story I told about the gentleman with LinkedIn, he, I said he got rid of all the other platforms and went all in on that one. Think about where your prospects are hanging out online and really go all in on that one platform. It's not enough anymore to try to be everywhere for all things, for all people. You end up diluting because you can't engage in the way that you really really want to. So it's fine to post on multiple platforms, but choose one to really focus your engagement, where you're commenting and liking and DMing people, and that be the platform that you spend the most time on from a social perspective. And then the last thing is, make somebody in your organization the face of the company. Because, we do need to humanize our practices. We need to get more personal. The personal is what differentiates from all the other options that are out there and all the technology. And when people are choosing an advisor, at the end of the day, they're choosing it for the relationship.

So make someone the face of your company, whether it's sharing their photo and articles from them, having them record videos or podcasts, you really want to be someone that's stepping out behind the logo.

[00:16:44] Doug Heikkinen: All right, Sam. Great stuff as always. Thank you so much for being with us.

[00:16:50] Samantha Russell: Thank you.

[00:16:51] Doug Heikkinen: For more information about fmg, please visit them at FMGsuite.com. We are on all social media platforms @Advisorpedia. Please give us a follow. For our producer Tory Miller and everyone at Advisorpedia, thank you so much for listening.