How AI Is Redefining Advisor Discoverability with Samantha Russell

I'm only here for a few more weeks, but have been here for going on three months now. So it's been so fun.

[00:00:30] Doug Heikkinen: What's been the best part about London?

[00:00:33] Samantha Russell: Well, the parks here are amazing. So I can walk out my door and be in Regents Park, which is a beautiful park like in three minutes. And I love being able to walk out the door, city living, right?

You go to so many restaurants and cafes. And then there is, if you're a history buff, pretty much at least three times a week we go somewhere that has some sort of historical significance. So that has been amazing. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention how easy it's to get so many other places in Europe.

So we've done trips to Paris and Switzerland and France, so I'm going to, it's going to be hard to come back.

[00:01:12] Doug Heikkinen: It is. And with all that visual sight seeing and historic stuff, today we're going to talk about everything AI.

[00:01:22] Samantha Russell: Love

[00:01:22] Doug Heikkinen: it.

How's that? Okay, so let's start with, what's the biggest shift you're seeing in how customers search for financial information today?

[00:01:30] Samantha Russell: So one of the things that a lot of people aren't paying attention to that's just been quietly happening in the background is that more than two thirds of Google searches now end without a click. So someone goes to Google, they type something in, and then Google just gives you the answer right at the top of the page in this AI summary. You don't have to go and go sift through websites to click through. So a lot of times people will say My ranking has changed. It's not that your ranking has changed, it's that you're still being listed, but the websites are further down the page. And that's just one tool, that's just Google and the Google ai.

But we now see about 20% of consumers going to either ChatGPT or Perplexity or one of these other tools to start their searches. And then that doesn't even include going to things like social media and doing social search. And we're really just at the tip of the iceberg here. We are becoming conditioned to just be given the answer, rather than us have to take the time to sift through the results.

And so now is the time to set your business up to be found by these AI tools.

[00:02:38] Doug Heikkinen: So what are these consumers searching for when they're using these AI tools? Are they researching advisor, investment questions? What are you finding?

[00:02:47] Samantha Russell: Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to how we would search Google, right? So it could be everything from, Hey ChatGPT, who's the best financial advisor near me.

It could be, I'm looking for a financial advisor that specifically works with women owned business owners in Philadelphia. What we do find, however, is that we tend to very quickly, if we're using an AI tool, start to talk to it the way we would talk to a friend. So we use more colloquial language, we talk in first person, and we ask much more in-depth questions.

And then if you allow these tools, if you sign up, they start to get to know you and your previous queries and your previous questions. So they'll even tailor the results further to you. So a big thing to think about in terms of shifting your marketing strategy, is that the formal buttoned up, really professional, type of content and language we typically see on advisor sites is not going to be what surfaces the quickest and easiest here.

What these sites are looking for is changing because the way that we're talking to these search tools is changing.

[00:03:53] Doug Heikkinen: So if somebody's going to a ChatGPT or an AI tool, and they're searching for an advisors, how should advisors prioritize on their websites and online profiles to be caught in this mix?

[00:04:08] Samantha Russell: Yeah, it's a great question. So there's really three things you want to think about when ChatGPT, or again, Google Gemini, any of these AI tools. When they think about what results should they show to Doug when he's searching for, let's say, an advisor, or really any query you're making. But what they're looking for are three things.

Number one. They're looking for reviews about that business. So these reviews could be Google reviews, they could be people mentioning your company on Facebook. It could be Reddit forums. So they're looking for real reviews. It could be Wealth Tender, Trustpilot, all these different ones. The second thing that they're looking for is reputation.

So they're looking for credible sources, credible businesses. If you have been featured on a podcast, if you contributed to a New York Times article or a local article, if you have been featured in the, a Top 100 list in your state or something like that. Any kind of credibility about your reputation.

If you create a lot of content, that all helps. So reviews, then reputation, and then the third one is about the way your content is structured. So we want to have something called schema markup on our websites, which is just the way that your data is structured, something your website provider can help you with.

And then when you're adding any additional content to your website, you want to add it in a format where it's called a Q and A format. So instead of just statements, you know, five things you need to know about claiming social security, you would pose it as a question and then what are the answers. So the questions would be things like.

If I take social security early, will I be penalized? What is the earliest I can take Social Security in the state of California? How do I figure out my social security benefits? So those are all the questions, and then you answer that in your content. So those three things, the reputation, reviews, and the content structuring or formatting are the three things that AI is looking for, and we can get into each of those further if you like.

[00:06:11] Doug Heikkinen: And that's such a shift because we were always taught to do five things that you can, blah, blah, blah. And now it's

[00:06:17] Samantha Russell: Exactly

[00:06:18] Doug Heikkinen: it's just shifted. So what else can advisors do to adapt this new search environment and stay visible as AI search grows in popularity? Anything else you got?

[00:06:27] Samantha Russell: Yeah, another big one is what we just call natural language, right?

So these are language models that are constantly scouring the web. And if you think about the way people are talking on social media, talking in forums, posting different things online, we have really shifted just as a society to be a lot more informal. And I think that's a good thing in a lot of ways, but a lot of financial advisory businesses have not caught up to that.

If I go look at what any firm's website says or what they're posting on social media, it is not written in a way you would talk to a friend. So that is something that everybody listening can do is start to think about, how would I explain this topic to a friend on the golf course or over a backyard barbecue.

And you want to start writing using the language that your clients would use, not the way you would rewrite it. So you can keep a list of the types of questions they ask, and then add that to your website and answer it using, again, their language, not your financial advisor jargon filled language.

[00:07:32] Doug Heikkinen: Let's talk about AI tools to create better content at scale. Which tools are you finding most effective for advisors looking to save time, but keep their voice authentic? We're kind of in a danger zone here, aren't we?

[00:07:47] Samantha Russell: Yeah, I think one of the things that's been really problematic is that we know that these AI tools can hallucinate, right?

So if they don't know the right answer, that's what they, we call it, they'll hallucinate and just fill in the blank, make up garbage that they don't, because they want to have something to give you. And so that's always been a real issue if someone is just asking ChatGPT to write an article for them for their marketing purposes, and then they're going to copy and paste it.

You really want to be using it more as a tool to create an outline for you or to give you a first draft and then you're really looking at it closely. But this is something we at FMG actually have been thinking a lot about and it's very exciting because just this week we launched our own new set of AI tools, where we've baked in a compliance Overwatch tool. So knowing what we know after over a decade of looking at advisor communications, what is and isn't going to be flagged for compliance, what is and isn't legitimate. We've trained the AI tool so that you know that what you're getting is going to be compliant and accurate.

And then the other part that's really difficult for advisors is the prompting. I don't know about you, Doug, but I think a lot of people are not prompt engineer extraordinaires at this point. AI is still relatively new. And the output you get, how good is the email, how good is the social post is only as good as the input you give, and most people don't really know how to create those inputs or prompts.

So our team has trained our AI tool internally within the dashboard to have six different voice styles, so that the prompts become a lot more specific and an advisor can play around, see which prompt style they like. The prompting and then the compliance are really the two pitfalls that you want to think about.

[00:09:41] Doug Heikkinen: Yeah, time, AI is a big time saver and it's saving time in our world over here. For advisors time is so valuable. How can they leverage AI to save time while still creating quality content? And you started talking about the outline. What else can AI do for them?

[00:10:02] Samantha Russell: So you can do everything from ask AI tools to give you a schedule saying, I'm a financial advisor.

I serve this type of clientele. I'd like to make a video every week for the next five weeks. Here are what my clients are interested in. What are some video scripts or video ideas? And they'll give you video ideas and then you can say, okay, can you script it out for me? You can almost use it as a brainstorming friend to really get you going.

That is one way that I think it really works. Of course, like we mentioned, you can get outlines. That is really helpful. Also for hooks, a lot of people really struggle with, okay, here's what my email is going to be or my social post is going to be, but how do I really engage and capture people within that first sentence?

You can say to AI, Hey, here's what my post is. Can you give me a great first line to really grab attention? And maybe say, even give me four or five options, and then you can pick and choose which one. So those are just some of the different ways that it can really help you. And again, these are all things, if you are using FMG, we've baked into our new tool.

[00:11:12] Doug Heikkinen: Yeah. You mentioned AI sometimes hallucinates and a lot of advisors worry about sounding robotic when using AI. What's your best advice for making sure AI content still sounds like a hundred percent like the advisor.

[00:11:26] Samantha Russell: I think one of the great things about it is that the more you use it, the more it learns your style.

So if you've logged in, you've created an account and it gives you an output and you say, no, this was good, but I talk like this. You can actually upload versions of your previous content marketing and tell it to match your tone and style. And that is a great way to ensure that it is going to sound like you.

We, at FMG, we've, in our new AI tool, we've done the same thing where we're training it so that with every iteration that changes someone makes, it saves it, and that then the next iterations are going to be remembered so that as you work with the tool, each new iteration, it's going to remember what you liked and didn't like, and then the further outputs will sound like you.

it's really just about giving it time to learn and adapt to your style.

[00:12:25] Doug Heikkinen: Are we at all worried that everybody's going to be sounding the same and giving the same answers once these large language models learn what consumers are after?

[00:12:36] Samantha Russell: I definitely think it's a real, it's one, one of many issues with AI that we're thinking about.

There are many, right? Will people still keep making content if nobody is going to click over to their websites and they're not getting that type of traffic. I think so, yes. I think there's the issue of everybody sounding the same. Of the learning language models using the same regurgitated pieces over and over again to learn from in the future.

I think this is where anyone who has expertise and has a voice really leaning into podcasting and video is going to be such a unique opportunity because you'll be able to really put your imprint on it and use that going forward too. But it's still the very much the wild west, so it remains to be seen.

But like all new technology, like the internet, like social media, there'll be good and bad that will come from it and we'll have to see how it plays out.

[00:13:32] Doug Heikkinen: It's part of the larger recipe.

[00:13:35] Samantha Russell: Exactly.

[00:13:37] Doug Heikkinen: Okay. What final advice would you like to give advisors navigating AI and the changes it brings to their marketing?

[00:13:43] Samantha Russell: I would say the number one is not to be scared and do nothing, right? I think we have a lot of people who haven't even gone near it because it feels very overwhelming. They're not sure how to integrate it into their system. And this, if you really do lean into it, it will make you more efficient and effective.

The amount of time saving we're seeing teams use across all industries, but specifically in marketing, is just astronomical. So don't wait. Do some research, investigate your options. Again, if you're already, we, I know so many of the advisors listening to this use FMG, turn it on in the FMG dashboard, start playing around with it, and I think you'll very quickly realize the amount of time and efficiencies that it will create.

[00:14:27] Doug Heikkinen: Sam, thanks so much for joining us. Enjoy your last few weeks in London. We've really enjoyed your shorts all through Europe on video, so thanks for being with us.

[00:14:40] Samantha Russell: Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope to see you soon.

[00:14:43] Doug Heikkinen: To learn more about FMG. Please visit 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 for listening.