AI is everywhere.
We no longer write “artificial intelligence”; as far as branding is concerned, the term AI has won.
In reality, many of the AI tools we’re already using — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc. — are Large Language Models (LLMs), and how far they are from passing the Turing test is a matter of debate.
How far these AI tools are from true sentience is even more debatable, and probably a long way off.
However, there is no denying that AI is making an impact, in the same way the Internet did in the early 2000s, and software (e.g., SaaS and “the cloud”) has since the first dot-com bubble burst.
As we covered in a previous article, AI is making an impact in the financial services industry. In particular, we looked at whether it could be a game-changer for wealth management firms.
Now we are looking at it another way: the impact of AI in search engines, and how financial brands can adapt in this new SEO environment.
TL;DR: Here is how to do Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for Financial Services:
- SEO is an integral part of brand storytelling, technical content, and content marketing.
- Except now it’s just as important to appear in AI Overviews (AIOs), Search Generative Experience results (SGEs), and in ChatGPT answers.
- Achieving this means using every proven SEO method: JTBD, BOFU, E-E-A-T, topical authority, and Hub & Spoke.
- While infusing those with:
- Deeper audience insights
- Content personalization
- PR, backlinks, and social media that will help you appear in AI-generated results
Read on if you want to understand how to do this in more detail.
AI is a $15.7 Trillion Value-Generator
AI is the next wave of innovation, and PwC is calling AI the “$15.7 trillion game changer.”
Data shows PwC is predicting that AI could: “Contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030, more than the current output of China and India combined.”
This tremendous opportunity for growth is one of the many reasons investors are so excited about AI. It’s one of the reasons OpenAI is currently worth $157 billion.
In recent years, investors, tech and corporate giants, universities, and governments have poured $1 trillion into AI startups, scaleups, hardware makers, and utilities to keep massive data centers operational for dozens of new AI models.
AI is being embedded into every aspect of the technology we already know, use, and trust. For example, Apple recently announced Apple Intelligence, a privacy-first, on-device AI that integrates with iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Think generative replies in Mail, summarised articles in Safari, and smart writing tools system-wide.
Google has also been experimenting with AI, firstly with AI Overviews (AIOs), and now with Search Generative Experience (SGE), initially known as “AI Mode”: AI-powered summaries that are replacing traditional results for many searches.
Because millions of businesses rely on people — potential customers, clients, investors — finding them in search engines, this move to a “zero-click” world is a difficult one to navigate.
Once the roll-out began, Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) started taking web traffic from brands and businesses.
Image: How AIOs appear in search results
This is a problem, one that the marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) industry is navigating to ensure that clients still get what they need from SEO-focused marketing:
- Web traffic
- Sales leads
- Customers
- New revenue (or investment, if you’re an alternative asset firm).
What AI-based Searches, AIOs, and Google’s Search Generative Experience Mean for Financial Services
Because OpenAI is currently worth $157 billion, it’s under pressure to scale across multiple industries, and search is a key target market for that and other AI startups and scaleups.
Google is the undisputed leader of search (organic and paid). To the extent that the U.S. Department of Justice has charged the company with being a monopoly.
Google has lost numerous lawsuits in other jurisdictions, too, being hit with record fines for market-manipulating practices (€8.25 billion and counting over 10 years), especially in the EU.
The DoJ is threatening to break the company up, forcing its parent company, Alphabet, to sell off divisions, like the browser, Chrome.
However, from a market-leading perspective, Google’s biggest threats are well-funded AI powerhouses, like OpenAI.
If people switch their search preferences to ChatGPT and other tools, the DoJ is the least of Google’s worries. So, with some of the world’s greatest technical talent at their disposal, and 5 trillion searches being conducted every year, Google sought to retake the lead in AI-powered search.
Hence, the development of AI Overviews (AIOs), and now, a more immersive, hyper-personalized Search Generative Experience (SGE).
Image: How SGEs appear in search results (source).
In the marketing world, it’s become an arms race to adapt to this new, lower-traffic, zero-click reality.
It’s not affecting every sector the same, of course.
In the investment world, where it’s the quality of the clicks that matter — the right people finding your firm (e.g., potential investors) — this isn’t as much of a problem.
However, it can’t be ignored, either.
AI is only going to play a bigger role in how people find information, so if someone is looking for new investment opportunities (professionally or personally), you don’t want to be invisible in an AI-powered search environment.
Fortunately, a solution is emerging for how businesses leverage marketing efforts to maintain visibility in this AI-powered search environment.
Introducing the next iteration of SEO: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
The Next Iteration of SEO: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is SEO with an AI twist.
Now, we need to remember that SEO isn’t about cramming web pages and blogs with hundreds of keywords in the hope of ranking in search engines.
Nor is it about buying backlinks with the hope of a sudden boost in rankings and traffic.
SEO is not a standalone tactic, and nor does any company benefit from “blackhat” tactics, or even AI-generated ones.
People buy from people, and your marketing needs to reflect that. Use AI as a tool, but trust between people isn’t built on AI-powered marketing (as we demonstrated with data-backed proof in this article).
At the same time, we are advocating that you evolve your current SEO strategy to factor AI into the equation; otherwise, you risk losing out on top-of-funnel conversations because your competitors are in AI-generated search results, and you are not.
This is where SEO plays such an important role in your marketing strategy.
SEO is an interwoven and integral part of storytelling.
Done right, SEO should be a natural ingredient in every piece of content marketing, thought-leadership, and technical content your firm publishes.
SEO helps you reach different audiences: senior professionals and younger generations.
Want to build trust online and establish your firm as a brand? SEO is as much an ingredient as visual brand guidelines and a user-friendly website.
Ultimately, SEO is and always will be one of the most important pillars of any financial services sector company’s marketing strategy.
GEO takes SEO an iterative leap further, helping your brand appear where it now matters:
- In AI Overviews
- In Search Generative Experience results (SGEs)
- In ChatGPT answers
- In Bing (because that powers ChatGPT answers)
- And in any other AI-generated answers, whether browser or app-based.
As a financial sector CMO — whether you work for an alternative asset firm, ESG firms, FIs, FinTech Saas, or another financial sector organization — we know you are under more pressure to get results.
Future-proofing your SEO by making it AI-friendly using GEO strategies is one of the ways you can achieve better marketing results.
We can help you do that.
Here are 5 ways you can put GEO into action as an integral part of your marketing strategy.
5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Investment Firm With Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- AI-centric SEO is audience, authority, and behaviour-based
SEO used to be about finding the right keywords to bring in traffic, clicks, and revenue.
Looking for keyword gaps and BOFU keywords that would move the needle.
It still is, kind of.
However, because of GEO, which is aiming to ensure your business appears in AI-generated results, the focus is shifted to SEO being audience, authority, and behaviour-based.
This means:
- Understanding your audience and showing you understand their needs through everything you publish (online, social media, newsletters, videos, etc.)
- Make sure your content is authoritative in your niche topics. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is an essential component of this.
- Getting content published where your audience searches for information online, e.g., LinkedIn, specific media outlets, and your website. This is the behaviour-based part of GEO you need to factor in more effectively.
- Audience insights are mission-critical
Google knows your audience better than anyone.
Unless you use another search engine, Google knows too much about all of us.
You need to understand your audience better to deliver content that serves them more effectively, and in doing so, you will ensure your content is served to them in AI-generated results instead of a competitor.
Deep-dive, quantitative, and qualitative research is ESSENTIAL.
Once you’ve done that, you can show you understand your current and potential customers/investors through everything you publish (online, social media, newsletters, videos, etc.), and this will help you secure space in AIOs and SGEs.
- Own and build authority around YOUR Niche
Trying to be everything for everyone — e.g., an alternative asset investment company trying to attract every type of investor from every region you cover — was hard enough before AI.
Now with AIOs and SGEs in search results, that’s getting even harder.
Building what’s known as topical authority has always been an integral part of SEO.
Combine that with:
- A “Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)”;
- Hub and Spoke (also known as inbound marketing);
- And a Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BOFU) approach to SEO-infused content, and;
It’s a winning formula that means you can own topical areas that your firm is an authority on. The tried-and-tested SEO approach usually includes on-page SEO (web copy and articles) and off-page SEO, like PR and securing backlinks.
All of those methods still work and are even more important with AIOs and SGEs in search results.
However, in this new SEO environment, it’s far more effective to go niche and build authority that way than spread your brand messaging too thin.
The best way to build authority, appear in SERPs (AI and non-AI results), and secure the investment you need from your ideal customers (ICPs) is to go niche.
Establish an authority in your niche. Own your niche.
Let’s say you were offering ESG-focused corporate deposit accounts.
Like Nordea, one of the world’s leading ESG-centric banks, has a “Deposit with Climate Focus” banking solution for large businesses and corporate treasuries.
It’s a big market (corporate cash reserves exceed $8 trillion) with very little competition, apart from Nordea.
Owning this niche would involve creating and implementing a marketing strategy that won your business traffic, clicks, and authoritative links, and summarizing in AIOs and SGEs that sold corporate CFOs on the advantages of your accounts:
- Reduces tail risks;
- Reduces volatility;
- Strong governance;
- Fixed and guaranteed returns (Like Nordea’s ‘Deposit with Climate Focus’)
- Better returns than oil, gas, weapons, and other harmful investments: 60% higher;
- 85% of investors reported that ESG leads to better returns, resilient portfolios, and enhanced fundamental analysis.
In a niche market, you’ve got a better chance of securing and holding the high ground. That’s the end goal you’ve got to keep in mind.
- Personalization is a necessity
Personalization is more important than ever. Here are a few ways you can do this:
- Dig deeper into keyword intent. Don’t just plug in keywords — ask why your audience is searching, and shape your message to match.
- Align your writing to where the reader is. Structure content to meet users in their journey, from curiosity to decision. Create content that aligns with where potential investors are in their decision-making journey.
- Use modular content to personalize at scale. Write flexible intros, CTAs, and blurbs that can be easily swapped for different personas.
- Become the source AIs are citing for answers: PR & Backlinks matter more than ever
As we’ve said, E-E-A-T and topic authority are essential.
One way to demonstrate that you own your niche — both to potential customers/investors, and AI-powered search results — is to secure press coverage (like the PR we are getting for LiquidX) and backlinks.
Both digital PR and guest articles that include a backlink from a media outlet or industry blog work in your favor within AI-generated search results.
For example, central banks are turning to Millennial and Gen Z-centric media outlets, even YouTube and TikTok, to engage younger audiences.
Following recent inflationary issues across the US and Europe, central banks — the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England — are turning to social media and quizzes with prizes in youth-focused media to regain public trust.
All of this secures audience-specific PR, backlinks, social posts, and social mentions, and all of that is a recipe for success with AIO and SGE search results.
Key Takeaways: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for Financial Services
Successful Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for financial services is the old SEO playbook with an AI twist.
- SEO is an integral part of brand storytelling, technical content, and content marketing.
- Except now it’s just as important to appear in AI Overviews (AIOs), Search Generative Experience results (SGEs), and in ChatGPT answers.
- Achieving this means using every proven SEO method: JTBD, BOFU, E-E-A-T, topical authority, and Hub & Spoke.
- While infusing those with:
- Deeper audience insights
- Content personalization
- PR, backlinks, and social media that will help you appear in AI-generated results
Once your brand is THE SOURCE that AIs cite for answers on YOUR TOPICS then you’ve won the AI-powered search high ground.
Doing that will make it much easier for potential customers/investors to find your brand instead of competitors.
Want a Free Tailored Sample & Marketing Analysis?
Now more than ever, alternative asset firms need to stand out and get noticed. You need investors to see the advantages of investing in your offering.
You can’t sit out another cycle waiting for investors to notice you. We can help you with that.
We are offering a free, no-obligation marketing analysis and a bespoke sample of copy.
Sounds interesting? Email us at: admin@fintechcontent.marketing, and we will get started for you.