Small Business Marketing Meets AI: Trends, Tools, and Strategies

Transcription – Small Business Marketing Meets AI: Trends, Tools, and Strategies

(0:00 – 0:25)

This is Stacie Porter Bilger with the Proof Point podcast, and today we’ve switched the script here. I have John Overton with me, and we’re going to talk about search marketing and all things small business. So, John, thanks for having me today in this amazing space. Hey, thanks for coming, and thanks for letting me sit in your chair. I’m excited to talk to you and learn some stuff here about AI and marketing. So let’s just dive in.

(0:26 – 0:53)

A topic that’s really hot right now in AI and marketing is AI search. My title here is “AI Search: The New Rules of Being Found.” Admittedly, I’m a little new to this topic myself. How would you explain it to me as if I’m clueless? I gotcha. Well, if you’re on Google and you type in something like, say you’re taking a trip, “what are the best things to do in Toronto, Canada?”

(0:58 – 1:26)

Or Indianapolis, Indiana. You’ll see a couple of things happen. Right now, search itself is changing on a regular basis. Sometimes the results are right there at the top, and Gemini is generating suggestions on what you should do in Indianapolis. It’s changing the way people receive their information. Now, how do you get into those results? You have to think about it a little differently.

(1:28 – 1:53)

You still have to do the same things as old school SEO. SEO is still important, especially in certain markets. Then you get results right below that from what’s called GEO, or AI search, or what I now call “search everywhere.” You have to make sure your site and your online presence can be found in multiple places. It’s just SE now. It’s just search.

(1:53 – 2:25)

If you look at your analytics or your traffic, you’re going to see more and more people coming from ChatGPT or other AI search tools. And one thing we’re seeing is if you’re found in those LLMs, those AI resources, you have a higher conversion rate, because getting there gives you credibility.

(2:27 – 2:53)

You’ve already answered some of their questions to get there, because it’s serving as your sales tool. It needs to actually be answering those questions. I kind of want to dive a little deeper. The old SEO playbook was keywords and backlinks. What does the new playbook look like? What are you doing differently for clients to optimize for this?

(2:54 – 3:26)

That’s the basics, but you still have to have a well-structured site. I always talk about it from a house standpoint. You have to have a structured house. You don’t want bad plumbing or bad wiring, because both Google’s search engines and AI bots have to crawl your site. So you still need that infrastructure and signage on your site telling people what you do. Then you go to the next level: actually providing more information, FAQs, questions and answers.

(3:27 – 3:57)

When people are at AI tools, they’re asking questions, prompting, and digging for more information, so your site and online presence has to do the same. It has to be contextual to be pulled. On top of that, the PR piece is really important, because these tools look for credibility to pull you up.

(3:59 – 4:32)

Reddit, other business listings, Chambers of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, anything that validates you as a legitimate source is important. So backlinks, yes, but not fake backlinks. Those were never good for SEO anyway. PR is important now for being the answer inside Gemini, ChatGPT, and others.

(4:34 – 5:00)

From a consumer’s viewpoint, do you feel like AI search is more trustworthy than Google search, or are we still getting there? It probably depends on the product or industry, but we are seeing higher conversion rates when somebody comes from an AI source. That’s interesting, and valuable information to have.

(5:01 – 5:26)

They’re also a consumer doing deeper analysis about what they’re purchasing. They’re going a step beyond. They’ve embraced AI, and they’re actively looking for answers. Take the travel example: if I’m traveling to Indianapolis, what museums do I visit, what source do I use?

(5:27 – 5:57)

It’s helping the consumer get answers and basically build their whole itinerary and decide what they’re going to do and buy. It’s almost an indicator of how interested they already are in what they’re looking for. That makes sense. A lot of small businesses have decades of blog posts and website content from the old playbook.

(6:03 – 6:31)

Is that archive an asset or a liability? Does it become obsolete, or does it still help with AI? It does help, but you need to structure it differently. Oftentimes what we’ll do is look at your traffic, see what blogs got the most traffic in the past, and revive, update, and republish them. You’re not creating all new content, but there’s a way to restructure it.

(6:35 – 7:01)

We actually have free resources on our site showing how to structure it. It’s almost like summarizing at the top what the article is about, right out of the gate, so when AI is crawling your site, it understands what question this piece of content answers. You help it out instead of making it search through the whole blog.

(7:02 – 7:31)

You point to the answer and summarize it. Internal links are still important too, since they give validation. There are ways to structure content to improve the odds of it actually being pulled as a result in an AI tool, so repurpose your old blog content. Content still is king, but it’s how it’s structured.

(7:32 – 8:00)

And that’s going to be really important. What about reviews and local listings? How does AI search change the role of real people reviewing and recommending businesses? That’s old school SEO, and it’s also AI. What problem do you solve, and are you credible? Quality links back to your site matter, not a huge number of them, and reviews still play a role.

(8:06 – 8:31)

Reviews play a big role in local business decisions especially. People look at reviews and make decisions based on them, and so does AI. You’ve got to blend it all together. How is AI search affecting paid search and Google Ads? Is that still worth it for a small business? It depends on the business.

(8:32 – 8:58)

It depends on where your customers are and who your target market is. If you’re selling a product, you’ll see Google Merchant Center at the top, still above AI results, because Google drives that too. Most people are still on Google, so they’ll keep prioritizing ad results since it’s a big moneymaker for them.

(9:06 – 9:40)

You should think strategically about where you spend your ad dollars. You’re already starting to see ads showing up inside AI platforms, since those companies have to figure out how to make money too. Different platforms will lean into ads differently, but with Google and Meta as leaders in the space, AI is playing a role you have to be cautious with.

(9:42 – 10:08)

A lot of these platforms are pushing ad automations that can miss your actual goal. AI isn’t perfect on the results side, so you can waste dollars if you’re not careful. We’re cautious about using Gemini or Meta AI automations wholesale, including to promote our own company.

(10:09 – 10:34)

When we’re running ads for clients, Google and Gemini are pushing their AI automations more and more, and some of it is good, some isn’t. You know your target audience better than Google thinks it does, so it’s a balancing act as these platforms automate more of the ad creation process.

(10:39 – 11:05)

That’s the nerdy backend stuff, but it’s going to keep evolving because these companies want to make money. Have you seen an uptick in your own business, clients finding you through AI? Yes, we have. We’re doing what we recommend to our own clients, so there’s no question about it.

(11:08 – 11:35)

We’ve had clients win on Gemini and ChatGPT, game-changing clients. Once you see the value and quality of client you get this way, because you’re already answering their questions, they already understand who you are before they even reach out.

(11:36 – 12:01)

They’re actually the right target. Going back to the travel example, people are more interested and better informed by the time they use AI search, so you’re giving them information before they even come to you, which is why conversion rates are often higher. But you have to make sure your site has titles, metas, and schema.

(12:02 – 12:36)

That’s another SEO term, so bots searching for your site get the right information, along with the content itself and the authority piece: reviews and links back to you as an authority. All of that still matters. Schema is basically code you put on your site that gives crawling bots clear information about what a page is about.

(12:40 – 13:09)

It’s a roadmap for the bots that crawl your site. It comes down to the details, just like making sure the wiring in a house is correct so everything functions. Where is this heading? Right now it’s still a blend of old and new. Ten years down the road, what becomes obsolete, if anything? Right now we’re figuring out how all these components work together.

(13:10 – 13:37)

Google, SEO, ads, AI, how does AI continue to shape the industry? It will continue to shape it significantly. I don’t know what ten years looks like, or even five, honestly, because the rapid growth of AI’s ability in just the last six months has been intense.

(13:37 – 14:06)

Most things don’t change much over two to three years. This is just rapidly changing. All I can tell you is I think it’s our role, and business’s role, to make AI better, which comes back to making sure it has clear information about your company and services, delivered in a way it can actually receive. It will dominate marketing.

(14:09 – 14:41)

It will dominate how people work efficiently from a workflow standpoint. The possibilities are endless. But the fundamentals still matter: who are your customers, and where are they? That’s still the basics. People are afraid of AI erasing the human element, but if your business is relationship-based, that’s still important. You still have to embrace AI from a marketing standpoint, or you’ll get left behind.

(14:42 – 15:11)

You can still be in the field making authentic human connections and building word of mouth. But when it comes to digital marketing, you can’t ignore AI at all. You have to either educate yourself on it or work with a company like Proof Digital that can help you navigate it. If you’ve watched how Google search results have evolved, they look different all the time.

(15:12 – 15:39)

Before, you didn’t even have products at the top of search results. Now if you’re looking for a particular product, all you see is products. And now Gemini dominates the top of search results too. It still matters whether you’re there, in the top three, part of Gemini, part of the AI results. If you’re not, people don’t look much further. They already don’t look past the front page.

(15:41 – 16:16)

If you’re not there, it’s going to be difficult, so you have to either invest in making that happen or come up with a different marketing strategy. It’s going to keep evolving, and Google is a business, so they’ll keep balancing things from both an ad standpoint and a search results standpoint. So let’s talk actionable items: what should a small business owner do this week, not eventually, to start getting ready for the AI search world already happening around them?

(16:17 – 16:43)

What’s step one? First, go back to marketing basics. What problem do you solve? Be really clear on your marketing message and who you’re targeting. Then you can run a simple AI audit of your site to see where you stand. There are tools out there you can put your site into to see exactly where you land.

(16:43 – 17:09)

That’s a genuinely important thing to understand, basically a report card of where you’re at. Being really clear on how you can make these tools a sales arm for you matters, whether you’re running a relationship-based business or leaning on AI as your sales tool.

(17:13 – 17:44)

So if Proof Digital disappeared from Google tomorrow and you had 90 days to get it back, knowing everything you know about AI search, what would you do first? Theoretically, I’d start with the website, the homepage, your home base. I’d be really specific about the industries I want to go after and build content around that.

(17:46 – 18:11)

The website has to be structurally sound. You have to dot your I’s and cross your T’s when building a site, because you can’t just build it and expect people to come. It’s like a building; it needs a foundation. I’d start with a website, and then I’d set up Google My Business, or Google Business Profile.

(18:12 – 18:39)

That’s an important piece, especially for geographic businesses. It’s the foundation for every business: your name, address, and phone number, consistent across the internet. I’d make sure my name and business info is consistent everywhere. You’ll see Google Business Profile show up especially when someone Googles a local restaurant or a local construction company.

(18:45 – 19:10)

It’s sometimes an overlooked marketing tool for a company, and it’s free. You need your name, address, and phone number, plus a description in 200 words or less of what you do, and the right category, whether that’s a restaurant or a construction management company. It really comes back to clarity.

(19:11 – 19:39)

If you get the simple things right, you really set yourself up for success. And make sure you’re not just on Google Business Profile, since there are hundreds of business listings out there. Tools like Bright Local can push your information out to all of them, which acts as a trust signal to Google that you’re a legitimate business. So if I disappeared, I’d work on my website and get my business profile in line.

(19:40 – 20:06)

Is there a case study you can point to that shows how impactful AI search can be? Absolutely. We have a great client out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Highmark Tech Systems. They build semi-permanent structures for things like NCAA events, golf tournaments, and events in Vegas.

(20:08 – 20:36)

About six months ago, we purposely built a strategy around “semi-permanent structures” as a search term. We structured their site specifically to be found for that product and created pillar pages, in-depth content pages built around that exact topic.

(20:39 – 21:08)

When you search “semi-permanent structures” now, they land in the top three, and they’ve landed some of the biggest deals, and the biggest client, they’ve ever had. We’ve partnered with this company for several years, and I think it’ll continue for a while, because this is their strongest year ever as a company.

(21:10 – 21:35)

They’re a small, family-owned business in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and their team can attest to how they landed this lead. We can track it back to how a specific person searched for and found this major organization. Can we say who it is? I can’t, but it’s a great story.

(21:37 – 22:11)

It’s a life-changing business opportunity, a huge visibility win for them. They believe in it now, and we’re being even more intentional about building out more strategies like it. The site structure is good, but the real work is deciding which product or service to go after and making sure you show up in these learning models, clearly answering the questions those consumers are actually asking.

(22:13 – 22:39)

Once you dominate a result like that, it gets easier to hold onto. Their competitors have noticed and are working at it too, so we have to keep building on that credibility. It comes down to a business strategy: deciding which market you really want to go after, based on the language you’re actually hearing your customers use.

(22:45 – 23:12)

You build the content, build the answer, build the credibility, and then you win. What I’m hearing is, don’t leave anything on the table when it comes to AI. Use this technology and this new era to elevate your business. It can change your business. Stacie, thanks for letting me take your seat. It’s been a great time, and it’s been awesome talking with you. I’m going to let you take us out. Thanks for joining today on the Proof Point podcast. We’ve had an amazing conversation around AI search with Round Table Recording Company.

(23:19 – 23:21)

Thanks, John, for joining us today. Pleasure.