Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There's still a decent amount of uncertainty out there that we have to continue paying attention to how the landscape changes. So many LLMs now on the market, there is a choice for consumers, and
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I will tell you, no, it is no longer my best friend. Oh, I have a new best friend. And ChatGPT is now my backup best friend. Now my behavior's changed. It's pretty amazing how quickly our habits change. The consumer behavior has shifted dramatically. Everything's controlled by AI now, so it's no longer about who are you friends and family with, who is it that you're connected with. All of that's out the window. The gate gameplay is now level for everybody. Whether you have 2,000 followers or you have two followers, it doesn't even matter anymore.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Yeah, people want you, that human element, that human touch, more than ever, especially in the health and wealth industries.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Now, if you're in sales and somebody says, hey, I'm looking for information, be ready. Our patience level is just not what it used to be.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: There's a compounding effect when you're using these practices.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: If you haven't started yet, the possibilities are endless right now.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Six months ago, we launched this podcast with one message for your marketing pick an AI platform and just start getting comfortable. Well, here we are halfway through 2026, and it's time for a check in.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Today we're looking back at what we've learned so far and what we should be paying attention to as we head into the second half of 2026. I'm Jo Barker.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: And I'm David Belleville, and this is
[00:01:24] Speaker B: the Amerilife Marketing Mentors Podcast.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Jo, in our very first podcast episode, you said something that stuck out to me, so I gotta follow up. You said chat was your best friend. So all these months later, has anything changed?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: It's definitely changed. You know what's funny is after that first episode, I actually had multiple people when we were at the AmerLife kickoff event come up and they're like, is ChatGPT really your best friend? And they were making fun of me for it, and I will tell you, no, it is no longer my best friend.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: I have a new best friend. His name is Claude. Claude is now my number one best friend, and ChatGPT is now my backup best friend.
But now I definitely use Claude more than any of them. Now, I. I'm very impressed with the updates. I do see ChatGPT making its advancements as it has over the last couple of months. Could it come back into play? Maybe. But now my behavior's changed and now that's the first app I go to, to the point where I purchase the $100 a month version of it because that's how much I use it.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: And with so many LLMs now on the market, there is a choice for consumers. I think when we did launch this podcast, it was really chatgpt dominated the market. And especially for just casual data, average users. Now we have Claude. That has really gone mainstream. Gemini is a very, very popular LLM. You have Grok, you have perplexity. It feels like we have all of these options now where just six months ago the landscape seems, seemed so much smaller. So we talk a lot about how consumer behavior has changed over time. What have you seen in these last six months when it comes to consumer behavior?
[00:02:57] Speaker B: So I still think Claw or I'm sorry, I still think ChatGPT is the, the number one out there. It's the most downloaded app. It is the one that most people get started on. And then I think as you find different ways to utilize AI, that's when you start to see people move into different platforms depending on what it is that they're looking for. The consumer behavior has shifted dramatically.
So we were just joking prior to this recording about Google and even, even our experiences with Google and going to the, to Google and putting in a search, we go straight to the AI overview of Google. The thought for many of us to have to scroll down and actually click on those links and have to go look at it ourselves seems ridiculous now. It's pretty amazing how quickly our habits changed and you're starting to see that continue with the different generations. So the 18 to 25 years old, they have dominated the AI market. And now you're seeing, as you know, for every month that pass, seeing more and more people utilize it on a monthly basis and you're seeing that reliance on it really pick up.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: And Google's one of those examples of you're using AI, even if that's not your intention. And Google really has just turned into AI mode, as you mentioned, the traditional search really isn't relevant anymore.
That also applies though, across other tools and platforms that we often mention. Amazon is a good one where AI is baked right in. Netflix is another one.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Are there any, I mean, even our social media algorithms, everything's, everything's controlled by AI now. So it's no longer about who are you friends and family with, who is it that you're connected with. All of that's out the window.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: It's more about what is it that this person's interested in. And now the social media platforms are serving up more content like that. Because you have to keep in mind for social media, the whole goal is to keep you there longer. So if they think that you're interested in something, you're going to keep getting content like that. So I think you're seeing it really start to affect multiple channels, if not all of them. And it's not going to slow down. We're going to keep going and you're going to keep seeing more advancements. Especially as you're seeing I recently chat GPT started allowing ads in financial sectors and you start hearing more about that as those type of things continue, where it's just going to keep growing, it's not going to slow down and more tools are going to keep coming to light.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: A little fun fact that at the end of last year there was a study done and there was an increase of 266% traffic to financial services websites. So people are going to AI to learn about the health and wealth industries. So this is a perfect opportunity. The best time to start was in January, but the second best time to start is now. So for our audience just getting started today, your advice back in January, Jo, was to have AI audit your website as a first step.
Has your advice changed at all?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: I think I would add to it. Okay, so I think it's still very relevant to ask AI to audit your website because it's going to catch just things that you could have missed. It's going to check it for SEO, it could check it for a user experience. There's a lot that you can utilize AI to check your website. But what I would add to it now is to check your digital presence. So if you are a business owner, if you're an agency owner, even if you're us, a marilife marketing mentorship, we want to go into AI and we want AI to do the research of tell us what the online digital presence looks like for a marilike marketing mentors. Tell us the opportunities that we're missing. Tell us, tell us where we're doing well, where can we improve? Because as you mentioned, it's no longer about being on page one of Google by itself. Google's still very relevant and you do want to be there, but it's no longer just about that. Now as you mentioned, you want to get cited and you want to get mentioned on those AI channels. So now utilize AI to help you build out that plan of where in my digital presence am I missing? It's going to come back and tell you your Google. My business could be optimized. You could get on some other sites, get on Reddit and get into the feeds. LinkedIn is definitely a game player when it comes to that. Your Facebook pages, all of that comes into play. And AI can help identify opportunities.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: I'm so happy you mentioned that, because just yesterday I had, you know, we launched the AmerLife Marketing Mentors website and in late 2025. And so for all intents and purposes, it's still being built and we're still progressing and making that website better and better every day. So yesterday I had AI crawl our website, and it seems so simple, but our SEO tags could have been improved. And so that was just one example of a way that we can continue optimizing our website with the help of AI.
There's a compounding effect when you're using these practices. And I go back to the advice we were giving six months ago.
If you would have started, you'd be six months into training your AI, you'd have six months worth of content that you are learning from, and you can make those decisions. Jo, what advantage, if you could add to that, are the agents that have started using AI over the ones that aren't using it at all?
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Well, the ones that have been using it are finding new ways to use it. And so they're not just stopping at, oh, create content, they're getting better and better at utilizing it, and they're understanding the limits and the capabilities of the AI tools that they're utilizing. So they're just that much further along than the ones who are just getting started. The ones who are just getting started. It was. I was at an event, I think, a month or two ago, and I asked, who here knows what prompting is now? I didn't even expect that to be a popular question or, or even a stumping question. I expected everybody to raise their hands. And it was like two people out of probably 80 raised their hand, and I was like, oh, wait. So it's. It reminded me that there's still so many people that don't understand how to utilize AI. And I think when you first get over there to the LLMs, you treat it like Google. You put in a couple of keywords where, where we need to get it to is where people realize that's your assistant, and you should speak to it like you're having a conversation. But you don't want to use words like please or thank you. You want to use direct words, but you really want to make sure that you're training it like you would a real assistant and it becomes a tool that you can utilize for multiple channels, multiple aspects of your day to day work.
Um, there's even days where I have so much on my calendar, I have so much that I feel I need to get done that it just helps me get it organized and it helps me break it down to where it feels more digestible for me and you don't get that overwhelming feeling. So that's what I would say. The biggest advantage is, is those who have already begun using it are continuing to find ways to utilize it more and more. Those who are just getting started. You're starting from scratch.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: And you're trying to figure it out. But that's why we're here, is to try to help escalate, you know, move that along and accelerate that learning process.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah, we're always happy to help you get comfortable with AI. As we're talking about learning about AI, we too are learning every single day. AI, you know, started at the same time for us as it did you. And so we're continuing to understand best practices and ways that you can optimize for AI search. And there's still a decent amount of uncertainty out there that we have to continue paying attention to how the landscape changes. And there are more and more tools coming up every day. Bing and and Google are starting to roll out analytics tools that you can start to measure how you're showing up in those AI searches. But that's just something that we should mention. We are still students of AI every single day as well.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Jo.
AEP comes around every year and it feels like it's right on the horizon. So what would you say to a busy agent who wants to utilize AI for efficiency in those busy time periods? Where would you direct them?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Well, I think when you're heading into AEP and you know, just when you're utilizing AI, keep compliance in mind. AI is not going to be able to replace compliance.
And so when you're looking at ways to utilize AI in a busy time frame, use it to help with inspiration ideas and even ask it how, how you can set up a marketing strategy that will get you to AEP or through aep.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Great idea.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: It's. You don't have to re. You don't have to create everything yourself. And I think that's where people underestimate the capabilities of AI. If you have a conversation with it and you say, hey, I'm heading into AEP from October to December, I am going to be busy and I'm not going to have time for marketing. It is now June, July, summertime and I am looking to prepare myself for this. Can you help me build out a marketing plan that will get me there? That's a great way to utilize it. Then as you get going and you keep using it to build out those pieces. The only thing I always say is just make sure you put your human and your own personal touch onto it. Don't just copy and paste that out. Take those pieces that it gives you and, and change it to where it actually sounds like you and to where you're confident that if you put that out, one, you're providing value and two, it's something that you believe people are going to use.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: And if you start today, by the time AEP does roll around, then you're going to be that much more comfortable using it. And so you, you now have an assistant to help get you through that busy time period. So again, now is the time to start if you haven't yet.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: But a reminder, don't put your clients personal information in there. So I have to always say that because you hear, you know, you hear those stories about agents who are utilizing AI and they're, they're taking information and they're putting it in there. It's a public data. You don't, you do not want to put any type of private information or personal information in there. So just keep that in mind as you're utilizing it. Utilize it for your marketing, utilize it to help you get organized. But don't utilize it with your client's information.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: I'm so happy you brought that up. Use placeholders if you ever need to. But I'm glad that you brought that up. That's a huge important point and that might be an answer to my next question. But I still will ask, is there anything that you think agents and advisors should not be doing with AI? As we've continued to learn throughout the year, we mentioned not putting client info into your AI. Is there anything else? Any pitfalls they should be watching out for?
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Well, I'll add a layer in there. So AI can't do your compliance for you. It's not. And it's going to tell you I am not a compliance officer. I do not understand all the rules. It will say you can't depend me for that. But what you can do is you can go to CMS and you can go to medicare.gov and you can pull out documents and put it into AI to reference. Those are all public documents. So as you're creating your plan. As you're creating your marketing materials, you can ask your AI to reference the rules around marketing Medicare. And that way at least you have some sort of layer before you actually send it to the person who's doing compliance for you so it can do a quick check for you. It'll probably point out a few things like, hey, this sounds salesy, not educational, might want to adjust that.
And then that way you're just that much further ahead. If you're submitting your, your marketing to
[00:13:25] Speaker A: compliance for approval, everything that AI generates gets human fact check and compliance especially.
Let's pivot a little bit away from AI and talk about trends in marketing through the rest of the year. AI will probably still be involved. But is there anything that has changed from the beginning of the year that you would encourage our audience to do or is there anything that we should encourage them to keep doing?
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I can't recall if we talked about this in January. I don't think we did. But I think the social media algorithm is critical. Okay, we've talked about it a couple of times. But I think it is really important for everyone to understand that the, the level, the gameplay is now level for everybody. Whether you have 2,000 followers or you have two followers, it doesn't even matter anymore. Yeah. The fact is, is if you are on social media and you're creating good content, it will, it will get shared if it's good content. So it really did level out the playing field for those people who have thousands and thousands of followers. If you have 200, you can still reach as many people. If it's good, that is really critical for people to understand because now it's the new start line for everybody and now it is just about creating good and authentic content. And I think that's really key. It's not just about sharing, it's about being you, being authentic and showing and bringing your personality to your post and to social media.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Authenticity is such an important word here when we're talking about trends. Being authentic has the through line through all of it, especially with the rise of AI generated content. People want you, that human element, that human touch more than ever, especially in the health and wealth industries.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: The only other thing I'll throw out there is what's one thing that we're watching? And it continues to, over the last 20 years that's continued to, to diminish is the patience and the response level of consumers. And so the turnaround time that you reach out and you respond to somebody, you know, 20 years ago they might have waited a day or two or three or four. If you know to return a postcard, they might have waited for you to call them back. Now if you're in sales and somebody says, hey, I'm looking for information, be ready.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Because that time that that consumer is going to wait for information isn't long before they move on and they're going on to the next person. Because our patience level is just not what it used to be. So I think that's really important for everybody to keep in mind when you're thinking about marketing, especially if you're doing any type of lead generation, that speed to lead is critical. Yeah. And it's getting shorter and shorter with every year that passes.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: That's such a great point. Also I'll add to that the importance of social media has grown because search has become more and more difficult.
As you mentioned, nobody's clicking through link after link after link to do their research anymore. AI overview will be provided and oftentimes that's exactly what people will go with and they'll be satisfied with their search. My point is, is that if you are active on social media, you're at least giving yourself another opportunity, potential leads to find you and you can become the source that they go to. Another thing I'd like to add, Jo, we know that short form video is an underutilized marketing tactic for our audience, but also at large. And so I would just urge anybody out there listening, short form video is just as important today as it was back in January, as it was a year from a year ago. So Jo, when it comes to short form video, what advice do you have? Because that's the biggest opportunity I think out there for our audience.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: It seems like the sweet spot right now is those one minute videos. It's just being consistent, it's just posting them and it's just creating them and getting them going. So just if you haven't started yet, even once a week in the beginning of just creating a one minute video, answering a frequently asked question or something as simple as that, getting out there and getting, getting those shorts running, it's going to be helpful. And we know after a survey that we did that that is how people like to learn. They like to learn with those short form videos. So the only other thing I'm going to add, as we just mentioned on the Google with you know, the old, the old way of searching I guess we'll call it, where you go down and do the links. It's important that, to know that we have agents that, that sell across all generations. So we have people who are selling life insurance to, you know, new parents in their twenties all the way through to people who sell Medicare, the 65 plus. So the younger generations are moving more and more towards AI. And that's where you're seeing Google be a little bit less relevant. It's important to note that that 50 plus and that especially that 65 plus is still utilizing Google in the old traditional way. So I don't want anybody to take away and say, oh, well, Google's completely gone. It's still relevant. It still is 80% of the traffic share and it's SEO still very much alive. We're just having to be more, I think, diverse and realize that it's now hitting all the channels and especially if you're targeting those younger generations.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Another development of 2026 has been that greater understanding of what gets cited within AI. Reddit and LinkedIn has emerged as two really important platforms for our audience to help rank with AI. I bring that up because oftentimes when we're on Reddit, I see that question get asked all the time, is SEO still relevant because we have AI. And I think that you just mentioned or you just answered that question, SEO is still as, as relevant today. So I'm glad that you made that point.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: And I think it's important to note too. I can't remember where I read it, but it was talking about the crossover of content between Google and the LLMs. And I know one study that came out said in all the searches that they did, there was only 11% crossover in content. So what that's saying is Google is utilizing its old, its indexed and traditional SEO methods as it's providing ranking. And when you move over to the LLMs, the LLMs are utilizing additional sources. And so the rankings and the results of the LLMs don't necessarily match Google. And so that's really important for people to realize because I think a lot of people think the LLMs are pulling it from Google. Well, guess what, they're competitors. So why would the LLMs ever utilize Google only and just their database? They're going to pull everything in. You mentioned it. Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of those. Google, my business, all of that's getting pulled in, which is where you're seeing that variance of results.
That is where the game now is. The game is now to remain on Google and get on the LLMs.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah, and we're gonna keep preaching it. The time to start is now and you just have to get started. And the reason being is because content getting ranked or cited by AI, that is a long game.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: And SEO is a long game. So if you're creating content with the goal of ranking in search or AI, that content that you create today could really be paying off in weeks to months to a year from now. But you gotta get started.
Joe, as we wind down this episode, what's one big thing that you're keeping an eye on as we enter the second half of 2026?
[00:20:04] Speaker B: I am really watching consumer behavior and the shift that we continue to see. It's amazing to watch the numbers as you're watching the amount of usage on Google compared to the LLM usage across all the different LLMs, all the different tools. There is such a huge shift in consumer behavior that just continues to me that is a pulse that I really want to keep a close eye on. I also am personally testing more integrations of AI platforms. There's so much AI can do now, from running your social media accounts to helping you with your like. It's just the possibilities are endless right now and it's really interesting to be able to test and see how much we can push those limits.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: And speaking of testing, what I think I'm most excited about and keeping my eye on is that visibility into what works with AI. We're just now starting to get to see behind the curtain of what works and what gets you cited. We're going to learn more and more as as time goes on. We're going to develop our own research, data and analytics and I'm excited for that knowledge and there's a lot to be excited for in the marketing world as 2026 continues. Of course, the Amer Life Marketing mentors are with you every step of the way. If you ever need help putting a strategy together that makes sense for you, please reach out. You can go to the amerlifemarketingmentors.com or find us on social media.
For the AmeriLife Marketing Mentors, I'm David Belleville.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: And I'm Jo Barker and we'll see you next time.
