Michael Byrnes, President of Byrnes Consulting, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, to discuss how advisors can deploy generative AI to help grow their business.
Byrnes works with advisors to determine their target market and how to get introductions to those prospects. It is important to understand your potential clients, who influences their decisions, and who they spend time with. This process includes getting referrals from professionals, such as grief counselors, who work with clients experiencing substantial life transitions.
Advisors who rely on search engines and paid advertising to drive traffic to their website may be negatively impacted by artificial intelligence, as users may pay more attention to summarized results from AI rather than to the traditional search results. Email traffic is likely to increase as AI makes it easier to generate and distribute new content. Users are increasingly using AI to filter emails, so messages may never reach the intended recipient.
On the positive side, generative AI can help advisors quickly create better content. Byrnes cites a Forbes Magazine article that discusses the career opportunities for prompt engineers who know how to make the most out of generative AI applications. When using generative AI, it is important to cite the references, as users don’t always know where the content was sourced from. Advisors with a strong presence can benefit when their content is listed as a source in an AI-generated search.
While marketers are familiar with A-B testing, AI can facilitate the testing of hundreds of variations of a brand message. AI can evaluate marketing campaigns and spending in real time, allowing advisors to spend marketing dollars more effectively.
Everyone can become a better writer by writing a rough first draft and improving the presentation by using an AI-based editing platform. AI can also help generate ideas and outline content. Byrnes encourages users not to give up on AI, as today’s technology will continue to improve.
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