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As AI-generated answers and content hog the search spotlight, pushing high-quality owned content through owned channels is a winning strategy for professional services firms 

By now, we’ve all seen AI-generated answers in response to human-written questions. Google’s AI Overviews — powered by the Gemini Large Language Model, or LLM — now takes pride of place in search results, often directly over the content it references.  

That’s worrisome for marketers at professional services firms, whose experts have suddenly been thrust into competition with the AI noise. If searchers can get the answers they need without clicking through to your firm’s website, your thought leadership can’t attract attention or build authority for your business. After all, according to Greentarget’s latest State of Digital survey, firm or company websites are still the second most valuable source of information for professional services firm leaders, trailing only — you guessed it — search engines.  

At least, that’s the case for now. To maintain their firms’ positions of authority, marketers will need to pivot to smart owned content and distribution strategies. Here’s why and how they can do so.  

How AI-Generated Answers Inflame the Fight for Attention  

As communicators, we’re trained to compete with other ideas. Now, we must compete with infinite permutations of ideas, and the AI-generated syntheses pushed by search and social platforms.  

That’s a problem, because for years publishers have relied on search to send an audience, with 63.4% of traffic referred on the U.S. web coming from Google as of January 2024. Even with that high number though, Google was keeping most searchers to itself — only 36% of Google searches send users to non-Google-owned, non-advertising websites. Almost 60% of searchers never go anywhere; they either accept the Google summary or search again. As AI answers continue to roll out in search, that number is only expected to go up.   

Publishers are already feeling the impact: At a recent conference at Columbia University, the President of Scientific American estimated that traffic to the site from Google is down over 30% since AI summaries were introduced. Meanwhile, an editor at 404 Media observed that an AI content farm’s copies of 404’s articles had outranked the source material in search.  

Provide Reliable Information, Then Publish Everywhere 

Professional services firms won’t be spared.  

That’s why, instead of relying on Google to send people to your site, today’s marketers must build their own audiences. That’s not impossible: though Google refers the most traffic, social holds the most attention, comprising 20.75% of web visits. A further 21% goes to productivity apps like email.  

With quality owned content like articles and research reports — the preferred content types for in-house counsel and C-suite executives — professional services firms can build an audience elsewhere. Social media channels, email newsletters, YouTube and podcasts all rely on original insights and create an opportunity to take back control of content marketing campaigns. Targeted owned content can also lead to earned media opportunities, as the insights can be leveraged to gain the attention of reporters or repurposed for bylines in external publications. For instance, when Greentarget, working with consulting firm Berkeley Research Group, published an article about how to avoid retail bankruptcies, Law360 reached out to see if the authors could adapt the article for their readers.  

Individual subject matter experts can also use owned content for direct email outreach, personalized social posts, or as the foundation for in-person events or webinars. Even better, invite current or prospective clients to collaborate with your thought leaders on the content itself. Finally, consider leveraging paid media (e.g., LinkedIn Ads) to amplify the pieces that perform best organically. 

The key concept to remember is create once, publish everywhere. The entire process can be broken down into four steps:  

  1. Maximize owned: Prioritize in-depth content and manage what you can control. 
  1. Leverage your owned content to secure earned media opportunities.  
  1. Broadcast and share on social. 
  1. Utilize paid to further amplify pieces that perform the best organically. 

Accept the State of AI in Search Today 

While we can no longer rely on search to provide a ready-made audience for our content, we can still earn some benefits from the platform. There are plenty of searches that don’t earn an AI overview, and those are usually the niche, industry-specific queries that professional services firms benefit from most.  

Professional services firms should continue to optimize content to compete in traditional search results — less traffic is still traffic, after all. Now though, they must also think about how their content engages with AI-generated answers. Most AI summarizers cite and link to their sources, and those links are a new opportunity to earn traffic, and perhaps more importantly, position your brand as a key source on a relevant topic.  

Utilizing a wide range of platforms, as outlined above, will help with that. LLMs build answers based on the language most often used. If your brand is associated with a particular subject, you are more likely to be cited as a source in AI answers for that subject. In this way, it’s similar to PR: the more often you’re mentioned, the more likely you are to be mentioned.  

Plan for an Even More AI-Powered Tomorrow 

This analysis and these recommendations deal with the AI tools of today. AI answers are appearing in search, traffic from search is decreasing as a result, and what it means to search-optimize your content is changing. But this is not the end. Almost all projections show AI tools improving to some extent, and thus playing a greater role in how we gather information. It may not be the full takeover some are predicting, but even a 10 or 20% increase will be keenly felt by those who publish original, relevant content.  

We don’t know what the future holds for AI. But we know what the trendline looks like. If you want to stay ahead of it, reach out.    

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With the election mere weeks away, many professional services firms are struggling to get off the fence about participating in election-related conversations with reporters before or even after November 5th.  

On the one hand, the election’s consequences will have a wide-ranging impact on everything from the economy to geopolitical stability to industry regulations, meaning that clients are eager for guidance and insight. On the other, staking out a thought leadership position in a hyper-polarized political environment could risk alienating key clients and stakeholders if done incorrectly.  

Yet, with the right strategy, professional services firms can position themselves as educators and leaders in conversations that lead to high-profile national election coverage.  

This guide provides a roadmap for proactive thought leadership on election-related topics where professional services firms can provide much-needed guidance. We’ll cover topics such as: 

  • When, where, and why to participate in election-related conversations 
  • How to effectively communicate about political issues before and after the election 
  • The election topics reporters, editors, and producers care about most 

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When your audience views your professional services firm as a trusted authority, they’re more likely to come to you for help in solving their toughest challenges.

That means your firm’s authority — which is established and strengthened through proactive thought leadership campaigns — is the catalyst for your firm to win new business and capture a larger portion of your current clientele’s marketing spend. But with all the noise out there, how can your firm stand out?

The answer lies in bespoke signature research projects that speak to your audience’s unique pain points.

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Leaders at professional services firms are under enormous pressure to communicate effectively and authentically in today’s volatile world. From global crises to social shifts, they’re expected to comment on issues even when situations don’t directly impact their business.

Deciding how, when, and what to communicate — or even whether to say anything at all — is a minefield.

Greentarget tackled this challenge in our recent webinar, Communicating in an Increasingly Volatile and Complex World: A Roadmap for Professional Services Leaders. In it, we offer important insights on navigating today’s toughest communication scenarios and provide guidance on how to speak out authentically while staying aligned with your firm’s values.

Topics include:

  • Geopolitical and generational shifts
  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • The impact of AI

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CMOs came into their own as C-suite utility players in 2021, when the leaders of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon did something no elected representative in Congress can do to the head of our federal government. Each imposed severe, unprecedented limits on the powers of a U.S. president.

Responding much faster than Congress to the will of the people — not as voters but as consumers — the chief executives demonstrated publicly and conclusively that they can more effectively circumscribe a government leader’s power than members of any other branch.

This led the Chief Financial Correspondent at Axios to conclude that CEOs have now become the fourth branch of government. “They have money, they have power, and they have more of the public’s trust than politicians do. And they’re using all of it in an attempt to preserve America’s system of governance.”

With this power comes a new kind of regulator, more powerful than the courts or the legislatures. Consumers can use their buying power and collective social influence to keep the “fourth branch” — let’s call it the C-branch — in check.

In such a world, the CMO becomes the CEO’s most valuable, versatile ally — a critically important conduit between the C-branch and consumers. The CMO-as-utility-player must do more than simply articulate positions, craft messages, and disseminate information internally and externally. In an era where corporate decisions can have far-reaching political and social implications, they must guide their organizations through turbulent waters. 

By learning and transmitting what’s on consumers’ minds — their predilections, pain points, and latest causes for social, economic, and political concern — CMOs can help the C-suite make decisions that protect and strengthen their position in the market. Like whether it’s time to take a stand on a contentious Supreme Court decision or how to position the company in the lead-up to a divisive election.

What it Means for CMOs to be the C-Suite’s Utility Player Today

Geopolitical and social unrest, contentious election cycles, fast-moving technological innovations, economic challenges, and far-reaching generational shifts continue to elevate the role of CMO. The C-suite faces ever-escalating pressure to communicate about everything from where their firm is heading to what role they expect it to play in an increasingly fractious society. And the CMO is the person who is best-positioned to help them do so effectively.

Recent events — the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision limiting federal agency power, the Israel-Hamas War, the widespread adoption of AI, and the backlash around DEI programs to name a few — continue to refashion the landscape in which CMOs operate. These developments have further solidified the CMO’s position as the C-suite’s indispensable utility player, bridging the gap between corporate strategy, consumer sentiment, and societal change.

Far more than just a chief marketing messenger, the CMO is now something of a CIO too — an executive who, if not working directly with information technology, must understand it well enough to take full advantage of the growing array of digital marketing tools. This includes leveraging AI to gain unprecedented insights into consumer behavior and sentiment, allowing CMOs to get closer to the ground than ever before in understanding their audience.

Additionally, the roles of the CMO and Chief Communications Officer are becoming more integrated by the day. They must be in order to achieve what Maja Pawinska Sims calls a better alignment with “brand and corporate narrative.” As honest, relevant, human storytelling becomes even more closely connected to the P&L, the C-suite’s storytellers are increasingly relied upon to develop new narratives.

It is not incorrect, then, to refer to the CMO as the C-suite’s new utility player, the executive who must know a little bit about every other position in order to help the CEO make sense of challenges and opportunities, especially in relation to the Three Rs: Revenue, Relationship, and Reputation.

Revenue & Relationships are the CMO’s Job, Too

Reputation has long been in the domain of the CMO. Marketing’s ties to revenue run deep, but the new order makes them inseparable. Relationship management, on the other hand, has traditionally resided outside the chief marketer’s purview. That’s not the case anymore.

Using a deep understanding of both customers and community, CMOs can and must actively identify and broker new kinds of relationships for their companies. Success will make them indispensable lieutenants, especially when it comes to helping CEOs influence “constituents” — as elected officials do.

A focus on revenue means CMOs need more than just hallway collegiality with the CFO; they need to develop an active, healthy relationship. They must also help persuade the finance chief that today, what’s good for customers and communities is good for the company’s bottom line.

Rather than be put off by such a prospect, chief marketers should view the present as an opportunity to, as Jann Schwarz writes, “reclaim a more strategic role” through a key relationship with the CFO.

“[The CMO’s] creativity and imagination (combined with commercial discipline and a customer lens) can drive a sustainable and competitive advantage” through such a rapprochement, writes Schwarz.

Clearly, this is not your mother’s or your father’s CMO.

The New Corporate Narrative: Social Responsibility

In this brave new world, the CMO is the CEO’s eyes and ears, both messenger and oracle, watching how our market-society, and the people who comprise it, are moving, shifting, aligning and re-aligning.

This means that CMOs can no longer compartmentalize company narratives, social responsibility and profitable growth. As the last Business Roundtable made eminently clear, these are now intertwined and interdependent considerations. That’s especially true given the rise of Gen Z and the expectations these emerging stakeholders bring to the business world. 

CMOs who are paying attention and playing the long game know that social responsibility is a key narrative and that terms such as “social impact” and “sustainability” are something more than fleeting hashtags to be expressed merely through a sprinkling of green on the logo. It will remain the narrative until norms have changed so dramatically that it becomes an unspoken expectation.

Perhaps the CMO’s greatest value, then, will be in perceiving what is moving the market. Or more accurately who is moving it: consumers and clients who are not data points, who are not math problems, but real, live people, governed by ever-shifting social norms and fickle human nature.

And who can vote any time, from anywhere, for unelected leaders in that fourth branch of government using something that may soon be more powerful than the ballot: their credit cards and their voices on social media.

About the Executive Positioning Practice

Exemplifying Greentarget’s commitment to being a trusted advisor to clients, Greentarget’s Executive Positioning team provides c-suite executives (managing partners, CEOs, executive committees, and boards) with insights to anticipate, understand, and respond to important global and social developments, analyzing key issues that can impact reputation and compel leaders to communicate. 

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Challenge 

AmLaw 100 firm Polsinelli has a top-tier healthcare practice that regularly produces high quality thought leadership. The firm’s long-running Healthcare Dealmakers Conference, for example, brings together healthcare providers, innovators, and investors to discuss the state of the industry, while the quarterly Healthcare Services Distress Research Index has tracked and benchmarked industry data for more than a decade. 

Though the firm’s reputation in the healthcare industry is strong, Polsinelli wanted to do more to elevate its brand and cement its position as a healthcare law leader among prospective clients. After all, the practice has grown considerably over the past few years—bringing on former administration healthcare officials and experienced deal counsel—and the firm wanted to make sure that potential clients and the market more broadly understood it as a healthcare powerhouse. 

To stake out this territory, Polsinelli looked to Greentarget to help elevate its healthcare practice through strategic media relations.  

Solution 

The Greentarget team started by holding more than 40 meetings with firm shareholders to understand the work they do for clients and the developments they were watching over the next few months. Armed with this knowledge, the Greentarget team pitched select journalists at key publications who were covering these issues, setting up interviews and nurturing relationships between reporters and shareholders. 

At the same time, the Greentarget team conducted outreach for marquee thought leadership campaigns like the Distress Research Index and Healthcare Dealmakers Conference, setting up 1:1 reporter meetings and a media roundtable with 12 journalists from top-tier and leading industry outlets.  

Results 

In the first year of the program, the Greentarget team secured media opportunities for over 20 shareholders resulting in 48 published articles in key trade publications, including McKnights Home Care, Behavioral Healthcare Executive, MedCity News, Healthcare Risk Management, Behavioral Health Business, Part B News, and Modern Healthcare, among others. Polsinelli attorneys were even quoted in national outlets like Axios about issues involving healthcare mergers and The New York Times regarding healthcare cybersecurity trends. 

Reflecting the breadth and depth of the healthcare practice’s capabilities, stories featuring Polsinelli attorneys covered everything from state laws impacting the industry’s dealmaking, healthcare data privacy and security, the emerging role of private credit, Medicare Advantage issues, home health payment rates, behavioral health trends, and more.  

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