Let me start with a request. Open up any Generative AI tool you might have. ChatGPT, CoPilot, Claude, etc. Ask this question: “What are the best banks for a small business owner?” What do you see regarding the results that are returned from that inquiry? If you don’t have access to GenAI or didn’t get a chance to do the query yourself, let me share the result that came back wasn’t shocking. What was shocking was who wasn’t represented. My list contained some large national banks, a few fintechs, and several digital-first brands that spend enormous amounts of money telling the world how they are the best SMB banking provider. Missing from the list were hundreds of community banks that I know personally, who provide better service, better local decision-making, and offer a better overall banking experience. That should concern every community banker reading this article. Not because tools like ChatGPT is somehow biased against community banks. Rather, it should concern us because customers are changing how they discover financial services. For years, bankers worried about SEO or Search Engine Optimization. We wanted to appear on the upper half of the first page of Google search results. However, today a whole new game is being played. It is called GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. If your institution is not paying attention, you may find yourself invisible to the very customers you need to attract. For decades, customer acquisition followed a familiar pattern. A consumer needed a checking account, a business owner needed a loan, or a family wanted a mortgage. They may have opened Google, typed a search phrase, clicked through a handful of links, and eventually landed on a bank website. Increasingly, that process is being bypassed altogether. Consumers are asking AI platforms questions such as, “What bank is best for a new business?”, “Where should I get my first mortgage?”, “What bank has the best mobile app?”, or “What bank is good for young families?” The GenAI results do not return ten blue links. It returns … an answer. And that answer is rapidly becoming the new front door to financial services. Think about what that means. If a prospect never sees your institution mentioned in their GenAI-generated response, they may never visit your website. If they never visit your website, your outstanding online account opening process does not matter. Your competitive rates do not matter. Your friendly lenders do not matter. Your beautiful, (hopefully transformed) branch does not matter. You have been eliminated before the customer ever knew you existed. Now before everyone starts blaming OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or whichever GenAI company happens to be making headlines this week, let’s be honest. This problem may actually be self-inflicted. Community banks have traditionally been not great story tellers. We are great at serving customers. We are great at supporting local businesses. We are great at helping communities. What we have not been particularly good at is documenting those successes online in a way that customers, and increasingly AI systems, can discover them. Meanwhile, fintechs publish articles, create videos, post customer success stories, and aggressively explain who they serve and why. Then bankers wonder why GenAI mentions those companies. GenAI is not recommending them because it likes them. GenAI is recommending them because it can find them. One of my key observations on this issue comes from a recent Financial Brand article where the author discusses how GenAI systems reward clarity, which aligns perfectly with what I have been saying for years. Many community banks try to be everything to everyone. We serve consumers, businesses, agriculture, nonprofits, retirees, young families, and virtually every other demographic imaginable. Unfortunately, that likely creates ambiguity. When GenAI tools are trying to answer a question such as “What bank is best for a startup company?” or “What bank specializes in agricultural lending?”, it looks for institutions with a clear identity. The organizations that surface most frequently are those that have intentionally defined who they serve and consistently reinforce that message. If your website looks exactly like every other community bank website in America, do not be surprised when GenAI struggles to determine what makes you unique. There is another reality to understand. Trust is no longer just a branding issue. Trust is becoming a discoverability issue. GenAI systems evaluate information from many different sources. They examine your website, customer reviews, social media mentions, news articles, customer sentiment, third-party references, and countless other signals. The days when your website alone defined your digital identity are ending. GenAI is building a picture of your institution based on everything it can find, and it has access to an abundant amount of information. Let me graphically illustrate the difference between the SEO model employed by search engines and how GenAI GEO is different: Changing your focus to GEO means every customer story matters. Every positive review matters. Every community event matters. Every educational article matters. Every video matters. Every social media post matters. All of these become trust signals that GenAI can use to understand who you are and what you stand for. This is where I am going to get on my soapbox. Community bankers are mostly rooted in traditional bank-think. Customers are not. Customers think about life events. They think about buying a home, starting a business, saving for college, planning a wedding, preparing for retirement, or dealing with unexpected financial challenges. The bank that creates content around those life events will outperform the bank that creates content around deposit products. Nobody wakes up wanting a checking account. People wake up wanting to solve a problem. GenAI understands this. The question is whether your marketing strategy does. One of the biggest mistakes bankers continue to make is assuming GenAI adoption is some future event that has not arrived yet. It has. Young Millennials and Gen Z customers are already using GenAI tools. They are using them to learn, compare options, research purchases, and make decisions. Increasingly, they are using them to evaluate financial services. I think GenAI is the new electricity. If your institution is waiting for AI adoption to become mainstream before developing a strategy, you are already behind. So, what should community banks do? First, audit your AI visibility. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity the same questions your prospective customers might ask. What answers appear? Is your bank mentioned? If not, why not? Second, define what you want to be known for. Not ten things. One, maybe two things. Maybe it is small business banking. Maybe it is agriculture. Maybe it is healthcare professionals. Maybe it is entrepreneurs or young families. Pick a lane and own it. Third, become a storytelling machine. Stop producing advertisements and start producing stories. Tell the stories of real customers, real businesses, and real community impact. Stories are easier for people to remember and easier for GenAI systems to understand. Emotions drive behavior. Fourth, create educational content. Answer the questions customers ask every day. How do I start a business? How much house can I afford? How do I improve my credit score? What should I know before applying for a loan? If customers are asking GenAI tools these questions, your content should already be answering them. Finally, make GEO part of your strategic planning process. Every institution discusses branches, loans, deposits, liquidity, and capital. Community banks should now be discussing GenAI discoverability as well. Not next year. Not someday. Right now. Many bankers worry that AI will eventually replace traditional banking relationships. I do not think that is the biggest threat. The biggest threat is irrelevance. The biggest threat is allowing someone else to define who you are. The biggest threat is being absent from the conversation entirely. Community banks still possess extraordinary advantages. We have local knowledge, personal relationships, community involvement, trust, and decision-making authority. Those advantages remain powerful, but they only matter if prospects know we exist. As GenAI increasingly becomes the first step in the customer journey, every community bank should ask itself one simple question: If a prospect asked an AI system about the services we provide, would it know enough about us to recommend us? If the answer is no, then your GEO strategy needs attention. Because in a world where GenAI guides discovery, invisibility is not a marketing problem. It is a strategic problem. Resources https://thefinancialbrand.com/news/artificial-intelligence-banking/how-to-earn-your-banks-place-in-financial-answers-from-ai-197806 Author’s Note – ChatGPT was used in researching this article.