Episode 64 - AI Marketing: How to Become the Company AI Recommends

Artificial intelligence is changing the way customers search for information, evaluate products, and make purchasing decisions. But what does that mean for your marketing strategy?

In this episode, we're joined by Todd Hockenberry to discuss how AI is reshaping search, content creation, and digital marketing. We break down the differences between SEO, AEO, and GEO, explore how companies can become trusted sources that AI recommends, and discuss what marketing teams should be doing today to prepare for the future. Whether you're a marketing professional, business owner, or sales leader, this episode provides practical insights to help your organization stay visible and competitive in an AI-driven world.

  • 28 min

Episode 64 - AI Marketing: How to Become the Company AI Recommends with Todd Hockenberry

The Building with Metal Podcast – Presented by McElroy Metal

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Notable Quotes

Todd Hockenberry: "AI is not killing SEO. It's just changing. SEO has always been about the tools that are available to make information available to people."

Todd Hockenberry: "Everything you build is content. Everything you put together, every project you work on is content. If you recognize it as content, you'd turn it into case studies, stories, Instagram, LinkedIn stories, reels."

Todd Hockenberry: "Don't publish content just to publish it. Be intentional. Be interesting. Be unique. Have a voice. Have an opinion. Have a point of view."

What You'll Learn

• The difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO, and which one deserves your focus
• Why website traffic is declining across the board and why that may be a good sign
• The new metric that matters more than traffic when measuring marketing success
• The types of content AI tools reward, and the generic content that no longer works
• Why HTML pages beat standalone PDFs for getting your technical content found
• The website trust signals AI engines look for, including site structure and schema
• How keywords have shifted from short phrases to full conversational questions
• Whether backlinks still matter, and why Reddit, Quora, and press releases are gaining value
• Free ways to test how your company ranks in AI search results right now
• What a winning 3-year AI content strategy looks like for a metal roofing brand

Key Timestamps

[00:00] Introduction: Kathi Miller welcomes Todd Hockenberry, inbound marketing expert, author, and McElroy Metal team member, to discuss how AI is changing search.

[01:00] The biggest AI marketing mistake: treating it as a content volume game when AI tools actually reward depth, structure, and authority.

[02:30] Myth busted: "SEO is dead." Todd explains why search is fragmenting rather than dying, and why Google and YouTube still dominate.

[04:30] SEO vs. AEO vs. GEO defined, plus why contractors should master local marketing before anything else.

[08:00] How AI answers have changed website traffic: B2C traffic is down sharply, B2B less so, and why flat traffic now means you're winning.

[10:30] Measuring success beyond traffic: why fewer visitors often means better-qualified leads and conversions.

[13:00] The best content for AI visibility: direct answers to real customer questions, honest product comparisons, and project stories.

[16:30] PDFs vs. HTML pages: why the same content on a web page gets crawled and cited while a standalone PDF gets missed.

[19:00] Website trust signals: site maps, logical URL structure, schema markup, consistent business information, and expertise signals.

[23:00] Keywords, free AI ranking tools, the one thing marketers should stop doing, and Todd's 3-year roadmap for winning the "best standing seam roof" answer.

Mentioned Resources

• Todd Hockenberry, Inc
• Connect with Todd Hockenberry on LinkedIn
• McElroy Metal website
• Connect with host Kathi Miller on LinkedIn

Episode Deep Dive

In 30 seconds

• AI tools now answer buyer questions directly, so website traffic is falling while lead quality rises. Measure conversions, not clicks.
• Focus on AEO: structure content as direct answers to real customer questions, and you'll rank in traditional search and AI tools at the same time.
• Get the basics right first: local marketing, site structure, HTML pages instead of standalone PDFs, and consistent business information across the web.

Buyers have changed how they search. Instead of typing a question into Google and clicking through the top results, more of them now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity and get a full answer without visiting a single website. For contractors, architects, and building product manufacturers, that raises an urgent question: how do you get found when the search engine answers for you?

On a recent episode of the Building with Metal podcast, host Kathi Miller sat down with Todd Hockenberry, an inbound marketing expert, author, and member of the McElroy Metal team, to sort out what's actually changing and what to do about it.

The biggest mistake companies make with AI marketing

Todd sees one error more than any other: treating AI visibility as a volume game. Companies assume they need to flood the internet with content. The opposite is true. “AI search tools reward depth. They reward structure, and they reward people and brands that have authority,” he explained. Thin, generic blog posts won't get cited. Content that answers a real question for a specific audience will.

That connects to a myth Todd wants to retire for good. You've probably seen the headline: SEO is dead. “AI is not killing SEO. It's just changing,” he said. “SEO has always been about the tools that are available to make information available to people.” Google remains the top search engine and YouTube sits at number two. The difference is that Google's top result is now often an AI summary, and the goal has shifted from earning the click to earning the citation inside that answer.

SEO, AEO, and GEO in plain language

The acronyms pile up fast, so here's how Todd breaks them down. SEO, search engine optimization, is the classic practice of creating content that ranks in Google's results. AEO, answer engine optimization, means structuring your content so AI tools cite you as the source when they answer a question. AI engines look for standalone blocks of content that answer one question cleanly, then extract and credit them. GEO, generative engine optimization, is broader: it's what a model says about your company across its entire output, even in answers with no link or citation.

If he had to pick one, Todd wouldn't hesitate. “I would focus on AEO because you'll rank in SEO and you'll rank across the model if you follow AEO best practices.” And for contractors serving a local market, he adds a step that comes before any of it: get local marketing right. Keep your Google business listing current, collect reviews, and stay consistent. A national AEO strategy means little if your local presence is a mess.

Traffic is down. That might be good news.

The numbers vary widely, but the direction is clear. It used to be that a top-3 Google ranking could deliver around half the clicks for a keyword. Now many searchers get their answer inside the AI summary and never click at all. Consumer traffic has dropped sharply. B2B and industrial traffic has dropped less, but it's still down. Todd's read: “If your traffic's even, you're probably winning.”

Here's the flip side. The visitors who do click through arrive with more context and more intent. They've already read a full answer and they want to go deeper. “Oftentimes, with less traffic, you get more or better quality conversions,” Todd said. That changes what you measure. Traffic used to be the headline metric. Now the question is whether your marketing drives qualified leads from your target audience. Kathi confirmed the same pattern at McElroy Metal: traffic dipped when AI summaries arrived, but within about six months the team saw lead quality climb.

The content AI actually rewards

The formula hasn't changed as much as you might think. “Make notes of every question every customer asks you,” Todd said. “Give it to your marketing department and have them write or create content around those questions.” That worked for SEO 15 years ago and it works for AEO today. Add authority to those answers: cite sources, share original data, and publish honest comparisons like metal roofs versus shingles or metal versus clay tile.

For contractors, the raw material is already there. “Everything you build is content,” Todd said. Every project can become a case study, a story, a reel, or an install video. AI tools even absorb the transcripts of your videos, so the questions you answer on camera become answers the model can cite. Generic how-to content, on the other hand, has lost its value. AI can already answer those questions from its own training. Your edge is what only you know: what you do, how you do it, and how it changes things for your customers.

One practical note on format. If you're handing customers printed materials, spec sheets, or install manuals as PDFs, put that same content on an HTML page of your website with a download button for the PDF version. Web pages get crawled and cited. Standalone PDFs mostly don't.

What makes a website trustworthy to AI

Trust starts in the back end. Your site needs a correctly built site map, a logical URL structure, and schema markup that tells engines exactly what your products are. If that's outside your skill set, Todd's advice is to hire someone to build it right once. From there, consistency matters: your business name, phone number, and product descriptions should match everywhere they appear online. Expertise signals help too. Studies, articles, certifications, podcast appearances, and associations with reputable companies all tell engines and buyers that you're the real thing.

Speed is no longer a differentiator. It's table stakes. “If your site doesn't load in a couple of seconds, I'm leaving. I'm going somewhere else,” Todd said. Backlinks still matter for SEO, but citations now carry more weight, and quality beats quantity. Mentions on Reddit and Quora are surprisingly valuable to AI engines, and press releases are gaining importance again.

How to check where you stand

You don't need an expensive tool to start. Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity and ask the questions your customers ask. Try “best metal roofing contractors in Las Vegas” or your own market. See if you show up. Ask the tool to review your website and tell you what you're doing right and wrong. “Just spend a half an hour and query it,” Todd said. The engines will tell you who they're citing, and that shows you exactly where you need to build.

One last piece of advice for the AI era: stop publishing content just to check a box. “Be intentional. Be interesting. Be unique. Have a voice. Have an opinion,” Todd said. Content without a point of view wastes your time, and doing it poorly can hurt you.

Want to talk with Todd about AI, SEO, AEO, or GEO? Find him at toddhockenberry.com

About McElroy Metal

McElroy Metal manufactures metal roofing and siding products for residential, commercial, agricultural, and industrial applications. Headquartered in Bossier City, Louisiana, with plants and service centers across the U.S., McElroy supplies contractors, architects, designers, and building owners with metal panel systems, accessories, and the engineering expertise to use them well.