Your content is up against a landscape that seems to be changing faster and faster these days. You’re still competing against other brands, but now also in an arena of AI-generated answers and endless scrolls of short-form video.
If your firm wants to stand out on more platforms, your creative must be engineered to thrive in answer engines and micro-video formats.
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), AI Overviews, and YouTube Shorts are now front doors to influence. If you’re not showing up persuasively on these platforms, you’re ceding attention and authority to someone else.
Here’s how to create content that doesn’t just survive the AI era but actually performs across today’s most important surfaces.
Your creative needs to travel
In a world where attention splinters in seconds, your message has to work across formats, platforms, and devices. That means building creative atoms—headline, claim, proof, frame, CTA—that can remix and rerun anywhere.
- Feature problem → outcome in headlines: Don’t be cute. Be clear. Your headline should instantly signal relevance by pointing to a problem your audience recognizes and the outcome they want. Think: “Struggling with denied claims? Get 40% more approvals with this framework.”
- Pair claims with proof: AI engines favor specificity. So does your audience. Every claim you make should be paired with proof such as a stat, case study, quote, or citation. Keep a registry of these for compliance and reuse.
- Make sure visuals survive the crop: Your images and videos need to make sense when they’re cropped, muted, or playing on a 5-inch screen. Use visual framing that’s tight, text that’s legible at small sizes, and layouts that prioritize mobile first.
- Deploy modular CTAs: A single CTA won’t work across all formats. Build a modular system with text for search, buttons for display, and voiceover for video that all point to the same next step. Make conversion easy no matter where they find you.
Structuring Promos for AI Overviews
AI Overviews pull structured, scannable, and credible information. If your content looks like a cluttered wall of text, you’re not getting featured. If it looks like a well-organized guide with real data, you have a shot.
- Use scannable headings and schema: Format your content with H2s and H3s that align with what people are actually searching. Where possible, use schema markup to help AI understand your structure.
- Summarize frameworks in bullet steps: Turn processes into numbered or bulleted frameworks. AI prefers content it can extract easily. Instead of burying the how-tos in a paragraph, make them explicit.
- Provide concrete numbers and sources: Vague claims get ignored. Numbers with recent, sourced data are the currency of trust in AI Overviews.
- Anchor to locations: Want to show up in local queries? Anchor your content to jurisdictions and regions. That means referencing state laws, city-specific data, or county-level services.
YouTube and Shorts: Performance in a Blink
Short-form video is a relatively new visibility engine. YouTube Shorts are heavily prioritized in mobile search results, and they’re often the first content users engage with after a query.
- Hook in 3 seconds: Lead with a transformation. What will the viewer learn, feel, or do by the end? Skip the intros. Go straight to the payoff.
- Keep to one idea per clip: Don’t overload your message. Pick one idea, one frame, and one CTA. Use a series if you need to.
- Caption for sound-off: A large percentage of mobile viewers watch videos without sound. Use captions and text overlays to communicate even if they’re muted.
- Design for the small screen: Use big text, clear visuals, fast pacing. If it doesn’t pop on a phone, it won’t perform.
Measuring Performance on New Surfaces
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. But tracking AI Overviews and Shorts isn’t like tracking traditional SEO or PPC.
- Track answer box mentions: Use tools that monitor when and where your content appears in AI Overviews or answer boxes. Standard SERP rankings have had to start moving over for AI-generated representation.
- Monitor replays and shares: Engagement metrics like replays, saves, and shares are better indicators of value than simple views. Prioritize what gets rewatched over what gets clicked.
- Attribute consults to journeys: People often move from a video to a blog to a form. Use cross-channel attribution to credit all touchpoints. Tag your content with UTMs and track conversions holistically.
A Playbook for Regulated Advertisers
If you work in legal, healthcare, or finance, the stakes are higher. You need creative that performs and complies.
- Maintain a claims registry: Keep a central database of all claims, with associated proofs and citations. Use it to vet scripts, headlines, and social copy.
- Use pre-approved language: Develop language banks that are cleared by compliance, especially for disclosures and disclaimers.
- Centralize metadata: Manage UTM tags, schema, and disclosures in a centralized system to reduce errors and improve accuracy across campaigns.
Your creative needs to move, flex, and perform across AI-generated search results and endlessly looping videos. But under the right mindset and strategy, this can be an opportunity instead of a burden.
Get the AI-era search and video brief template and start producing content that gets seen and acted on.
Need help building a content engine that works across AI Overviews, YouTube Shorts, and every channel your audience uses? Contact LaFleur Marketing and let’s schedule a consultation.
