Episode 276: How to Get Your Brand Recommended by AI: AEO with Julian Lopez
Release Date: 05/20/2026
Episode 276: How to Get Your Brand Recommended by AI: AEO with Julian Lopez
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode Description AI is changing how customers discover, research, and choose brands. If your business isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers, you may be missing the next major wave of organic visibility. In this live session from Mentor Table Nashville, Julian Lopez from the Smart Marketer team breaks down AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, and what brands need to do now to become the recommended choice inside AI tools, AI overviews, and answer engines. From schema markup and indexability to brand authority and bottom-of-funnel search intent, Julian shares the early signals Smart...
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Episode 275: The Paid Ads Machine: Creative Systems That Scale in the Age of AI
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 275: The Paid Ads Machine: Creative Systems That Scale in the Age of AI Episode Description What if your ad creative system could think more like Meta’s algorithm? In this live session from Mentor Table Nashville, Smart Marketer’s Director of Creative Ben Bennett and Creative Operations Manager Melvin Cotton III break down the exact system they use to plan, produce, analyze, and scale paid social creative in the age of AI and Andromeda. From diagnosing what’s actually working inside your ad account to building scalable creator systems and using AI to uncover hidden performance...
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Episode 274: How to Use AI to Write Better Meta Ad Copy Without Losing the Human Touch
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 274: How to Use AI to Write Better Meta Ad Copy Without Losing the Human Touch Episode Description AI can help you write faster, but that does not mean it should be writing your ads for you. In this podcast episode taken from our Smart Paid Traffic Live training, Senior Paid Performance Specialist Dominique Nobel breaks down her step-by-step process for using AI to create stronger Meta ad copy. You will learn how to build a brand intelligence document, generate better hooks, write stronger body copy, improve headlines and descriptions, and use AI as a volume tool while keeping...
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Episode 273: Scaling to $300M+: Paid Media, Attribution & Building Teams That Win
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 273: Scaling to $300M+: Paid Media, Attribution & Building Teams That Win Episode Description What does it really take to scale to $300M+ in revenue and spend $300K per day on ads? In this live Mentor Table session from Nashville, Molly Pittman sits down with entrepreneur Rob Schmidt to break down what actually changes as you grow, from attribution and paid media to leadership and team building. “You have to be really comfortable relying on your other leaders… You need to find good people to surround yourself with that you can trust because you can't do it all yourself....
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Episode 272: The Business Growth Levers That Actually Matter (Ezra Firestone and John Grimshaw)
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Ep. 272: The Business Growth Levers That Actually Matter (Mentor Table with Ezra Firestone and John Grimshaw) Episode Description Most entrepreneurs are stuck optimizing the wrong things. In this Mentor Table conversation, Ezra Firestone and John Grimshaw break down the real levers that drive business growth from customer acquisition and profitability to product strategy and operational focus. If you have been buried in the weeds, this episode will help you zoom out, simplify, and focus on what actually moves the needle. “Don’t quit before the miracle, man, just keep going. I am telling...
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Episode 271: Meta Ads Q&A: Targeting Evolution, Retargeting & What Actually Matters Now
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 271: Meta Ads Q&A: Targeting Evolution, Retargeting & What Actually Matters Now Episode Description Are you overthinking your campaign structure while missing what actually drives results? In this episode of the Smart Marketer Podcast, Molly Pittman and Smart Marketer’s Director of Advertising, Denis Paskalev, continue the Meta Ads Q&A series, diving into retargeting, targeting strategy, and how the algorithm is really working in 2026. From whether you still need separate retargeting campaigns to how creative is now doing the heavy lifting, this conversation breaks down...
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Episode 270: Organic Social vs Paid Ads What’s Actually Working Right Now (And Why Most Brands Get It Wrong)
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 270: Organic Social vs Paid Ads What’s Actually Working Right Now (And Why Most Brands Get It Wrong) Most brands are doing organic social completely wrong and it’s costing them growth. In this episode, Zach Dampier breaks down what’s actually working with organic social right now… and how to use it alongside paid ads without burning out or chasing the wrong metrics. If your organic content feels like an afterthought or just a weaker version of your ads, this episode will completely reframe your strategy. “Organic and paid are not competing for your resources. They're doing...
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Episode 269: Meta Ads Q&A: Creative, Budgets, and What’s Actually Working Right Now
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 269: Meta Ads Q&A: Creative, Budgets, and What’s Actually Working Right Now Episode Description In this episode of the Smart Marketer Podcast, Molly Pittman, CEO of Smart Marketer, and Denis Paskalev, Director of Advertising, answer real questions from marketers navigating the shift in Meta ads, starting with one of the biggest concerns right now: can small businesses still win? They break down the reality behind creative demands, including whether you really need dozens of new ads every week, and what actually drives performance when budgets are limited. “The information that...
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Episode 268: Axon Ads - How to Diversify Beyond Meta and Find New Customers
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode 268: Axon Ads - How to Diversify Beyond Meta and Find New Customers Episode Description In this episode of the Smart Marketer Podcast, Molly Pittman is joined by Smart Marketer agency CEO Pep Hufen to break down Axon (also known as AppLovin), a fast-growing ad platform that is giving marketers a new way to diversify beyond Meta. They walk through how the platform works, what makes it different from traditional social media advertising, and why it is becoming a powerful channel for acquiring net-new customers. From creative requirements and campaign setup to attribution differences and...
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Episode 267: Meta Ads Q&A - What’s Actually Working in 2026
The Smart Marketer Podcast
Episode Description In this episode of the Smart Marketer Podcast, Molly Pittman is joined by Smart Marketer’s Director of Advertising, Denis Paskalev, for a live Meta Ads Q&A where they answer real questions from marketers about what is actually working with Meta ads in 2026. From campaign structure and creative testing to scaling strategies and performance metrics, this conversation breaks down the modern approach to Meta ads in a world where targeting is driven more by creative, messaging, and landing pages than traditional audience targeting. If you are running ads for ecommerce,...
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Episode Description
AI is changing how customers discover, research, and choose brands. If your business isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers, you may be missing the next major wave of organic visibility.
In this live session from Mentor Table Nashville, Julian Lopez from the Smart Marketer team breaks down AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, and what brands need to do now to become the recommended choice inside AI tools, AI overviews, and answer engines. From schema markup and indexability to brand authority and bottom-of-funnel search intent, Julian shares the early signals Smart Marketer is seeing after analyzing thousands of AI-driven commercial searches.
“Your brand is not what you say, it is what AI is able to pull out of the answer.” – Julian Lopez
You Will Learn:
• What AEO is and why it matters for brands that want to stay visible in the AI era.
• Why SEO isn’t dead, but the game has changed.
• How AI tools research, compare, and recommend brands behind the scenes.
• Why your website is becoming less of a destination and more of a data source.
• The difference between informational traffic and bottom-of-funnel commercial intent.
• How schema markup helps AI understand your products, people, and brand.
• Why third-party sources, reviews, Reddit, directories, and social proof impact AI recommendations.
• How to structure your content so AI can retrieve, understand, and cite it faster.
• Why brand authority now depends on what AI can verify across the web.
• What agentic shopping may mean for the future of ecommerce.
Links & Resources:
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Smart Marketer: smartmarketer.com
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Smart Marketer Free Trainings & Resources: https://smartmarketer.com/free-resources/
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Smart Marketer Agency: https://smartmarketeragency.com/
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Mentor Table: https://smartmarketer.com/mentor-table/
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OmniSend (Sponsor): https://smartmarketer.com/omnisend
Use code SMART for 50% off your first three months.
Time Stamps:
00:00:20: Welcome: AI, Paid Traffic, Creative and Organic Visibility
00:01:11: Sponsor Message: Why Ezra Firestone Uses Omnisend
00:02:14: Molly Introduces Julian Lopez and the Importance of AEO
00:03:47: How to Get Your Brand Recommended by AI
00:05:00: Create Relevance, Not Awareness
00:06:03: Why AEO Is Still an Emerging Discipline
00:07:09: What Changed: AI Enters the Search Experience
00:08:16: Search Is Becoming Delegated Research
00:09:39: Is SEO Dead? What’s Actually Changing
00:10:41: What Commercial Search Results Look Like Now
00:12:11: The Future of Walled Gardens, Wearables and AI Everywhere
00:14:11: GEO, LMO, AEO: What Should We Call It?
00:15:10: The Goal: Become the AI-Recommended Brand
00:16:19: What Smart Marketer Found After Thousands of AI Queries
00:17:22: Why Your Website Is Now a Data Source
00:18:28: The Challenge: AI Platforms Are Black Boxes
00:19:28: SEO Still Matters, But Rankings Aren’t the Whole Story
00:21:29: How AI Answers Actually Work
00:22:38: Why Bottom-of-Funnel Questions Are the New Opportunity
00:23:21: The Site Is Not the Destination, It’s the Data Source
00:24:29: The Answer Budget Theory: How AI Chooses Brands
00:26:43: Why AI Looks Beyond Your Website Before Recommending You
00:28:10: Your Brand Is Built on the Sources
00:29:10: The AEO Action Plan: Indexability, Content Readiness and Authority
00:32:11: Why You Need to Let the Right Bots Access Your Site
00:33:06: Schema Markup: Helping AI Understand Your Business
00:36:38: How to Make Product Pages More Specific for AI
00:38:44: IDs, Entities and Connecting Your Website’s Information
00:39:45: Optimizing Product Data, Ratings and Rich Results
00:40:44: Content Structure: Make Your Pages Easier for AI to Retrieve
00:42:12: Cover Topics, Not Just Keywords
00:43:12: Brand Representation and Authority in the AI Era
00:44:23: Agentic Shopping: What’s Coming Next
00:45:13: Wrap-Up and Final Applause
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