even community-driven brands like credit unions are competing in an ecosystem where members make decisions without ever visiting a branch, or even your website. There’s no doubt about it: AI is changing the search landscape, rapidly and seismically.
A recent qualitative study of marketing experts from our research partner, Northwestern’s Spiegel Research Center, confirms it:
“It’s no longer about improving your rank, it’s about being called on. If your content isn’t in the ‘mental reach’ of the model, no amount of SEO will fix that.” — Marketing Executive at a large technology company, 2025
“Information intent [in contrast to commercial intent] has become increasingly, and has been for years, an extremely low click-through rate environment. But that’s fine, because they didn’t have any intent to work with your brand anyway.” — CMO of a Digital Marketing Agency, 2025
In contrast, searches with commercial intent where consumers want to explore a brand, compare offerings, or make a purchase still drive meaningful website visits.
Today, consumers with commercial intent are continuing to make more decisions based on authenticity. Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that trust now drives purchase decisions as much as price or convenience, especially among Millennials and Gen Z. These are audiences raised on transparency and tuned to spot performative marketing from a mile away:
“If I ask ChatGPT what shoes to buy, how do I know if the answer is based on what's best for me or if it’s influenced by someone paying to be featured? That blurs the line between organic relevance and paid visibility. And without transparency, trust becomes harder to earn.” — Digital marketing professional, 2025
This shift is especially relevant for credit unions, where the entire value proposition is built on transparency, local trust, and community connection, values now being tested in an AI-mediated digital world.
The key to a successful transaction is to create a trusted platform, even when AI delivers the experience. For credit unions, this isn’t just about improving marketing outcomes, it’s about protecting the foundation of member trust that differentiates you from big banks and fintechs. That said, what drives trust in a digital environment isn’t always clear.
For example, another Spiegel Research Center study found that when people see products with a perfect five-star rating, they actually trust them less. They’re more likely to buy when ratings sit in the 4.0–4.5 range. Why? Because a flawless score feels fake—like something’s being hidden or hyped. Imperfection signals honesty. And honesty builds trust:
“AI is no longer just helping us find information—it’s starting to frame it. That means the AI model plays a bigger role in shaping how consumers understand a topic or a product. And that’s a huge shift for brands.” — Digital marketing professional, 2025
Building trust starts with tracking and measuring it, which is empirically difficult to do. According to PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey, 90% of business executives believe customers highly trust their companies, but only 30% of consumers actually do, a 60-point gap that’s even wider than in 2023 and 2022.
In contrast, when you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right now, a consumer’s attention is the measurable incentive. And companies use algorithms to nudge consumers’ attention to a maximum, because that’s what they can measure with behavioral indicators like click-through rates or watch/read time. But trust and other forms of consumer sentiment that signal lasting relationships, like loyalty, respect, and goodwill is more elusive.
This is because trusting, or distrusting, something is a subjective and sticky experience. The small moments of a consumers’ journey—whether it’s how quickly a loan application loads, how clearly rates are explained, or how smoothly onboarding flows between devices—have actually become the marketing for a brand.
We’ve been trained to think in funnels: awareness, interest, consideration, conversion. But funnels depend on clicks, and today’s member journey doesn’t.
We’re entering a phase where decisions happen invisibly: in voice search answers, digital assistants, review snippets, and chatbots. And if your systems can’t deliver on the brand promise in those first few unseen moments, you may never see that prospective new member again.
For credit unions, this is especially pressing. You’re often asking people to make weighty, emotionally loaded decisions like opening accounts, refinancing, and above all else, trusting you with their financial future. Those decisions, understandably, carry a good amount of risk. Which means the experience itself has to feel safe and real.
“Consumers are wanting to see real human beings, and unless we're explicitly stating like this was made with AI, and for this cool reason, it would come through as inauthentic if it was consumer facing.” — Digital marketing professional, 2025
That means: designing onboarding flows that make membership feel personal, using digital service tools that feel familiar, and creating application processes that are simple and transparent.
Because when marketing and experience are aligned, every interaction reinforces the same truth: “this feels right, and I belong here.”
Credit unions tend to build their brands on empathy and human connection. But in addition to friendly interactions with branch managers, all those aforementioned digital experiences have to be full of humanity, too.
That means some org fine tuning might be required. Where does your member experience break your brand promise? What potential trust-building interactions are broken or need fine-tuning? What can you do to demonstrate a measurable lift in engagement or satisfaction?
By reframing your thought process around what today’s Trust Economy looks like, you can redefine what financial relationships look like too.
