Brand strategist Zoltan Lorantffy shows SMB owners how to align brand story and AI search visibility — so the right people find you and stay.
GROWTH PILLAR: Marketing & Branding
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: How to define a clear brand story. How AI is changing the way customers find you. Practical steps to improve your brand's visibility right now.
Most business owners think they have a sales problem. Zoltan Lorantffy says it's usually a brand problem.
Zoltan is the founder of BrandRelate Marketing — a brand strategy and AI marketing agency helping small and medium-sized businesses look credible, communicate clearly, and grow with purpose. He brings 25 years of corporate brand experience, including work with global firm Interbrand, to the SMB world.
In this Canada Growth Network Power Hour session, Zoltan breaks down what a brand actually is — and why most businesses are underselling themselves without knowing it. He covers brand value, the three ways a brand creates real worth (driving choice, securing loyalty, commanding a premium), and why your brand story is the one thing that holds all of it together.
He also gets practical about AI. Fifty percent of consumers are now using AI to find products and services. If your brand isn't showing up in AI-generated answers, you're invisible to half your market. Zoltan explains how brand strategy and AI optimization work together — and what SMB owners can do right now to close that gap.
Key topics covered:
Free offer from Zoltan: Take the free AI Visibility Assessment — find out how well AI systems are using your content right now.
Connect with Zoltan: BrandRelate Marketing | LinkedIn | Company LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Blog
Resources that support this session:
Join Canada Growth Network — full GHL CRM + membership community. $1 CAD first month. $47 CAD/month after. No lock-in.
Try Web Indexer — the smart chatbot for the Knack 4 Business website. Find episodes faster, discover related content, and book a meeting.
Explore @Hive — Community, Collab and resource space for entrepreneurs
Explore Gentry Learning — real estate investing platform | Listen to Property Wizard — the Gentry Learning podcast
Ready to go deeper?
Attend the Monday Power Hour free — every Monday, practical tools and real introductions for business owners who are building.
Join Canada Growth Network — full GHL CRM + membership community. $1 CAD first month. $47 CAD/month. No lock-in.
Questions? Email: info@kreativinsight.com | Subscribe for a new episode every weekday.
Zoltan (00:05)
The topic of today, brand strategy and artificial intelligence. These are two of the biggest topics on my mind, personally. And we know AI has been all over the place. Everyone's been talking about it. Everyone seems to know something about it or a little bit or a lot about it. How,
how can AI and brand strategy work together? So my agency works with these two different, let's call them approaches or styles. And we work with brands of all sizes from startups to large. I think for this particular group, we're focused on SMB, which is small, medium size businesses.
But just a little bit about us. So we were originally called WeRelate. We were an agency that started up during the pandemic. And long, long story short, the reason I started up WeRelate is because I couldn't stand all the advertising that was coming out during the pandemic. It was just tone deaf. The world had changed and the marketing stayed the same. And it was, it didn't make sense. People's lives were completely altered.
and they were craving very different things. And so that's why I started that agency while I was still working in corporate to help brands navigate through and go back to the drawing board when it came to their marketing and advertising strategies and processes. Brand relate now we have about five people. And again, we work with startups.
and all the way up to very large orgs. Larger organizations is where I came from. So I was in corporate for about 25 years. And last year I made the transition along with my wife, Colombe here, who is my business partner to go full-time as entrepreneurs and business owners and brand related as one of our businesses. We also have an AI startup that we're about to launch this year.
We have a short-term rental business and a luxury travel agency which we acquired last year. really helps to fuel all of our others. Services, I mean, I am primarily trained in brand strategies. So I worked for Interbrand, which is a large global company, which is how I learned how to put together
creatives and brand strategies for very large brands. So we really start with brand strategy, but we also pepper our services with AI ⁓ optimization content. We don't do a lot of websites. We started to a little bit. We're big into AEO and SEO. We'll get into that in a little bit. And also social media and campaigns, both organic and paid.
we really primarily focus on brand strategy and campaigns and some things in between. In terms of our vision and mission, so again, we work with brands ⁓ not just to compete on attention, but to earn loyalty through clarity, purpose, and credibility. Our mission is to help brands grow through meaningful
connections. So how we think about brand, let's just start there. And this was early on when I was starting out the way that we think of brand, a brand is a living business asset. It brought to life across every touch point. It properly manage creates identification, differentiation and value. What is brand value? Many of you have probably seen these types of reports where you see brands and then you see numbers. What does that mean?
The number that's attributed to these brands, this is one taken, this is the 50 most valuable brands of 2026 by one agency. Every agency will have their own formula for this. Brand value is a formula that helps to determine what that brand is worth if you take away the brick and mortar and then you value it over an extended period of time into infinity. In other words, what's the brand value of Apple, which is...
by far the most valuable brand on the planet. According to this particular study, they thought it looked about 608 billion. So again, it is not their phones, it is not their laptops, it is the promise of their consumers that they will continue to buy Apple. The same with Google, same with Amazon, Microsoft. I mean, it comes as no surprise that the largest brands on the planet, the most valued brands on the planet are technology brands right now.
But of course there are all the other traditional brands that everyone knows. There's Visa, McDonald's, American Express, all of these others have substantial value. To put it in another way, if there's ever a merger and acquisition of a large company, if there's ever an acquisition of a company, you want to determine what that brand is. And oftentimes the large consultancies such as Deloitte's and the McKenzie's
the world will have to determine that particular value. But also advertising and branding companies help determine value of brands too. There is a public way of doing it. There's a formula for public ways of doing it and also private. But that's what we mean by brand, by brand value. So we take brand quite seriously.
In terms of value creation, there are three separate ways that a brand can ascertain true value. You can drive choice. You can secure loyalty.
and or you can command a premium. If you can do any of these three, you have a functional and working business. If you can do all three, you're Right? It is very, very difficult to be the brand that is top of mind driving choice. It's even more difficult getting that loyalty in. So as many of you may know, it's more expensive to get new customers than it is to keep existing customers.
And then even more challenging is commanding a premium at every touch point. There are very few companies on the planet that can do all three at the same time.
So what's important for us? We see that in 2026, the most important thing for a brand is to own your story. What does that mean? That means that your story or the brand's story is what is getting that loyalty. It's allowing you to drive choice and it helps you command that premium. This is the secret formula of Apple.
This is the secret formula of McDonald's. This is the secret formula of Starbucks. So, and I do this during workshops, but just a simple branding question. You know, what does Starbucks sell?
You think they sell coffee, right? They don't. They sell community. They sell community because they were the first company for people to come in, feel at home, and start to work from there. What does McDonald's sell? Do you think they sell hamburgers?
speaker-0 (06:42)
Nope.
Zoltan (06:43)
They sell franchise. They were the first franchisee in the 1950s. They were the first scalable business model. What does Apple sell? Right? So on and so forth. So getting at the essence of your brand helps you get at that brand story. That's what's going to get you those customers. That's what is, is not just going to get you those customers. It's going to help you keep those customers and help you command that premium.
So how do customers find your brand? So for SMBs, small medium-sized businesses, right? Here's an interesting chart here from local IQ. It seems that the challenges seem to be many from budget to making, to knowing which marketing channels to use, economic conditions, right? Increased competition. This was very, very similar to our...
We see the biggest challenges this year standing out in crowded markets, limited marketing budgets, fragmented channels and tools, weak brand positioning, inconsistent lead generation, lack of time and internal expertise, underutilized data and technology, building trust with new customers.
speaker-7 (07:47)
customers.
Zoltan (07:47)
maintaining consistent content and visibility. Many of these challenges carry through at the end of the day, quite simply, if a company is not selling, not making money, it's not a business. However, it goes deeper than that, right? So many customers come to us with a sales, what they think is a sales problem, but it may not be, it may be a branding problem. It may be an awareness problem. You might be the right brand, wrong market, right market.
wrong customer segment, right customer segment, wrong geography, so on and so forth, right? It's kind of like if you have an ailment, right? If you have something hurting in your side and then you go to a physiotherapist and somehow he's tweaking your ankle. Well, that's not where the pain originates from. No, it doesn't matter. You have to go to the source and the source sometimes is hard to find. And so that's why when we work with customers,
We really talk to them about everything that's going on in their company, because it's not just one thing that you're tweaking. You're looking at all of it. And oftentimes it starts with brand.
AI search on the rise. So 50 % of consumers are using AI to find things. this is displacing 20 to 50 % of traditional search.
So consumers will spend 750 billion by 2028. What we found is that consumers are using both Google and Claude, or if you use ChatGPT, whatever AI platform you're using, you'll use Google for something quick, you'll use AI for something a little more in depth, is kind of how you want to look at.
those two things, but they're both being used. In other words, if you're running a campaign, if you're a small business and you're selling, you know, you're selling boots and you have an e-commerce play, how do people find you? And it's not an easy, quick thing where it's just Google or it's just AI, they're using both. So you have to really run a campaign on both right now, which is good.
This brings an advantage to businesses to get ahead of this thing.
From Forbes, what we find in 2026 is that trust, quality, and frictionless experience, these are what consumers are looking for from their brands. During COVID, it was all about trust and loyalty, right? So during COVID, people were looking for brands that best resembled their values. And so you saw brands like Nike, you know, do these.
very intelligent campaigns and people really gravitated towards them. Some other brands did very, very cool things during that time too, to connect. Today, it is about a brand's authenticity, right? So the more authentic your brand can be, the better it resonates with your consumers. We did a report looking at brand and AI strategies, and we wanted to understand...
in 2026 what those benefits are. This is very busy chart. Now, I'll be sending this by email to everyone here, this particular presentation. So don't fret. We don't have to go through this in detail. And we'll also send the link so you can double click on these particular figures. But the main takeaway from this report are two things.
Zoltan (10:40)
This is a
Zoltan (11:04)
Brands around the world, especially large brands are making huge investments into AI. They are using brand and AI or brand strategy and AI together to maximize their, you know, the selling of their products and services. And consumers are using AI to find those products and services in a huge way. So this is only starting and it's growing leaps and bounds.
So brand and AI strategies to drive growth, what would those be? So again, this may be a very ⁓ busy slide and deck and I'm happy to jump on a call and discuss any of these items. I think there's a question and answer after this too. So if you have any questions, please let me know. So for brand and AI strategies working together, authenticity and purpose equals trust.
This is what your brand wants to try to accomplish. You want to look authentic. Why do you want to look authentic? Because people only buy from people that they trust. That's it, right? So if you can do that, you increase your conversion and retention. In other words, you increase your sales and holding onto those customers.
Storytelling with emotion equals brand preference equals a higher customer lifetime value. When you tell a cohesive story and all of you are telling the same story about your brand, what you want to try to get from your audience, from your customers is an emotional response. If you can get an emotional response, they'll remember you. If you can do that, you build trust, it's easier for them to buy from you.
Product and service differentiation. This is really important, right? How do you differentiate? How does your product differentiate, right? How does Burger King differentiate from McDonald's, right? How does a cup of Joe differentiate from Starbucks, so on and so forth. You might be swimming in a sea of other brands that sell exactly what you do. Not exactly, but very similar to what you do. How do you stand out?
What are those attributes that help you stand out? It's tough, not easy. Brand positioning and architecture equals market clarity for scalable growth. So brand positioning is just a fancy way of saying, how can your particular company stand out in a sea full of other companies doing very similar things? Brand experience equals trust at every touch point. So whatever your story is,
You want to make sure that you get it right and you want to make sure that it's the same everywhere. In other words, if you're, you know, if you're a local restaurant and, you know, you, you want to get more customers in, I mean, this is a brick and mortar location. That's fine. But let's just say you don't have a lot of foot traffic and you need to make a digital play. So you need to entice people to come to your restaurant.
They need to be super clear about what you're serving, what you're offering, what you're about. That could be done. But if it's not clear, if it's not authentic, then people are just not going to visit. Visual identity equals recognition, equals lower acquisition costs. So this basically means whatever your story is, whatever your brand identity is, it has to permeate
in your visual identity, whether that be your website, your logo, how you present yourself, and also your verbal identity, which is not listed here, but verbal identity is basically your ⁓ content, right? How you sound, what's on your website, what verbage you're sending out there. Pricing is really important, right? So price-based positioning equals margin strategy equals premium pricing. There are different ways that you can look at brands.
and that you can look at pricing using brand and AI strategies. Employee advocacy and authenticity. This should not be overlooked. We work with brands all the time to make sure that culture, because culture is incredibly important. And the bigger your company, the more important culture is, because culture is...
what signals to your audiences and your consumers, what you're really about, it shows them your values, right? And people are still looking for a match on values. That hasn't gone away. That was really big during the pandemic, but we believe culture still resonates today. PR and reputation management. Now there are some beautiful AI tools that we use also to determine what's called...
you know, the to ascertain a sentiment. So any brand that comes to us and wants to understand a little bit more about how they're visible out there in the marketplace, there are tools that can help do that. Understanding that also gives you an insight into what people are saying about you, right, which is very, very important. And then, of course, brand monitoring and sentiment analysis. And that's for faster response and protected revenue. So there are
These are only a few things that brands can do right now that will yield benefits. Here's an example. So this is an e-commerce case study. Starting at the very top left, what we did for this brand, we did a combination of brand AI marketing. So these were paid ads, organic social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, email nurturing, newsletters, partners, influencers.
a combination of AEO and SEO combo. The name of the game is you want to get this part right because you're trying to drive and what we did in this case, we drove them from leads to customers on the top right. Leads to customers are we drove leads to their site. They had an e-commerce site and we also helped them track everything through a CRM.
Very, very important here. And from there, excellent customer service was not just a salesperson, but we helped build out automation to make sure that whoever bought that product was being sent an email, confirming they bought the product, then being sent another email, asking them questions, then a survey, so on and so forth. So always staying in touch with that customer. Why is that important? Because the bottom...
bottom left is where we want customers always to be in that retention and referral stage. This is where brands shine. If you can get to a point where you're getting more business off of referrals than you are off of any marketing campaign, then you're doing something right. I mean, that's fantastic, right? But this entire circle, like this is entire, this is really what we call a
customer success wheel. This entire wheel is what we look at and we help all of our customers along the way, no matter if they're selling a product or service. So what are the big takeaways? What do we think brands need to do to win in 2026? Number one, define a clear and differentiated brand story. Here's a test. If you have a business and you want a test,
If you have a clear and defined brand story, ask all of your executive team and people within your management team separately how they would define your company or your brand. I promise you, everyone's going to give you a different answer. Most, most of the time. Why? Well, because you might be unknowingly right.
⁓ showing something on one channel and then showing something on in another channel. Maybe people are not aligned on what the core mission of the brand is. And it's just something that hasn't been defined enough, but that's a good way of trying to test that. The next is embed that story. If you're sure you have that story embedded across every product experience and culture everywhere, everyone has to be.
singing the same tune, talking the same language, however you want to frame it, right? And then the next, and this is what we help brands do, is leverage AI, not just as a gimmick, but as a force multiplier for relevance, personalization, and insight. AI is your friend right now, as a brand. There are so many things you can do with it, just like George, think, we're knee deep into AI.
Myself, mean, you know, our entire team uses it. We use it to research. We use it to build. We also use it on projects. Like we use it a lot, right? It's not dictating what we're doing, but it is definitely an extended portion of our team. And that's really the way you want to look at AI, right? It's just an extended team member or members helping you do things.
What we have, what we built out is a free AI visibility assessment. So this is something that we'll offer to everyone here. And all you have to do is click on this link, not to worry, we'll send this presentation out afterwards. What this does, this assessment helps you to understand how well AI systems use your content. At the end of the day, it's always interesting to see how your content is showing up.
Is your content suitable for AI answers? What are the technical signals for AI and search generated answers? What's your brand authority and trust signals, competitive visibility and benchmarking, and also risk and accuracy assessment? So we do offer this as a free assessment just to kind of gauge where your brand is. And then we talk about it and then we see, is it something that needs to be worked on?
And ladies and gentlemen, that's it. Thank