When Michigan Residents Ask AI Which Bank to Trust, Merc Bank Is Now the Answer

HubSpot provides a suite of marketing, sales, and content tools. In this case study, the relevant product is HubSpot AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), part of Marketing Hub and Content Hub, which gives marketers a live dashboard to track AI citation visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — benchmarked against competitors on specific prompts.

Mercantile Bank of Michigan is Michigan's largest community bank, founded in 1997, with $6.9 billion in assets and more than 50 locations statewide. It serves individuals, businesses, and communities across Michigan, offering commercial lending, personal banking, payroll banking, and human capital management software — positioning itself as the trusted local alternative to national banks.

A naming conflict with a South African institution called Mercantile Bank caused the wrong bank to surface in AI-generated results for Michigan-specific banking searches, costing Merc Bank prospects before any conversation started. The website had no meta descriptions, broken heading structures, outdated content, and a developer-heavy CMS not built for marketing performance. Tracking AI visibility was entirely manual — Vanessa Sinclair spent roughly 64 hours per quarter screenshotting ChatGPT results with no dashboard, no benchmarks, and no ability to identify which sources AI engines were pulling from or act on the data.

HubSpot AEO replaced the manual screenshot process with a live dashboard showing Merc Bank's AI presence across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, benchmarked against named competitors on exact prompts Michigan prospects were typing. The citation analysis dashboard revealed mercbank.com was already cited 952 times — 2.4x the nearest competitor — and identified which owned pages and third-party sources were driving citations. Prompt cleanup narrowed focus to Michigan-specific and community banking queries where Merc Bank had a meaningful advantage. The tool also surfaced actionable recommendations, enabling Vanessa to send clear content briefs to colleagues based on citation data rather than instinct.

Vanessa Sinclair joined Merc Bank's digital team at end of 2024 and began by auditing the website and setting up HubSpot AEO. She refined the prompt set to focus on Michigan-specific and niche commercial categories, deprioritizing broad national queries. The blog was launched alongside a new HubSpot CMS site, producing structured content that AI engines cited directly. The AEO dashboard confirmed which posts were cited and which weren't, informing future content briefs. Citation data was also used to build the internal case for PR and content partnership outreach, bringing third-party coverage into the strategy. AEO monitoring shifted from a quarterly episodic task to a weekly operational rhythm — each week Vanessa checks prompt movement, identifies competitor gains, and routes briefs to the right team members.

Mercantile Bank went from zero visibility into AI-generated results to holding 952 citations and 13% share of voice in Michigan banking AI answers — outranking Chase and Huntington. The 64 hours per quarter previously spent on manual screenshot research were redirected to content production, page optimization, and citation partnership outreach. The payroll banking category became a standout proof point, with Merc Bank surfacing as a top AI recommendation in Michigan due to clear content and an underserved competitive category. Following its December 2025 acquisition of Eastern Michigan Financial Corporation, the bank now operates 50+ locations and is building its digital presence to match its expanding physical footprint.