As a Founder, you have great expertise and real life perspective. Your approach and line of thinking based on your lived experience is what makes you different than your competition. And that’s the reason your clients prefer you over someone else.
YOU are the advantage, and Leadership Marketing is how to unlock your advantage
If you ask AI to come up with marketing ideas, guess who else it’s giving similar ideas to? Yup, your competition.
Even worse if you’re using AI to give you content ideas for things to talk about.
And the cardinal sin of using AI in your marketing is having it actually write the content you are putting out to the market.
YOU are the Leader, the one who knows and can dictate what your market should be thinking about and doing.
AI is a great tool, I use it every day.
It’s an amplifier, it’s fast and efficient when you know what you’re doing.
But it does not have discernment about the nuance of what is actually good or not.
It is by definition AVERAGE.
So What’s The Right Way To Use AI In Your Marketing?
First and main rule I lay down personally- NEVER use it as the Source. YOU are the Source. AI is your helper to speed things up and do things you might not have the technical skills (or time) for yet.
That means the best way to use AI in your marketing, especially if you’re just getting started:
1- You can use it as a sounding board where you are essentially talking to yourself to flesh out ideas. But not to source ideas from scratch. Brain storm collaboratively but use your sense here.
2- You can use it as a writing companion who can take your brain dumps of value and turn them into something readable. But not to come up with the actual information itself, because your experience and perspective is what makes you worth paying attention to.
You have great ideas from the trenches, you have the knowledge and wisdom to help your clients – you just aren’t the wordsmith to craft it into something you want to publish.
You are still dictating WHAT is being said, you’re getting help from AI on HOW to say it.
3- You can use it as a multiplier and remixer. Take your existing meeting transcripts, emails or texts with clients, previous content you’ve created – and run it through AI to take that same Source information and remix it to be written in a different way. So it’s your same genius from you, just HOW it is written is different.
For example you might have had a meeting where you talked about some mistakes you see someone making and then provided some suggestions on what to do instead.
That one transcript of your genius can be remixed with AI into a ‘avoid these mistakes’ post + a ‘the right way to do X’ post + written in a Problem-Agitate-Solution format + written in a “high tension with call to action” format, etc etc.
AI Is An Amplifier Of Your Expertise (A Story), But You Need Expertise First
Every day I am working, I use my AI assistant to create highly impactful and valuable content in my voice (or my clients’ voices), and it works.
Why?
Because first, I have trained it on what ‘good’ is and how to craft ‘good’ content. But more importantly, I know what good is and what it looks like. I can spot the fake.
I am an expert in marketing, and specifically content marketing.
So when it spits something out that sounds confident and looks engaging to the naked eye, I can see that it sounds like a college student throwing something together that ‘checks the boxes’ but is not actually that good.
If you don’t have that eye for the nuance, some people call it ‘taste’ now, then you will fall into the AI slop trap and not even realize it.
You’ll be cranking out tons of marketing stuff from AI, activity and volume go way up – but the performance doesn’t seem to make a difference. You’re not attracting or converting any more clients and you’re wondering why…that’s why. The nuance, the taste.
I happen to be a marketing expert, but this goes for any field when using AI. Try it for yourself on your area of expertise and you’ll notice “oh that sounds pretty good…wait a sec, it’s just surface level stuff and feels off. Like a college kid researching the topic, not like an expert with actual depth in the topic.”
I Found It When Researching A New Topic For Myself
I was doing some research using AI on economic theories, which I know nothing about. What it gave me back sounded really solid and made total sense, I was about to move on in my process accepting those concepts as standard and legit.
Something in one of the phrases caught my attention though because it sounded too similar to how I talk about marketing (when I’m chatting with my AI assistant).
So I asked it to cross reference the information for accuracy and cite the source.
8 of the 10 things it originally gave me it cited as “I made this up” and 2 of the 10 were inaccurate.
If you can’t catch the nuance, if you don’t have a ‘taste’ for the subject – you’ll be cranking out mediocre stuff at best.
That’s why you have to have a quality control component if you’re using AI for your marketing.
The 4 Step Process That Makes AI Marketing Work Every Time
The way I work with my content clients one on one and what I teach in The Growth Suite group is to follow this 4 step process when you use AI in your marketing so that it maintains your integrity and expertise:
1- Strategize
First you need to have a clear and intentional marketing strategy and action plan that drives towards your actual business goals (not just siloed marketing tactics that check the box but just have you on a hamster wheel)
2- Digitize
This is where you get the genius out of your head and into a documented library for AI to assist you with.
You can do this using existing stuff like meeting transcripts, previous content, etc.
Or you can go through a conversational interview process (with AI or a colleague) based on your Strategy from step 1 that will have you effortlessly extract your insights and personality into something we can use with AI in your marketing
3- Multiply
This is where you take that genius you digitized and have AI work on the HOW to turn it into content that fits into your marketing strategy and drives results.
4- Amplify
All that gold won’t do you much good sitting on your computer. Step 4 is when you publish, promote, bring your marketing to the world so it can get you found, followed, and preferred by your dream clients.
Now you have your car on the track and you can steer (aka make adjustments based on real data). Then go back through the cycle next month/quarter.
If you want help with implementing AI into your marketing the right way, and in a way that actually helps you achieve your goals instead of wasting time playing around, book a call and I’ll help you – https://thegrowthsuite.com/book-a-call/