Love it or loathe it, AI, including generative AI, is here to stay. And it’s had some positive impacts on the digital marketing space. In 2024, however, generative AI is starting to give some of our customers the ‘icks’ so it’s never been more important for businesses to stay authentic and create truly original content. As usual, it doesn’t have to be hard!
AI in digital marketing – it’s been around longer than you think
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT caused quite a stir when they entered the mainstream world in 2023, but it wasn’t the first-time marketing had been impacted by technology. Indeed, we can almost break the impacts of technology on marketing into four broad phases:
- Traditional marketing. Pretty much everything before the internet. Think magazines, newspapers, billboards, direct mail, door-to-door, and technologies television and radio.
- Digital marketing, sometimes known as online marketing. Everything we access via smart devices and computers, including emails, social media, websites, web-based ads, and even text or multimedia messages.
- AI digital marketing or AI marketing. The addition of artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse data, predict customer behaviour, automate and optimise sending and posting times, integrate systems and enhance personalisation of communications and user experiences.
- Generative AI marketing. The latest horror to befall copywriters around the world. The introduction of programs like ChatGPT that write (and even visually create) marketing content at next to no cost.
The common threads for marketing and business success across these phases, is standing out from the crowd and building customer trust. In 2024, that’s still about authenticity and originality.
Stand out against generative AI with authentic, original content
There is no one alive who is you’er than you – Dr Suess.
I know what it’s like to see a competitor create a load of professional-looking content and wonder if using generative AI will help you be as ‘good’ as they are. Or if it would give you back the time it takes to create it from scratch. But at the end of the day, customer trust isn’t built on high volume, polished social media posts. It’s built on connected language, understanding your customer, and engagement. It’s about being you.
Indeed, an overreliance on generative AI to create your social media marketing content can leave your brand feeling impersonal and distant. That disconnect from your customers damages your brand a whole lot more than an occasional spelling mistake or a week without posting.
So, if your brand is local or personal, about you or your genuinely unique service, don’t hand your content creation to artificial intelligence. Keep your humanity and really connect with your customer. Stand out from the crowd of generic posts with their generic information by creating authentic and unique social media content showcasing:
- Your opinion. Showcase your understanding of your industry by sharing your thoughts on industry news and experience in business.
- Behind the scenes. Humanise your brand by showing people who you are to forge real connections. Share photos or videos of your studio, product creation, or even your workspace like I did here.
- Product releases. If you sell physical products, post photos and introduce them. Then share what you love about them and how improve your life (which will also showcase that you understand your customer’s pain points).
- Your expertise. Think about the brands you follow to learn from. You could follow a dozen of their competitors instead, but you choose to stick with brands you relate to and understand. Your followers are doing the same thing, so keep sharing your expertise your way.
- Collaborations. If other businesses can work with and trust you, so can your customers. So share the load of creation with a fellow small business. More on collaboration here.
- Feedback and reviews. Create an on-brand tile like mine below or share screenshots from independent review collectors like Google business pages. This makes it easy for your customers to find social proof about your business.
- Customer content. Even better than a screenshot of a review is the customer tag. If a customer tags you in a piece of content share it and thank them.
The right way to use generative AI in business
Used wisely, AI digital marketing has been increasing sales conversions behind the scenes for years, and many customers haven’t noticed or don’t care. Cookies make ads more relevant to our interests, optimised posting and sending times make us more likely to open or see an ad, and personalised emails make us feel seen.
Generative AI can also be used in ways your customers won’t notice. You can use it to brainstorm content ideas, make editing suggestions, give you feedback on your content, or draft a long form content outline to flesh out yourself. With the right resources larger businesses might even invest in the right commands to get generative AI tools to create marketing content for them. But that’s not something I recommend just dabbling in because if you get it wrong, you can lose hard earned trust and connection with your audience.
A caution around generative AI in business
Small businesses, sole traders and freelancers in particular, should really approach generative AI with caution. Especially engaging generative AI to entirely create content.
Your little spelling errors, unique words, or even your habit of bringing every post back to your pet, can be part of your brand. People start to expect them. If you take away that uniqueness, something can start to feel off for your customers. If it feels off enough, it can lead them to doubt your brand and that’s bad for business.
Similarly, we all want to know there is a human behind a brand, so AI should never replace a human for engagement and connection. Simple generic answers can be helpful in their place, but let the customer know it’s an AI helping them, and make sure a human hand is also available.
At The Social Nest, we help small businesses like yours maximise the benefits of AI digital marketing and generative AI. But we do it with the sort of authenticity that builds customer trust. To find out more, book your free intro chat with our head Social Media Strategist, Susie Basiaco.
