AI Practices In Marketing For Small Businesses

With the availability of platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini that have far reaching capabilities, using AI for mundane tasks grows increasingly tempting - especially when it comes to AI practices in marketing. At first thought, it's extremely appealing. Why would you want to spend your time doing something you don't feel like doing? That blog post? Just have ChatGPT write it, and you can edit it after. The copy on your website needing to be updated? Create a list of SEO keywords, drop them into an LLM (large language model), and let AI take care of that for you. Although sourcing these tasks out to AI might seem like the easiest approach - and I fully admit that I use AI on a daily basis - I do not and will not ever recommend that LLMs be used as a replacement for a thought partner or creative professional.

The truth of the matter is, while we all love the idea of using these platforms to make life easier, we all still crave genuine human interaction. YBMK believes that especially on the creative side, AI practices in marketing should be used sparingly. For example - YBMK might use AI for idea generation, but the highest level of involvement AI has with our work is proofreading at the most. AI should be an assistant - not a replacement. It cannot offer perspective, tangible experiences, or lessons only learned through real life.

Mediums like podcasts, vlogs, and personally written blog posts are the best way to connect with people in an age where so much is automated. In my opinion, you can absolutely tell when something has been written by AI - and when I think it has been, I stop reading. In our world today, finding a way to connect with people is more important than ever. With this in mind, my advice for small businesses exploring AI is to use it as a helper, but not as a replacement for forging genuine connections with client bases. When in doubt, just keep it real. It's okay to use AI to help with that, but don't use it as a substitute for it.