How to use AI in your marketing without sounding like everyone else

One of the areas I've found AI particularly useful is copywriting.

Starting with a blank page can take time. Give an AI tool the right information and it can help develop ideas, explore different approaches, organise your thinking and get a first draft onto the page.

Then I can get to work on it.

I'll add my own experience. Change things I wouldn't say. Pull something apart. Add an example. Make it sound more natural. Question something I don't agree with. Put a bit more personality back in.

And sometimes I'll ask AI to have another go because the first answer simply isn't right.

That's the bit I think is important.

The first output doesn't have to be the final output.

Sometimes AI produces something and you think, Wow. It did that in about eight seconds.

It is genuinely impressive.

But take another look.

Does it actually sound like your business?

Does it say anything particularly distinctive?

Will it resonate with the people you're trying to reach?

Or could exactly the same copy quite happily sit on the website of five of your competitors?

That's where we need to be a little careful.

AI tools learn from enormous amounts of existing content. If lots of businesses ask similar tools similar questions without giving them much context, it's hardly surprising when the answers start sounding… similar.

You know the sort of thing.

Everything is being unlocked. Businesses are being empowered. Solutions are tailored. Experiences are seamless.

And apparently we're all embarking on a journey.

That's when the human needs to get involved.

If you type: "Write me a Facebook post advertising my business"

you'll get something.

But the AI doesn't really know your business.

It doesn't know your customers, what matters to them, how you normally speak, what makes you different, what you're trying to achieve or what you absolutely never want to sound like.

So give it that information.

Tell it who your audience is. Give it your brand positioning. Give it your tone of voice. Explain your product or service. Tell it what you're trying to achieve. Give it examples of things you've written that sound like you.

And don't just tell it what you do want. Tell it what you don't want too.

The more useful context you provide, the less you're asking AI to guess.

This is a big one for me.

AI hasn't removed the need for brand thinking.

If anything, I think having a clear brand has become more important now that everyone has access to tools capable of producing reasonable-looking marketing in seconds.

Before asking AI to create content for your business, spend some time defining the business itself.

What do you stand for? Who are you talking to? What makes you different? What do you sound like? What should somebody feel when they come across your marketing? What words or phrases feel natural to you — and which ones would you never use?

You don't necessarily need an enormous brand strategy document.

But you do need to know who you are before you ask AI to sound like you.

The same applies to your customers.

AI can absolutely help with audience research and profiling. It can help organise information, identify themes, explore questions and give you ideas you might not have considered.

But don't let it become a substitute for what you actually know.

Look at your customer data. Talk to customers. Read their feedback. Pay attention to the questions they ask. Understand why they buy from you.

Then give some of that information to the AI.

Use AI to help you work with your customer knowledge — not invent your customers for you.

This is probably the most important point.

Everything we needed to understand before AI came along still matters.

Who is the audience? What are we trying to achieve? What's our proposition? What does our brand stand for? Which channels make sense? What's the budget? What's the customer journey? How are we going to measure whether it worked?

AI can help you with every one of those things.

It can ask questions, analyse information, suggest approaches, organise ideas and help turn your thinking into something tangible.

But the questions still need answering.

If the foundations aren't there, asking AI to create a campaign doesn't magically create them.

It just creates a campaign without very good foundations.

I think this is where things get much more interesting.

AI isn't only useful for writing social posts.

You could use it to help brainstorm campaign ideas, analyse customer feedback and identify common themes, develop questions for customer research, explore different audience segments, interrogate data and look for patterns, plan content, develop email journeys, turn one useful piece of content into several different formats, challenge an idea or give you another perspective, and organise a lot of messy thoughts into something you can actually work with.

And, yes, write things.

For me, the real opportunity isn't necessarily "AI can do my marketing."

It's "AI can help me do my marketing better."

AI can sound extremely confident.

That doesn't mean it's right.

Check facts. Question recommendations. Read the copy properly. Look at whether an idea actually makes sense for your business.

And if something doesn't feel right, don't use it just because the AI produced a beautifully structured answer explaining why it's a brilliant idea.

You still know your business better than it does.

And if you're working with an experienced marketer, designer, developer or other specialist, their judgement still matters too.

AI gives us another very capable tool.

It doesn't mean we stop thinking.

I'd come back to a few fairly simple things.

Know your brand. Know your audience. Give AI good information. And don't automatically accept the first thing it gives you.

Use your own stories. Add your experience. Have an opinion. Use examples that could only have come from your business. Take out the words you would never actually say.

Read it aloud and ask yourself:

Would I actually say this to a customer?

If the answer is no, keep working on it.

Because the goal isn't to hide the fact that you've used AI.

The goal is to make sure the end result still sounds like you.

I think AI is making some genuinely exciting things possible for small businesses.

It's giving people access to capabilities they might not previously have had. It's speeding up work. It's helping people learn. And it's making it much easier to get an idea out of your head and start doing something with it.

That's a very good thing.

But the businesses that stand out won't necessarily be the ones using the most AI.

I think they'll be the ones that learn to use it well.

Bring the customer knowledge. Bring the brand. Bring your experience, judgement, ideas and personality.

Let AI help with the rest.

That's where I think it gets really interesting.