11 WRONG Ways to Use AI For Marketing Content (and 5 Ways You Can)
Artificial intelligence has made leaps and bounds in the past couple of years. Even as a skeptic, I can admit that the technology is pretty incredible and does some amazing things.
It’s truly changing the way people work, and you can’t fight it forever.
That said, you also can’t rely on AI for everything. I see too many marketers using AI the wrong way, and it’s going to backfire (if it hasn’t already).
I’ve identified all the wrong ways to leverage AI below so you can avoid common pitfalls in your marketing department. But it’s not all bad. Later on, I’ll highlight a few of my favorite ways to use AI for marketing.
#1 — Blogging
I remember the first few iterations of generative AI that I tested out a few years ago. It was awful.
That’s no longer the case. Between ChatGPT, Claude, and the others, you can generate lots of human-sounding long-form content in minutes that’s well-written and makes your head spin.
As impressive as this might be, I still refuse to use AI to write blogs on my website or any of my clients’ sites.
Aside from the content having no soul and just reiterating the same basic concepts that have already been covered on the subject, I predict that AI-generated content will be the downfall of websites in a future Google update.
While Google has come out and said they don’t penalize AI content, if you look closer at what Google wants to see from content, everything about it is anti-AI (despite what they’ve said).
My good friend Vignesh Kumar and I talked about this a couple of years back on my podcast. Vignesh made an excellent point that these AI platforms are direct competitors of Google. So if Google can detect ChatGPT content (which they can), it’s in Google’s best interest to stop people from using one of their competitors.
I’m not willing to take that risk and see decades of hard work destroyed because I tried to take a shortcut to blogging.
#2 — Marketing Emails
It’s painfully obvious when businesses are using AI to write their marketing emails.
In some cases, I can’t tell if it’s just an employee or contractor taking the easy way out when they’re submitting work or if the brand itself is trying to cut costs and use AI to scale. But whatever the reason might be, those emails stink.
I know I’m going to catch some flack for this, and I’m sure my inbox will get flooded with emails written by AI and passed off as a human in an attempt to fool me and prove me wrong.
The lack of human touch just doesn’t work here. Your marketing emails need to be personalized and authentic—and AI just doesn’t get the job done.
I’ve also seen businesses get flagged for spam on their email domain because the copy seems so robotic. Plus, Gmail (Google) can detect AI content and mark it as low quality, sending it to the spam folder (even if your email domain isn’t flagged).
#3 — Keyword Research
Asking ChatGPT to help you identify keywords to target is a big mistake.
Can you do it and get results? Sure. But I could do that for you too without any real effort—it doesn’t mean it will work.
Let’s keep it simple and say you have a blog about golf. AI might tell you to target keywords like best golf calls, best golf courses in Florida, or PGA events this year. All reasonable, right?
But this isn’t the type of depth you need to truly win at SEO.
The biggest problem is that these AI tools aren’t up to date with the latest search data. Just bite the bullet and pay for Ahrefs or Semrush.
You’ll get the latest search data, keyword ideas, plus other context—like keyword difficulty. Then you can read between the lines to spot the low-hanging fruit and long-tail keywords that your specific site actually has a chance of actually ranking for.
#4 — Authority Marketing
I’m arguably the biggest proponent of authority marketing in the industry. It’s something I’ve felt strongly about for decades, and it’s the best way to build your personal brand and, ultimately, your business.
But to be a true expert and leader in your space, you need to actually leverage your own experiences and personal perspective.
This isn’t something that can be replicated by AI (and it probably never will be).
Don’t try to let a machine tell your story for you. It’s on you to do the research, write the blogs, contribute to guest posts, publish YouTube videos, be a podcast guest, and all of the other elements that go into a winning authority marketing strategy.
#5 — Content Repurposing
Repurposing content is always a great idea for marketing. You can take a single piece of content and turn it into multiple formats for various marketing channels.
But I’ve seen marketers approach this strategy the wrong way over the last couple of years—trying to leverage AI as a shortcut.
First, I want to make it clear that you should only be thinking about repurposing your own content. For example, I’ve had a few clients tell me that they just want to feed blog posts from a competitor’s website into AI and ask the tool to essentially re-write the post in different words.
This is awful, unethical, and ultimately just a fast way to publish really bad content on your site. I shut those ideas down quickly, and they understood.
Don’t do this.
#6 — Bulk Social Media Posts
There’s nothing wrong with planning out and scheduling your social media content weeks or months in advance. If you don’t have a full-time social media specialist on your team, it’s much easier to just spend an hour once a week scheduling your content (as long as you’re not trying to be topical—then you need to post in real-time).
Leveraging AI for this might seem like a time-saving strategy, but you’re going to end up with really poor-quality posts that will have a trickle-down effect on your brand image.
It’s painfully obvious whenever a business is using AI to produce social posts, and it just feels so soulless and inauthentic. This is the wrong way to connect with your customers on a personalized level through social media.
#7 — B2B and High-Ticket Product Descriptions
In some cases, using AI to write your product descriptions can be fine. If you’re selling a plain red t-shirt, go for it—an AI content generator can add descriptors like “stylish” or “perfect fit” and you’ll be fine.
But this doesn’t work for B2B products and services or high-ticket items.
Those product descriptions need to be so precise, accurate, and primed for conversions. Using AI to generate fluff to save a few minutes just isn’t worth it in the long run.
Spend the extra 30-60+ minutes writing these yourself, or, better yet, hire a professional writer to do this properly. It could be the difference in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per year for your business.
#8 — Case Studies and Customer Stories
Case studies and customer stories are two powerful ways to provide proof of concept on your website. They showcase the results you’ve provided for your customers while simultaneously providing examples of the types of real businesses you’ve worked with.
But you can’t force a case study. You need to have real, concrete data that resonates with readers and tells the story of that client’s experience with your brand.
I have a friend who had dozens of “clients we’ve worked with” on his website, but only a handful of customer stories.
As a shortcut, he copied and pasted all of the clients he’s worked with into an AI generator. Then he fed the AI a few of his best customer stories and asked the AI to create more following the same format.
It was a disaster.
Every case study was essentially the same. Some generic background about the business and a cookie-cutter explanation about how they benefited from my friend’s services.
I’m still trying to convince him to remove those stories from his website because I honestly think they’re doing more harm than good. What’s even worse is that his real and impactful case studies are now buried amongst the sea of AI-generated trash.
#9 — Cold Outreach
It’s common for marketing departments to collaborate with sales teams on cold outreach campaigns. Don’t use AI for this.
Cold outreach is always going to be difficult, and generic blasts don’t work in my experience.
Personally, I’ve always had better luck sending fewer outreach messages and making them highly personalized—which isn’t going to work with AI.
Pro Tip: Make yourself a note to follow up at least once or twice if your first outreach goes unanswered. You’d be surprised how often this works.
#10 — Link Building
This piggybacks a bit off of my last point, especially if you’re using cold outreach emails to connect with editors for link-building. Don’t use AI to craft those messages.
Instead, I recommend guest posting for link building.
It’s much more authentic, and you definitely don’t want to be using AI for your guest blogs.
Additional Reading: 10 Link Building Tactics to Avoid
#11 — Replacing Human Insight
AI isn’t supposed to offer any insightful knowledge based on human experience. So stop trying to use AI to make a point or take a stance on a particular topic—it doesn’t work.
Can you ask AI to provide a clear and concise definition of an industry term or subject? Sure.
But it’s on you to offer insight around that topic based on your experiences. Make your own bold predictions. If you’re wrong, who cares? If it doesn’t sound perfect, it’s no big deal.
Too many businesses are trying to use AI as a shortcut to save them time and money, which is fine, and there’s a case for it. But replacing real human insight just isn’t one of them.
5 Ways AI Works For Marketing
Despite my clear resentment for AI, even I can admit that there are plenty of ways that marketers can use it. Here are a few of my favorites.
Meta Descriptions
I like using AI to write meta descriptions for my blog posts because it does a great job of maximizing the full 160 characters without adding fluff. For summarizing a blog post in a sentence or two, this is fine and you can always make slight tweaks.
Sentiment Analysis
Lots of modern social media marketing tools include social listening features that are powered by AI. This is a great way to understand how people feel about your brand based on what’s being said across hundreds or thousands of posts on multiple channels. AI can analyze comments, social posts, reviews, media, and more in seconds, which would be impossible for you to do.
Brainstorming and Outlines
Producing content is tough when you’re starting with a blank page. Whether it’s a blog post, podcast, YouTube video, or something similar, you can use AI to help you get the ball rolling and structure your approach. You don’t need to follow these suggestions completely, but pick and choose what you like.
Data Processing and Trend Analysis
You can use AI to process massive amounts of data and pull trends. Some of you might be using CRMs or sales tools with customer data that has built-in AI features for this. Otherwise, you can copy and paste data (assuming it’s not sensitive) into tools and ask to pull specific trends or insights.
Saving Time
You can use AI to crunch numbers, create tables, or anything else that used to take you a long time before. I work with some websites that are always updating different fees and prices for companies—including single resources that have hundreds of fees. Rather than having to go line by line to see what’s been updated, you can just plug the new pricing pages into AI and ask the tool to tell you which fees have changed.
Final Thoughts
Don’t use AI for content generation or as a replacement for human insight. While you can’t resist it completely, relying on AI to do everything for your marketing department is a major risk—and I’d keep a close eye on your team to ensure they aren’t leaning too heavily on it.
Another pitfall of using AI too much is that you start to lose some of your skills.
For example, let’s fast-forward a couple of years and we might learn that Google is penalizing AI content. But now you haven’t written a blog post on your own in years. It’s going to be difficult for you to get back into the swing of things.
If you need help overcoming the AI craze and you’re not sure how to effectively market your business without it, contact my team and we’ll be happy to put a plan together for you—no AI, no BS.
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