For more than two years, we have integrated various AI tools into our processes to AMPLIFY our human insights and abilities but right now too many small business owners are been distracted by snake oil promises that gold lies just one subscription away.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our team has been involved in using large language models and other AI tools in various modes of usage since 2023, and I can tell you that all that glitters is not gold, it’s just hyperbolic marketing trash (probably spun by an AI tool).
Please keep your focus on your customers and THAT will help you stay on the straight and narrow. Here’s how.
The Stairway To Human Hell And Brain Atrophy
Two things inspired this post.
Firstly, I have just seen a rash of ads proclaiming we need an AI-first mindset.
No. No we don’t. We never have. We never will.
What is useful is an AI-supported human endeavour. That is the sweet spot.
That emerging industry of quick-buck-eteers is cashing in on our innate, evolved drive to be lazy. Yes, our brain wants to do nothing, if it can, to conserve calories. But, at the same time, our brain thrives when we engage in novelty. That’s our brain’s plasticity can be employed and new connections made, to create a better, faster, and more efficient brain.
But you string an “I’ll do everything for you” gimmick with bells, whistles, and the digital equivalent of showbag filler trinkets, it’s a perfect storm for kidnapping our brains.
Secondly, a client asked today if this new era of AI-led search means we need to write for the bots?
Well, despite all the hullabaloo that these snake oil people sprout (yes, they are the new SEO and AdWords pushers), they have no idea how the large language models really work. And neither do the people who made them. Seriously, they are developing in ways unexpected.
So how do you rewrite your website content and marketing to lure these bots.
You don’t.
Let me explain why.
Customers First, Not AI
Imagine any of these Huckleberry promises about getting hundreds of leads or thousands of sales were true. How amazing would that be?
But let’s pause a moment. Who are these sheep-like people that this AI tool can round up and not only steer to your business but also open their wallets and buy from you?
No matter how slick the push, it all becomes serious when someone needs to pay.
And, yes, there are many psychologically-persuasive methods marketers can use to hypnotise you and make you pay, but that is countered by a thing called Buyer’s Remorse and the allure of the refund option, once heads have cooled down.
So, what now?
Apply The Discipline Of Crafting Useful Messages That Meet People On Their Journey To You
I started intermittent fasting almost four weeks ago. That means, I skip breakfast and lunch, until breaking my fast around 2-4pm.
I have tried this in the past and it was hard work. I was constantly thinking about eating and impatient for the weight loss or other benefits.
But this time, something has been different.
- I just decided to draw a line in the sand because:
I caught Tim Ferriss make an off hand comment on one of my favourite podcasts, Econtalk, noting how four weeks of this method of fasting delivered very clean, impressive blood tests. - I recalled my colleague, David Olney, telling me how the rumbles in your stomach do not come about because you are hungry but rather because our systems have adopted a Pavlov’s Dog approach to eating, releasing the hunger hormone, ghrelin, to get us to gorge. Once you know this, it’s like little Toto pulling back the curtain in the Wizard Of Oz, revealing the ogre was not to be feared, just a little man playing tricks.
- I then was reading The Paramedic Mindset by Leigh Anderson, and he cited literature about elite athletes who win gold and championships, noting, they are the ones who thrive on the process, while others who just want to win the title, tend to fail.
- And The Fourth Pillar by Harry Moffitt was the last kick up my backside, as his philosophy-informed, SAS-shaped narrative helped me find a way to relish the “pain” and to just push on for the greater good.
It’s the same with marketing.
Aside from random accidents, nothing happens like magic. But if we show up, we think about our potential customers and their wants, needs, and fears, we can start helping to make sense of their world in relation to our part of it.
Even writing this blog is helping. Yes, you might find it gives you an insight into how I think (which it does) and if that aligns with your values and needs, you may well follow me up to explore how we might work together.
But if this leaves you cold, I won’t lose sleep over that because this simple, 40-minute act of getting my thoughts written “out loud” and “by hand”, has scratched a deep itch. I feel better for having represented my perspective in a field I love and in the hope it might save you from being sucked in by the AI charlatans.
As the Swiss physician Paracelsus, said in Latin, “dosis sola facit venenum,” meaning:
“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; alone the dose makes that a thing is not a poison.”
So this was my marketing discipline work out. What have you done today?