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

AI has made creating marketing content much quicker. You can ask it for social media posts, blog articles, emails, website copy, ideas, headlines and just about anything else. There’s a problem though…

If everybody is using the same AI tools and giving them similar instructions, we risk ending up with a lot of marketing that sounds exactly the same!

I’ve been using AI more and more in my own business and I think it’s useful, but I see it as something to work with rather than something that should do all the thinking for you.

Here’s how I think businesses can get the benefits of AI without losing the personality, knowledge and experience that make their marketing their own.

Don’t start with “write me a post”

You can open ChatGPT and type something like “Write me a LinkedIn post promoting my web design service” and you’ll get something back within seconds. It might even sound perfectly well written. But ChatGPT doesn’t know how I work, what makes Belluber different, the sort of clients I want, what I think about websites or how I normally speak to people unless I tell it.

The more useful information you give AI, the better chance it has of producing something you can actually use.

Tell AI about your business first

Before asking AI to create marketing content, give it some background.

That could include:

• what your business does
• the products or services you provide
• the type of customers you want to attract
• the problems you help them solve
• why customers choose you
• your experience and areas of expertise
• how you want your business to sound
• words or phrases you would and wouldn’t normally use

You don’t need to type all of that every time. Depending on the AI tool you’re using, you should be able to set up instructions or a project containing information about your business that you can reuse.

I do this with Belluber. The more relevant context AI has, the less time I have to spend correcting generic suggestions afterwards.

Use AI to get past the blank page

This is probably one of the biggest benefits for me. Coming up with an idea is one thing. Turning it into a properly structured article, email or series of posts can take much longer. AI is very good at helping you get that first draft onto the screen.

You can give it your rough notes, a list of points you want to cover, information from a project or something you’ve written previously and ask it to help you organise it.

It’s much easier to edit something that’s already there than stare at a blank screen wondering how to start.

Give it your knowledge rather than asking it to invent some

This is really important if you provide a professional or specialist service.

Instead of asking AI to tell you what your customers need to know, start with what you know. What questions do customers ask you? What mistakes do you regularly see? What advice do you find yourself giving? What has happened on a recent project? What have you learnt from doing your job for years? Give that information to AI and ask it to help you turn it into useful content.

That way the expertise is still yours. AI is helping you communicate it.

Use real examples

This is one of the easiest ways to stop AI-generated content sounding generic. If you’re writing about customer service, add something that actually happened with a customer. If you’re explaining a common problem, mention one you’ve genuinely come across. If you’re talking about a project, explain what you did and what happened. I’m doing exactly that while updating some of the older articles on this website.

I’m using AI to help me review and rewrite articles I originally wrote years ago. It saves me lots of time getting the structure and first draft together, but I’m not just copying and pasting the result onto my website. I’m changing wording I wouldn’t use, removing bits that don’t sound like me, combining sentences and paragraphs, adding things I’ve learnt since I originally wrote the article and including examples from my own business.

Sometimes I disagree with what AI suggests and change it completely. That’s the bit that makes the finished article mine rather than an article ChatGPT could have written for any marketing business.

Tell it when it doesn’t sound like you

You don’t have to accept the first answer AI gives you. If something sounds too formal, too salesy, too enthusiastic or just not like something you’d ever say, tell it. Better still, explain why you don’t like it.

For example, I’ve found there are certain phrases and writing habits that immediately make content feel AI-generated to me. If I keep correcting them and explaining how I’d rather something was written, the results become much closer to what I want. You can also give AI examples of things you’ve already written and ask it to use a similar tone – although I’d still check the finished result carefully.

Don’t let AI make you sound more impressive than you are

AI does have a habit of getting a little carried away. A normal service can suddenly become transformative, game-changing or revolutionary. A straightforward process becomes a journey and everybody seems to be passionate about everything. If that’s genuinely how your business communicates, fine. But if it isn’t, take it out.

Clear, believable content is much more useful than filling your website and social media with claims that don’t sound like you.

Check the facts

This one is really important. AI can give you an answer that sounds totally convincing and is completely wrong.

If you’re using it to help with factual content, statistics, regulations, technical information or anything else where accuracy matters, check the information against a reliable source.

Use AI for ideas, not just finished content

You don’t have to ask AI to write everything for you. Sometimes it’s more useful as ‘somebody’ to bounce ideas off.

You could ask it to suggest:

• questions potential customers might have about a service
• blog subjects based on common customer problems
• different angles for a social media post
• ways to explain something complicated more clearly
• headlines for an article
• FAQs for a website page
• ideas for a newsletter
• ways to reuse content you’ve already created

You can then decide which suggestions are relevant rather than asking it to create a month’s worth of content and publishing the lot.

Make one piece of content work harder

This is where I think AI can save businesses a lot of time. If you’ve spent time writing a useful article, don’t let it sit on your website and do nothing else. You could give the article to AI and ask it for some ideas to pull out of it for social media posts or a newsletter. The same applies to a case study, presentation, report or video transcript.

You’re not constantly asking AI to invent new things to say – you’re making better use of information you’ve already created.

AI can help with website content too

AI can be useful when you’re struggling to explain a service clearly on your website.

You could give it your existing page and ask what questions a potential customer might still have, where something is unclear or what information appears to be missing. You can also use it to help create FAQs, reorganise information or suggest clearer headings.

Again, I wouldn’t ask it to write an entire website from scratch. That’s when you tend to get the same vague claims about quality, solutions and exceptional service that could belong to anybody.

Don’t use AI just because you can

Not every email, comment or social media reply needs to go through ChatGPT. Sometimes it’s quicker (and much more natural), to write two sentences yourself.

AI should save you time or help you do something better. If you’re spending longer prompting it, rewriting the answer and trying to make a simple message sound human again, you probably didn’t need it in the first place.

AI should make your marketing easier, not make it less you

I don’t think businesses need to be put off using AI for their marketing. Used properly, it can save loads of time and help you come up with ideas you might not have thought of.

The businesses that get the most from it will be the ones giving AI better information in the first place, checking what it produces and adding the knowledge, opinions, experience and personality that AI doesn’t have.

If you’d like some help getting better results, I’ve created a free AI Content Prompt Toolkit with prompts for social media, blogs and website content, along with guidance on giving AI the background information it needs to create content that’s more relevant to your business.