How can marketers improve the use of AI marketing tools to not come off like a spambot?
The way you use AI to market your products and services is how it will come across to your audience. AI marketing is great, but if you use it to spam your prospects with less than relevant and unoriginal content that lacks creativity then you’re toast.
That’s a great way to get an instant unsubscribe, unfriend, and unfollow all at the same time!
AI marketing is supposed to make things easier to get your message out there and build your brand, so make sure that message is worth spreading and make some friends.
Rule #1: Don’t be like Everyone Else
When the robot army takes over the world, we can all become like everyone else but for now, we are unique and emotionally charged individuals that buy tons of stuff online.
Online shopping and business, in general, has become a haven for AI automation. Whether it’s getting a text of what to buy when you walk into a mall or just getting an email with your name at the top, we are all getting accustomed to big companies knowing more and more about us. Adding to the craziness, marketers will use and abuse this technology to the highest degree.
As one of my favorite marketers, Gary Vaynerchuk says, “marketers ruin everything” and he’s right. AI will be the new tool that marketers use to get the inside information on their clients and prospects. They will squeeze every piece of data out of their targets and then write cunning content pieces to reel you in an email and sales pages to take you hook, line and sinker.
If you want a clearer picture of what marketers do today to get customers to buy, check out Clickbank. It’s the ultimate in AI marketing and has plenty of examples of what not to do if you’re interested in building a great brand but great if you’re looking for a quick buck.
Being a marketer myself, I know this because it works. It even works on me.
Rule #2: Freak Occurrences are Now the Norm
When I’m surfing the net sometimes I’m on Amazon looking up a product. I’m not going to buy it right now, but I’m just checking prices. It’s freaky when I go to Facebook next and see an ad for the same product I checked out earlier letting me know of special if I buy through them. Weird, huh?
Actually, it’s not weird anymore, because it happens all the time; and with all the data that’s collected on us every time we search, view and click, you can bet your bottom-dollar there will be more of this as this technology becomes more mainstream.
Since everyone tends to use marketing the same way these days, make it your priority to stand out. Make every piece of content you create unique but within your brand’s style.
You don’t have to go Richard Branson marketing stunts, but it’s important to make sure the engagement you get is high on all blogs, posts, articles, etc.
Rule #3: AI Marketing Is The Ultimate Community Builder
AI marketing is a very polarizing piece of technology. You might think I’m against using it, which I will assure you is not the case. I am in support of using it with care to build a huge community in the least amount of time.
If you use it for sales, it will be easier to drive readers to your products, but is also just as fast to drive them away if you’re message is off.
AI is great for data purposes, but when you sell you have to make sure you’re still making the emotional connection with your readers in every piece.
Here’s a great strategy to understand your readers better to build trust…
Use AI marketing to give out your best material. Teach your clients about what you do with a great ebook and use automation to spread it to all your profiles. Then create a targeted email campaign that gives even more.
After a few emails you can start selling. If your open and click-thru rates are high then you’ll know that you’re in the green to start selling.
Sell them on your products for 2-3 emails using high-converting copy and then stop selling altogether.
Some of your readers will ‘bail’ when they get the sales pitch and that data is extremely valuable for the next time you do this.
Rule #4: Think: Brand First
Expert marketers know you don’t have to sell very hard if you get your brand right first. This is why I think it’s better to use AI marketing build your brand, then make your sales pitches highly targeted and personal. Wait until you’ve gathered more data on your target audience than you think is necessary and then start selling.
The need for exceptional copy grows through the roof with AI marketing, which means more businesses will struggle to figure out why their automation isn’t working.
What separates the winners and losers will be many things like the quality of the research, the readability of the copy, the eye-catching images and the quality of the videos. Headlines and subheadings must be more than perfect.
The companies that have gifted ad and sales page writers will do extremely well, so it is my recommendation to hire a professional copywriter for every sales piece you produce for your AI enhanced automation. If you can resist the urge to sell with AI then I think you’ll much better with a brand first pull tactic marketing strategy.
Rule #5: AI Marketing and the Time-saving Myth
If you’re marketing your business correctly, you can’t rush it.
If you think you can create a sales page in a day that will tell your story correctly, you’re kidding yourself.
Sure that kind of stuff happens, but only when you’re timing is perfect. Even some decent content can have that effect on selling a product if it’s about to go viral.
The reality of business is that unless you truly know who you’re talking to you will fall flat on your face and waste a ton of money. This is why using AI to collect data and understand your audience is how it should be used. Yes, AI marketing can make you a ton of money if it’s written well and targeted, but at what cost. Are you going to risk your entire brand to make a quick buck?
This is what a lot of companies do way too soon. They don’t produce nearly enough content and then try some cheesy sales trick to get people’s attention.
Rule #6: Emotion Sells
AI can give you the best information money can buy. It can give the tools to succeed, but right now it doesn’t capture the attention of your audience. You do!
Your emotion through your words, videos, and audio creates the connection you need to get your clients to pull their credit cards out and get a sale.
This is the reason why AI can be dangerous to a company with a mediocre product and weak brand building skills. Your brand and community should be firmly established before attempting anything except fact-finding with AI.
There are tons of marketing gurus out there that will tell you that a good funnel with one or two content pieces is enough, but what they don’t tell you is that you need to have a viral product or a huge email list for their system to work. They don’t tell you about all the nights they stayed up late creating Instagram images, writing ebooks, or making explainer videos for their website.
Very rarely will they tell you what they did to get that huge list. True marketing is boots on the ground. Hooyah!
Summary
Treat your customers like you would want to be treated. If you spam them, you can guarantee a large majority of them will delete and ‘unsub’ you really fast.
Use AI marketing to give or to teach. It’s too powerful to spam. Spamming creates feast or famine with your business. If you spent a ton of time creating your community, I wouldn’t make a habit of using AI for sales, but I would use it to continue to build your community.
Your clients deserve more of a personal touch when you try to sell your products to them. They gave you their trust and now you’re going to put a cheesy spambot sales page in front of them. Come on, people are catching on to that game more every day.
Content is the gift that keeps on giving, so supercharge it with the data you collect with AI.
There’s a reason why most companies don’t use spambots to reach out to new customers, and it’s the same reason why there is a law to protect recipients of the emails from cold-email harassment.
If you’re looking for more ways to build a business for tomorrow, you have to understand where the world is going. Check out our last article, Why You Need to Adapt Your Business to Millennials.
