Hello, my friend!
While I was in the middle of a little recon on some businesses in the area and I checked my email and saw not one, but four emails about AI…just today!
This AI talk is getting crazy but it did get me thinking about you and your business and how deceptive this AI thing could possibly be to local marketers.
I don’t want to downplay what AI is but I will call this what it is, A New Tool, that’s it. It’s shiny and smells nice and has so…many…cool…features, but it’s just another tool. And yes, it is a very cool tool, and you might want to play around with it, but before you go buying software built around AI (and there are a LOT of them now), let me give you a few nuggets to pay attention to, K?
- AI will NOT be taking over the world anytime, at least not in the Terminator sense. It’s got a loooong way to go for that to happen.
- AI cannot think. This is not a debated topic. AI can DO but it cannot THINK. We (the humans) can think and do, but if you can train someone to DO the work, the DOING is a commodity (that’s an impressive word for easy to get and in large quantities). Our job is to THINK and use AI to help with the doing.
- Think of AI, the same way people used to think of freelance help from Fiverr or Upwork. If you need some copy or graphics, you wouldn’t think twice about farming that help out to someone who could do it faster and cheaper than you could. The older folks used to say things like, “get your neighbor’s kid to do it for $10.” Bad news, my seasoned friends, the neighbor’s kid’s rates are now around $100
- AI is like an intern that doesn’t complain (for now) and will do as much as it’s capable of doing…with one big caveat – AI knows nothing. Tell it to write a poem and it will, but it doesn’t know what a poem is. It can scour the interweb really, really fast, find out what a poem is and create one faster than you can spellcheck “haiku” but that’s it. It’s not smart.
- Though it is super fast and super dumb, it doesn’t know that, so everything it spits out looks and sounds super legit. Don’t believe it? Check out Google’s little debacle when it debuted its AI tool…to the world!
- There are some savvy ways to get good results from AI but the best way is to treat it like what it is, the cheap intern willing to work hard but still needs their work checked. Your intern is not YOU. You can think…it cannot
But, with all that trash-talk on AI, one thing AI is pretty good at is research. It’s like a more polite search engine. Instead of just spewing out search results and links, it gives polite answers like the good little intern it is.
Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about.
You know my “big thing” is helping businesses create a connection with their customer (I don’t call it Customer Connection for nothing). I asked Chat GPT how important it is to create a connection with your customer and here is its response:
Creating a strong relationship with customers is essential for the success of any local business. Local businesses rely heavily on repeat business and word-of-mouth recommendations, and developing a positive relationship with customers is the foundation of this.
Here are some reasons why creating a relationship with customers is so important for local businesses:
- Loyalty: Building a relationship with customers can help foster a sense of loyalty towards the business. When customers feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to return and recommend the business to others.
- Reputation: Word-of-mouth recommendations are a powerful marketing tool for local businesses. By creating a positive relationship with customers, businesses can encourage them to spread the word and help build a strong reputation for the business in the local community.
- Feedback: Developing a relationship with customers can also provide valuable feedback for the business. By listening to their needs and concerns, businesses can make improvements to their products or services and better meet the needs of their target audience.
- Upselling: A strong relationship with customers can also lead to opportunities for upselling or cross-selling. When customers trust and value the business, they are more likely to be open to trying new products or services that the business offers.
Overall, creating a relationship with customers is critical for the success of local businesses. By building loyalty, fostering a positive reputation, gathering feedback, and upselling, local businesses can drive growth and establish a strong presence in their local community.
It’s not exactly the most compelling piece of marketing copy but it’s pretty solid and it sounds almost exactly like the 100+ business books I’ve read over the past 5 years (hint: AI is pulling its info from these texts).
So there you go – a mini intro on AI. We’ll talk more about it but for now, don’t get too excited that all your good marketing work can be done for you OR too scared that AI will take away your local business…even if your business is as a writer!
Have a great week, my friend.
