Welcome back to DigitalRage. I am Jeff the producer here at Byer Company. Today we are presenting a marketing framework for using AI tools, but incorporating the much needed human touch to generate unique thoughts and credibility.
A brand needs a unique voice that breaks out of the AI monotone to deliver data and insights AI cannot provide. Let's dig in.
The whole atmosphere we are marking right now is just thick with this promise of AI or maybe threat.
It is. I mean, everywhere you look. Every conference, every LinkedIn post, it's this idea that AI is going to automate everything and replace all of us.
You can solve every problem overnight. It's exhausting, honestly.
It is being crammed down our throats.
Absolutely. That's why we really have to just pause and reset here. Because the source material we are looking at, it just cuts right through that noise with a really important voice.
With a really important clarification, which AI is not a magic wand. It is, and I love the synology, it's a power tool.
A power tool. I like that. I really do. Because a power tool, I mean, it's useless, right? It's even dangerous if you don't have a skilled person actually guiding it. You need a plan.
You need a blueprint and that gets to the real point of this whole framework. The goal here is not full automation.
It's the opposite.
Basically, it's to become more human, more creative, more strategic by basically delegating all that tedious repetitive work to the machine.
So we're trying to get the scale of AI without losing the soul of the brand or the authenticity. That's the cornerstone of everything.
Okay. So if we're going to pull that off, we need a real strategy. So I guess our mission today is to lay out that framework.
A way to weave AI into marketing that doesn't just chase efficiency.
A framework that stops optimizing for the robots.
And we have to because it feels like the default setting right now is, well, it's what the source warns about.
Using AI to do the wrong things faster.
Exactly.
So what does that trap actually look like?
You see it everywhere. It's falling into that pattern of just mass producing generic low-value content.
The goal is social media posts.
So let's say that's a solid post. Yeah, automating things that shouldn't be automated and chasing all those vanity metrics that look great on a chart but have like zero actual impact on a real human being.
So we're optimizing for an algorithm not a person.
That's it. And the source is pretty blunt about it. It calls that strategy a dead end.
And it feels like a dead end.
Like we're creating this digital world where every brand just sounds exactly the same.
And what happens when you feed an AI the same internet data everyone else is using the value of that basic generic information is just plummeting.
We're seeing proof of that every day or only I mean think about Google's AI overviews or just the huge surge in people using chat GPT for basic questions.
If the answer to be generated instantly its market value just drops.
It drops to zero.
Right to zero.
And this is where it gets really critical strategically.
The source brings up Kevin Indieg's point that AI is destroying the value of that old school evergreen concept.
To foundational stuff.
Yeah.
But at the same time it's massively raising the value of additive net new insights.
Yeah.
This has to be a huge threat to content forms.
It's an existential threat.
And we all need to really internalize this idea.
If your whole AI strategy is just to create and I'm quoting the source here, more the same bland slop.
Ah, that's a good phrase.
It's a great phrase. If that's what you're doing, you're just digging your own grave.
You have to pivot from chasing scale to demanding substance.
Okay, so give me a solid example of that.
What's the difference between bland slop and an additive insight?
Sure.
So evergreen slop would be like the 10 best SEO practices for 2024.
An AI can write that in 10 seconds.
Right.
An additive net new insight would be publishing the results from your company's own six month A/B test
on how core web vitals actually impacted your conversion rates using your own data.
Something an AI can't possibly replicate.
It can't.
That unique data is what builds trust.
It becomes a magnet.
That makes a ton of sense.
So if generic is the dead end, we need a plan.
And the source boils it down to three pillars, the three A's.
Right.
Forget all the complex models.
This framework just stands on three simple ideas.
Augment, analyze, and authenticate.
Okay. Before we dive into each one, let's just quickly define them.
Augment is.
Augment is about helping human creativity, not replacing it.
Think of AI as your intern.
Okay.
Analyze.
That's about using AI for what it's truly great at.
Finding hidden patterns in huge messy data sets that a human could never spot.
And the last one, authenticate.
That's your defense.
That's about making sure everything you create builds trust and actually stands out from all the generic AI content that's coming.
All right. Let's start with that first pillar then augment human creativity.
The big rule here seems to be AI is your intern, not your creative director.
That is the line in the sand.
That's what determines if you succeed or fail.
You use AI to get past the friction, speed up the boring parts, but you never ever let it handle the final execution.
But there's a risk there, isn't there?
I mean, marketers are pushed for speed.
What stops them from just letting the AI write the final copy anyway?
What about changing the use case?
Focus on reducing friction, you know that feeling of staring at a blank page.
Well, instead of trying to rate 10 great subject lines, you ask the AI for five.
You probably won't use any of them as is.
But seeing them, it sparks a human idea.
Maybe you combine two or you see an angle the AI totally missed.
So it's a creative sparring partner.
Exactly. It generates the raw material and the human takes the time they saved and applies judgment, nuance, creativity.
We see this with visual stuff too, right? Using tools like mid-journey or deli to just spitball concepts when a designer is stuck.
Yes, you get that rapid ideation.
But then a real designer takes those concepts and executes them with the right brand feel, the technical skill, the emotion.
The AI is the spark.
The human provides the professional polish.
And this applies to personalization at scale too.
The source mentions AI can draft say 100 personalized email intros.
Which is an incredible time saver.
But a human has to add that final authentic touch, that one sentence that shows you are actually paying attention.
That's the part AI can't fake, the real human emotion.
It can't.
So the takeaway here is really simple. Look at your workflow this week.
Pick one creative task you absolutely hate.
Use AI for the rough draft and then spend all that time you saved making it brilliant.
A huge shift in how we use our time.
Okay, so once we've augmented creativity, we need to aim it at the right people.
That brings us to pillar two.
Analyze the signal in the noise.
And this, I mean, this is where AI goes from being a helpful intern to an essential strategic partner.
Humans.
We are just terrible at spotting complex patterns in massive data sets.
Our brains just aren't wired for it.
Not at all. We look for simple cause and effect.
But reality is messy. AI is built for that mess.
So it's about going deeper than just surface level demographics.
What does that analysis look like?
It means you move past basic segments like, you know, millennials in Chicago.
You have AI tools actually cluster your audience into these microsegments based on their behavior.
I'm kind of behavior.
For instance, an AI might notice that customers who frequently look at both your pricing page and your support docs end up having a 30% higher lifetime value.
That's a segment you can actually do something with.
So it's predictive. It tells you where to focus your creative energy.
Precisely. And maybe the most powerful example is using AI to find out why your customers are churning.
Instead of just guessing, you feed it thousands of support tickets.
Chat transcripts survey responses.
And it finds patterns that a human agent would miss.
A human agent, dealing with things one by one, might just categorize 100 tickets as cancellation requests.
A generic tag.
But the AI analyzes the actual text and might find that say a specific bug in the mobile payment interface is mentioned in 80% of those conversations.
The individual agent misses the pattern, but the AI connects the dots.
So the takeaway is, stop staring at spreadsheets.
Stop staring at spreadsheets that don't tell the whole story.
Feed your data into an AI tool and ask to really specific question like, what is the one hidden pattern here that I am missing?
And then this is key. You have to actually act on what you find.
You have to commit resources to it. That's the difference between using AI for efficiency versus using it for a real competitive advantage.
And that advantage brings us to the third pillar. Authenticate everything.
If the first two pillars are about creating better and understanding deeper, this one feels like it's about survival.
It is. The source literally calls the internet a cesspool of AI generated slop.
Strong words. Very strong. But it points to a critical truth.
When content becomes a commodity, authenticity is your most valuable asset.
Trust is the new currency. You have to be the signal in all that noise.
So how do you do that? How do you earn trust when everyone's using the same tools?
You lead with the one thing only you have. Unique proprietary data. This means you have to start publishing your own research, your own case studies.
AI can summarize the internet, but it can't replicate the data that's behind your company's firewall.
And you have to step out from behind the text on a screen.
Yes. The framework is big on this. Lean into formats like video on podcasts.
Show your face. Show your team. It's so much harder for AI to fake a real unscripted human conversation.
The medium itself becomes a form of authentication.
And finally, have an opinion.
Have a strong opinion. The source sites the Edelman Trust barometer, which shows people trust experts.
If you have a bold point of view on your industry, share it. Don't just recite the consensus that an AI could summarize.
So the challenge for everyone listening is to look at their content calendar and ask for every single piece could an AI have written this.
And if the answer is yes, you either scrap it or you pivot immediately.
You add a personal story, your own data, a controversial take, something that proves a human was here.
Okay, so let's put it all together. Augment, analyze, authenticate. What does this mean for the future of marketing? It sounds like a pretty big shift.
It is a massive shift. The bottom line is that the future isn't human versus AI. It's human with AI.
The winners will be the marketers who use AI to handle the scale and the data, which frees up their human team for the really critical work.
The work that can't be automated. Building relationships, coming up with game-changing ideas.
Exactly, but that takes discipline and the source gives a really clear three-step action plan to get started.
Okay, let's hear it.
First, appoint an AI Augmenter. Pick one person whose job it is to find one new way to augment your team's creativity every single week.
It forces you to keep experimenting.
I like that.
Number two.
Run one deep analysis. This month, not this year, use an AI to find one hidden insight in your data
and then actually build a campaign around it. Don't just let it sit in a report.
And the third step.
Kill one generic piece of content. Just get it off your calendar. Replace it with something only your brand could create.
A deep customer story and opinionated think piece. You have to starve the slot machine to feed the authenticity engine.
The power tool is here. It's ready. But the real work, the work that builds trust and gets results that aren't a commodity that still belongs to us.
The hype is going to fade, but the results from this kind of discipline approach won't. It's all about where you choose to invest your irreplaceable human time.
That leads perfectly to our final provocative thought for you today.
We've talked a lot about this need to authenticate by leading with your own proprietary data.
We know the source covers industries like cybersecurity, marketing analytics, SEO, all places where unique data is king.
So if we all accept that AI is rapidly making generic information totally worthless, it raises a really high stakes question for you and your team.
Which is?
How quickly do you need to fundamentally shift your resources, your time, your budget away from creating basic top of funnel content
and toward funding unique proprietary research that establishes you as the only trusted expert in your field?
Something to think about.
Something to chew on as you build your plan. This has been The Deep Dive. Thanks for joining us.
Reach out to us at jbuyer.com, commenting questions, follow us at buyer company on social media.
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