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Emanuel Rose, author of “Authentic Marketing in the Age of AI” joins me on Episode 641 of “The Business Storytelling Show” to discuss the topic.
We discuss:
- What is authentic marketing?
- How does AI affect it?
- How can you tell when marketing is inauthentic?
- Ensuring your marketing is authentic
What is authentic marketing?
Authentic marketing to me is really about telling your truthful story to engage with the customers that you can help the most. It’s not misleading but is transparent about what the product can and cannot do. At the end of the day, it helps companies connect to the right people, the people they can actually help.
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This becomes especially important as consumers can look through inauthenticity. And even when they don’t, at some point, they figure out that the purchase is not as good as they thought it would be. Afterall, that does not lead to return customers. Inauthenticity can hurt business long-term.
Now, with the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the use of such in content creation and other marketing practices, committing to be authentic, and then implementing with that in mind becomes ever more important.
Diving deeper on authentic marketing
Authentic marketing is the idea that you really want to understand the pain points of the people that you’re talking to, you want to treat them like human beings, and you want to have a conversation with them, according to Emanuel. He explains that sometimes as marketers, we get lost in our KPIs and having to generate a certain number of leads, and we forget that we’re actually talking to people who have to make a decision. The authentic part is remembering the humaneness in the interaction with potential customers.
He points out that anything that’s challenging often gets overlooked because it takes more time and thought and refers to this as “lazy marketing” where marketers just want to get tasks done without deeply considering their target audience. Young or inexperienced copywriters and ad writers often make this mistake by creating content that focuses on what the company provides rather than the problems and solutions that would actually resonate with customers. To get good marketing results, you have to do good, thoughtful work that demonstrates understanding of your target audience.
A key part of authentic marketing is stratifying your market – telling different, tailored stories to different customer segments. If you’re selling personal training, your messaging should resonate differently with baby boomer women versus Gen Z women, anticipating their unique concerns and building an “envelope of trust” based on that understanding.
Successful brands often have a visible leader who posts on social platforms like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. This allows a human connection to the brand through the leadership. For older generations not accustomed to such transparency, this can be a challenge. But for marketing authenticity, it’s critical for the CEO or founders to be the primary influencers of the brand rather than paid marketing employees. Their passion for starting the company or solving customer problems comes across as more believable.
If leaders are not naturally comfortable being public figures, interviews can be a good approach to draw out their authentic perspectives on the company’s origin story, vision and purpose. Scripting tends to come across as inauthentic, so unscripted videos on a smartphone work better to convey gritty authenticity – which the market often demands nowadays.
The role of AI
AI has increased the amount of marketing content being produced, both good and bad. The seduction of taking a “shotgun approach” with AI-generated content is real. Instead, Emanuel advises marketers continue using AI as a “scalpel” rather than a shotgun. In other words, AI should be used strategically and precisely rather than just spewing out mass content hoping something sticks.
The best marketing transactions happen when you can speak to an ideal client profile that you truly understand, with an offer tailored specifically to their needs and consumption preferences. This level of insight and customization runs counter to lazy, broad-based marketing enabled by irresponsible use of AI.
So while generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help develop initial ideas for blog topics, interview questions, ad concepts and more, human marketers need to carefully prompt the AI and have an interactive conversation to refine the output. The AI rough drafts still require cleaning up, revising, and adding the human touch before publication to avoid repetition, hallucinations or inauthentic voice.
The prompt engineering and iterative process with AI takes thoughtful effort. But it can save time for resource-constrained marketing teams and entrepreneurs compared to creating fully manual original drafts. As long as the human guidance ensures the final output is unique yet aligned to brand voice, AI becomes an amplifier rather than a crutch.
When evaluating AI tools, Emanuel recommends analyzing the biggest drag on current marketing workflows or weak points in capability. Research several tools that could address those gaps. Factor required investments of both money (monthly subscriptions) and time needed to learn the technologies and integrate them into workflows. Tools should solve high-priority needs rather than just accumulate without strategy.
Maintaining authenticity alongside AI augmentation requires marketers improve their prompts over time, check outputs diligently, and stay focused on speaking to the needs of well-defined audience segments. Trying to entirely automate customization and emotional connection is where inauthenticity creeps in. Responsible adoption that combines the scalable idea generation of AI with the refinement, judgment and care of human marketers is the ultimate recipe for success.
Like websites, AI capabilities represent tools that some will use to benefit marketing and customer relationships, while others apply irresponsibly in ways that undermine authenticity. Hopefully conscientious marketers will outnumber those seeking shortcuts, because AI adoption is inevitable. By framing AI as an enhancement rather than replacement for thoughtful human marketing efforts, its potential to improve reach and relevance of authentic branding remains high.
In conclusion
The bottom line is that effective authentic marketing requires truly understanding your target customers, speaking directly to their needs and problems, conveying the passion and purpose of company leaders, and communicating in an unscripted yet strategic way. It takes more effort than lazy or broad-based marketing, but pays off with stronger customer relationships and advocacy.
But even with the use of AI, that doesn’t mean your marketing will become inauthentic, especially if it was authentic to begin with. Though there certainly is a danger since AI offers ways to move quicker, and even create content from scratch with just the push of a button.
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