AI Marketing’s Toilet Bowl Mentality

There is an alarming trend in marketing today that I’m starting to see everywhere I look. It’s a continuation of marketing’s journey to become “quick” and “easy” and right now, AI is leading the charge the bottom of the barrel, or more accurately, the bowl.

I often have said “quick and easy is the DEFINITELY best way to clean your toilet bowl, but NOT the best way to do marketing work.” It’s also not a good way to build ANYTHING that matters.

Let’s look at lottery winners.  It’s been reported that 70 percent of them go bankrupt less than five years after getting their quick and easy fortunes. They don’t appreciate it and so who cares, right?  Same thing with marketing.

I like to remind clients and really the world at large that marketing is VERY dangerous because every time you decide to communicate to your audiences who have consented to receive said communications, those relationships are now at risk.  The UNSUBSCRIBE button is the very first one for any group email and it’s like email software is DARING users to use it. Look how quick and how EASY that was to hit that button and—end the marketing relationship….FOREVER.

I saw a guy on LinkedIn saying, “I created a website and sales e-mails” just from a 30 minute conference call — it was so (wait for it..) quick and easy!  Right, and I will bet good American folding money that the site and emails were terrible. You see, it takes no time to do bad work, which is why we all suffer through such bad marketing today — bad emails, horrible websites, invasive text messages, etc.

Good work requires thought. And thought actually does take time. This is a good thing. This is a respectful thing. Because if you’re going to make the very dangerous decision of putting your customer relationships at risk, you’d better be REALLY sure what you’re sending to them is your VERY best, not just what an AI dashed off at lunch. Get it?  

The way we make marketing better is to first understand that:

  1. We don’t automatically have the right to bother people 24/7 with our sales-driven garbage and expect them to remain connected
  2. We don’t want to make things easier on US while not even considering THEM
  3. We want to bring VALUE and DEEPEN the relationship every time we hit SEND
  4. We want to invest in creating the BEST for our customers because they mean a lot to us
  5. We want to make this experience fun for them—and us

AI marketing (esp automated) does none of that. Do not brag about how quickly you got your marketing work done if it turns out to be crap and increases your company’s unsubscribe rate by double digits. Quick and easy for you might be the end of the line for them and THAT actually will be the end of the line for you, too.

We can do better. We owe it to the audiences out there to do better. Think long and hard (the opposite of quick and easy btw) about it — and then send out your next hopefully GREAT thing. 

FYI – None of this was written by an AI or helped in any way by one because I care about you (my audience) and because I am an actual human writer.