Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
287: How to use AI for Marketing Strategy
How to Use AI for Marketing Strategy (Without Losing Your Voice)
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, host Kendra Corman tackles a hot-button topic: AI in marketing strategy. Is it a game-changer, a gimmick, or something in between? If you've ever rolled your eyes at those five-minute "AI builds your business" TikToks—or felt overwhelmed trying to organize your strategy—you’re not alone.
Kendra shares a refreshingly balanced take on using AI as a powerful marketing assistant, not a replacement. She walks you through her own process using her AI partner "Suzy Strategy," and how this dynamic duo transformed pages of chaotic meeting notes into a streamlined, strategic roadmap for a client.
In this episode, we cover:
AI Myths vs. Reality
- Why AI won’t build your business from scratch (and that’s a good thing)
- The danger of unrealistic expectations (spoiler: it's not a magic wand)
- What AI can do that saves you hours every week
How to Use AI as a Marketing Partner
- Kendra’s real-life example of AI helping build a client strategy
- How her AI partner “Suzy” helps identify patterns, structure ideas, and save time
- Why the last 10-20% of human input is what makes content exceptional
A Practical Framework for Building Strategy with AI
- Start with what you know: your customers, their pain points, your insights
- Use AI to prompt clarifying questions and surface blind spots
- Tap AI for research, trend analysis, and content structuring
- Always refine and personalize: add your voice, stories, and expertise
Key Takeaways for Marketers:
- AI is a tool, not a miracle. It’s a screwdriver, not the whole kitchen table.
- Use AI to amplify, not replace, your expertise.
- The best strategies come from a partnership between human insight and machine support.
Whether you’re skeptical about AI or curious how to use it more strategically, this episode offers a grounded, practical approach to integrating AI into your marketing workflow—without losing your authenticity.
If you found this episode helpful, share it with a fellow marketer or entrepreneur!
Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
🎧 Imperfect Marketing — because imperfect action always beats perfect inaction.
Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?
Check and see how I am using it for FREE on YouTube.
From "Holy cow, it can do that?" to "Wait, how does this work again?" – I've got all your AI curiosities covered. It's the perfect after-podcast snack for your tech-hungry brain.
Watch here
Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business, with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today I am going to be talking about something that seems to be on a lot of people's minds AI for marketing strategy. So I got this email the other day. That was a rant. The top line was AI sucks, and it was really about how AI sucks for marketing and your business and everything in between, and while reading it, I found myself nodding my head to some of it, but definitely shaking my head at the rest. The rest. The email was basically calling out I'm going to say those TikTok videos that used to show up on my For you page that basically said AI is going to build your business and it can do all of your marketing and just tell it who you're targeting and it'll come up with a downloadable and everything else to go with it. Right? I get the frustration, but conversations around AI seem to be one or the other. Right, it's going to take our jobs and replace us, or it's completely useless and coming up with mediocre drivel. And I have a more balanced perspective. Okay, and I feel like we're either selling it short or expecting it to do more than it can at this point, and I don't like either of those answers. Okay, ai saved me 30 to 40 hours a week, which is insane. It doesn't seem like it should be real, yet it does. Doesn't seem like it should be real, yet it does. So let's talk about how AI can enhance and assist you in creating your marketing strategy, not by taking over your business or recreating it or creating products for you, but working alongside you as a powerful tool Just a different way to think about it. So let me share a bit from this email that I received, and I'm going to read some of this, so bear with me.
Speaker 1:The author wrote AI won't build me a new business, or you or anyone. Now we're all surrounded by a slew of fake, mediocre content posing as empathy, sympathy and opportunity. You know what? Sympathy and opportunity? You know what? It's not entirely wrong. Ai alone is not going to build your business, and there absolutely is a flood of mediocre AI content out there for people that aren't using it the correct way. The writer also said my screwdriver won't build me a new kitchen table. You're right 100%. But that's where I disagree. Right, the screwdriver is not going to build you your entire kitchen table by itself, but that doesn't mean it's not an incredibly useful tool in the process. You might not be able to build your kitchen table without a screwdriver, right? The problem isn't with AI itself. It's how it's being used, and some of the people are using it with unrealistic expectations being set.
Speaker 1:There was somebody who was like get a complete marketing strategy or, you know, grow your business to $10,000 a day in five minutes with AI. Sorry, to burst your bubble. That is not realistic. Marketing is not magic, and neither is AI, although sometimes it does feel like it is. All AI can do is amplify your efforts, speed up certain processes, organize your thoughts and maybe sometimes help you see things from a different angle.
Speaker 1:I actually have an AI marketing partner. Her name is Susie, susie Strategy actually. Susie has about 20 plus years of marketing experience, a built-in. She knows the classics from content marketing expert Joe Paluzzi, marketing legend Seth Godin, writing guru Anne Handley and many others in the digital marketing space. But Susie doesn't run my business. I direct her focus, I provide the inputs and make the decisions. She is a partner, not a replacement for my experience and expertise. So let me give you a real example of how this partnership with Susie works.
Speaker 1:After a client discovery session, I had pages and pages of notes also known as transcript from fathomvideo but I was struggling to organize them into a coherent strategy because there were so many ideas, goals, challenges. It felt a little bit overwhelming to have that a 90 minute meeting in a transcript, right, and I needed to structure it in a way that made sense and really cut down to what they truly meant and were getting at which. I had some ideas because, again, we had a conversation right. So I had some ideas and I knew a little bit about what I was getting into, but that was about it. So again, I asked Susie to help me categorize the information, identify some potential strategic pillars, find patterns and connections. That's what she does. Well. She helped structure everything okay into four clear focus areas, suggested connections between them, and at least one of them I had missed in my analysis. When I presented what I came up with to the client and I, they actually said wow, this is really well organized. I loved how you got to the bottom of this, because we sort of felt a little disjointed and they were disjointed, but I was actually able to offer them clarity and Susie was able to help me along the way.
Speaker 1:Did Susie do the strategy? No, my questions, my thoughts, their responses that's what built the strategy, not AI. Ai probably saved me 10, 12 hours on the strategy, right Going through typing, organizing things like that. That's a lot of work. So, even though I had an outline and knew a little bit about where I was headed with them, susie was able to help me focus it even more. So, again, I made those final decisions. I actually edited a couple of things that Susie had that I didn't agree with. This was way faster than I could have done it alone.
Speaker 1:That's the power of AI. When it's used correctly, it enhances capabilities, it doesn't replace them. Now, when you're thinking about AI and marketing and marketing strategy, I want you to think about AI getting you 80 to 90% of the way there. That 10 to 20%, that's what makes all of the difference in this world. Now let me explain what I mean.
Speaker 1:Ai can draft content, analyze data, organize information, suggest ideas. It cannot replace your unique business knowledge. Ai doesn't know your company's history, internal dynamics or unwritten rules. Your understanding of your customer needs it can't replace. It hasn't had those conversations with those customers that you've had. It hasn't heard the emotion in their voice or noticed the hesitation when discussing certain topics. It can duplicate your brand, voice and personality. It can mimic a tone right, but authentic personality comes from real experiences and values. Your strategic decision making is what it can't duplicate. It can present options, but it doesn't truly understand risk, opportunity, cost or intuition based on years of experience in your industry. That's important. You have experience that AI may know of written down on paper, but it's not going to come up with a new idea. That's all you.
Speaker 1:I often see a stark difference between AI generated content and the final version after human refinement. For example, when I ask AI to write about marketing automation, it could produce a technically accurate article that covers all the basics. It could produce a technically accurate article that covers all the basics, but it doesn't include that story about how you helped a specific client use automation and reclaim 15 hours of their week. It's not going to reference the unique challenges your particular audience faces with implementation that human touch, those real world examples and stories. That's the 10 to 20% that turns mediocre content into something valuable and distinctive.
Speaker 1:So how would I recommend that you create a marketing strategy with AI? Well, here's my practical approach. First, start with what you know. What problem do you solve? Who are your customers? What are they trying to achieve? What challenges are they facing? What's keeping them up at night? That you can help them with AI? Yeah, it can make up answers to this, but it can't answer these questions for you, not in the way that you need to to build a marketing strategy. It can help give you a form and a focus and help you organize all of it, which will save you hours and hours and hours of time, but it's not going to do it all for you. Okay, this knowledge, this information, these insights, they have to come from you.
Speaker 1:Second, use AI to ask clarifying questions. I love asking AI what else do you need to know? Or how can I help you do this best? Right, because sometimes we are so close to our business that we miss asking important questions or we miss giving information because it's in our head. Ai can prompt you with things like have you considered your secondary audience? What metrics will indicate success in this strategy? Those types of questions that sometimes we know the answer to right. We just don't put it down on paper and if, when you're building a strategy, it really helps to have it there. Finally, or third I should say, ai can be used for research and trend analysis and trend identification. Ask it to summarize recent developments in your industry or identify patterns across successful competitors. Perplexity is a really good one for this and can help you do that.
Speaker 1:Fourth, have AI organize and structure your ideas. This is where I find it most valuable. I can just give it a brain dump right, feed it my thoughts, data, insights and ask it to help me find connections and create a structured approach that will give me that direction. Oh, by the way, I came up with that direction already, which is fine, but this will help take it to the next level. Finally, and this is absolutely essential, review, refine and inject your personality, experience and ideas. Add those customer stories, include your unique insights, ensure the strategy aligns with your brand, voice and values.
Speaker 1:This approach is not going to get you a full proof marketing strategy in five minutes or less. That's just not realistic. But if you understand your business, your customers and have ideas of your own. Ai can shave hours, dozens of hours off the process and maybe give you a perspective that you hadn't considered before. So where does this leave us?
Speaker 1:Ai is not the magic marketing pill. It's also not useless. It's a tool, a powerful one, when used correctly. If you're completely ignoring AI in your marketing efforts, I hate to say it, but you're probably falling behind, not because AI is doing everything better right or that you're doing everything better by yourself, but because your competitors, who are using it strategically, have an efficiency advantage, and time is one of our most valuable resources. Those five-minute marketing strategies are going to be generic at best and potentially harmful at worst, and it can be harmful because it might go against your brand.
Speaker 1:The sweet spot is using AI as a partner, while maintaining your strategic vision, your unique voice, your unique experience and ideas. So start small. Use it to help you organize your thoughts, generate ideas based on your input, or draft content that you can refine. If you want a more structured approach, you can check out my content creation roadmap that walks you through exactly how to integrate AI into your content development process while maintaining quality and authenticity, which is important. You can find it on my website at KendraCormancom. Forward slash playbook.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Imperfect Marketing. Remember, good marketing isn't about finding magical shortcuts. It's about connecting authentically with your audience and providing genuine value. Ai can help with that process, but it cannot replace the human connection at the heart of great marketing. It can't. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a fellow marketer or business owner who might be wrestling with how to be using AI effectively. Be sure to rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, this is Kendra Korman, reminding you that imperfect marketing beats out perfect inaction. Every time, take care and have a great rest of your day.
