13. My thoughts on using AI for marketing

I'm not anti-AI. But when you're letting AI drive your creative direction instead of supporting it, your audience can sense it — even if they don't know how to explain it. And it's costing you more than you think.

Listen to hear more about:

• What happens when you let the brilliant chaos of your humanity take a backseat to "optimization"
• How marketing built on genuine human connection creates a totally different resonance 
• The reasons why relying on AI makes for ineffective marketing — and it's NOT just because it makes you look and sound the same as everyone else
• How to enjoy the benefits of this technology without compromising all that makes your business YOU 

If you've ever felt like something is "off" in your AI-assisted marketing but you couldn't name it, this might be what you've been feeling all along.

Transcript

You are listening to Liberatory Business and I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening and welcome to another episode where today we're diving into something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is artificial intelligence and its place in marketing. Now, there's so much weird fuzziness around it where people don't wanna talk about it, but if you know me, I'm always like, "Let's just talk about all of it."

So I'll be the first to tell you that I have been experimenting with AI. I've been playing with primarily ChatGPT and Claude, and testing what they can do for my business because, you know, I'm a business teacher, I'm a marketing teacher. Everyone's on this bandwagon. I'm like, let me check out what's happening.

Let me tell you something right off the bat, which is kind of a relief, was realizing, oh, AI is not as smart as me. It has a long way to go before it can be as smart as me, if it'll ever get there. And the thing is, I'm willing to bet it's not as smart as you either, and that's not me being arrogant. That's just the truth of where we are right now.

But here's the thing. Even if AI gets smarter—and it will, I truly believe we're just in the baby stages of AI and it's just about to get smarter and smarter—but even if it does, there's a fundamental issue with how it approaches marketing that I wanna talk about today.

So if you've been wondering about whether you should be using AI for your marketing, or you're using it for marketing but you feel weird about it, or if you've been guilty about it because you haven't been using it but you feel like you should, this episode is for you.

So let's talk about what happens when you ask AI to help with marketing that I have found. I have tried this many times. I have asked AI for help with email sequences (not that I really do those anyway, I just write everything in the moment), but hey, I try. Like, "Hey, create an email sequence for me. Create social media content for me. Create a sales page for me." I've tried it many different times, many different ways.

Every single time I'm like, "Wow, this sucks. Like really, really bad. I can't use any of this crap." And sometimes I'm like, "Okay, you know what, parts of this are okay, so maybe I just need to edit it." But then by the time I finished editing it, it might as well have been like I wrote the whole thing from scratch, 'cause the end result resembles the beginning 0%.

As I went through this process, I started thinking more deeply about why AI is so bad at helping me with marketing, why it sucks at writing sales pages, content, emails, whatever—like unusable, horrible, horrible. I would grimace, like, "Oh, it's so bad." Why does it suck so much?

And that's because I realized AI, when it's helping me with marketing, thinks the end goal is conversion, getting the sale, moving people through a customer journey that takes them from ignorance to awareness and from awareness to desire and from desire to the decision to buy. That's marketing 101, right? Sales 101.

And of course it thinks that. AI thinks whatever people feed it. And it's been trained to approach marketing and sales by people who think like this, people who understand and practice marketing and sales this way, right? So here's the funnel, the customer journey, the conversion.

But in my world, the world of business that I have built, that I practice and teach, that is only a part of marketing—leading people towards a sale. I mean, for sure that's a part of it, but it's not the only part of it, and it's not even the most important part.

Let me tell you what marketing really is to me:

First, it's satisfying human relationships for the sake of human relationships, because connecting with other humans on a human-to-human level is good. It is inherently enjoyable. It is good for us. We need it not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

Secondly, for me, marketing is service to the community, genuinely helping people before they buy, and regardless of whether they're gonna buy. It means giving away valuable advice, insights, tools, resources with no strings attached. Not like "no strings attached, and then they'll eventually buy from me," just like genuinely no strings. I just want this to help you because it makes me happy when people are helped because when I needed help and I got help, that felt good.

Third, marketing for me is a rigorous filtering system for people who are not aligned with me or are not really genuinely likely to enjoy or benefit from my work, even if I could skillfully push their psychological buttons to get them to buy from me anyway, which I could if I wanted to. I'm really good at that shit. But if we're not truly aligned in where we wanna go, I don't want you to buy from me because in some way that's going to be a misaligned experience for both of us.

And lastly, for me, marketing is a way to connect people to their own power and agency. It's all about connecting people to their own bigness, to their own truth, to their own sovereignty, even when it means helping them to decide not to buy from me in this moment.

When I ask AI for help with marketing, it simply cannot honor these priorities because sometimes these priorities will compete directly with the goal of more conversion.

Let me break down each of these elements a bit more and share some examples from my own business.

So first I talked about building genuine human relationships for the sake of human relationships. Last year during my sabbatical, I sent out a few emails that were just book recommendations, 'cause I was just tearing through novel after novel after novel and I was like, "Oh my God, I know my people are smart. They love stories, they love reading. I want them to know about some of these books I'm reading." Like if I really looked up to someone and they wanted to share a reading list, I'd be like, "Yes, I wanna know what you're reading." Right? And so I thought people would be interested.

So I did. I just said, "Hey, here's some of my book recommendations." No agenda, no pitch. Just a chance to connect with people to talk about books. Isn't that fun? I thought it was fun.

I was doing that and not once did I mention anything about my business 'cause that wasn't on my mind. And what ensued was a bunch of really incredible conversations about books and ideas and the beauty and power of storytelling. My people recommended books back to me and I read some of them and they genuinely changed my life. It's like a beautiful exchange of humanity and value in a way that has nothing to do with business.

And to me, getting to connect with people on this level is such a huge pleasure of doing the thing that I'm doing with the platform and ways of communicating that I have. It added nothing to my bottom line, but added everything to my soul.

AI can't build that kind of relationship. It can simulate human conversation, but it can't actually care for people at the soul level and resonate at the soul level about things that we mutually care about as human beings.

Next let's talk about the service to community piece. I regularly put out really helpful guides and resources that I could honestly package up and charge so much money for, including this podcast.

You might have noticed if you're a regular listener, most of my podcast episodes don't have a sales pitch, and that's on purpose. When I record this podcast, like right now, I have one thought in mind and that is I really want this to help you. If it really helps you, then yeah, you might be interested in buying something from me at some point, and I'll let you know about it from time to time, but it's not why I do this. It's not why this podcast exists.

I've had people who listen to my podcast—I realize this podcast is quite young, but I had a former podcast that was over 200 episodes—and I've had people message me all the time and say, "Hey, I've been just listening to your free podcast, using your free resources for years now, and they've transformed so much about my life in business and I actually never bought anything from you."

For various reasons—like, some people live in a country with really bad currency and anything in dollars they can't afford, or they have life circumstances that make it hard for them to spend money on business resources—but they say, "I just want you to know the impact that you've had on me. Thank you so much for all that you've done for free."

From people who have not bought from me and are not gonna buy from me. And these messages make my day. Do these people contribute to my bottom line? No. But do they contribute to my soul? Yes.

AI once again does not understand this kind of value exchange. It's not programmed to understand how things add to the soul because it doesn't have a soul.

Remember the third element I talked about was filtering out people who aren't a good fit. In my marketing, I am intentionally political. I'm pretty freaking loud about anti-racism and allyship and decolonization. I've been a clear and unequivocal supporter of freedom and dignity for Palestinians. I don't mince words about this, and I know for a fact that this has cost me customers.

I have had people unsubscribe and unfollow with messages like "I was interested in buying from you until I saw this," and "I loved buying from you, but I will not buy from you any longer." And guess what? I am completely fine with that.

I'm grateful that those people filtered themselves out, not because I don't like them or because I wish them ill, but because we would've otherwise entered into a business relationship that would've left both of us frustrated because we are very misaligned in important ways, and it's important to be with people who are aligned with you. That's how you're gonna enjoy yourself, right?

AI doesn't understand the value of turning people away on purpose. It's designed to cast the widest net possible, to offend the fewest people, to, again, maximize potential conversions. It would never recommend that I include content that might actively repel people away, even though that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want as many people as possible, I want people who are aligned with me, who are going to enjoy being with exactly who I am with all of my loud opinions and all of the complexity of who I am as a human being.

And finally, let's talk about that piece about connecting people to their own power and agency. This is so important to me in my marketing because marketing is essentially inviting people into experiences. And how can I do that in a clean and ethical way when I am not also paying attention to what it means for you to answer an invitation in a clean, sovereign way?

So in my sales pages, in my emails, I regularly include language like, "This isn't for everyone. And even if it is for you, this might not be the timing. Trust your gut. Take your time, trust your timeline, and here's why you should wait to buy."

I say stuff like this all the time, and so many people write me to thank me for that and to tell me about how safe they feel being in my world because I say those things. Does that cut into my launch revenue? Yeah, probably. But it did mean that the people who did join were truly ready and excited to be there. This means fewer refund requests, less buyer's remorse, and a group of students who are genuinely happy to be there, genuinely committed.

AI would never suggest approaches that would lead to this. It's trained to overcome objections, not to help people tune into their inner truth and their bodily cues. It's programmed to create urgency, not spaciousness and sovereignty.

Now let's talk about what happens when we let AI take over our marketing strategies. What are the real costs?

First, there's the obvious ones that people are already aware of, probably. Your marketing's gonna start to sound like everybody else's. This is already happening all over the place. When you look at so much marketing and it sounds and looks the same, it's so uniform, it's all cookie cutter. You blend into the sea of sameness.

Seriously. People need to stop. Like this is actually stupid. It's stupid business strategy to make your marketing look and feel cookie cutter for obvious reasons. Do I even have to explain? I don't need to say anymore about that, right? It's stupid. Let's not do that.

But there are steep costs too. If you let AI write your marketing, you are making a trade. You are trading genuine connection for optimization. You are trading your complex humanity for a simplified version that's designed to convert at all costs.

Let me give you a concrete example. Last year I wrote a really personal email to my list, as I often do, about how I honestly felt like I'd lost all sense of purpose in my work. I just couldn't connect to anything that inspired me or motivated me, and that was really scaring me.

Not only was it scary, it was very uncomfortable because of how foreign it felt. I'm just so not used to feeling that way 'cause I'm such a passionate person. I've always been so driven by my mission. To feel like, "I don't even have a mission right now. I'm so confused." It was really uncomfortable.

It was just honest. I was just relaying the messy state of my being as a human being and absolutely nothing about it was optimized. I got lots of responses to that email from people sharing their own stories and thanking me for my honesty and telling me how it took the shame out of when they were feeling the same way.

There was no neat little lesson that I tied that into. There was no takeaway, there was no call to action. It was just, "I feel really terrible 'cause I feel like I lost my connection to my work." And the only purpose of that email was to just connect with where I was, to just be like, "Hey, I'm having a human experience and I wanna be witnessed."

And look, if I had asked AI to help me write that email or edit that email, it would've suggested that I add a call to action. It would've found a way to tie my personal story back into a lesson, a takeaway, or connect it back to one of the things that I have for sale, and it would've optimized all the humanity and genuine connection and vulnerability right out of it.

These choices that I make to be fully and unapologetically human, even when it's inconvenient, to take stands, to prioritize non-transactional connection—they do mean less sales, at least less than the number that I could squeeze out by optimizing all my messaging for conversion, but it's worth it to me.

Because without connection to who I am as a human being and not just the resource that outputs value when you push the buy button, we don't really have a human relationship. And without human relationships, business is fucking nothing.

And without the spaciousness that I intentionally create for you to feel into your truth and trust it, without hype and scarcity and FOMO and objections-overcoming clouding your clarity, clouding your connection to yourself, then we don't have a genuine collaboration. What we have is soft coercion.

Now, let me be very clear. I'm not anti-AI in the least. I actually am pro-AI, with a lot of complicated ethical caveats, but there are certain things it does that I'm very appreciative of. I love AI for specific purposes, especially when it makes my life easier for my ADHD brain. I use it to help organize the brilliant chaos of my mind.

But that's the thing. My magic as a teacher, as a marketer, as a whatever, is in the brilliant chaos part, not the organizing part.

So here's how I think about it and suggest that you think about it too. AI can be a fantastic assistant, but it needs to metaphorically sit at the assistant's desk and eat lunch with the assistants. It should not creep into the Creative Director's office. That's where I sit. I'm the creative director. That is where your humanity needs to be.

Let me just share with you my personal framework for deciding what I use AI for in my marketing and what I absolutely don't:

I use AI for helping me flesh out the thoughts that I already have. I use it to find different ways to phrase something that I already know what I'm thinking, and I'm like, "Okay, how do I say this in different ways?" I use AI to edit transcripts for clarity, like for this podcast. I also use it to create show notes from the transcript, things like that. Summarizing, organizing, lower-level stuff.

What I never outsource—and if I ever did try to outsource, it would just suck very badly—is my creative decision making, my human perspective and opinions and voice, my values and what I stand for. The decision about what actually matters to my community beyond what contributes to my sales, and just the overall creative direction behind my marketing.

I use these words very deliberately, 'cause marketing is a creative act. It's an art form. And just think about that next time you ever feel tempted to outsource the creative parts about what gets said and how it gets delivered to AI. 'Cause what does it mean if you are asking a computer model to create art for you? That's something that is very disconcerting to me.

The balance that I just described about what I use it for and what I don't works for me. It lets me enjoy the benefits of this technology without compromising all that makes my business me.

So last thing, here's my challenge to you. Take a look at your current marketing. Where does your humanity show up? What parts of it make you you, not just your niche, not just your quote-unquote "value proposition," but really what makes it yours? And what makes it a safe and welcoming place for the people who are aligned with you?

Where are you making choices that might reduce conversion, but increase connection, which might feel risky sometimes? Where are you serving for the sake of serving? Where are you exercising your generosity non-transactionally? And where are you intentionally filtering out people who aren't aligned with you? Where would you rather be you than optimized?

Upon reflecting on these questions, identify at least one aspect of your marketing that you are never going to delegate to AI because that's the part that requires you. 'Cause remember, AI can be a good assistant, but it cannot and should never replace the creative director that is you.

If you believe all the hype right now and let AI sit in the creative director's chair of your business, you're gonna get—you're gonna deserve—everything you get: a business that might convert in the short run, but doesn't connect and is incapable of building deep trust. A business that sells maybe, but doesn't serve. A business that markets, but ultimately doesn't matter in the world.

That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.