Automatic marketing myth — Kelford Labs Daily

Every day there are more and more apps, services, and prompts out there to help you use AI or automation for your marketing.

And, largely, I think they can be initially helpful. Like I often say, the problem with most marketing is not that it’s bad, it’s that it stops. So, if it keeps you from stopping, that’s good.

The bad part is that, once we hand over all our marketing to, as Michael E. Porter put it, an “efficient third party,” we’re in danger of losing what makes us special:

“The more that rivals outsource activities to efficient third parties, often the same ones,” he wrote in What is Strategy, “the more generic those activities become.”

That’s why I’m constantly making sure you’re in, and working on, your own marketing. That’s why the AI tools I build and recommend will (usually, when they’re following their instructions) refuse to actually do any writing for you.

Even when we’re leading the marketing for a client, we’re considerate (to the point of paranoid) of what they believe, what sets them apart, what they’re uniquely capable of.

So that no matter whose marketing we’re handling, they’re getting something unique, something special, something different from everyone else.

Because when you hand over all thinking, insight, and content creation to an efficient third party, you’re likely to get the same, or similar, outputs as everyone else who’s outsourcing to them, too.

Keep that in mind the next time you ask ChatGPT a marketing question, or even see specific tactical advice given on LinkedIn or TikTok.

Ask yourself: If someone else, in my industry or with a similar business, asked this same question or followed these same instructions, would we both get the same output?

If the answer is yes, we’re not actually marketing, we’re blending into the background.

The promise of automatic marketing is like the promise of standing on your tiptoes at a parade:

At first, it feels like you’re at an advantage.

But, like Warren Buffet once put it, pretty soon everyone has to stand on their tiptoes, but nobody can see any better.

Everyone’s doing the same thing, in the same way, and nobody is any better off anymore.

So instead of just doing what everyone else can, and eventually will be doing, do something different, now.

Something only you can do.

By focusing on the advice that sets you apart, instead of covering you in camouflage.

Reply to this email to tell me what you think, or ask any questions!

Kelford Inc. shows experts the way to always knowing what to say.