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I keep having very similar conversations with business owners related to using AI for marketing, and it almost always starts with confusion. They’ve jumped all in to using AI in their business, which makes sense because there’s so many reasons why it’s helpful that I won’t rehash them here.
Then they get surprised.
“We didn’t realize AI made that up.”
“It sounded fine when we read it.”
“The tool posted it automatically.”
In one recent example, a business came to me because sales conversations had started feeling harder in a way they couldn’t explain. Prospects were hesitating more, asking for clarification they never used to need, and pushing back on topics that used to land easily. Yet the business was also posting more content (AI generated), had cleaned up their website and added examples and FAQs (using AI generated content). They even had AI help hone some of their pricing and strategies. They thought all of this would help answer prospect objections before they were received; but the opposite was actually happening.
When we traced it back, the issue wasn’t pricing or demand or competition. Their website copy was now full of AI-generated messaging that overstated experience, removed nuance, and introduced claims they could no longer fully and confidently defend. Nothing was outright false, but the grounding was gone.
In another case, the AI platform the client started using published a post to their social media account that included a testimonial generated by AI. It directly quoted a customer who does not exist. It also read like AI, not like a human would have actually said it, which is the big thing that would make someone want to go see if it was true … and it was super easy to quickly look at their real testimonials on Google—they have hundreds of excellent ones—and see that this testimonial did not exist.
The business owner didn’t intend to deceive anyone. They didn’t write this post. They didn’t even see it before it went live because this particular platform both writes and posts. By the time I saw what had happened, the post had already been public under their brand. No telling how many people had seen it already, and felt interested in doing their own detective work to find out the review was faked.
Situations like these come from the same underlying problem: AI being layered on top of a business without strategy, without guardrails, and without someone actively applying judgment in the process.
What follows are the biggest mistakes I’m seeing businesses make when using AI in their marketing, often without realizing they’re eroding credibility, reach, and trust until the effects show up in stalled sales, disengaged audiences, or reputational damage.
This is the most dangerous mistake I’m seeing, and it’s happening far more often than people realize.
AI-generated testimonials, reviews, or customer quotes are being used as placeholders, shortcuts, or automated outputs from tools that promise to “help” with content creation. In many cases, the business owner may not even know the testimonial isn’t real. It sounds plausible, polished, and aligned with what they wish customers would say. You might assume that AI went to Google or your website or whatever and chose a review to showcase.
Once false social proof exists anywhere in the ecosystem, it contaminates everything around it.
Then prospects stop trusting the testimonial section entirely. They stop trusting anything you say AT ALL, and by extension, stop trusting your business. Real reviews lose their credibility by association. Case studies get read more skeptically. Claims that would have passed without friction now trigger doubt.
Even after the fake content is removed, the credibility loss doesn’t disappear.
This is especially damaging in industries where trust and ethics already carry weight:
Social proof is (and should not be) not filler content. It is a truth claim. Once that truth is compromised, rebuilding trust takes far longer than most businesses expect, and in some cases never fully happens.
If you actually have existing testimonials and case studies, there are simply ways to have AI access that real information and use it, versus it entirely making something up that is fake.
Another common complaint I hear is, “We’re posting more than ever, but engagement is down.” That outcome is not surprising.
I never recommend “post more”. I’ve had debates with other “experts” (fakexperts?) in the past about this. One debate was about traffic to a website. I mentioned if you send a million people to a website and the site itself isn’t created to CONVERT those into customers, more traffic is pointless. I noted that I would rather work to send 100 people to a website that were the right audience and would convert, than work to send 100,000 people to a website that were the wrong audience and you’d be lucky for 100 to convert.
The guy argued (mansplained?) “I would always take a million visitors, you don’t know what you’re talking about”. (And I’ve worked on websites and campaigns with a million visitors a month, I guarantee he HAS NOT.)
Case in point, I had a client who came to me because they were driving HUGE amounts of traffic to their site from their podcast and TikTok, but with ZERO conversions. When I reviewed their flow and then their website, it was quickly evident that there was no WAY for anyone to convert, plus nothing asking or telling them why, or how, or even to do so. That traffic was pointless at that stage.
Similar concept with posting more content on social media, on your website or anywhere else. You can have AI write all of the content in the world for you, but more content alone doesn’t mean it will *work better* … ie make you money.
Then let’s talk about how freaking BORING AI writes.
Most businesses are prompting the same AI tools in the same AI ways to write the same sort of content. Write a LinkedIn post about leadership. Create a content calendar. Rewrite this page to sound more professional. AI responds with language designed to be broadly acceptable, neutral, and safe.
That language disappears into the scroll.
I’m not saying that your content has to be exciting or entertaining … my content is usually neither (if you get a laugh it’s often accidental!), but I also don’t expect you to be here to be entertained. I write for entrepreneurs who are serious about their business. If you’re only looking to be entertained, then you might not be serious and probably are wasting your time here.
Platforms, and people, reward distinction. Audiences remember specificity. When a business starts sounding like every other business in its space (which is the type of content LLMs are inherently trained to do), it loses memorability, even if the content is technically “good.”
This shows up everywhere:
Brand voice is not and should never be, a “stylistic preference”.
It is a strategic asset that signals positioning, values, and authority. AI cannot make up that asset for you. It can only reflect what has already been defined. When no real differentiation exists, sameness is the inevitable result.
This is why I always insist on real differentiation and brand voice work FIRST for my clients who are serious about their business. Without that foundation, AI smooths away the very signals that make a business recognizable and referable.
Another major mistake is letting AI quietly inflate authority or expertise without scrutiny.
AI fills gaps confidently. Even when it is flat out wrong. It invents case studies, extends timelines, strengthens claims, and reframes experience in ways that may appear subtle, but matter deeply once a prospect starts asking questions.
The copy reads well on the page. But then real conversations expose the problem.
Sales calls stall, like they were for that one entrepreneur who came to me for help, because details don’t hold up under pressure. Prospects disengage because something feels overstated or rehearsed. Business owners sense skepticism increasing but don’t always understand where it’s coming from.
This pattern shows up across industries:
Authority is built through experience, clarity, and perhaps most importantly, restraint. AI has none of those instincts. Because it has a “brain” but no heart. When authority is inflated, even unintentionally, trust erodes quickly … and silently.
Many businesses assume that increased outreach volume equals progress.
And oh my gosh let me tell you when I first learned how very inaccurate that is. My senior year in high school, I was 16, and I was the editor of the school yearbook. I had worked on the school paper and yearbook freshman and sophomore years, been editor of the paper junior year, and was editor of the yearbook senior year. I ended up doing much more work my senior year because we had a new advisor, who was a new teacher to the school and had worked on her own school publications but never advised students working on one, nor worked with ours. So I actually had more experience with our particular one, and, as happens, ended up that my knowledge was more needed than maybe it would have been otherwise.
I mean, I was 16 … what other time is my knowledge going to actually be needed lol.
But I was like the mini me boss. And there was some event occurring, and I crawled the school and found our staff photographer and was like “hey, I need you to go take photos of X.” And he says, “sorry, I’m too busy” and scrambles off.
This was during the two periods of school that we were in the yearbook “class”, so the only thing he should have been doing was yearbook stuff. I did not have him doing anything. The teacher advisor did not have him doing anything.
So I yelled after him, “Stop! What are you actually doing?”
He was busy looking busy. Looking busy didn’t get those photos taken. (And what a helpful lesson for me to learn so early!)
This can feel similar to entrepreneurs who automate outreach. They point to consistency, automation, and personalization as evidence that things are moving in the right direction.
Response rates usually tell a different story. Things may be moving. Some thing. Where it’s moving to, who the heck knows.
AI-driven outreach often looks efficient internally while damaging reputation externally. Messages sound polished but generic.
Personalization is surface-level, like the TONS of emails I receive that drop in my first name, the name of my business or URL (which has changed by the way, and when they get it wrong it’s EVIDENT), and even referencing some of my clients “Oh I see you helped X with Y” … from a case study or old blog post that is already in the brain of the AI they used to write the email.
Yeah tell me you have put ZERO effort in without directly saying so. (I’m sorry, but why would I want to work with someone who has already proven that effort is not in their plan? Sorry not sorry.)
The result is rarely overt backlash. It’s quiet disengagement. For me, I block those email addresses. They can’t get through to me again even if they try.
People mute. Unfollow. Ignore. They remember your brand as noise rather than relevance.
This is particularly damaging in B2B services, or industries like recruiting, real estate, health, or SaaS, where trust needs to exist before a conversation ever starts. Outreach without positioning doesn’t just fail to convert. It conditions prospects to disengage permanently.
Another frequent mistake appears, incorrectly, as, “SEO used to work better.”
What usually happened instead is the publication of large volumes of AI-generated content without depth, specificity, or true demonstrated experience. Pages rank briefly, attract low-intent visitors, and fail to convert. Engagement drops. Lead quality declines. The sales teams start flagging traffic as unqualified.
Search engines increasingly reward originality, depth, and lived expertise. Believe, me, the search engines understand when content is AI better than we do. It doesn’t necessarily “punish” content just because it’s created with the help of AI. It understands when AI content is thin (bad), or when it’s supplementing the actual real experience and expertise (good).
More critically, users leave quickly when content feels generic. They may not be able to put their finger right on why. Volume can mask the decline for a while, but it doesn’t correct it longterm.
You see this across industries:
This was similar to the one client who came to me while driving tons of traffic their website but getting zero customers.
SEO attracts the audience your strategy defines. Or … should. When strategy is weak or unclear, AI just does … random shit and traffic quality follows.
Many businesses now ask AI to define their ideal client, identify pain points, and write messaging from scratch, without validating any of it against real conversations or behavioral data.
Ugh. No.
The process feels efficient. The misalignment shows up later. Messaging misses real objections. Offers underperform. Sales conversations feel harder than they should.
Course creators attract people who never buy. SaaS companies promote features customers don’t prioritize. Local businesses talk past the concerns prospects actually raise in calls.
I preach again and again how AI should never be used as a strategist. I am on this soapbox or a reason. AI should be used like an intern who you have to explain exactly what to do, how, and when. It should not be used like the expert—like a CMO or marketing strategist, for example.
Audience understanding comes to an entrepreneur from listening, pattern recognition, and experience. AI can help refine insight once it exists, but it cannot replace human discovery.
In regulated industries especially, AI introduces risk that businesses probably won’t recognize until something breaks. And we aren’t talking about the risk of confidentiality, which is a valid concern.
Healthcare, finance, real estate, and education all carry boundaries AI does not understand. Besides not understanding, it doesn’t care, because it has no heart. It might generate implied guarantees, invented credentials, exaggerated claims, and noncompliant language without hesitation.
Even in industries that are not regulated, there are still ethical concerns that you, and your customers, likely care about. Sometimes subconsciously. But AI doesn’t care, because it doesn’t have a heart, so it cannot. It also doesn’t have a subconscious.
Remember, AI uses everything it researched from the internet, and at least 90% of that is utter crap. It also takes the crap from the entrepreneurs who have zero ethics.
Expertise includes knowing where the lines are and why they matter. Strategy exists partly to protect businesses from exposure. AI has no awareness of consequences. And it won’t be impacted by those consequences even if it did have awareness.
Every issue above traces back to this one mistake. And I’ve talked about this before: AI is like an inexperienced intern, not an expert.
AI is being allowed to guide decisions that require judgment, context, and accountability. Decisions about positioning. Claims. Audience targeting. Trust signals. Messaging hierarchy.
When those decisions are delegated to AI, businesses lose coherence. The brand starts subtly drifting without anyone realizing. Small inconsistencies compound. Overstatement creeps in. Differentiation erodes.
AI is extremely good at executing within boundaries. It is extremely bad at defining those boundaries.
Without a clear strategy, AI doesn’t just move faster, it moves indiscriminately. It scales whatever inputs it’s given, including flawed assumptions, weak positioning, and unverified claims.
It is full of crap (other people’s crap, the crappy 90% of the internet) and will use that crap in whatever you ask it to, if you’re not very careful.
This is why businesses often feel like things are “off” before they can articulate what’s wrong. And why your customers and prospects may feel like things are off even when they can’t quite put their finger on why.
The tool is doing exactly what it was asked to do. No one defined what it should not do.
This is why I never start marketing with tools.
Strategy sets direction. Differentiation creates signal. Brand voice preserves trust.
Once those exist, AI becomes powerful and efficient, assuming you know how to have AI reference yours. Without them, AI magnifies inconsistency, exaggeration, and sameness at scale.
What I bring to clients are the elements AI cannot generate: judgment, restraint, context, and experience. And the ability to recognize when something looks efficient in the short term but undermines credibility over time.
AI reflects the foundation underneath it. When that foundation is weak, the cracks surface faster and more publicly. Once trust is gone, no tool brings it back.
Leverage AI tools to create consistent and engaging content effortlessly.
Enhance your marketing strategy with clear, actionable phrasing.
Collaborate effectively with your team using a unified brand communication guide.
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