Episode 463: Digital Marketing Truth: What AI Tools Can't Do For Your Business and Why Human Strategy Still Matters
In this episode you'll learn:
Why building authentic relationships remains a critical business advantage that AI cannot replicate, and how to leverage this human skill for sustainable growth.
How to identify and capitalize on business scenarios where human judgment and ethical considerations outperform AI solutions.
The crucial role of emotional intelligence in business decision-making and customer service - something AI still struggles to understand and implement.
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Hello and welcome to episode 463 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today. It's a quick tip episode and this is one I've been discussing with a lot of small business owners, both friends and clients and family. And I think it's a really important thing as we begin to see more and more and more AI come into the workplace. Before I get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands, which for me in North Wurondhyte is the Wo, Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I also wanted to, on the topic of AI, let you know that we have an AI monthly meetup. It is just a place for small business owners to come and chat and discuss how they're using AI. And also for me to walk you through the best ways to use AI, the best platforms to use AI for so much more than just, you know, writing content for you. And I have to reiterate that ChatGPT is not something that we use. We have such better systems, I think, than ChatGPT, I think. I mean, obviously it's huge. And yeah, I could go into a whole other episode about that. But if you're interested in how AI can help you in your business and how to actually, with real life examples, put it in place, then check out the AI chat at, mydailybusiness.com/aichat.
All right, let's get into today's Quick Tip episode I have been talking to a lot of my clients about AI over the last year and a half, two years and I know on this podcast I've been talking a lot more about AI in the recent sort of weeks and episodes and I'm getting a lot of DMS from people about this and about, you know, which AI platforms are best. And also just a lot of fear I think in the small business community around what AI is doing to particularly creative businesses.
So photography, graphic design, website design, service based businesses, I mean so many. But also in terms of what does this mean for the path forward? Like is AI going to take over all of our jobs? And that seems to be the constant question. And yes, for sure, anything that's a repetitive task, AI will be coming in and making it just more efficient in order for things to get done. And obviously that raises kind of ethical questions around some industries, but for many people it just is a, no brainer. Of course we're going to use AI. But in light of all of those DMS and chats and conversation and in light of the fear that is there, I thought that today in the Quick TIFF episode, I'm going to give you three things that AI currently in its current state is not able to fully take over. And these may be the things that you as the leader in your business need to really focus in on to ensure that you're doing. Because these are the things that as currently stands, AI grapples with or can't quite do to the level that humans can. So the first one, and this should be part and parcel of your strategy always, and I've said this from the beginning of time, is building relationships, building and nurturing relationships because it cannot currently replicate the nuance and the human touch that we as humans can have with each other.
So really developing these kind of personal relationships with your clients, with your customers, with your audience. I mean I often say to people, you can do your own PR and a lot of the time that will work, but a lot of the time what you're paying a, ah, PR agent for is the relationships. They have spent years building up relationships with media and with influencers and with other people so that when their email or text message hits that person's inbox or phone, they're more likely to look at it than somebody that they don't know, that they don't have that nurtured relationship with. So if you're worried about AI and IT taking over everything, think about the areas in your business in which you can Nurture, and, and build and strengthen relationships. So in terms of, if you think about the buyer cycle, the last stage is post purchase, which is done well, leads to advocacy. That advocacy is then leading to greater awareness and people go through the whole cycle again. And you're building your audience, you're growing that community. So how are you nurturing in the post purchase stage? How are you genuinely building relationships? How are you creating connection points where people can meet in real life, where they can get on a zoom call, where they can see your face?
How are you bringing out that humanity in things like your social media? How are you chatting in the DMs? That's not just a robot kind of auto message. How are you actually building those relationships so people feel a genuine connection with you? The second point is another thing that I have been talking about forever. Oh, my goodness. And in my first book, Passion Purpose Prophet, I mentioned this as well. Is empathy just empathy? Emotional intelligence, Just empathy. Being able to put yourselves fully in somebody else's shoes currently, AI, when it's talking to people, you know? Yes. I mean, if you have a chat with AI, you know, it'll say, oh, I'm so sorry, I totally understand where you're coming from, when you may correct it in a, prompt or something. But what it's not doing is fully being able to step into your shoes and understand things, or fully being able to empathise with a customer if they're complaining about something like, so you want to be thinking about that empathy, how does that show up in your business? Again, it really goes hand in hand with nurturing relationships. How does that empathy and that ability to really personalise your communication, personalise your messages, personalise the memory of somebody's experience with your business? How is that happening inside of your business that is not going to be taken over by AI, because if there is something that's kind of complex and I'm sure you've been on the, you know, receiving end of this. I have. Where you're.
You have no other way of connecting with a business except a chat bot. And you're like, no, that is not what I'm saying. No, you do not understand. No, like, or, you know, you're on a phone message and it's like, press one, press five, and you're like, can I just speak to a human? That frustration can be really damaging for brands and currently AI, whilst you can put incredible data into it, it doesn't have the same ability as a human to connect with another human and go, oh, yes, okay, Okay, I totally didn't understand the way that you first worded that, but. But yes, I get what you're saying now. It takes a lot longer for that to happen. And particularly in say, like, workflows where it's a chatbot that you're speaking to on, I don't know, an insurance company or something else on their website. They don't have every possible scenario because they couldn't. It's infinity. But when you're talking to a human, they're listening to like, oh, okay, yeah, this is different to the call I was just on prior to this customer. But I can understand and I can help problem solve together. So that kind of emotional intelligence and that empathy is not there just yet. I mean, I have no doubt that in the future. But right now, this is the sort of stuff that you're like, okay, how is that showing up in our business?
And I guess the third one is this sort of, I guess, what would you call it, like, ethical. Moral. Ethical sort of way of looking at something and going, okay, what is our, standpoint on that as a brand? You know, because there are, there's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of things to really think about in terms of how do we show up to our values, how are we aligned? And then from the way that we actually action things, where is our ethical standpoint on stuff? And to that point, when I started at Amazon, this is 2010, 2009, God, I can't remember. But sometime in the UK, one of the biggest questions that they had when hiring people is how do you deal with ambiguity? Because so often there were situations where it wasn't absolutely clear. You might have, you know, a buyer who's telling you one thing, you've got another person who's head of that category telling you something else. You've got, you know, your own data that you're collecting and your gut instinct. And so you're dealing with multiple things and you've got to make a decision very quickly. So how do you deal with this ambiguous information? And again, that is something that, again, if you've used any sort of AI tool, the prompts, it will often say, I don't quite understand, I don't quite understand. And you have to be clearer and clearer and clearer in order to get a result that you're comfortable or satisfied with. Whereas when we dealing with a human, to a human, you're thinking about, okay, there's ambiguity, but I'm m gonna run these various scenarios, but I might also do that And I might also do this and I might pick up the phone and have a chat with somebody and I'm gonna go through it. And we have, we all have different, like, coping mechanisms of dealing with ambiguity. And it's interesting to think about in this, you know, more modern sense of AI. That question that I was asked so long ago, more than a decade ago at Amazon, how do you deal with it? Because maybe they knew that this is the thing that AI cannot do really well at the moment. So those are three things to think about in your business. If you're worried about AI is going to take over everything.
Thinking about, okay, well, what are these three things? How do we, how do we show up as a business? And how am I strengthening those skills in myself and in my staff? So that is it for today's Quick Tip episode. Really? Yeah, II is here. It's here. And if you want to discuss this sort of stuff and be part of a group of small business owners in a safe environment where you can ask any kind of questions and nobody is like going to tell you that it's silly or that you should have a better tech or AI understanding, then you might want to join our monthly AI chat that is just a zoom call. We come on, I go through various tools and platforms. I may also try and get the founders of those tools and platforms onto the call and we go through it in real life in, you know, this is a scenario that you may have in your business. This is how the AI, tool can help. This is how you can set it up. So if you want to be part of that, you can join anytime. It's just a monthly get together and you can join at mydailybusiness.com/aichat. We'll have all of this plus any links that I've mentioned at mydailybusiness.com/podcast463. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
