How Can Small Businesses Avoid Generic AI Marketing?

Introduction and Five Quick Checks

Announcer: You're listening to Underestimated, the podcast that helps overwhelmed small business owners turn their size into their unfair advantage so they can grow without burning out. Now, here's your host, Shawna Suckow.

Shawna Suckow: AI can make your marketing look better than anything you've ever done before, while at the same time still keeping you blending in with your competitors. So before you post another AI-generated flyer or newsletter or social media post, give it five quick checks. Today, Paula Skoviera of Princess Paula Consulting and of the Royally Unhinged podcast is my guest, and we're going to talk about what to fix, what to leave out, and how to keep your own voice and style even though you're using AI. So let's start with Paula's checklist of five quick checks that you should make.

Paula Skoviera: First thing is brand colors. Is it on brand for your brand color? Did you already tell it, upload your brand kit so that it knows what your colors are? It should be on brand. That includes fonts. So to your earlier point, if there's more than two fonts, start over again and make sure that it knows what your fonts are. Don't put all of the information. There has to be blank space. So just look at it, and if there's no white space or blank anything, you've got to start over because our brains need that blank space in order to process what they're looking at. Then keep it simple. Look at it and just kind of date, time, what it is, who it's for. Stop trying to put every single piece of information on there. Save that for somewhere else. Oh, and the last one is bullet points. AI is on a roll right now where it's trying to put all these bullet points on your newsletters, on your flyers you're creating, and it creates a different icon for every bullet point. You're going to start noticing this the more you look. You're going to see there's lots of bullet points, and they're all a different icon or graphic. It's too busy. It's really too busy. So really simplify, even though that's going to feel hard. To your point, it feels like you're not getting your money's worth. Simplify, simplify.

Saving Money and Improving the Brief

Paula Skoviera: People are going, “Oh, hey, I can now create my flyers and my marketing.” Great, go ahead and do it, and it's like, pause, please. Yes, it can, but we need to dial it in because now it's so bad, Shawna. It's so bad. It's so bad, and we can see it, smell it, a mile away, and it does not smell good. They're actually doing worse.

Shawna Suckow: I just came from a panel this morning. I was at a panel for business owners, and one of the people on the panel said they themselves, if they see something AI-created, they just swipe. They don't even bother to look at it or pause. Now it's creating a whole new niche, a whole new area where people creating organically and themselves, rather than using AI, are standing out.

Paula Skoviera: Yes. The whole thing, when you're a small business, really any business, every business is just trying to make money, and they're just trying to be successful. They're just kind of checking the box, like, “Oh, I need to make a flyer. I have this upcoming event, this upcoming sale, whatever it is I'm trying to promote. I need to make something.” Well, I can pay someone, and pause here for a minute. I always want to acknowledge nobody's made of money. We know a lot of these small businesses, they're literally paycheck to paycheck, or they're running on credit or a credit card or whatever it is right now.

Shawna Suckow: Been there.

Paula Skoviera: We know that. So when they're looking at everything and they think, “Can I afford to hire a marketing person? Can I afford that?” Probably not. “Can I even contract with a marketing

company just for this project?” Maybe, but maybe not. So you're trying to figure out how to do it in- house. I get that. I am all for bootstraps, getting scrappy, all of that. I love it. But again, doing it just to do it and doing it well, because if you don't take a couple minutes to use AI effectively, you're doing more harm than good.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, you can train it. If you front-load just a little bit of time to train it better, the output's going to be so much better.

Paula Skoviera: You know, you'll appreciate this. Again, I love you. I love your work and how you speak. When I go and I talk about AI, one of the examples I always use is if I were to say, “Hey, Shawna, can you get me some nachos?” You might say, “Great,” and you might go to the local gas station and get those nachos that come in a package. You put the cold cheese on top of them, and then the nachos get kind of bendy. Technically, that's nachos. That's great, but that's disgusting. Versus if I were to say, “Hey, can you go down to the local taqueria, Mexican restaurant, get me fresh nachos with some queso on the side?” When I ask for what I want, I end up with a very different product.

Shawna Suckow: Oh, that's a good analogy.

Paula Skoviera: People need to understand that. Especially when you're working with AI, if you ask for something, it will always, it's a puppy, it wants to please. It's going to give you what you want, but you're not ending up with something good. Because the average person, myself included, I haven't gone to marketing, graphic design school, but we know that the brain needs space. When people are putting too much stuff out there, our brains can't. It's too much.

Shawna Suckow: Are you talking about too much on a flyer or an ad or a social media?

Paula Skoviera: All, everything you ever wanted on the flyer. If you look at the things AI is creating, it's putting all of the information. It's too much on there. There's no blank space, no white space. It's trying to put every possible thing on there, and it's too overwhelming. It's bad.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, it's bad.

Keeping Your Brand and Writing Voice

Paula Skoviera: Again, something you understand. This is why I love this, why I wanted to talk to you so bad. You understand brand. You have such a good brand, and you have locked in your brand colors, sound, who you are. Everything about you, your brand is great. I've also worked really hard on creating a brand.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah.

Paula Skoviera: Then when people ask AI to create something and it creates a flyer not even close to being on brand with what he's doing.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah.

Paula Skoviera: People don't realize that when they're creating these things, and again, I know that you've analyzed this. You've looked at people's marketing pieces. If it's not on brand with your colors, your font, your messaging, who you are, who you're creating yourself to be as a company, as a brand, it just kind of bleeds into the background. People aren't noticing it.

Shawna Suckow: Yes.

Paula Skoviera: Or the number of times I'll see something come up in one of my feeds on one of the platforms, and I'm looking at it going, “I can't tell what this is for.”

Shawna Suckow: Yes, yes.

Paula Skoviera: You're looking at it going, “What is this? Is this a coupon, a sale, an event, a launch?” Nothing stands out.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah. Same with social media posts. If they have AI write something, man, I can see that a mile away on LinkedIn, and it is so cringe now. A lot of people can't see it in their own writing. A, because they just let AI write it and then they just copy and paste, or B, they just haven't let AI really capture their voice and trained it to not use... I trained mine to go to, there's a Wikipedia page. I'll put it in the show notes because I can't remember it off the top of my head, of icky, cringe-worthy AI words and phrases. It's constantly updated, as Wikipedia pages are. Cody knows to always check against that when he's writing anything for me. Then I also will read over because I don't trust Cody. I trust him a lot more than I did before I trained him, but he's still maybe 90% of the way there. My voice is too important because it's my living, and I want to make sure whatever he's writing on my behalf, that I bless it. He doesn't get to write everything either.

Paula Skoviera: That is so good, and it's so true. Tarah, she and I do a podcast together, and she's done my website. She does graphics and whatnot, and I cannot tell you how many times a week we're sending each other flyers that either people have messaged to us, sent to us, or we just find online. It's, “Look at this one. Oh, look at this one. Look at how much information is on this, or how many fonts.” That's a big one.

Shawna Suckow: Yes.

Paula Skoviera: When you see multiple fonts, and some that you're like, “What even, what font is that?” You know immediately it's AI. Again, there's nothing wrong with creating something with AI.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, I'm the biggest proponent, or even a photo or graphic or something.

Paula Skoviera: Yeah, but it's not good. What has been created, it's not good.

Shawna Suckow: For people who aren't graphic designers, two fonts. Stick with two. If you're a graphic designer, you can use three beautifully, but don't let AI be the chooser of that unless you have a graphic designer's eye. Small businesses, most of them aren't in business as graphic designers or marketers. Some are, of course. But if you are an auto repair shop, you don't want to learn graphic design. You've got to coach your AI and give it examples of things that you do like and do look professional, and go from there.

Less Information and More Real People

Paula Skoviera: Okay, let me ask you this, your thoughts now. I need your opinion. With some of these flyers, because I know I'm now at the point where I just scroll, I don't even look at them. It's sad, but I'm not even, or I'm looking at them to mock them and make fun of them. What are your thoughts on how people are trying to put every single piece of information onto the flyer?

Shawna Suckow: What I tell my audiences and my clients is, especially if you're paying to get this out, you know that maybe people will see it only once, whether it's an ad or a post or a flyer or whatever it is. So I know the mindset is, you only get one shot, and you've still got to put everything on there. That is contrary to the way that your potential buyers or guests or whatever you're selling, that's contrary to the way people ingest information today. I know this is hard. I fight it myself, but less is more. Like you were saying, white space is so important. If you are forced to live in the size of a number 10 envelope because you're one of those ads, I understand you want to cram the front and the back. What I see, though, if it's a physical flyer or ad, is they say the same things in the same way on both the front and the back because they don't know if people are going to flip it over or not. If it's digital, I understand the inclination, but just don't.

Paula Skoviera: Just so good. This is why I love you. Just to have someone that understands, that you can talk to, because you don't want to hurt people's feelings and lose that. I've been trying to tell people, send them to your website. Send them to an e-vite link. All of the information that they're

trying to put on there, like, “Here's where the parking is. Here's all the details.” Stop putting that on your marketing piece. All the tier pricing, we get it. We get it.

Shawna Suckow: I get it. I've been there. I have, and I'm a marketer and used to be a graphic designer. I get the inclination and the temptation, but yeah, do the less is more. If you're going to use a photo, I tell all my small businesses, don't use a stock photo. Do not. Slap your hand if you're thinking about using a stock photo. Don't. Human faces today stop the scroll. Human faces on ads are far more compelling, and human faces that aren't in a perfect environment are especially compelling. Again, with the auto repair shop, we know that if you're showing a picture of a mechanic and he's clean and your garage is clean, that's a fake staged photo. Don't do it. Really embrace the you-ness of whatever it is. Even if your AI is doing it, feed your AI with not stock photos.

Paula Skoviera: This reminds me of, when people look at the AI newsletters or marketing pieces they're creating, they're like, “Oh, this is so good.” This reminds me of when you watch American Idol or The Voice or some of these shows, and someone comes on that isn't good, and everyone's like, “Oh, aren't they so good?” It's like, no, they're really not. They're not a good singer, and they don't know that they're not a good singer because some people have said, “Oh, they're a great singer. That's really good.” I think that's what's happening with AI. People are creating these marketing pieces. They're like, “Oh, look at that. That's good.”

Shawna Suckow: It's so much better than I could do, is what they're thinking. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but say more. Sorry, say more. I interrupted you.

Paula Skoviera: Oh, no. No, this is good. It's just got me. This is good. You're right. That's really good. It's such a problem. People are so excited. They're like, “Look, I created something. I got this done. I can put this out there because it looks good. It looks neat.”

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, but that's not the same as good.

Paula Skoviera: Yeah.

Shawna Suckow: If it's better than what you're used to putting out, that's great. But it still doesn't mean that it's a good representation of who you are, or the event that you're putting on, or whatever.

Logos and Designing for Your Audience

Paula Skoviera: I have enough graphic designers in my world and in my network. Same thing with logos. All these businesses are starting up, and they're going to AI, “Create for me a logo,” and they create something, and they're like, “Ooh, look at that. Isn't that great?” Yeah, it's really pretty. You will not be able to recreate that on a logo, a sticker, embroidery. Just because it created a picture doesn't mean that it's transferable to merchandise and the like.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, and think of your audience. One of my clients, who you maybe have worked with because they're local, On Time Service, HVAC and heating, cooling, all that stuff. They changed their vans around town to be blue and pink, which I'm sure there was a lot of pushback at first because it's a male-owned company. All, if not most, of their technicians are male, and it's contrary to what you see in the industry, but they know most of their decision makers are women.

Paula Skoviera: One hundred percent.

Shawna Suckow: Audience, too. A bunch of auto mechanics, because they're also a niche of mine, as you might tell, they do these male-dominated, really cool logos. It's like race cars and flames coming, whatever. But they're not appealing to the other half of their audience. They're appealing to a niche, so maybe not even appealing to half of their audience. They're appealing to a really narrow niche that's like them, but their audience may not be that. So also that.

Paula Skoviera: That is so good. That is so good.

Shawna Suckow: Do you have a way that somebody can reach out to you and send you something for you to give them quick feedback on? Talk to me about the ways that they can say, “Here's an ad, and I need eyeballs that aren't mine, that'll tell me the truth.” That's the other thing. Make sure you have a truth teller that you're asking and not your best friend.

Reviewing the Five Checks

Paula Skoviera: That is so good. I'm going to take one step back from what you said because we actually really recently did an episode on the podcast about this because we were getting so fired up. I was telling people, when you create these, you're either going to front-load your AI or look at what it created. First thing is brand colors. Is it on brand for your brand color? Did you already tell it, upload your brand kit so that it knows what your colors are? It should be on brand. That includes fonts. To your earlier point, if there's more than two fonts, start over again and make sure that it knows what your fonts are. Don't put all of the information. There has to be blank space. So just look at it, and if there's no white space or blank anything, you've got to start over because our brains need that blank space in order to process what they're looking at. Then keep it simple. Look at it and just kind of date, time, what it is, who it's for. Stop trying to put every single piece of information on there. Save that for somewhere else. Oh, and the last one is bullet points. AI is on a roll right now where it's trying to put all of these bullet points on your newsletters, on your flyers you're creating, and it creates a different icon for every bullet point. You're going to start noticing this the more you look. You're going to see there's lots of bullet points, and they're all a different icon or graphic. It's too busy. You know what? You'll get this. A lot of these flyers remind me of Thomas Kinkade stuff. Remember Thomas Kinkade from the '90s? Beautiful, but very busy. His paintings were spectacular, but they're very full and very busy. There's a lot going on, and that's what these remind me of.

Shawna Suckow: Yeah, Thomas Kinkade flyers. It was good for the time. It was good for the time. So yeah, that's a good tip, too, and I love the nachos. Remember the nachos. I'm going to have bumper stickers made that say, “Remember the nachos,” because then people kind of know, I don't want the gas station nachos.

Paula Skoviera: I want the good stuff. Good stuff, and you deserve good stuff, and people who are seeing it. Some people may like gas station nachos.

Shawna Suckow: But probably not if given a choice, I'm thinking.

Connecting With Paula and What to Watch Next

Shawna Suckow: So Paula, where can people reach you? You gave them the website, and we gave them the podcast site. Where on socials are you?

Paula Skoviera: That's great. I'm on all the big ones. Meta, of course, Instagram and Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube. I have a YouTube channel as well.

Shawna Suckow: You are all the places.

Paula Skoviera: I'm trying.

Shawna Suckow: You're also on Snapchat, but that's personal.

Paula Skoviera: Your girl has to have some boundaries, so select few can find me. That's where all the personal stuff goes now.

Shawna Suckow: Do you have any resources that...?

Paula Skoviera: Nope. I just had this conversation today. I was like, no, I have no books. I have no online programs you can buy. If you want any of this goodness, you've got to call me and just have a chitchat. I suppose our Royally Unhinged podcast, a lot of it goes onto the podcast. But yeah, I've got nothing to sell you folks, just me.

Shawna Suckow: So one last question that's very important. Cats or dogs?

Paula Skoviera: Dogs, hands down.

Shawna Suckow: Thank you. I knew, see, we are yin and yang and all the things. Two final things. Once your marketing looks and sounds like you, the next question is whether it gives customers a reason to choose you. So watch my episode on standing out in a crowded market next. It'll show you a simple test for the claims you make about your business. The second thing, please subscribe, like, do all the things so that you can find me again, and other people can find me as well. Thanks. Thank you again, Paula. It's been wonderful. Thank you all for listening or watching, and this has been another episode of Underestimated.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Underestimated, hosted by Shawna Suckow. To connect with Shawna, go to thebuyerinsider.com.