Digital marketing with AI: What to avoid

From generating dinner recipes to planning a full-funnel marketing campaign, AI tools are already part of everyday life. They promise to improve efficiency - but relying on AI too much as a brand can have consequences, from being devalued in search to damaged reputation and credibility and a loss of customer purchases.  

If you’re using AI for your digital marketing outputs, here are several warnings from trends we’re starting to see regularly.

Poster design and creation 

You may have seen several AI posters for food and drink brands or even been tempted to design one yourself. After all, it’s quick, easy and it doesn’t require paying for a graphic designer. Thousands of users are searching for the queries below: 

So, what’s the big deal? The biggest myth about AI-generated posts is that nobody notices the lack of the authentically human touch. The research states otherwise. A recent poll showed: 

• Trust drops from 70% for human-made ads to just 20% for pure AI 
• 63% to 73% of buyers report being less likely to buy from or trust a brand using visible AI media 

Source: https://www.theharrispoll.co.uk/insights/blog/the-authenticity-trade-off-how-ai-is-reshaping-trust-in-advertisingnbsp 

Using AI for graphic design means that your asset is at risk of looking identical to thousands of other designs. Not only will you get lost among competitors but you’re likely to lose the trust of customers who see AI-generated designs as lazy or misleading – impacting your business credibility. There are also resulting limitations on the print quality as a graphic designer will consider the final print-ready format, including the correct bleeds and margins.  

As well as using a trained graphic designer for a creative and polished effect, there are plenty of free-to-use tools out there if you want to experiment with your own AI-free designs, such as Canva, Adobe Express and Figma.

Social graphics and posts 

Brands are now using AI to design a quick social media post. Why? To save time, cut productive costs and scale content output across multiple social platforms.  

People are searching for a generator so they can rapidly share it online with a quick caption before hitting post. But people connect and relate to human creativity and intent – machine-made graphics can feel dull and meaningless, so this approach can impact the innate strength of social media; to create a connection with your brand story.  

Users can spot the difference between an authentically designed and drafted post that relates to a wider posting strategy vs an artificial image. We want the brand to feel consistent and follow the correct colour codes, fonts and messaging.  

Optimised blogs 

Using 100% AI content for SEO blogs is highly discouraged because it lacks authenticity, trust, authoritativeness and can fail to connect with the reader.  

While AI is a fantastic tool to use for creative ideas and research for your blog, search engines heavily prioritise unique, human content that demonstrates real-world expertise and authoritativeness. When copy reads as AI-written, it runs the risk of being penalised by not being crawled by search engines and struggling to rank against competitors - which we don’t want. 

Use AI to research topics and generate a specific outline but always edit the text to add your brand messaging and tone-of-voice. 

Brand messaging and strategy 

Relying on AI for your brand strategy refresh is a major risk. It will include too much of a generic output and lack the emotional connection you want to share with your target audience.  

AI does not know your business. It is trained on data – not your story. Yes, you can use it to give you some inspiration and spark an idea, but then you need the human element to build on that. You need to ensure it is aligned with your audience, tone-of-voice and growth ambitions.  

Paid ads 

AI has become a major part of paid advertising platforms, with tools that can generate anything from headlines, descriptions and images to videos and even optimised bidding strategies.  

While these features can improve efficiency, relying on AI to create your entire pay-per-click (PPC) campaign can lead to poor results. AI doesn't have first-hand knowledge of your customers, your brand positioning or the unique selling points that will make you stand out among competitors. 

Instead, AI generates copy based on patterns, which can result in generic messaging. It can also reduce click-through rates by failing to communicate a clear value proposition. If your messaging is vague or sounds like every other business in your industry, potential customers are far less likely to engage. 
 
AI can support campaign optimisation, but it cannot independently make commercial decisions about your wider marketing strategy, priorities or brand positioning. While Google's automated bidding and Meta’s Advantage+ suite can be incredibly effective, they still require experienced marketers to monitor performance, interpret the data, make strategic decisions and align campaign outputs with overarching business goals. 

Press release imagery  

The proliferation of AI can enable anyone to conjure an image in seconds, increasing the temptation to favour the cost and time savings of an AI-generated or AI-edited image over professional photography. 

Journalists, who can often receive hundreds of emails a day, are adept at spotting an AI-heavy photograph or graphic from a mile away, becoming instantly dismissive of the legitimacy of the article. 

Authenticity is a critical factor of newsworthiness in the media landscape. While a minor touch is acceptable, editing an image or building one from scratch using AI will only create a perception of mistrust to your business, and likely blacklist future coverage opportunities. 

When should you use AI for marketing? 

In summary, while AI has so many wonderful uses – we have even created an innovation role at Cartwright as our colleague Pete harnesses its potential to strengthen our own workflows and insights - there are several ways to deliver value: 

• Efficiencies – AI can speed up research and summarise reports or discover trends  
• Creative starting point – it can kick-off your thought process or support an ideation as well as telling you if an idea has been covered before 
• Automation – AI can answer common questions people are asking on your website, potentially freeing up a team member from responding directly or managing a live chat  

It essentially speeds up repetitive and laborious admin tasks so marketeers can focus on stand out creativity and insight-powered strategy.