AI is wiping out your competitors. Now take their market share

Photo by Tara Winstead

Today, AI is causing a lot of anxiety for small business owners. I’d like to help you eliminate this anxiety, and equip you to wipe the floor with your AI heavy competitors.

Here’s the thing: from a marketing perspective, where AI is useful, it’s useful. But where AI is terrible, it’s really, really terrible.

The useful: AI can write content for social media posts and LinkedIn that’s better than the average business owner. AI has made it quicker and easier to get an image for your marketing. It’s also very useful for making social media cards.

The terrible: AI has critically serious problems when it comes to marketing. 

How serious? 

This serious!

Any business using AI for all or most of its marketing, that doesn’t have an experienced marketing professional overseeing everything, is in danger of wiping itself off the map. And the heavier they lean into AI marketing, the faster it will happen.

In fact, that’s what inspired me to write this for you. Members of the newsletter community have emailed over the past month, wondering why AI marketing doesn’t work for them. It’s not a coincidence. Several said trialing AI marketing was a New Year’s resolution. This is about the time I’d expect them to start struggling. 

Here’s how AI struggles with marketing

AI has no intuitive understanding of the realities of the physical world, which humans take for granted

What does this mean? AI sounds like a world-class marketing expert. It will sound this confident, as it suggests a marketing tactic, that cannot work when it comes into contact with reality. It will then work hard to convince users it’s a great idea. And AI is trained to be very convincing. To a user with just a basic understanding of marketing, the tactic will sound like a winner. 

It will be deployed. 

It will fail.

Every day, people are losing their reputations, their clients, their businesses, their contacts and their money as a result.

AI gives you answers and ideas, based on biased training information

Why is that a problem for your marketing?

It’s a massive problem, because the training data always contains the biases and goals of the AI provider.

We’ve all seen examples in the news, of politically biased answers, especially during the run-up to an election. We’ve seen examples of answers that trend toward recommending you use a certain product or service. And examples where if you ask it about the CEO of the AI, it will provide a doctored answer, based on what it’s been trained to say.

AI is blind to all non-obvious marketing opportunities

As you know, the best opportunities are never obvious. The problem? AI can’t spot a non-obvious opportunity. Why? It cannot make a move that seems to go against the data. This inability on the part of AIs, means those leaning into AI for their marketing will miss all the biggest wins. 

AI can’t take ownership of the risk

This is something one of the newsletter community mentioned in their email to me. And it’s a big deal. AI cannot absorb financial loss, fix reputational damage, accept legal liability,etc.

As the reader discovered, when advice or recommendations fail, all real-world impact falls on you. She explained how AI talked her into a $200 Google Ads investment. It wrote the ad and explained exactly what to do. The ad failed. The AI immediately said this was useful feedback and it now knew exactly what to say to make it work. She tried another $200. Again, it failed.

It’s only $400, you might say.

But $400 when her business is fighting for survival is a lot of money. 

Your opportunity today is huge

Right now, a lot of your competitors are wasting a lot of their time and missing a lot of new customers or clients. They’re gifting you a rare opportunity to own their share of the market. 

How? 

By not reacting to AI as a threat. 

It isn’t a threat to you. 

It’s your friend.

Yes, if you have a good eye, use AI for graphics.

Yes, if you need research for your marketing, let AI handle it. [Important: make sure you insist on a checkable source for everything, and tell AI to avoid anything on Reddit].

Yes, if you find writing for social media challenging, tell AI who you’re trying to reach and what you want your post to achieve; an enquiry, to subscribe to your podcast, to book a discovery call with you, etc. And let AI do it!

Your big win in May 2026 comes when you get smart!

Use actual, real world, proven, trusted, skin-in-the-game marketing. It works better today than at any time in my business’ 30-year history. 

Think about it: without even knowing it, lots of your competition is self-sabotaging today, to leave you with doors wide open all over your marketplace. How exciting is that! (no that’s not supposed to be a question mark, it’s supposed to be a motivating exclamation mark!). 

I’m really excited to help readers wipe out their competition. Not all of it, just enough to improve your life. So, what are you waiting for?

AI is wiping out your competitors. Now take their market share was written by Jim Connolly and originally published on Jim Connolly Marketing

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