Jim Connolly Marketing

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

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AI Marketing, AI mistakes, small business marketing

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?

Powerful words for your marketing toolbox. Part 2

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marketing words, powerful words, words that sell, small business

Here’s another bunch of words you should use, to make more sales from your marketing. The previous list is here → Powerful words for your marketing toolbox.

As before, these are in no particular order. 

Ready? Let’s go!

Discover

Discover creates a sense of curiosity and opportunity. It suggests there’s something the reader doesn’t yet know, which is worth knowing. Compare ‘Find the secret that unlocks your potential’ with ‘Discover the secret that unlocks your potential’. 

Find makes the next step feel dry. Discovermakes it feel like an adventure.

Results

Results is a word that cuts to the chase. It’s the bottom line. The outcome. Prospects don’t buy products or services. They buy outcomes.

When you use the word results, you’re speaking directly to what they actually want. ‘You’ll see results in just 30-days’. It’s powerful.

Immediately

We live in an impatient world. When your prospect knows they’ll get something immediately, a lot of the hesitation disappears. Immediate access. Immediate results. Immediate peace of mind. So, if your product or service delivers something fast, say so.

When I showed small business owners how to get immediate marketing results, it went viral. Why? Because it delivered on the promise. It genuinely shows lots of ways that you can immediately enjoy results. It remains one of the most popular pages on my blog, and has been updated for 2026. 

Because

Because is a word I use regularly in my own marketing copy. And it’s always been effective. Why? It answers the question your prospect is already asking themselves: ‘why should I care about this?’ 

When you give people a reason, they’re far more likely to take action. I used this in my previous newsletter right at the end, when I said ‘Talk about the future as if it’s worth looking forward to. Because for a well-run business, it is’.

The word by itself, sets the reader’s expectation that a justification is coming. And people find that reassuring. This encourages them to read on.

Imagine

Imagine is a remarkable word. It does something powerful, which most marketing words do not. It moves the prospect’s focus from the present moment into the future. ‘Imagine what your business could look like in six months’. 

When you ask someone to imagine something, you’re not simply painting a picture, which by itself is powerful. You’re also inviting them to see their desired outcome. Very few words are more persuasive.

Now what, Jim?

Here’s the thing: the difference between a marketing message that converts and one that doesn’t is often tiny. A single word, well placed, can change the tone from distant and low impact, to NOW and high impact. 

Take a look at an underperforming piece of marketing you’re using. Look for a suitable place in the copy, where you can swap one of the words, for one of the options above. 

Want to make more sales in these fast-moving times, and enjoy the process? 

Well, you can. So let’s chat.

Why your audience isn’t growing in 2026

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Build your list, marketing, subscribers

Dylan Thomas 1937: Photo by Nora Summer

If you feel like you’re being ignored. If your subscriber count is flatlining despite following every best practice the AI marketing gurus are recommending. I want to offer you some reassurance. It isn’t your SEO, GEO, the freshness of your content or your publishing frequency.

The problem is much simpler, and a lot more human than that.

The rise of perfectly okay content

In 2016, we were worried about content creation fatigue. In 2026 we are drowning in a vast, automated ocean of content. Anyone can now generate a mountain of ‘okay quality’ marketing content with an AI prompt.

And that’s exactly what millions are doing. Leaving us swimming in an ocean of automated text.

Further reading: The anti creative ‘AI slop’ problem.

The content experts are telling you to use AI to scale-up your production. They give you prompts, templates and frameworks. But these frameworks make your writing indistinguishable from everyone else’s. They focus on getting the mechanics right.

Here’s the thing.

No one ever felt a connection with the mechanics of AI content. They connect with the person behind the words. And increasingly, there’s no person there. Just a chunk of automated content.

The Real Solution: How to build an audience in 2026

Building an audience today isn’t about out-producing the machines. It’s about out-thinking them. It boils down to three things that no algorithm can fake.

Here they are.

  • Have a point of view worth sharing. Don’t just report the news. Tell us why it matters. Don’t just give us a tip, tell us why the standard advice is no longer effective.
  • Say it with soul. Write in a way that sounds like a conversation over a good cup of coffee. Be brave enough to be imperfect and real. Be yourself.
  • Respect the reader’s time. Whether it’s 200 words or 2,000, make sure every sentence carries value.

    If you do this, something magical happens. You might start with only five readers. That’s fine. Because those five people will feel something. They will feel seen, helped or inspired by your words. And because they felt a connection with you and your thoughts, that can inspire some of them to tell their friends.

    A subset of their friends feel that same connection… repeat.

    The Dylan Thomas test: So rich. So strange. So new

    I’m reminded of the introduction given to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas before a performance in New York. The MC described his work as: “So rich. So strange. So new.”

    In a world of soulless, mechanical, AI-generated sameness, being strange or different is maybe your greatest competitive advantage. I call this the Dylan Thomas Test: if your work isn’t rich with insight, strange (different) enough to be human, and new enough to challenge the consensus, it will be largely ignored.

    Dylan Thomas didn’t become a legend because he optimised his poetry using H2 headings and bullet-points correctly. He didn’t become a household name because he published on the right day of the week. His work isn’t recognisable because he was a mechanically perfect writer.

    He succeeded because his poetic voice was unmistakably his. It was too rich to ignore. It was too human to be replaced.

    In 2026, the world doesn’t need more content. It needs more of you. And it needs you more than ever.

    Stop: Don’t hide the bad stuff

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    marketing tips, small print, fine print

    Photo by Francisco De Legarreta C.

    You’re reading about a product or service.

    It sounds amazing.

    Then you spot it!

    You spot the dreaded *asterisk. And your heart sinks.

    You know you’re about to be disappointed. You’re about to discover the exclusions, restrictions, omissions and conditions, which means that offer isn’t as good as they said it was.

    They could have told you the truth without hiding it behind the asterisk. However, they deliberately chose not to. They intentionally concealed it from you, hoping you wouldn’t dig deeper. And in a split second, they’ve totally changed how you feel about them.

    You wonder what else they’re hiding from you.

    Your guard is up.

    Your trust is diminished. Perhaps totally diminished.

    The asterisk risk

    If a business owner feels they need to hide something behind an asterisk, there are always better alternatives.

    The most effective alternative, is to make the product or service as good as you said. This eliminates the need for an asterisk. Plus, it simultaneously pumps more value into your offering, making it more attractive and giving you a huge competitive advantage.

    Another powerful alternative is to openly state, in honest and clear language, exactly what you’re offering. And include whatever would have been behind the asterisk, out in the open. Here’s an example of what that could look like.

    Imagine it’s an introductory deal, offering your service at a reduced price for the first 3 months. Rather than quote the introductory price (and hide the fact it increases after 3 months, behind an asterisk), tell them up front. Let people know that you’re so confident they’ll love your service, you’re offering it at a super-low discount, so they can discover for themselves, why it’s outstanding value at the regular price.

    There’s another reason for adopting a transparent approach to your marketing.

    And it’s a biggie, too.

    Social networks give your prospects a powerful voice. That voice can either be used to tell everyone how great you are, or how disappointed they are. Thankfully, you get to choose the kind of experience that’s being shared.

    Not only does transparency start to work immediately, it’s also a proven way to build an outstanding reputation in the long-term.

    Grab. Focus. Urgency: How to vastly increase your sales

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    marketing motivation, deadlines, sales

    When it comes to making sales or getting clients, deadlines are extremely effective. That’s because deadlines tap into one of the strongest motivators in business. The principle of scarcity.

    Here’s what makes deadlines such a powerful marketing tool.

    • They grab attention.
    • They focus the mind.
    • They create urgency.

    Attention grabbing

    It’s no wonder deadlines grab our attention. People hate to miss out. The fear of missing out, or FOMO, is activated the moment we see a deadline attached to something we have an interest in. FOMO grabs a prospect’s attention in a way that isn’t possible, when you don’t attach a deadline to your offer.

    Focused

    Our mind is then immediately focused on the actual date or time of the deadline. We start to work out the amount of time between now, and the cut-off point. Within reason, the shorter the deadline, the greater the motivation. However, too short a deadline will actually result in fewer sales/enquiries. There’s a balance required. For example, when marketing an event, 1 month is usually too short. But for a flash sale, 48 hours is often too long.

    Urgent

    The deadline presents us with a limited amount of time to make our decision. This sense of urgency will immediately inspire some people to take rapid action. Others will find the urgency grow and grow as the deadline approaches. Either way, the deadline creates a level of urgency that just isn’t there, when the prospect thinks they have all the time in the world.

    So, look for opportunities to add a deadline date or time to your marketing. Then see how all that increased attention, focus and urgency improves your response rates.

    Photo by Justin Veenema

    Does your business pass the coffee shop test?

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    marketing tip, coffee shop marketing, feelings over logic

    Almost all small business marketing relies too much on logic. If your business is one of them, that logic is already hurting your sales results. Let’s fix that right now!

    Here’s an example of how to get it right, which you already know extremely well. I’m talking about coffee shops. Consider the following.

    • People don’t visit coffee shops for the coffee.
    • They already have their favourite coffee at home.
    • They pay between 300% and 750% more for coffee at the coffee shop, because of how the experience makes them feel.

    Logically, they’d save a ton of money by drinking their coffee at home, sitting in their own super-comfortable chair.

    But people, including your prospective clients or customers, don’t make purchasing decisions based on logic. We largely make them based on feelings. I explain how emotions drive decisions, here.

    If your marketing message is based around facts, numbers, graphs, percentages… that’s way too logical. And it’s losing you sales. Your service or product may be less expensive, more premium, faster, or better designed. All those things are valid reasons why you should gain a huge chunk of your marketplace.

    However, unless you’re also, clearly explaining how your service or product will make them feel you’re leaving money on the table!

    Think of it like this: logic tells. Feeling sells.

    In his book “How Customers Think“, Harvard Business School professor, Gerald Zaltman, confirms that emotions/feelings contribute far more to decision making than conscious, rational thought.

    The switch from logic-based marketing to feelings-based marketing can be a massive win for you and your business. Here’s a suggestion: give it a try. Then, measure your results and see for yourself.

    Photo by Jon Tyson