AI is going to AI
We’re past the AI honeymoon and firmly in the “OK, how do I use this without losing myself?” era. Right now, 80 per cent of Australian small businesses are either already using AI or planning to adopt it, according to the Australian Small Business AI Report 2025 by BizCover, based on a survey of 965 small business owners.
I’m firmly pro‑AI. I just know that when something becomes trending, templated and everywhere, it also becomes dangerously beige. So for small business owners, the real question is no longer “Should I use AI?” It’s “How do I use AI in my marketing and stay unmistakably me?”
1. Staying unique in an AI world
My rule of thumb: around 80 per cent of your core content should be a dead‑honest expression of your brand – your identity, vision, positioning and offers, in your own words. That’s your foundation. The other 20 per cent is your AI playground, where you let tools help you explore new angles, formats and ideas that still line up with your values.
Millennials and Gen Z are not loyal to trends; they are loyal to brands that feel real. SuperStaff’s 2025 “Brand Loyalty in 2025: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Reshaping the Market” notes that close to 90 per cent of Millennials and Gen Z say authenticity and shared values are key reasons they choose and stay with a brand. AI helps you move faster, but your humanity is what actually keeps them connected.
2. How I actually feel about AI in copy
I don’t see AI as the enemy; I see it as the fast, slightly chaotic junior on your team. It becomes powerful once your foundations are clear: your unique value proposition, your brand voice, your mission and core values, your offers, your key landing pages, and real language from your customers (reviews, DMs, emails, call notes).
Once that exists, go for it. Use AI tools to riff on hooks, headlines, subject lines, blog outlines, carousel ideas and angles your tired brain wouldn’t spot at 10 p.m. But if you ask AI to find your positioning and write your whole brand story from scratch, you’ll sound like everyone else who did the same thing last night.
3. How not to lose your brand voice to AI
“Write like you talk” is a good start. “Write like you type” is better. Think about how you thumb‑type into the group chat with your buddies, send voice notes to your best friend, or forward a reel to your sibling at 11 p.m. with a brutally honest comment. That’s where your real voice lives – and that’s exactly the texture AI will smooth out if you let it run unedited.
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows both generations are quick to disengage from brands that feel performative or inauthentic and are far more likely to support brands that “speak like real people” and behave consistently with their stated values. Gen Z, in particular, grew up flooded with content; they are ruthless at sniffing out generic, recycled language. AI can absolutely draft, but you have to put your fingerprints back into the copy.
4. You’re not losing loyal customers because of AI
You’re not losing loyal customers because you used an AI tool to draft a caption. You lose them when you stop evolving, when your content feels like a museum of your old “greatest hits”. SuperStaff’s 2025 loyalty report emphasises that Millennials and Gen Z are willing to switch quickly if a brand stops feeling relevant, aligned or transparent.
Your loyal community actually wants to see you adapt. They’ve loved what you’ve done so far, but they don’t want the same safe post on repeat. They want to see you try new things, use new tools and play with new ideas – as long as the core of who you are doesn’t disappear in the process.
5. Lawyer up harder with proof
Storytelling is still queen, but she now needs a lawyer and evidence. Beautiful brand stories are great, but they must be backed by proof: data points, testimonials, screenshots, case studies, reviews and user‑generated content that show real outcomes for real people.
Vogue Business, in “Gen Z Broke the Marketing Funnel”, reports that 56 per cent of Gen Z believe brands often lie about their products and services, compared with 47 per cent of Millennials. That’s a serious trust gap. At the same time, SuperStaff’s 2025 analysis highlights transparency and honesty as non‑negotiables for Millennials and Gen Z when choosing brands. So yes, tell the story – and put the receipts underneath it.
6. Personalise like you actually know them
Personalisation isn’t “Hi, {First Name}” anymore; it’s content that clearly remembers what someone has already shown you they care about. In practice: stop sending the exact same thing to everyone, and start using AI‑powered tools to tailor what you send based on behaviour, interests and stage of the journey.
McKinsey & Company shared 2025 survey findings that 71 per cent of consumers expect personalised interactions, and 76 per cent get frustrated when they don’t receive them. Contentful’s 2025 “State of Personalisation” roundup, citing McKinsey, also notes that companies leading in personalisation are seeing up to 40 per cent more revenue from these efforts than slower‑growing peers. So when I say “personalise”, I don’t mean “be cute”; I mean “stop leaving money and loyalty on the table”.
7. Build the thing in real time
We’re in a “build it in public” era. You no longer need six months in a cave to perfect your next offer. Use AI tools to get you to a solid draft quickly, then test it in front of real humans and let their reactions guide your next version.
This can look like sharing your idea or first draft with a closed community, your warmest email list or a membership space. Australian small business reports from Deloitte and Amazon, in “The AI Edge for Small Business”, show owners who experiment and iterate with AI‑supported workflows see higher productivity and faster time to market than those who wait for perfect solutions. If you launched it perfect, you probably launched too late.
8. Float above the AI black hole
There’ll always be another AI tool, prompt pack or hack. Your customers do not care which one you used; they care whether what you made actually helps them, inspires them or solves something that matters.
Codewave’s 2025 “Customer Experience Trends in Australia” report found that Australians prioritise speed, clarity and feeling in control of their interactions over the specific technology behind them. So yes, learn enough AI to work smarter. But spend more energy understanding your customer’s desires, language and behaviour than you spend watching tutorials. The tools will keep changing. Your people are the point.
The Mind‑bending Bit: Humanness is the New Scarcity
Here’s the bit I want you to really sit with: AI has made content abundant, but it has made humanness scarce. When anyone can generate decent content at scale, the thing that stops the scroll isn’t “better AI”; it’s a real human voice cutting through the sameness.
Vogue and Vogue Business have already shown how algorithmic culture can create sameness at scale – from identical trending bags to identical brand aesthetics that lose their magic the moment everyone has them. That’s what happens when everything is optimised for the trend, not for the person. AI is abundant. You are not. And in marketing, the scarce thing is always the thing people crave. So absolutely use AI. Just make sure that, in a sea of AI‑generated noise, you’re still the most human thing in the room.
Book a private strategy session with me to dive deeper into making your AI generated content to sound just like you.
