Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often feel pressured to keep up with big brands that dominate social media channels with large marketing budgets and huge creative teams. Generative AI offers SMBs an opportunity to level the playing field by producing high-quality, engaging content at scale, similar to what bigger brands achieve. But there’s more to it than just cranking out content—at Avenue9, we humanize that content and tell the unique story of your business.

Here’s how you can use human-first AI to market like big brands, while keeping content personal and relatable:

1. Define Your Brand Voice and Story

Before you even open an AI tool, your brand voice and story need to be clear. Big brands have a distinct identity that runs through all their messaging, and your SMB should too. To get started:

• Reflect on your mission, values, and customer needs. What problem does your business solve? How are you uniquely positioned to address your customers’ pain points?
• Craft a human-centered story. Your audience wants to connect with real people and real stories. Share how your business was founded, the challenges you’ve overcome, and your vision for the future.

Once this is clear, you can use AI to amplify that voice. Generative AI tools like Jasper or ChatGPT can take the tone and style you’ve defined and help create content that consistently reflects your story across platforms.

Action Step: Write a brief brand narrative and define 3-5 key characteristics of your brand voice (e.g., friendly, innovative, approachable). Use these guidelines when prompting AI for content generation.

2. Leverage AI for Content Ideation and Creation

Big brands often have entire teams dedicated to content brainstorming and production, but generative AI can act as your own creative assistant. Whether you’re writing blog posts, crafting social media copy, or drafting emails, AI can help create a variety of content quickly.

• Create engaging social media content. AI can process your existing content and draft punchy, on-brand social media captions and even suggest visual ideas to complement them.
• Expand on AI-generated ideas. AI can give you a rough draft, but personalizing and adding human touch is essential. For example, take the AI’s blog intro and add a personal anecdote or case study to highlight your business’s unique experience.

Action Step: Use AI to generate a list of 10 blog posts or social media ideas that align with your brand story. Choose two and develop them by adding insights or anecdotes from your business. Or better yet, write out your top 2 client success stories and then have AI turn them into blog posts with actionable steps like this one.

3. Personalize Content with Data

One of the advantages big brands have is access to massive datasets that allow them to personalize marketing efforts. But with AI-powered tools, SMBs can use customer data in smart ways to create personalized content.

• Segment your audience. Use AI to analyze your customer base and segment them by behaviors, preferences, or purchase history. This allows you to tailor messages to different segments.
• Create dynamic content. AI can help generate dynamic emails or web content that changes based on user behavior, interests, or past interactions with your brand. This creates a more relatable story.

Actionable Step: Start with basic customer data (even if it’s just examples of existing clients) and create AI-generated email campaigns that offer personalized recommendations or content. Tailor your existing emails to each industry or buyer persona.

4. Maintain Authenticity with Human-First Content

While generative AI can save time and increase your content output, it’s important to infuse a human touch. Big brands succeed by creating content that resonates emotionally with their audience—your business can do the same by adding authenticity.

• Incorporate customer stories or testimonials. AI can help draft a basic story or testimonial format, but actual customer feedback will make it feel real. Humanize your content by sharing real-world examples of how your product or service has positively impacted someone.
• Show your behind-the-scenes. Big brands have polished campaigns, but many also show authenticity through behind-the-scenes content. AI can help generate captions or structure content ideas, but share real images or videos from your team to make the connection personal.

Actionable Step: Use AI to draft a set of questions for your testimonial outline and then reach out to a real customer and interview them to fill in the details. Incorporate snippets of this video into your website, email campaigns, or social media. You can also upload the transcript to AI and remix the testimonial into other formats like blog posts, emails, and white papers.

Human-First AI Marketing Leads to SMB Success

New AI tools offer small businesses the opportunity to market like big brands, but the key to success lies in how you use it. By telling your business’s specific story, personalizing content with customer data, and adding a human touch to everything you produce, you can build a brand that feels personal, even at scale.

Generative AI is a powerful tool, but it’s the human input first—the stories, values, and creativity—that makes your content resonate. When used effectively, AI doesn’t just help you market; it helps you build authentic connections that drive long-term customer loyalty.

If you need help coming up with an AI marketing plan, producing the content, or tying the pieces together to a lead generation machine, contact us for a free discovery consultation.