How to use AI for marketing: 3 things small business owners do differently (that actually work)
I've been using AI pretty much every day for the past year — mainly Claude and to a lesser extent ChatGPT — and I've noticed my approach is quite different to most people I talk to.
Most people use it like a slightly cleverer Google. They ask a question, get an answer, close the tab. Which is fine, but it's scratching the surface.
Here are three things I do differently, with some ideas for how you can try them in your business too.
1. Give your AI tool a permanent memory of your business
Every time you start a new AI chat, it knows nothing about you. So if you're typing "I run a small photography business and my tone is quite warm and informal..." at the start of every conversation, you're wasting time — and you'll still get generic output.
The fix is to create a document that captures everything about your business: your voice, your values, who your clients are, words you'd never use, what you stand for, what you sell. Then you paste that document at the start of every chat.* Instantly, the AI is working with real context instead of guessing.
*If you use the paid versions of Claude or ChatGPT, you can take this further with projects or custom GPTs — upload your document once and it's there every time, without you having to do anything.
Try this: Write a one-page brain-dump about your voice, your audience, and a few examples of content you're proud of. Paste it at the start of your next AI chat and see how much better the output gets.
2. Use AI to figure out what you already think
This is the one that surprises people most. I don't use AI to write things for me from scratch. I use it to help me understand my own patterns — to spot what I'm already doing well and name it, so I can do it on purpose.
For example, I once pasted 20 emails I was proud of and asked: "What do these have in common? What does this tell you about my voice and style?"
The response was genuinely useful. It spotted things I hadn't consciously noticed about how I naturally write. The same thing works for social posts, proposals, website copy — anything, really.
You can also use it to get unstuck when you know roughly what you want to say but can't quite find the words. Instead of asking it to write something, tell it what you're trying to communicate — type a stream of consciousness, or even speak to it — and ask it to ask you questions until it can help you shape it. That way, the thinking stays yours.
Try this: Paste five or more pieces of content you like and ask "what patterns do you notice in how I write?" Then follow up with: "what does this tell you about my voice?"
3. Turn one idea into multiple formats in a single session
This is the one that saves me the most time.
Instead of treating every piece of content as a separate job — write a social post one day, write a newsletter another, record something else the week after — I use one piece of thinking and ask AI to help me slice it into different formats.
If I've just written a newsletter, I might ask: "What would this look like as three short social captions?" or "Give me five subject line options for this" or "Turn the main point of this into a 60-second script."
The core idea is already there. The AI is just helping me reshape it — because it already knows my voice from the context I've given it.
This works especially well if you batch your content. Spend an hour on one topic, really think it through, then extract as much as you can from it rather than starting from scratch each time.
Try this: Take something you've already created — a post, a blog, an email — and ask "what else could this become?" Then pick one format that feels right and make it real.
None of this requires any technical skill. It just requires thinking about AI as a tool you work with rather than a magic button you press.
A note on AI and the environment
AI uses a lot of energy. I'm not going to pretend otherwise or dress it up.
My approach is the same one I take with most things: do it thoughtfully rather than not at all. Using AI with proper context set up — so you're not going back and forth ten times trying to get something useful — means you're getting more value out of fewer interactions.
It won't make your AI habit carbon neutral, but it's a more considered way to use a tool that's not going anywhere.
The other thing that made me get over myself about it: AI genuinely levels the playing field for small businesses across the UK. The kind of support that used to cost thousands, or simply wasn't available to people working on their own, is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
Small businesses doing good work in the world being able to compete, grow, and have more impact? That feels like a worthwhile trade-off to me.
It's not perfect. But neither is doing nothing.
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Claude and ChatGPT are the two I use most. Both have free versions worth trying, and paid plans that unlock more useful features like saved projects and custom instructions.
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The biggest thing you can do is give the AI context about your business before you ask it anything. Your voice, your values, your audience, your offer. The more it knows, the less generic the output.
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It can help — but the best results come when you use it to shape your own thinking rather than replace it. Use AI to ask you better questions, spot your patterns, and repurpose content you've already made.
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It uses energy, yes. Using it thoughtfully — with good context so you're not repeating yourself — is a more considered approach than using it carelessly. Small businesses getting better access to marketing support is, I'd argue, a fair trade-off.
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By doing exactly what's in tip one above: building a document that captures your voice, your values, and your way of writing, and giving that to the AI at the start of every session. It's not about letting AI take over — it's about giving it enough of you to work with.
If you want to work on this kind of thing — thinking about your marketing, then actually doing it — alongside a community of small business owners who get it, that's exactly what the Do Crew is for.
We work on our marketing together every week, which turns out to be a lot more effective than doing it alone at midnight.