Imagine a curtain shop on the corner. The owner opens an AI tool and types: “Help me write some warm, personable marketing copy.”
A few seconds later, the screen displays: “With a curtain of tenderness, cherish the happiness of home.”
Lovely. The sofa shop next door could use it too, as could the interior designer upstairs. Swap “a curtain” for “a cup,” and tomorrow’s post for the breakfast shop is ready too.
My heart aches a little for her. She paid for the tool hoping to improve business, and the first thing she got was a line anyone could say.
The better tools get at writing, the more you might sound like everyone else
When you see topics like AI tool popularity and profitability rankings, it’s easy to ask: Which one is most worth buying? Small and medium-sized businesses have limited budgets. Wanting to avoid costly detours is completely understandable.
But I tend to move the first step back a little: First, identify something you can actually deliver that customers also care about, then ask AI to help express it.
That sounds slow. Everyone else is already automating their posts, and we’re still sitting in the shop asking questions?
Because “we aren’t producing enough content” and “people can’t tell who we’re right for” call for different solutions. If the latter remains unresolved, AI simply prints your vague self-introduction into a thicker stack.
What customers are looking for often isn’t your job title
Suppose someone asks AI: “My rental gets strong afternoon sun, I can’t drill into the walls, and my budget is limited. What curtain options do I have?”
If a shop’s page only says “professional installation, quality first, attentive service,” you still won’t know after reading it whether the shop can meet that need. If it says “We can first assess no-drill options from photos of your window frames; some window types are unsuitable; blackout fabric samples are available for comparison,” at least it provides clues you can use to make a judgment.
This doesn’t mean clear writing guarantees an AI recommendation. Whether you can be found also depends on whether the page is accessible, whether the information is up to date, and how different search services process it.
But put those two descriptions in front of you: Which one is easier to use when answering the customer’s question? The difference is tangible.
People in digital marketing are familiar with visibility. In the context of AI search and recommendations, I care more about this: Once you’re visible, is there enough specific information to connect what you can do with that need?
The first task you give AI can be small
Don’t rush to plan an entire year’s content schedule. Pull out a few recent conversations leading up to a sale, redact names, phone numbers, and other personal information, and ask AI to organize the concerns customers repeatedly raise. Then have the people who actually provide the service check the results.
Are customers worried the installation will make a mess? That extra charges will be added to the quote? Or that they’ll take a day off and wait all day, only for the installer never to show up?
Next, choose one concern you can address and add the answer to your service page: how you handle it, what conditions are required, and in which situations it cannot be done. That’s a small task you can start with.
Some people will hesitate: Will spelling out our limitations cost us a few orders? It might. Every order matters to a small shop, and that struggle is real. But requests you were never well equipped to handle can also eat up an owner’s entire afternoon.
Back to that curtain shop. Looking at the questions AI had organized, the owner suddenly smiled: “So what everyone fears most is that I’ll tell them to redo the whole place. I often just replace the curtains on one window for people.”
She deleted “With a curtain of tenderness, cherish the happiness of home,” and slowly typed: “Even if you only want to replace the curtains on one window, you’re welcome to bring in a photo and ask.”