Winning the Customer Through Marketing: Trust, AI, and Brand

Episode #362 Winning the Customer Through Marketing: Trust, AI, and Brand

Marty:
Every year, we run three Business Accelerator Programs (what we call BAPs) with eight CEOs in each cohort. The program is designed to help business owners drive profitable growth, make success more predictable, and realise their ambitions faster.

I’ll be honest, it used to be the Marty Show. I brought all my insights and experience to help CEOs improve rapidly. But over time, we’ve realised something. Marketing plays a much bigger role in business success than I originally gave it credit for.

Our CEO, Em, is probably one of the most skilled marketers out there. And the truth is, the success of our business has been largely due to her efforts.

We noticed that most of our BAP CEOs already have great businesses, strong teams, and solid results. But when it comes to marketing, they’re still trying to figure it out. They don’t always know what to focus on, how to get a return, or what actually moves the needle.

That led us to a bigger conversation – why marketing should matter to every leader, not just the marketing team.

Em:
Thanks for the intro, Marty. As you said, we work closely with 24 CEOs and business owners each year. They’re smart, capable, and deeply invested in their leadership, strategy, and operations. But marketing still feels like unfamiliar territory.

And honestly, that makes sense. If you’re running a business in manufacturing or professional services, marketing isn’t going to be your natural focus. But in 2025, you can’t afford to ignore it.

AI is reshaping everything. Trust is at an all-time low. And marketing has become a leadership responsibility. It’s not just about promoting a product. It’s how leaders think about strategy, relationships, and profitability. It defines how people experience your business, and your leadership.

Even if you’re not actively doing marketing, it’s still being done to you.

Marty:
Absolutely. Marketing is tightly linked to strategy. And that’s why it matters to every single leader. If you understand your strategy and you’re executing on it, you need to know how to market.

So Em, what are we diving into today?

Em:
We’re going to unpack the biggest marketing blind spots we see in leaders, and what to do about them.

So whether you’re running a business, leading a team, or just trying to influence more effectively, you’ll find something valuable here.

We’ll cover:

• Why brand marketing feels so hard, and why most leaders get it wrong

• How to get clear on your ideal customer so your marketing actually lands

• Why trust is harder to build than ever, and what to do about it

• What content works today and why polished isn’t always better

• And how to use AI without losing your voice

Marty:
I might even have something to add there. I haven’t done a Google search in six months. It’s all ChatGPT for me now. It’s an intelligent conversation partner, I love using it to challenge my thinking.

Em:
You’re deep in it, and we’ll definitely talk more about how AI is changing the game. We’ll also explore the human touches that still cut through, and how your marketing shapes your employer brand, which is critical in the war for talent.

Sound good?

Marty:
Let’s get into it.

Marty:
Let’s start with brand. Where do most leaders go wrong, and why does it feel so hard to get it right?

Em:
Most leaders still think brand means your logo, your LinkedIn banner, or your Instagram feed. But brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

Think about it. If your ideal customer is chatting to a friend and your name comes up as a recommendation – that’s brand. Or when you see a logo and instantly feel something based on your experience with that business – that’s brand.

I love this quote from Seth Godin:

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product over another.”

That sums it up perfectly.

Marty:
Yeah, that’s a bit of a mouthful, but I get it. It all comes back to why someone buys from you. And that’s where strategy meets marketing. Marketing supports strategy, full stop.

Em:
Exactly. And here’s the problem, if your marketing is off, if it’s inconsistent, inauthentic, or confusing, then you’re not going to be the first name someone thinks of when a recommendation comes up.

What most leaders miss is that your actions and your voice shape the brand more than you realise. Obviously if you’re the CEO or founder, your voice is your most powerful marketing asset, and often the most underutilised.

That doesn’t mean you need to be posting on TikTok every day and doing dance trends.

Marty:
Thank God.

Em:
But people do want to see the human behind the business. Your tone, your decisions, your visibility, all of that shapes how people perceive you.

Even if you’re a mid-level leader, you might think brand has nothing to do with you. But it does. You’re the face of the business to your team, your customers, and your peers.

How you run meetings. How you give feedback. How you live the company values when no one’s watching. That is brand.

Marty:
Yeah, especially as a mid-level leader. You’re trying to align your team with the strategy and purpose of the organisation. And if you don’t understand how to market to your customers, you’re going to struggle to keep your team focused on what matters most.

Em:
Totally. And that’s the world we’re leading in now – low trust, high noise.

How you show up as a leader directly influences how people experience the brand, whether you’re the founder or not. Trust isn’t built through polish anymore. That worked in the Mad Men era. I still wish I could have been part of that sometimes.

But today, trust is built on consistency, authenticity, and proof.

Marty:
Alright, so let’s shift into customer understanding. We talk about this a lot in the Business Accelerator. Leaders need to know exactly who their customer is and why they choose to buy. How does that play into marketing?

Em:
If you don’t know who you’re talking to, you can’t create content that connects or converts. It’s so easy to get wrong.

I’ve done it myself. A few years ago I was in a mastermind in the US and my friend Laura said, “Em, I love what you guys do, but when I look at your Instagram, I can’t tell who your product is for. Is it for new leaders? Executives?”

She was right. I had committed the cardinal sin of marketing – trying to appeal to too many people.

Yes, technically all those groups could benefit from our work, but by trying to speak to everyone, I was diluting the message. So about 18 months ago, we made a decision.

We stopped talking to CEOs and business owners in our content, even though we run a program specifically for them. It was confusing for the audience. Instead, we focused everything on mid-to-senior level leaders. That’s who gets the most value from your insights. That’s who we speak to in every message.

And what happened? They started resonating deeply. They knew the brand was for them. Our messaging became sharper. And it changed our results.

Marty:
Yeah, that was a turning point. We had incredible clarity when we started the business. We knew our ideal customer. But over time, we blurred the focus trying to expand the reach. Like a normal distribution curve, we started drifting toward the edges instead of hitting the sweet spot in the middle.

Em:
Exactly. And once you’ve defined your avatar, the next question is, what do you actually do with it?

Start at the beginning. Who are they? What keeps them up at night? What problems are they trying to solve? And how does what you offer help them?

We get this insight from anecdotal feedback, surveys (which I send a lot of) and from the questions people ask us.

Marty:
I get your surveys too. What’s going on with your segmentation?

Em:
Clearly not good enough if you’re still getting them!! But once you know your avatar, and your whole team knows it – marketing, ops, sales, product – then everything becomes sharper. Your content gets more engaging, your training becomes more relevant, and even frontline staff can connect more deeply with customers.

Marty:
And that gets even more complex with AI, right?

Em:
Yes. We’ve been working closely with our friend James Killick from Njin on this. He built a custom GPT that helps define tone of voice specifically for your customer avatar. You create the avatar, define how they want to be spoken to, and then roll that tone out across marketing, sales, and customer service.

Having a clear, simple avatar doesn’t just change your marketing, it changes everything. Sales, ops, CX. If you serve multiple customer groups, this becomes even more important.

One of our clients, Innovync, makes high-accuracy five-axis CNC machines. They serve glass, stone, composites, plastics, all different customer groups. But their pain points are the same: avoid downtime, stay away from cheap, unreliable imports. So while you might tweak the language, your core value prop stays sharp.

We could go deep on segmentation here, but that’s the short version.

Marty:
You’re absolutely right. Once you’ve nailed your message and you’re speaking to the right people, the next challenge is: how do you actually get cut-through? Especially when AI is flooding the market with content that, let’s be honest, is mostly garbage. What still makes people stop and trust you?

Em:
Trust used to be about credibility. A polished, professional brand. Today, I’d say trust is about proof. It’s in the testimonials. The behind-the-scenes moments. The low-production, high-value content. The tone of voice. How human you actually sound.

People can smell AI-written content from a mile away. If your emails feel robotic, or your social media feels overly curated and inauthentic, people just won’t trust you, no matter how good your product is.

Trust isn’t built by telling anymore. It’s built by showing.

Marty:
That’s probably why I still write all the podcast content myself. And fun fact, a 20-minute solo podcast takes me between 10 and 12 hours to produce, depending on how much research I have to do.

Em:
You’re an author,  writing’s in your wheelhouse. But more importantly, it’s your voice. I’ve seen you use ChatGPT here and there for research “Here are my points, am I missing anything?” but the writing is always you.

And honestly, that’s rare now.

Marty:
You can see it in the output. I sometimes use AI to speed up the research or tighten phrasing, but I don’t like the way it writes. I find it faster to just do it myself, because that’s the only way it sounds like me.

Em:
Exactly. And I’ve been trying to write like you for seven years and I still get red ink.

Marty:
Lots of it.

Em:
So when it comes to trust, it’s about being real, not perfect. We talk about excellence over perfection all the time. And that applies to marketing too.

Trust comes from showing the people behind the brand. Sharing real stories. Posting content that feels human and organic.

We test this constantly. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on ads, and the data is clear, high-production glossy content almost never performs as well as the stuff that feels real.

On Meta and LinkedIn, the posts that work are the ones that tell a story, that give people insight into you, the team, or the topic in a way that feels personal and relatable.

Marty:
That’s such an important point. And even as AI is getting better, it’s still not you. So how do you help leaders cut through the noise without losing their voice?

Em:
It starts with understanding what AI is good for, and what it’s not.

I’m not an AI expert, but I’m a huge fan of using it well. I experiment with it all the time, not just for speed, but for creativity.

There’s a quote I love, often attributed to Hemingway: “Write drunk, edit sober.” I’ve adapted that for how I use AI: “Write with ChatGPT, edit like yourself.”

AI helps me structure ideas, brainstorm, and get out of a blank-page rut. But the final output? That has to sound like you. The moment something feels too polished, robotic, or formulaic, people disconnect.

AI doesn’t lack nuance, it just lacks you. Your phrasing, your energy, your voice.

If you’re going to use AI, let it get you 60% of the way there. But don’t skip the final 40%, that’s where connection happens.

Marty:
So what do you think AI is actually great at in marketing?

Em:
Oh, so many things! It’s also amazing for:

• Researching your ideal customer

• Structuring your thinking

• Analysing content performance

• Organising rough ideas

I use it constantly with voice dictation or tools like Whisper Flow. I can talk way faster than I type, so I capture ideas quickly and get them into a format I can shape later.

What I don’t use it for? Final posts. Public content like newsletters. AI-generated avatars or videos pretending to be someone else.

Remember that Portuguese video of you, Marty? Three years ago, I put a clip from Leadership Beyond the Theory into an AI tool and made it look like you were speaking fluent Portuguese.

Marty:
It was actually amazing. I showed it to a friend in Boston who’s Portuguese, he said it was spot on.

Em:
It was freaky good. But just because the tech exists doesn’t mean it should be used that way. You can feel when something’s AI-written, especially in marketing.

Also, this is a random one, but if you’re still using dash ems in your writing, delete them. They make everything sound like ChatGPT wrote it.

Marty:
Wait, I still use dash ems sometimes.

Em:
I know, and I’ve had to start editing them out. People think it’s AI-generated when they see it. It sounds too clean, too vague, like it’s trying not to offend anyone. I just can’t do it.

Marty:
That wouldn’t work for me. I mean, the word “bullsh!t” offends people in some parts of the world, especially in the conservative US. But that’s actually a built-in filter. If you’re offended by the name, you’re probably not going to resonate with our approach.

Em:
Exactly. And that’s why the brand works – it’s direct, it’s consistent, and people know what they’re getting. You look at the box, and when you open it, it’s the same inside.

The moment something starts sounding like management-speak or a generic corporate statement, trust drops. People buy from people. And we’re wired to connect with human language.

So if you’re using AI in your marketing or in your leadership comms, do it to accelerate, not to replace. Use it to build the skeleton. But you still have to add the muscle and the heart.

Marty:
You touched earlier on how this impacts your employer brand. I reckon that’s a massively underrated part of the marketing conversation. What’s the connection there?

Em:
Yeah, it’s a big one. Leaders often separate employer brand from marketing. But it’s the same thing, it’s all about how people experience your business.

The way you post job ads, the tone of your career site, how your leaders show up online, it all influences how people see your culture. And when trust is low, people look for signals.

Does this business reflect the values they claim to have? Is this leader someone I can learn from? Will I feel proud to say I work here?

Employer brand doesn’t mean ping pong tables or a social post about your office dog. It’s about consistency. Do your leaders live the values? Does your content match the internal reality? Is your onboarding process an extension of what your marketing promised?

Marketing isn’t just a lead-gen activity, it’s your culture’s handshake with the outside world. It sets expectations. And if your internal leadership doesn’t match that external promise, it creates churn, misalignment, and a talent brand problem you’ll feel for years.

Marty:
Okay. So to wrap it up, what’s your one piece of advice for a leader who’s still thinking “this isn’t my job, marketing’s not my thing”?

Em:
You don’t have to do the marketing, but you have to understand it. If you’re running a team, a business, or anything where you need to influence others,  you’re already marketing.

The question is whether you’re doing it consciously and effectively, or just letting it happen by default.

You don’t need to become a marketing expert. But if you ignore it completely, you’re going to struggle to grow, hire, sell, or build trust in today’s world.

Marketing is just modern leadership, in public.

Marty:
Well, I think that’s the mic drop moment right there.

Thanks Em. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We’ll be back next week with more No Bullsh!t insights to help you lead better, grow faster, and cut through the noise.

See you then.