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In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, host Kendra Corman tackles one of her biggest marketing pet peeves — believing that artificial intelligence can replace truly knowing your audience. With AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini becoming everyday marketing helpers, many professionals are skipping the fundamentals of understanding their customers. Kendra explains why that shortcut leads to bland, ineffective content and what to do instead.

The Problem with Skipping the Basics

• Many marketers use AI to generate content without doing the essential groundwork of understanding their audience.
• AI tends to “make you happy” — it tells you what you want to hear, not necessarily what your target market is actually thinking.
• When you rely solely on AI, you end up with generic, emotionless copy that fails to connect.

Understanding Your Audience: The Real Marketing 101

• Knowing your audience isn’t just about demographics — it’s about visualizing the person you’re talking to.
• Kendra shares a story about working with a local business that used detailed data to build realistic customer personas—down to shopping habits, lifestyle, and motivations.
• You don’t need expensive software to do this. Start by thinking about your favorite client and what makes them unique.

How to Really Learn About Your Audience

• Skip the surveys—people edit themselves when writing responses.
• Have real conversations with your audience instead. 

Ask questions like:

• What’s keeping you up at night?
• What frustrates you most about your business or life?
• What do you wish you had a solution for?

These conversations give you the exact words and emotions that resonate with your audience — words you can later feed into AI for far more powerful results.

Using AI the Right Way

• Once you understand your audience, AI becomes a powerful tool — not a replacement for human connection.

AI can help you:

• Brainstorm ideas and refine your voice
• Draft faster and polish existing content
• Create consistent, audience-specific messaging

The difference between “Write me an email” and “Write me an email for this audience, in this voice, about this problem” is night and day.

Key Takeaways for Marketers

• AI isn’t the enemy — but it’s not magic either.
• You are the strategist. AI can only amplify what you already know.
• Know your audience better than anyone else, and your marketing will never sound forced or fake.

Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or content creator, this episode will challenge you to return to the roots of great marketing: understanding people.

👉 Grab Kendra’s free “Define Your Dream Audience” guide and start using real audience insights to make your AI tools work for you — not the other way around.

Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?

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