I was recently in Charlotte to watch my team take on the Carolina Panthers. My friend flew down with his son, and I picked up my son on the way.

We were heading out to dinner, and my son wanted to eat a burger at a bar, but David (my friend) wanted to make this more than just a meal and more of an experience. We ended up at The Capital Grill, and the whole experience was worth the price of admission.

My crew understands why you eat at a Capital Grill rather than a Texas Roadhouse. It’s the personalized service and the food quality.

AI In the News

While waiting for our table, I was watching the evening news, and a story came on about how “AI Wants to Kill Us!”

AI has been in the news a lot lately. “Artificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn.” While the article highlights concerns from execs at top AI companies, it’s a bit of hyperbole. AI could eventually pose an extinction-level risk comparable to pandemics or nuclear war, experts argue, but the real concern is more about the concentration of technological power than science-fiction-style human extinction.

Every day, new headlines mention that AI will kill jobs, flood the zone with misinformation, and get smart enough to determine that humans are their enemy.

But for those of us marketing our businesses to generate leads and create meaningful customer relationships, there is a more pressing question.

Has AI Already Killed Marketing?

Well, maybe? Or it may be killing the version of marketing that has already been on life support.

For years, too much marketing has been based on volume over value. Build a bigger email list, get 30,000 LinkedIn followers, generate more Google ads. AI promises to make that easier and faster.

But AI did not create the volume-over-value problem. It simply gives everyone a bigger, faster, cheaper megaphone.

Flooding the Zone

AI can produce a flood of blog posts, social updates, email sequences, and more before most people finish their first cup of coffee. Attention and influence are the internet’s new currency. That is why the internet is deluged with content that may look and sound polished, but says very little.

In a 2025 survey, 63% of marketers said they were using AI at least weekly. The American Marketing Association (which I was a member of) reported that nearly 90% of marketers are using generative AI at work.

To be fair, AI doesn’t only create bad content. It can create good first drafts, useful outlines, strong research summaries, and even a few clever ideas.

The main problem is that many people get lazy and think the first draft is good enough to publish.

There are hundreds of companies that may use the same tools, with maybe even the same prompts, that query the same recycled source material to create the same generic AI slop. What we, the readers, get is dull, uninspired AI output that all sounds vanilla and lacks any new ideas or thought leadership.

Trust me. AI has the flavor of a McDonald’s Big Mac. Tasty with all the bread, cheese, sauce, and other ingredients, but your view would change if you ate that burger patty alone. Your content needs to be like a Morton’s, Ruth’s Chris, or Capital Grill steak where the meat stands alone and is much more satisfying.

Quality counts when you are trying to earn your customers’ attention and trust.

By the way… the picture is of BACON! And it was the best bacon any of us have had in our lives!

Marketing Is Not Dead

Marketing is not dead. But lazy marketing is killing interest and enthusiasm.

The old playbook of creating keyword-stuffed articles, automating generic emails, and hoping people have the time and attention span to consume it was losing its luster before AI arrived.

AI has simply made it easier for everyone to mass-produce more of it.

The kind of marketing that still works does three things better than AI:

• It speaks to a specific audience and the problems they are trying to solve.
• It shares a unique point of view based on experience, not just other content compiled from competitors’ old stuff on the web.
• It informs in a way that piques interest and creates questions that drive human interaction (not just more prompts in an AI engine).

AI can help with the first two. But only quality human-generated content can create the third.

Consumers may be swayed by an influencer’s post, but a B2b buyer does not make a decision based on a blog post’s headings or a video’s caption in a social media feed. They are hiring a partner who understands their business model, offers intelligent ideas, and helps them make better decisions.

They want to interact with people who communicate with empathy and credibility.

The Trust Problem

AI may not kill people yet… but it can kill sales.

Research from the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions found that people who knew content was AI-made viewed it more negatively than when they believed it was human-made. This creates a trust gap that makes people more hesitant to engage with that brand.

Recent consumer research found that only 7% of people said visible AI-generated marketing made them trust a brand more, but 31% said it made them trust less.

That does not mean you should try to hide every use of AI, but it should make you hesitate to outsource your voice, your knowledge, or your customer relationships to just any AI tool.

People do not want or need “more content.” They want better content that helps them make sense of complicated issues.

How AI Can Help You Create Better Marketing

AI will not replace your need to market, but it can enhance your ability to create better, more focused content that speaks to your audience.

It can help you:

• Research topics and identify patterns in your market.
• Organize notes from sales calls and customer interviews.
• Turn one strong idea into multiple content formats.
• Draft outlines, headlines, subject lines, and first versions.
• Analyze data faster and find questions worth investigating.
• Create a starting point that a knowledgeable human can improve.

Content comes alive when you insert your voice via:

• Your hard-earned experience.
• Customer stories, with permission and appropriate confidentiality.
• A clear opinion.
• Specific examples.
• Useful next steps.

Your job is to make it sound like a human voice that creates a desire for more human-to-human interaction.

AI can become the raw meat of a content meal, but your spice and cooking prowess create a creative experience worth consuming.

Your New Marketing Advantage

There is no competitive advantage to producing more content faster. That is so 2025.

The real advantage is using your knowledge, experience, and brand personality to create content that proves you understand your customer better than competitors do.

For a small or midsize B2b company, that creates a major opportunity. You may not have the largest budget, or biggest team, or even the loudest brand, but you can be more relevant when people need what you sell.

Just create better pieces that answer the questions your sales team hears every week. Simplify complex issues in plain English. Prove to customers and prospects that you have the chops to help them learn how to avoid expensive mistakes. And when they raise their hands, follow up with a thoughtful, personalized message instead of automated sequences that end up in junk mail.

That is what moves the needle today. Powerful personalization beats prompt pontification every time.

Closing Thought

AI is here to stay. Thinking it’s evil and wants to destroy us is not a strategy, but handing it the keys to all your marketing without human direction is not a strategy either.

Use AI to help you move faster, become more prepared, and act more consistently. Don’t use it as a crutch when you are in a hurry or uninspired.

There are no internet awards (or rewards) for generating the most AI content. But there are prizes for using AI to spend more time listening, thinking, and creating thought-provoking thought-leadership content. The prize will be more leads and better sales, built through stronger business relationships.

So, no, AI hasn’t killed marketing yet, but the jury is still out on whether it will open the hatch doors when we need it to!

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.