AI is Exposing Weak Brands | Here’s What Great Brands Understand
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Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer
Have you ever felt a disconnect between your work and your brand? Or have you felt discouraged by founders with less credentials booking clients you’ve only dreamed of working with? In this short, yet impactful episode, Victoria defines "The Perception Gap" and how you can close it to ensure every aspect of your business represents the high-quality experience you give your clients.
Victoria explains how the modern buying behavior has shifted, the impact AI could have on trust, and ways to reduce friction with potential clients. This is the education and pep talk combination so many founders need to hear right now—at a time when the internet is the loudest it's ever been. Whether you’re in the school drop off line or heading out the door for a meeting, this episode will leave you feeling inspired and more equipped to handle the ever-changing marketing landscape.
Are We Entering a Trust Crisis?
The most successful brands right now aren’t necessarily the ones with the most experience. They’re the ones creating the clearest emotional connection and strongest sense of trust with their audiences.
The way consumers interact with brands is rapidly changing. We’re currently in a time where content has never been easier to produce. AI generates captions, blogs, emails, podcast scripts, and website copy almost instantly. While that sounds exciting and can save you hours of time as a business owner, it’s also creating a massive amount of noise.
The Internet is loud and repetitive, and consumers can feel it. People are overwhelmed by the noise, and they're more skeptical than they've ever been. The recycled content and messaging is leading us into a trust crisis, where consumers are overanalyzing brands before investing in them.
The Perception Gap
Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer is a book about how modern consumers were beginning to rebel against manipulative, impersonal marketing. The tagline of the book is “the most human company wins”. The book came out in 2019, but that message is even more relevant today.
In a world flooded with information, consumers are making faster decisions about who feels trustworthy, aligned, credible, and even believable. The “perception gap” is a phrase Victoria coined for what happens when a business outgrows its scrappy startup era. Their business has evolved beyond its initial branding and website. Their expertise and client experience have improved, and pricing has increased. The problem is their presentation has not changed, and that disconnect creates friction inside of the business. Their online presence no longer reflects the caliber of what they've built.
Perception drives trust, power, and emotional connection. It’s what determines whether someone inquires or clicks off the website.
Modern Buying Behavior Has Changed
It’s no longer enough to assume your work will speak for itself. The modern buyer behavior has changed, and it’s important to understand this and tailor it to your business.
People Research Everything
Even if your business primarily relies on referrals, your potential clients are researching you online. And the higher the investment is, the more trust that’s required for your potential clients to book you. Trust is formed or broken often within seconds of someone landing on your website or interacting with your brand, so it’s crucial to offer a positive first impression.
Branding is Not for Your Ego
When someone lands on your website or social media, they’re looking for clues. They’re asking:
Does this feel established?
Is this brand trustworthy?
Do they understand someone like me?
Your brand answers those questions before you ever get on a sales call. Branding isn’t actually about you; it’s about your customers. Branding acknowledges that the customer experience begins before a client pays their invoice.
You Pay for the Experience
Clients don’t just pay for a product, but they pay for the entire experience surrounding the product. You have to prepare someone emotionally for the price point before they ever hear the number.
Your website creates a psychological experience for its visitors. If there’s a mismatch between the caliber of your work and the caliber of your presentation, buyers experience tension—which they’ll avoid at all costs. That’s where the perception gap really comes into play. Potential clients may not voice this friction upfront, but instead they’ll say things like, “We’re exploring a few options” or “We decided to go in another direction”.
How Different Generations Interact with Brands
It’s no surprise that the younger generations buy differently. Millennials, Gen Z, and eventually Gen Alpha are deeply brand aware generations. They make a purchase with identity, alignment, values, experience, and emotional resonance in mind. That shift is heavily impacting marketing forever.
The younger generations grew up on their phones, so they have the opportunity to interact with brands every single day. As Millennials and Gen Z start to make up more of the buyer pool, they’re requiring marketers to change how they market their products and services.
The older generations were shaped by mass marketing—widen your audience or service, widen your client base. But that just doesn’t work as well anymore. Today’s market rewards specificity and deeply understanding a particular customer and their needs.
AI and Humanized Brands
Victoria believes that AI accelerates this shift toward specificity. The more AI-generated content floods the internet, the more valuable a human brand becomes. If you use AI in your business, use it for efficiency purposes, not for creative tasks. When you hand your creativity over to AI, it’s going to dilute your brand's uniqueness and you’ll lose your distinct point of view.
Watering down what makes you stand out causes you to look like every other business in your industry, and when everyone looks the same, people will resort to the cheapest or most convenient option.
How to Close the Perception Gap
If you’re an established business owner, perhaps you’ve come to the point where you no longer compete on skill or credentials. You’re competing on perception, and here are some ways to close that perception gap.
Strategic Branding
Strategic branding is meant to be a visual representation of the brand’s unique positioning within their market. Define the brand, audience persona, and feeling you want to create when someone interacts with you, and then use that to design the visual elements and website.
People rarely buy based on logic—they buy based on emotions. Your branding should clearly be in alignment with your customer experience, prices, and expertise.
Intentional Messaging
As your business grows and evolves, your ideal client likely will too. Perform an audit of your website copy to ensure it’s reflective of the current version of your ideal client. Your copy and messaging should emotionally resonate with where they’re at today, not where they were at a few years ago.
More Humanity
We all crave human-to-human connection, and when that’s stripped of us, it’s very frustrating for the consumer. The brands that survive this trust crisis will be the ones that are grounded in their POV, clear with their messaging, and are believable. AI won’t replace great brands, but it will expose the weak ones.
Analyze Your Buying Decisions
If this opened your eyes to the perception gap in your own business or inspired you to think about modern buying behavior, here’s an exercise to try. Look at the last 3 brands you intentionally bought from. Ask yourself:
What made you trust them quickly?
What assumptions did you make before buying?
What emotions did their branding evoke inside you?
Did their presentation align with its price point?
Chances are, you’re currently making buying decisions based on perception. Be sure your own brand is creating that same level of trust for the people considering you.
Key Quotes
“The brand’s winning right now are not necessarily the brands with the most experience. They are often the brands creating the clearest emotional connection and the strongest sense of trust.”
Victoria Marcouillier
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