The Industry is Lying to You About AI
If you listen to most 'gurus' on LinkedIn, AI is a magic wand that replaces your marketing department for $20 a month. They’ll tell you to just 'prompt' your way to a million-dollar business.
At Local Marketing Group, we’ve found the opposite to be true. AI-generated content is flooding the Brisbane market with bland, robotic filler that residents can smell a mile away. If you’re using ChatGPT to write your entire blog or social media presence, you aren't 'innovating'—you’re polluting your brand.
We don't use AI to think for us. We use it to do the work we’re too expensive or too busy to do manually. Here is the 'LMG Way' of using AI as a high-powered labourer rather than a mediocre creative.
Myth #1: AI is a Writer. Truth: AI is a Researcher.
Most business owners start a prompt with 'Write me an article about...' This is the fastest way to get ignored by Google and your customers. Instead, we use AI to process the mountains of data that would take a human hours to sort through.
For example, we might feed an AI 500 customer reviews from a local tradie’s competitors. We don’t ask it to write ads; we ask it to find the gaps. 'What are people complaining about most in these reviews?' If the answer is 'no one calls back,' our human copywriters have their hook. We use AI for labour to find the insights, but the actual writing stays human. This ensures the voice remains authentically Queenslander, not 'Silicon Valley Robot.'
Myth #2: More Automations = More Efficiency. Truth: Most Zapier Webs are Technical Debt.
We see it all the time with Brisbane SMBs: a 'Frankenstein' system of 40 different Zaps connecting a CRM to a spreadsheet to an email tool. It’s fragile, expensive, and it breaks when you least expect it.
We’ve moved away from building fragile automation webs that require constant babysitting. Internally, we focus on 'Single-Step Value.' If an automation doesn't save at least 3 hours of manual work a week or eliminate a critical human error, we don't build it.
Our Internal Automation Rule: If you can't explain the logic of the automation to a 10-year-old on a whiteboard, it’s too complex to be reliable.
How We Actually Use Tools (The 'Un-Sexy' Stuff)
Forget the flashy image generators. Here is what actually moves the needle for our clients and our agency in 2026:
1. Transcription & Sentiment Analysis: We record our strategy sessions and use AI to pull out action items and 'sentiment shifts.' It catches things a human note-taker might miss, like a client sounding hesitant about a specific budget allocation. 2. Code Debugging: Our developers use AI to check for syntax errors in custom tracking scripts. This turns a 30-minute troubleshooting session into a 30-second fix. 3. Data Cleaning: Taking a messy CSV file from an old CRM and formatting it for a new one is soul-crushing work. AI handles this in seconds, ensuring cleaner data structures for our marketing campaigns.
The Prompting Secret: Context Over Cleverness
Stop trying to write 'perfect' prompts. The secret isn't a magic word; it's context. When we use AI internally, we give it a 'Persona' and a 'Constraint.'
Bad Prompt: "Write a Facebook ad for a plumber." LMG Prompt: "Act as a grumpy but honest Brisbane plumber with 20 years of experience. Review this list of customer pain points. Identify the top 3 and explain why a homeowner should care about them in 2 sentences each. Use Australian slang sparingly and avoid being 'salesy'."
See the difference? We aren't asking it to be the final product; we are asking it to be a sounding board.
Stop Chasing the Shiny Object
If you’re a business owner in South East Queensland, your competitive advantage isn't that you have access to AI—everyone has that. Your advantage is your local knowledge, your reputation, and your ability to solve real problems for real people.
AI should be the engine under the hood, not the driver. It should be handling the repetitive, data-heavy tasks so you can get back to talking to your customers and growing your business.
Ready to stop playing with AI 'toys' and start building a real marketing engine? Contact us at Local Marketing Group and let’s talk about how to automate the grunt work, not your soul.