Using generative AI can help your self-care business grow and thrive, as long as real people take part in every project

Artificial intelligence (AI) can’t cut hair, paint nails, or perform skin treatments, but there’s still a lot it can do in the self-care space. With just a few simple prompts, you could ask a generative AI tool to design a website or manage a marketing campaign. This convenience comes at a cost, though. AI content can sound generic and robotic, which is a big problem in an industry that runs on personal attention.

The content you put in front of your clients needs to feel authentic, even if an AI helped you write it. Here are five AI best practices to help you leverage the power of generative AI while avoiding the marketing fails that come from using it the wrong way. 

5 AI best practices for your self-care business

Before we get into specific AI best practices, we should clarify exactly what AI means in this context. In this blog, we’re talking about generative AI, which uses a huge set of training data to create original text. Tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini AI can respond to questions and follow instructions in plain English rather than programming languages. Generative AI has become incredibly popular in the past few years, with almost three-quarters of businesses using it.

You can use AI for lots of other things, too, from optimizing schedules to creating chatbots. If you’re interested in those features, look for a self-care management platform with built-in AI. The easiest way to get started using GenAI to help your business is by having it help you create on-brand marketing campaigns. Keep the following tips in mind:

1. Avoid generic-sounding content

When an AI writes a website description or marketing email, it doesn’t sit down and think through the assignment like a person would. In fact, a generative AI doesn’t “think” at all. Instead, the algorithm churns out content based on patterns in its training data. To an AI, the “right” answer is simply the one that comes up the most often, which is why AI copy tends to sound boring, shallow, and obvious.

If you use AI marketing tools for your self-care business, avoiding generic-sounding content is your top priority. One way to do this is to come up with creative, specific prompts. “Write a weekly marketing email for a hair salon” is bland, boring, and not likely to get you great results. Try feeding the elements of your brand identity — your mission statement, values, tone, etc. — into an AI tool first, zeroing in on a timely topic, or even creating a fictional person who represents your ideal client. Edit the output and ask another staff member to read it over. If they think it sounds impersonal, so will your clients.

2. Build an emotional connection

Your business relies on strong relationships with your clients, and those relationships come from positive emotions. During a good appointment, your client should feel relaxed and happy. You and your staff should feel satisfied with a job well done. An AI will never be excited for an upcoming appointment, or grateful for a positive review, or eager to share the news about a big discount. If you use AI content for your emails, text messages, or social media pages, clients may feel a disconnect between the words on the screen and the staff members they know and love, unless you take the time to prompt it properly.

Putting emotions into words is tricky at the best of times, so there’s no perfect solution to this problem. You can try AI prompts with keywords like “heartfelt” or “funny,” then add a good round of editing to take out anything too sappy or cringey (unless that’s the vibe you’re going for!). 

3. Maintain brand consistency

Building a business means building a brand. The aesthetic of your storefront, the selection of services you offer, your voice on social media, and even the signature scent in your space all contribute to your unique identity. The trouble with using generative AI is that it doesn’t know anything in particular about your brand. Left to its own devices, it will create content for a completely generic salon or spa, which may look and feel nothing like yours.

Before you prompt an AI tool, you can feed it your website, your social media pages, your marketing emails, your storefront photos, your client reviews, and anything else that helps define your business. The content you get afterwards should feel much more like your brand.

4. Fact-check everything

Of all the AI best practices in this blog, “don’t take anything at face value” might be the most important. Remember, AIs can’t think. They can only use what’s in their training data. If there’s an error in that data, there’s going to be an error in the final product. When an AI presents complete nonsense as the right answer, that’s called a hallucination, and it’s incredibly common. The only way to fix hallucinations is to read over AI content and correct any mistakes yourself.

Finding these errors can be tough, since in theory, an AI could hallucinate about anything. There are a few good places to start, though:

• Double-check any numbers of percentages

• Confirm that named people or businesses are real

• Check to see if events actually happened

This is another area where you’ll want to use your intuition. If a fact or figure sounds wrong, it probably is.

5. Do creative projects yourself

Generative AI can save you a ton of time and effort, but it’s not the right tool for every job. AIs are good at short, simple tasks, like writing product descriptions or summarizing information in an email. If your marketing project requires creativity or insight, you’re better off doing it yourself. AIs can’t have original ideas or reason through problems. If you ask an AI to write a blog post, you’re going to get something flat and predictable; if you ask it to create an image, you might get something incredibly weird. Use AI to help brainstorm ideas, but leave the true creativity to humans. 

All of the AI best practices we’ve outlined here have a common theme: Marketing mistakes happen when you trust generative AI completely. The truth is that AI is simply a tool. Like any tool, it can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how you handle it. As long as real people in your business have the final say, you can make the most of AI without losing the human touch.