Last week, I got all the digital marketing agencies mad at me when I proclaimed that Google may not be the best place to find affluent pool buyers anymore. I say you’re better off building relationships with home builders, architects, interior designers, and all those wealthy people who shop based on referrals, not based on Google.
This week, I’ll take a shot at all the marketing agencies squealing with glee as they mindlessly use artificial intelligence to crank out endless quantities of marketing content, giddy at how easy their job has become.
I fear they are missing the third major marketing shift steamrolling towards us in 2026, which I refer to as “Artificial Intelligence 3.0.”
This is where we transition from “Generative AI” (where we use tools like ChatGPT to create copious content in seconds) to “Agentic AI,” where AI itself uses AI tools to become digital partners. In Marketing, it’s AI telling AI to create content for you.
This won’t hinder anyone’s ability to create new marketing content fast and cheap. In fact, it will do it more efficiently and effectively than ever.
And that’s the rub.
Now, with so much content-creation power in the hands of not only your competitors, but every person and business on the planet, 2026 will be the year we all begin to get saturated and overwhelmed with mediocre, repetitive AI-generated content.
In 2024 and 2025, AI was fun and exciting due to its novelty. But now with everyone using AI for the same thing, then all the AI-generated messages and articles and web pages and blog posts start to look and sound the same.
Especially when we start seeing 1000 to 10,000 times more examples of the same thing, over and over again.
I don’t know about you, but I can still sniff out AI-content versus real-people content pretty quickly, and I usually find it to be a turn off.
Now think about it from the homeowner’s perspective. When all these messages from all these different pool builders all look and sound, how does the homeowner know who to choose?
Even if it’s nice, polished content from AI, It’s just like the old platitudes of yesteryear. Meaningless dribble that sounds good but means nothing. Only now, there’s more of it. LOTS more of it.
This makes it harder than ever for any homeowner to know who to choose.
This is also bad news for you. Because if you can’t make yourself sound any different or better than your competition, then the buying decision comes down to price. The cheapest builder wins.
That is NOT the market I want you to be in. You need to stand out from the competition, and be recognized as the superior choice. But standing out in this unrelenting cacophony of messages will be harder than ever, especially if you are relying on AI.
Homeowners have long been numb to hollow messages that feel generic, polished, or manufactured. AI just does it faster. That’s not helpful.
The market wants to see your human side.
It’s time to inject your personality, your story, your quirks, your voice. AI can help you improve clarity and eliminate fluff, so you might start with AI as a first draft. But you must aggressively strive to move yourself away from that AI-center as fast as possible.
Talk about things that AI wouldn’t think of, or would be afraid to offer.
Show us the emotional truths that drive your company. Show us behind-the-scenes humanity. Not the perfectly-posed team photos, but the messy team, covered in mud, working in the rain, anything to make you stand out from the boring ordinary.
In 2026, a year overly-saturated with AI-generated content, people will be desperately craving authenticity. Do what AI can’t do. Be real.
To prove you are not AI, you need to use real photos (not stock or AI-generated), and tell real stories, and share real opinions and experiences. Talk like the human you are.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve repeated this cautionary phrase: “People tell the truth with specifics, and lie with generalities.”
That’s the secret to proving you are real, and not an AI-fake.
The most effective content in 2026 will be that which sounds like it was written by a real human with specific experience in this industry.
