Digital marketing expert Scott Moon warns that beauty professionals risk sounding generic if they treat AI tools like a vending machine. He suggests that AI, like a new assistant, requires training with specific brand information, voice examples, and business goals to produce personalised content.
Moon highlights that generic prompts fed into tools like ChatGPT result in similar outputs for thousands of stylists. He advocates for a collaborative approach, encouraging users to prompt engineer and provide feedback to refine AI-generated text. The quality of AI output directly correlates with the specificity and detail of the user's instructions.
He reiterates the long-standing advice for salon owners to build a digital presence beyond social media platforms they do not own. A personal website serves as the foundational asset, offering control over design, messaging, and customer experience. Social platforms can shift unpredictably with changes in ownership or algorithms, making a owned website crucial.
For those exploring AI, Moon recommends experimenting with different platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Gemini to identify strengths for various tasks. He stresses that AI should amplify, not replace, a professional's unique voice and expertise. The effort invested in teaching AI about one's brand will directly determine its usefulness.
