3 Tips to Know Before Using ChatGPT for Marketing ChatGPT represents a new frontier in marketing content creation. But before you dive in too deeply, let these ideas help guide you.
By John Boitnott Edited by Jessica Thomas
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By now, you've undoubtedly heard the buzz surrounding ChatGPT. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), this tool is capable of producing written content that's similar to, if not virtually indistinguishable from human writing.
Naturally, that's elicited concerns about plagiarism in classroom and college settings. But others are optimistic about the tool's application to a variety of advanced industries. For the business world, ChatGPT represents a new frontier in the creation of marketing content. Before you hand over your marketing plans to a program, however, there are certain key things you should keep in mind.
Related: The Complete Guide to Effectively Using AI Writing Tools in Content Marketing
What is ChatGPT?
For starters, getting to know the details of the tool might be helpful.
ChatGPT is the brainchild of OpenAI, a company that specializes in artificial intelligence and research. The company had already made waves with Dall-E-2, a tool that generates AI art. But ChatGPT can replicate human language well, allowing users to compose essays, emails and other reports with ease.
How does ChatGPT work, exactly? Through machine learning, the bot is designed to scour the web to "learn" from existing blog posts, essays and online journals. As a result, the chatbot can reproduce skillfully written content, even emulating colloquial speech patterns and commonly used phrases.
Not that ChatGPT is perfect. In fact, university systems are discovering that ChatGPT often invents fake sources and citations, presenting a natural limit to its usage in academic settings.
Still, what the program currently lacks in accuracy, it seems to make up for in sheer speed and accessibility. And that's primarily what's drawn business owners to eye the program as a useful marketing tool.
Related: How ChatGPT Is Changing One Industry — But Challenges Are on the Horizon
Using ChatGPT in your marketing
When thinking about how ChatGPT might help your business, the natural temptation is to start feeding it prompts and letting it go to work. But it's important to use the program in ways that align with your company's mission and strategy.
Here are three practical considerations for integrating ChatGPT into your marketing methods.
1. Look for very specific use cases
Let's go beyond the hype for a minute.
It's easy to speak in generalities: "Automation is the future" or "AI is changing the mortgage/retail/food service industry." It might be nice to dream about, but the devil, as they say, is in the details.
Related: How ChatGPT and Generative AI Can Transform the Way You Run Your Business
To integrate ChatGPT into your marketing plan, you might start by considering very specific use cases. For instance, you might already know a few weak points in your marketing plan — maybe you're attracting first-time visitors to your website but struggling with your page bounce rate.
In this case, you might consider implementing ChatGPT to help you craft new language that engages your target market. Even better, use an AI-powered chatbot on your company web page. That way, users can interact with a live conversation partner whose responses may be indistinguishable from a live representative.
These are just two common examples. You might also consider adapting ChatGPT to serve other functions, including:
- Crafting search engine optimization (SEO) keywords and search terms
- Generating social media posts
- Creating compelling content captions and titles for your other content marketing
- Writing optimized blog posts and online articles
- Producing scripts for video content or podcasts
ChatGPT is best used to augment tasks and initiatives you're already engaged in, and to that end, it can be powerful. Even if you simply dictate your ideas to the program, it can polish your words and create a script you can use for podcasts, videos and more. (Just make sure you put your editing hat on afterward.)
Related: ChatGPT: What Is It and How Does It Work?
2. Look for new tools that will help people use ChatGPT
You don't have to reinvent the wheel. That is, you don't have to find ways to use ChatGPT in its raw form.
Instead, look for ways that other companies and developers are adapting this technology to create custom marketing tools driven by ChatGPT but tailored to fulfill a specific function.
For example, the popular tool WriteGPT is powered by ChatGPT and designed specifically to compose personalized emails for your target audience.
By entering your recipient's website into the program, the tool creates content that "speaks their language," using phrases and vocabulary that show areas of alignment, which might lead to more conversions.
Likewise, you can now leverage ChatGPT to gather continuous customer feedback through a tool called Hubble. This feedback can help you learn more about your target market's needs and pain points, which you can then use as part of your product development and future marketing presentations.
These are just the start. Again, everyone's talking about the "revolutionary impact of AI," which also creates needs that developers can meet using AI-powered business tools.
In other words, the smartest thing marketers can do is stay alert and look for ChatGPT products that enhance their marketing strategies and refine their methods. In some cases, they can use these tools "out of the box" rather than having to develop every plan from scratch.
Related: What Does ChatGPT Mean for the Future of Business?
3. Don't invent use cases
If you don't find use cases, it's possible they simply don't exist. Trying to find ways to shoehorn ChatGPT into your business could be a distraction, not an enhancement.
Today's consumers are highly sensitive to scams and manipulative marketing tactics. As such, it's possible that making a shift in your marketing efforts could backfire on you.
For instance, you might use ChatGPT to learn how to speak to your target market. But if you start throwing in too much slang and jargon about how your products are "on fleek," you could come across as desperate — or worse, outdated — among the very crowd you're trying to reach.
Furthermore, it's important to remember that ChatGPT is still in its infancy.
If you ask it to generate 10 marketing ideas for your electronics business, you're likely to get 10 ideas that are very similar to what every business owner in America gets. That might change as technology improves, but for the time being, attention is still required to refine the way you use the program in your marketing plans.
Related: How to Start a Business With $100 Using ChatGPT, AI Tools
Instead of imposing AI tools on every aspect of your business possible, think of ways to use ChatGPT to accelerate things you're already doing. For instance, if you currently produce video content, ask ChatGPT to create a script. If you write blogs, ask it to help you generate creative titles.
Think of ChatGPT as a means of eliminating bottlenecks or enhancing and streamlining your current efforts overall. And, don't give in to the pressure to try something brand new. It might not work out the way you hope it will.
The future of AI-powered marketing
What does the future hold for ChatGPT? In all likelihood, stiff competition. Google has already released Bard as a direct competitor. Regardless, ChatGPT has very much emerged as a proof-of-concept, which means it's only a matter of time before even more competitors emerge, or, as noted, other programs arrive that adapt the application to specific purposes.
The sky truly is the limit when it comes to business marketing. These AI products may very well revolutionize many industries, though they also create new demands for marketers to make judgment calls about how best to leverage such tools.
In the final analysis, advances in AI once again call for marketers to tap into the greatest resource of all: the human mind.
Related: How Can Marketers Use ChatGPT? Here Are the Top 11 Uses.
