The pros and cons of using ChatGPT in marketing

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and the speed at which it’s been taken up by many industries to help with marketing brands and products, might have initially been seen as a threat to many marketeers. However, rather than taking away their jobs, many marketing professionals have quickly seen the benefits of adopting AI tools to help make their working lives easier, and more productive.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is your very own AI writing assistant, ready and waiting to help write anything from snappy headlines to long form content, at speed. It doesn’t just stop there either, ChatGPT boasts a range of other handy features and tools such as programming, customer service chatbots, translations and much more, all designed to simplify workload and boost productivity.

Standing for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, ChatGPT is programmed to respond as a human would. From admitting mistakes, to challenging incorrect premises, to answering follow up questions. The results are not only high quality, but responses have a natural, human touch. Copy can be engaging and emotive. Certainly not the standard computerised ‘one-size-fits-all’ answers generated by chatbots of the past.

In fact, there are multiple reasons why ChatGPT now has over 100 million users and generated over 1.6 billion visits to its website by June 2023 since the technology (developed by Open AI) first came on the scene in November 2022.

Source: LinkedIn

The pros of ChatGPT

Instant content creation: from blogs to website product descriptions

Email marketing: suggesting subject lines and strong calls to action

SEO optimization: with keywords and relevant meta descriptions to improve click through rates and search engine results

Social media management: from scheduling posts to optimisation

Personalised customer experience: generating tailored recommendations and content

Chatbot for customer support

Providing audience research: including creating customer surveys.

With compelling copy and content generated in a fraction of the time, the ability to be reactive in a crowded marketplace and less need to outsource work, ChatGPT can clearly save a busy marketing department or agency valuable time and money. Time and money that can be used to concentrate on developing strategy and focus on other areas of marketing.

 Let’s face it, it’s no surprise why so many marketeers have already jumped on this clever artificial intelligence tool to support their marketing activity.

The cons of ChatGPT

People have raised concerns about a decline in creativity. Freelance copywriters, for example expressed their worries about being replaced, but with ChatGPT content being detectable, it eliminates such lazy use of the tool. Plus, as insight is gained from internet data, as with human research using the internet, facts still need to be verified.

Whilst there will never be a true replacement for the motivation, drive and creativity of a marketing team, incorporating this innovative technology that’s now at our fingertips, means people can work faster and smarter. Marketeers truly know their brands and audiences inside out and so will always have that extra insight and there’s no replacement for that human gut instinct in business either. But rather than looking at the limitations, instead it is more about embracing clever AI tools and viewing them as an extra string to your marketing bow.

The truth is, far from just being a trend, ChatGPT is not going anywhere so we may as well use it to our advantage. As Scott Keever writes in Forbes to ‘free up time for other aspects of your business’ but to make sure to view it as an extra helping hand, rather than a replacement as it’s crucial to ‘have human eyes on a finished product, especially because Google frowns upon solely AI-created content and can even penalize rankings’ (Forbes).

Source: Forbes

The future of ChatGPT in marketing

 So what does the future of ChatGPT look like and what more can it do to help marketing professionals? And will it remain free to use? So far there have been no plans for the free version of the tool to be scrapped, but there is already a premium version, ChatGPT Plus, available for £16 a month. Further advancements of the tool are expected to become available too with additional features ready to strengthen a marketing campaign, such as AI video.

With so many ways that ChatGPT is already adding to marketing success and even more to come on the horizon, if you’re not using it to help with your marketing activity already, then it’s probably time you start and discover the benefits for yourself.

We can help you to make the most of your content, including the creation of blogs, press releases, long-form content and social media campaigns. Get in touch and let’s talk if you need some support.