Unlocking the Power of AI in Marketing: Opportunities and Benefits
The rise of AI in the marketing industry:
ChatGPT is not the first AI writer that’s been in use, but it’s the first one that’s sent disruptive ripples through the social media marketing and copyrighting industry.
Tools like Jasper (formally Jarvis) and Surfer SEO have been around for a few years, already allowing marketers or business owners to use AI to help with content ideas, creation, and optimization. More recently there have been AI additions like magic write in Canva, and AI assist in Notion. Not to mention a flurry of AI design tools to create images from descriptions or AI profile designs.
How ChatGPT is changing the game
So why all the drama surrounding ChatGPT specifically, if we’ve had, and have been using AI for a while?
ChatGPT wasn’t marketed as a tool to help create captions, or write your blog posts. It wasn’t targeted to the marketing industry or social media users specifically. Open AI launched ChatGPT as a chatbot, built on the GPT-3 (a family of language models), and launched it as a prototype.
Critically, not as a finished product for a particular end user in mind.
And it was free.
These two elements, along with the actual power of the chatbot, and broadly applicable nature of the tool, has meant that everyone could see a potential use for it in their business. Cue a tech buzz that we haven’t seen for some time!
A matter of months after launching, Open AI and Microsoft are using a newer version, GPT 3.5, to create a completely new search experience in the search engine Bing.
The thing is, the tech has been there all along, in different forms… and within weeks, Google have announced their AI model ‘Bard’, will be out soon and is currently being testing. Not to mention a potential competitor, called Claude, set up by former employees of OpenAI.
I think what this all can tell us, whether we like the advancements in AI or not, that there is a new way of doing things coming.
So what are the benefits of this revolution for marketers?
Pro’s
Like most tools, knowing how to use it properly can really boost the results you get. So taking some time to learn prompt engineering (how to write well written prompts that will produce quality outputs) will make the use of this type of AI a big help for markerers.
The potential feels endless!
🟡Outlines for articles and copy
🟡Drafting parts of blogs
🟡Blog titles
🟡Generate responses to other people’s social media posts for engagement
🟡Market research
🟡Generate code
🟡SEO research and classification (although it can’t look for keyword volumes)
🟡Research semantic keywords for SEO
🟡Create product descriptions for clients
🟡Capitalizing hashtags so they are more friendly for visually impaired screen readers
🟡Content ideas- perfect for when you have no idea what to post about!
🟡Generate a list of FAQ in an industry (I love this- it’s been super helpful for working with a new business in an emerging industry)
🟡Summarize team meeting notes for agencies
🟡Summarize article keypoints
🟡Outlining emails or potential sequence ideas
🟡Shortening existing copy to create tweets
🟡Changing the tone of voice of existing copy
Con’s
The biggest drawback of using AI like this is that it can only create based on two things:
-What it has been inputted. That includes any bias that the source material had
-It can only create on what has existed before. The AI we have access to is not capable of original thought like we are. I asked it just to be sure!
Another con I see many marketers sharing about, is a concern that the AI will threaten our jobs and make us obsolete. I have a few thoughts on this:
AI doesn’t have it’s own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or experiences, so can only talk emotively through content that has already written. That does not replace good story telling, brand stories, emotive story telling, and the power of connection we human marketers can create. I think our roles are safe. Even if we use AI to create copy, we are going to need to heavily edit, and
AI cannot be a decision maker. It produces its output based on our input, but it can’t do anything with that. It can’t choose the best option for your client. The decisions have to be made by people, since AI is limited by its programming and training. It also can’t manage accounts, upload blogs, or do many of the other tasks that marketers do for clients.
However, I do think that AI is not going anywhere, and we need to embrace it to keep up. But you know what, social media and digital marketing has ALWAYS been fast paced and changing. Anyone who has tried to keep up with the Instagram algorithm can tell you that!
In summary
The future of AI in content creation is an exciting area of development; it is not a technology to replace us, but does have the potential to change how we tackle our marketing tasks. As AI tech continues to advance, not only will how we ‘Google’ will change, but its also likely that the role of human content creators will shift in a world with advanced AI tools.
ChatGPT and AI in content creation bring several benefits, including increased efficiency and speed, improved quality and consistency of content, and access to a broader range of content ideas. All things that help us to be more productive for our clients. However, there are limitations, including human creativity and originality, and the opportunity for more mediocre content going out.
Ultimately, good marketers are the mavericks, always testing what works, trying all the tools to get the best results for clients, and AI and how we use it will be no different. Take what works, what makes your job easier, what gets your clients results, and leave the rest!