ChatGPT - What Australian Marketers Need To Know

ChatGPT is changing the face of marketing (and the world). The Open AI software responds to prompts with conversational, informative and detailed responses. 

But with the AI surge comes much uncertainty. If ChatGPT can write good copy quickly, does that mean copywriters will cease to have a job? If audiences turn to ChatGPT for answers instead of blogs and landing pages, what will SEO and Google Ads look like in a few years?

If there is one thing that’s certain - the current version of ChatGPT is the worst it will ever be. With updates, advancements, and user feedback, it will only improve over time. Rest assured though, this tool does not spell the end of human marketers and copywriters! It’s simply another tool you need to use effectively to stay relevant and effective.

First and foremost, ChatGPT stopped crawling data at the end of 2021. This means if you’re looking for information that is recent and topical, it is going to really struggle to give you those answers. 

What’s more, like everything, ChatGPT is limited by ‘garbage in - garbage out’. If you are not briefing the software properly, then it’s not going to give you a good result. Consider feeding ChatGPT information as you would any copywriter or marketer. The more generic the prompt is, the more generic the output will be.

Users should also remember that ChatGPT is not sentient. It doesn’t think and create the way that humans do - it simply re-hashes information that it’s been fed from existing sources. If you are using it to produce something genuinely unique, in short, it’s not going to do it.

One of the key challenges for any marketer is determining what will perform, and what won’t. Past campaign experience is one of the key factors that every marketer uses to form future strategy. You can feed ChatGPT all of the statistics and results that you want, but it’s not going to think creatively and problem solve the challenges you are facing in your campaign (no matter how well-written your prompt is). 

It’s also going to be limited at giving you advice on ‘success’ for a specific campaign or challenge. Even though we talk as an industry about being data-driven, success can often be very difficult to define - long sales cycles, complex buyer journeys and dozens or more touch points mean determining success is complex for the human brain, let alone for an AI machine that doesn’t have access to campaign data as well as the wider context of the campaign.

ChatGPT will be able to supply you with an unlimited number of variations on any query. Knowing which option to pick and then edit, or indeed knowing if any of its options are suitable, requires the skills of a marketer or writer who know what great looks like. ChatGPT is a tool for experts.

This is not a criticism. The reality today is that ChatGPT’s key strength in marketing right now is generating mediocre content and suggestions at speed. 

This means that there’s no excuses for being below mediocre anymore. If you are using an AI source and then tweaking it to suit your business, then while the content might not be groundbreaking, it’s certainly not going to be poor, provided you use prompts effectively to ensure the tool understands ‘what’ you need and ‘who’ you need it for. 

This raises an interesting question - if the ability to create mediocre content is being democratised, then what is the value of that mediocre content anymore?

Despite its limitations, ChatGPT is an amazing tool. As we mentioned earlier, you should be using it like you would any other software that can make you better or faster. It can be a great support in:

• Writing articles, emails, ad copy, and video scripts
• Reducing word count for existing copy
• Generating top-level ideas for campaigns
• Rephrasing existing content
• Keyword research
• Creating complex Google sheet formulas
• Writing code
• Generating ideas to prevent writers’ block

However, when it comes to content and SEO, it is important to remember that Google is looking to reward high quality content that follows the EEAT structure (expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). While ChatGPT can pump out content, it won’t create high-quality material that you should be copying and pasting in your website and campaigns. True thought leadership has never been more valuable than it is right now and ChatGPT is not able to deliver in this area as a standalone tool. 

For more comprehensive and strategic work, such as how to present a digital marketing plan, you are going to need an actual marketer and not AI.

Bottom line - use ChatGPT to improve parts of the marketing and copywriting process, not as a substitute for an expert copywriter or marketer.

To get the best results from ChatGPT, strengthening your prompts is critical.

Here’s a short list of examples for briefing the tool to get less generic output:

• Include how many words/characters the copy should contain
• Include the tone of voice (for example persuasive, humorous, informative)
• Include background information about the subject, the audience, USPs, key points and more.
• Detail how you want the response to be structured
• Add in relevant keywords you want to target
• Write in plain text and use short sentences

In learning how to get the most from ChatGPT, you should expect to spend time researching and experimenting with different ways to brief and prompt the tool to ensure the results are as usable as possible. You will need to spend time assessing the output closest to your needs and then editing it to ensure it’s perfect. 

Assuming you’ve briefed it effectively, the most important point is that you keep prompting after your initial query is answered. Like writing any copy or solving any marketing challenge, your first idea won’t always hit the mark. ChatGPT is a highly responsive AI tool that will take on board feedback to deliver stronger results. Consider how your feedback can strengthen the output. 

Here are two simple examples of feedback you can offer in response to an answer to a query. Your job is to build your skills in briefing and prompting ChatGPT to get it delivering outputs as close as possible to what you need.

• “Rewrite the heading in 3 different versions. The first version should be informative, the second should be sales-driven, and the third version should be conversational.” 
• “Rewrite the blog article but give more specific examples. Focus less on the products, and more on their benefits and limitations.” 

The key takeaway? ChatGPT will assist an expert to get better and faster at certain tasks. As a marketer, it’s time to use ChatGPT and spend time improving how it performs for you. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits and limitations of ChatGPT, we have a podcast episode dedicated to how the software will impact the marketing industry.