Can ChatGPT Supercharge Your Digital Marketing?

After a few months of use, we evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of the revolutionary generative AI platform

Less than four months since ChatGPT forever transformed the world of writing and research, it has surpassed a staggering 100 million users. On the big scale, the development of this AI super tool is on par with the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone.

At Nowspeed, it changed, practically overnight, how many of us work. Our senior search marketing manager Stacy Cook says, “It immediately became a tool that I use every single day and multiple times per day. It enables me to be more efficient with my time and has proven to improve results with ads to improve CTR [click-through-rate] many times.”

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, writes it “will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”

Integrated into Bing and Microsoft Edge, ChatGPT has given the Google laggards a sudden boost. Google has, in turn, been forced to play catch up with the release last week of its own generative AI platform, Google Bard (users can join a waitlist).

But, before we get any further, let’s have ChatGPT itself explain what it is. This is the response:

“ChatGPT is a large language model created by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. The version you are currently interacting with is based on GPT-4, an advanced iteration of the model. ChatGPT has been trained on vast amounts of text data and is designed to generate human-like responses to various text inputs, such as questions or statements.

It can be used for a wide range of applications, including answering questions, providing recommendations, generating creative content, and more. However, it is important to note that the information provided by ChatGPT may not always be accurate or up-to-date, as its knowledge is limited to the data it was trained on, with a cutoff date in September 2021.”

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty on how ChatGPT picks words based on probabilities, this is a great explanation by Stephen Wolfram, a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking. Fortunately, you don’t have to understand the backend to take advantage of it. For such an incredibly advanced tool, it’s also incredibly easy to use.

What’s the impact of ChatGPT and how can you use it?

Here are three areas where ChatGPT has had an impact, from benefits to shortcomings to be aware of.

1. Blog and Copy Writing

Blog posts are like a website’s engine for search optimization (SEO). They give you the opportunity to speak directly to your audience and draw them to your site by incorporating the keywords they use as they search for products, services, and information to make buying decisions.

In the old days — back in the fall, in other words — our content writers typically kicked off most writing tasks by scouring websites for information on the topic they were going to write about. If the topic was complex, this step could be quite time-consuming. Now, they ask ChatGPT for insight and it replies in seconds. Although the reply needs to be verified, it makes even complex topics more digestible and easier to research. It has also been useful in the following areas of blog and copy writing:

• Summarizing interviews: ChatGPT can, upon request, capture the gist of interview and meeting transcripts (also captured by AI, by the way), saving you from going through your notes.
• Defining concepts: It can quickly provide standard definitions of concepts that you can use without rephrasing or rewriting (see the above example).
• SEO updating: It can refresh content, which is a critical step for breathing new life into SEO. Although it won’t get the entire job done, it provides a good start.

However, ChatGPT does not produce complete posts. Some current issues include:

• Sourcing: No serious company can publish claims that are not legitimately sourced and hyperlinked. On more than a few occasions when probing ChatGPT to back up data with statistics or studies, the answer has been an “oops”:“I apologize for the confusion earlier. Upon further research, I couldn’t find a study titled […] I made an error in providing you with that information. To ensure accurate information, please consult other resources or studies related to…”
• Internal discussions: It is not privy to the internal client conversations that typically yield the most important and useful insights for blog writers.
• Too generic: While able to produce a wealth of information, ChatGPT tends to generate generic copy that does not meet demand for certain details and fails to align with the voice and tone of clients.
• Lack of new and local data: Ask ChatGPT who won the 2022 World Cup and the reply is an apology along with a recommendation to check other sources for “real-time information.” Along with the September, 2021, knowledge cutoff, it cannot always relay local trends and data.

In sum, content writers are better off when they join forces with ChatGPT. Just like an expert human chess player can beat a computer when they team up with another computer (this is the concept of centaur chess), expert writers can produce even better and more effective copy when they work hand in hand with AI.

2. Ad Copy

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) can be a company’s foremost lead generator if done right. But for campaigns to see success, a myriad of pieces need to click. A key piece of creating campaigns involves writing strong ad copy, headlines, and content. The arrival of ChatGPT has fundamentally transformed this task for our search marketing team, allowing them to quickly brainstorm ideas for their ads.

Says one team member, “ChatGPT has streamlined the process. It’s great for writing new copy, as well as figuring out new ways to write sentences. For instance, ‘tailored to a promise’ becomes ‘custom made with a commitment.’ You can even use the program to rewrite sentences based on formal or informal tone.”

On the flipside, Stacy Cook notes it tends to be verbose even when you ask it not to be, and doesn’t necessarily comply with requests to limit meta descriptions to a certain character count. The latest iteration, Chat-4, has, however, already improved a previous flaw, the tendency to repeat the same phrases over and over again.

3. Website Copy

Few marketing projects require a more strategic approach than website creation. As the public display of the company’s heart and soul, the website has to bring it all together, from messaging to design. With limited space to get the message across, every paragraph and headline needs to encapsulate the brand. Can ChatGPT help?

In this process, it’s best used as a quick-thinking assistant. It can, after all, generate as many headline variations as you want. Even if none is a perfect match, you may find words or phrases that you could combine with your own ideas to achieve the result you want (centaur chess in action). At this point, it won’t easily capture the brand nuances that website copy requires. But considering the speed of progress, that may soon change.

Let’s wrap up

How should we summarize the above? ChatGPT provided the following when prompted to wrap it up in five sentences:

ChatGPT, an AI tool with over 100 million users, has greatly impacted various industries and fields. Nowspeed has seen improvements in efficiency and results through its use in ad copy and search marketing. Despite its limitations, such as outdated knowledge and occasionally generic responses, content writers have found value in partnering with ChatGPT for enhanced results. The AI tool has streamlined the process of writing ad copy and brainstorming ideas. Although not perfect for website copy, ChatGPT can serve as an assistant in generating headlines and ideas to complement human efforts.

Yes, that pretty much sums it up.

Do you have questions for the Nowspeed team? We’re always here to help take your digital marketing to the next level with the latest tools and most tailored approach. Contact us today to start a conversation.

Read more:

Case study: How Nowspeed improved PPC results while cutting ad spend
SEO strategy: Advanced tips and techniques to fuel your website
How to create the perfect website wireframe