Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve likely heard about ChatGPT by now. This AI-powered natural language bot has been the talk of the internet. It’s also had Microsoft and Google racing to introduce their versions to the world.
ChatGPT generates unique answers written by a bot in a human-like conversational style. This offers an opportunity to leverage its capabilities to power your marketing while saving you considerable time.
But the tech is still in its infancy, so caution is the key word. I’ll give you some tips on how you can take advantage of this new “toy” without stumbling into any pitfalls.
How Does ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT was launched in November of 2022 by OpenAI. It gained steam in a big way in early 2023, and by February, Microsoft and Google held dueling press events about how they would integrate this type of technology into their respective search engines.
This advancement in AI-powered processing is a poster child for disruptive technology, with some saying it’s as revolutionary as the internet and cloud computing.
What makes it different?
ChatGPT uses a deep learning technique known as transformer architecture. This enables it to search through several terabytes of data to create answers to questions. But it’s far more than a Q&A bot.
The tool can write emails, create forms, and write college essays, all generated from a user’s distinct request.
GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and this architecture generates text using a transformer neural network. The vast amount of data the bot was trained on (and continues to train on) gives it the ability to answer uniquely in a natural, and coherent style.
You already have companies like BuzzFeed stating they’re going to use ChatGPT to create quizzes and other content to assist their human content creators. This AI tech holds a lot of potential for assisting with marketing and lead generation, but you do need to proceed with caution, as you do with any brand-new tech innovation. Now, let’s look at some ways you can leverage the tool in your marketing.
6 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve Your Lead Generation
Get Tips for Developing a Marketing Strategy
If you’re looking to freshen up your marketing or are starting a brand-new IT business and need help. You can ask ChatGPT to give you a marketing strategy.
In this exchange below, I typed in “Create a marketing strategy for a managed services provider” and the bot gave me an 8-point marketing strategy that included things like defining a target audience and investing in SEO.
While it wasn’t specifically tailored to an MSP, it still provides a solid foundation for a good marketing plan. So, using it for strategy ideas can help you come up with new approaches that you may not have thought about.
Market Research
Now, let’s say we’re following the strategy suggested by ChatGPT. The first thing on the list is to define a target audience. This is another thing you can use the tool for. This is especially helpful if you intend to launch a new service and are looking for ways to tailor your marketing to the right audience.
For example, say that you were launching a new vulnerability assessment service. You could ask, “what is the target market for vulnerability assessment service?”
I asked ChatGPT this, and it gave me a list of six industry types, including SMBs, large enterprises, government agencies, e-commerce companies, healthcare providers, and more.
This can be a great way to get new target market ideas so you’re not missing any potential customers.
Headlines for Paid Ads and Brochures
Generating attention-grabbing headlines for paid ads, service pages, blog posts, and brochures can be difficult. Lots of MSP sites have rather boring page headers that aren’t very exciting or engaging to a potential customer.
If you feel your services pages or Google ads could use a charge of excitement, try generating some headlines from ChatGPT. You can even tell it the number of characters to use if you’re trying to keep within an advertising limit.
Another tip is to add a target market, which helps you generate more targeted headlines and ad copy. In this exchange, I asked ChatGPT, “Give me 3 headlines to market managed IT services to hospitals.”
The results were:
- “Secure Your Patient Data and Maximize Efficiency with Our Managed IT Services for Hospitals”
- “Say Goodbye to Downtime and Hello to Seamless IT Operations with Our Customized Hospital IT Solutions”
- “Focus on Patient Care While We Handle Your IT Needs – Managed Services Tailored for Hospitals”
Generating Keywords for SEO
Good search engine rankings depend on the right keywords. There are a lot of tools out there that can help you research them but using them can be time-consuming when you’re trying to run a successful IT business. This is another area where ChatGPT can boost your marketing, giving you a quick and easy way to come up with targeted keywords.
Ask for keywords related to your service type, area, etc. Letting ChatGPT do the searching for you can save you time and help you come up with the best keywords to use for each specific page of our site, as well as new blog posts, videos, and other content.
First Drafts of Customer Emails
You may have seen stories online about CEOs and others using ChatGPT to draft emails. You want to be careful how you use it, but you can get some good rough drafts of general marketing emails that you can then personalize and spruce up to meet your needs.
Ask it to generate emails for things like:
- Requesting a review
- Welcoming a new customer
- Promoting a cybersecurity assessment
- Following up with a prospect on a quote
Social Media Posts
If you’re in a hurry and need to put together a lot of social media content, then ChatGPT can help you draft them. You may need to slightly change the wording before adding your link or video, but it can definitely short-cut the process for you.
If you aren’t getting the results you’re looking for, try asking your question in a different way.
What Pitfalls to Avoid When Using ChatGPT
This is a new technology, and it’s still learning and being developed. So, you can’t rely on it 100% for marketing content. You need to treat it as a tool, not as another human that can think up and write these things for you.
Here are some of the pitfalls to avoid when dipping your toe into the ChatGPT pool.
Inaccuracies
OpenAI is very transparent about the fact that ChatGPT can return inaccuracies. It’s still very much in a learning phase, so you can’t rely on it to return completely trustworthy and correct information.
You should instead, treat it as a “first pass,” and then have someone skilled review and research (as needed) what it has generated to ensure the information is correct and to personalize it for your needs.
Very General
When requesting various content from ChatGPT, you’ll often get back things that are very general. For example, when I asked for a marketing plan for an MSP business, I got a general marketing plan back for any business. That’s fine for a start, but it doesn’t provide specifics that I may need if I want to know more about marketing cybersecurity services and pen-testing, for example.
It May Make Things Up
Be wary about using it for statistics. It may not be able to cite a source and could be making statistics up. Always search for these online so you can cite or link to the source.
Additionally, be careful about relying on it for any dates, like the day the internet was invented. It’s been known to provide wrong dates for historical facts, and even give different answers when asked the same question at different times.
It Can Be Biased
Back in 2016, Microsoft released “Tay” an intelligent chatbot on Twitter. After just 16 hours, it had to be shut down because it learned from what it read and began posting offensive and inflammatory tweets.
ChatGPT is also learning, and it’s doing it from the wide swath of information on the internet, thus it could also return offensive or biased results. You definitely don’t want your reputation to be hurt by trusting your marketing content to an AI program.
Be Smart When Using AI-Powered ChatGPT in your Marketing
ChatGPT is absolutely revolutionary. Who knows how it will be used a year from now? But it’s important to understand that it is just a tool and a flawed one at that.
It may not have all the right answers to your questions, but can it save you time? It definitely can! Define the best uses for it at your company and then have a discussion with your team on allowable uses and how it can serve your company best.
Need more help with marketing? Check out Tech Marketing Engine for à la carte marketing content to supercharge your business.
What is your experience with ChatGPT so far? Share it in the comments!
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