Is ChatGPT Your Next Star Copywriter?

In 2023, making the most out of what you have is vital. With marketing budgets being reduced by nearly 10% across the board and the recent waves of layoffs plaguing businesses, having an extra pair of hands can come in, well, handy.

Luckily one of the easiest ways to reduce the workload and budget gaps that have sprung up comes in the form of using ChatGPT for copywriting. But can they truly replace humans, or is this another passing fad?

In this article, we'll learn how businesses are leveraging AI-powered tools like ChatGPT to engage with their audience and create compelling copy that captures attention and keeps them coming back for more.

We'll also show you how you can leverage ChatGPT for every aspect of creating marketing content and give you some ready-made prompts to help inspire you.

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Introduction to chatbot copywriting and ChatGPT

Good copywriting is at the heart of every effective marketing campaign. And in the modern marketing landscape, AI chatbots and advanced language models like ChatGPT are playing increasingly significant roles.

AI chatbots are apps that can simulate a natural, human-like conversation. These interactions can be simple, such as answering a basic question, or more complex, like having a mock conversation with a celebrity.

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, adds a layer of complexity to this idea. ChatGPT relies on machine learning to predict and generate responses, making it capable of generating more nuanced and relevant dialogue—making it an incredible tool in any modern-day marketer’s arsenal.

ChatGPT can help marketers in nearly every part of the trade—from providing blog post ideas to rewriting content for clarity and precision and even automating some aspects of content generation entirely.

The AI’s ability to learn from vast amounts of data allows it to generate copy that resonates with any audience you ask it to, increasing both marketing efficiency and effectiveness in one fell swoop.

The release of ChatGPT-4 offers significant advancements over ChatGPT-3.5, showcasing more human-like text production and speech patterns. It's more versatile in regard to translation and text summarization, and it's better at figuring out what your end goal is, even if you have typos or misspellings in your prompt.

One of the most distinct advancements in ChatGPT-4 is its ability to understand images, which you can only access through the developer API. While this feature is still in its early stages, it allows GPT-4 to interpret and describe visual information, which will be a huge game-changer.

ChatGPT-3.5 is available to use for free (with some rate limits), while ChatGPT-4 is available for $20/month USD.

Benefits of ChatGPT in copywriting

While AI marketing tools can improve nearly every part of marketing, ChatGPT, in particular, can be used to help you vastly improve the time-consuming task of creating copy and content for your brand. By swiftly generating high-quality copy and project outlines, ChatGPT takes on a large part of the manual labor involved in content creation. This allows marketing teams to focus on the overall planning and strategy of their content.

Even if you want to do the writing yourself, ChatGPT can help you amplify your creativity and idea-generation process. It has been trained on vast amounts of data, enabling it to generate an incredible range of perspectives and tones.

When marketers encounter creative blocks, ChatGPT can serve as a valuable partner, providing fresh angles and insights that might otherwise be overlooked. This can enrich the brainstorming process and lead to the development of more compelling copy.

Another important thing to note is that ChatGPT can help maintain a consistent brand voice across all platforms, which is crucial for building a strong brand identity and fostering loyalty.

Thanks to its machine learning capabilities, ChatGPT can "learn" a brand's unique voice and style and ensure that it is accurately reflected in your copy. Whether it's a social media post, an email newsletter, or a blog post, marketers can trust ChatGPT to deliver consistent, on-brand messaging.

Applications of ChatGPT in copywriting

Now that we’ve learned what ChatGPT is and how we can use it for copywriting let’s break down some strategies you can implement today to use it to its full capabilities.

Social media marketing

Organic social media marketing

People tend to jump to blog posts and long-form content when they think of outsourcing their copywriting, but one of the easiest ways to get started is to use it across your paid and organic social media efforts.

On the organic side, you can use ChatGPT to help you create engaging content or even just to help you come up with ideas that you write yourself. Here are a few of my favorite applications of ChatGPT for my social media channels:

Idea generation: Even if you’re only posting once every other day, you’ll still need to create around 180 pieces of content per year (and that’s just for one platform). Instead, try using ChatGPT to help you create a 3-month content calendar full of ideas about your brand's focus.

Carousel content: After writing a long blog post, I like to break some of the bigger themes down and share them in a carousel format across my profiles (which is a big engagement rate booster for me). I paste my blog post inside ChatGPT and ask it to create a specific number of carousel cards, including headline and subheading text, using my post as a reference.

Content optimization: As we mentioned before, it’s crucial to keep a consistent tone of voice across your brand. I frequently ask ChatGPT to polish some parts of my content that I’m not happy with using my company’s internal style guide.

Paid social media marketing

There are just as many (if not more) ways chat ChatGPT can help you on the paid side of social as well, including:

Ad copy creation: Just as we did before with organic social, you can use ChatGPT to generate compelling and persuasive ad copy, headlines, and even call to actions tailored to your brand voice and the audience you input.

A/B testing: A/B testing is one of the best ways to slash your ad costs and improve results. I love to use ChatGPT to generate multiple versions of all my copy using different product benefits so I can see which resonates best.

Cross-platform optimization: What works well on TikTok doesn’t translate well to LinkedIn. If you’re ever unsure of how to approach a new platform, you can use ChatGPT to tailor your ad copy for different social media platforms, taking into account the specific nuances and audience expectations of each platform.

Email marketing

Revenue from email marketing is estimated to reach almost 11 billion USD by the end of the year—which means if you haven’t jumped on board the email marketing train, you need to do so ASAP.

Luckily for you, ChatGPT is there once more to help a friend in need with these productivity hacks.

Crafting catchy subject lines: You can write the best email content of your life, but if nobody opens it, it’ll all be for naught. Use ChatGPT to generate catchy, clickable subject lines that entice recipients to open your email.

Writing email content: Creating the subject is the easy part—but creating an engaging email that can entice users to complete your desired action is a whole other project entirely. Whether it's a welcome email, a promotional message, a newsletter, or a transactional email, ChatGPT can help you find the right thing to say.

Personalization: There’s an English idiom that says, “You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo.” This means that no matter how hard you try, you can’t persuade someone to do something they have no interest in. In the email marketing sense, personalized emails can greatly enhance customer engagement and conversion rates. Using the information you provide about your customers, you can use ChatGPT to help craft personalized messages, making your emails more relevant and impactful.

Blog content creation

Writing blog posts can be a lot like running a marathon—you need to have your end goal in mind and mentally prepare; otherwise, you might not make it to the finish line. Here are a few ways you can use ChatGPT to expedite and improve your blog strategy.

Idea generation: Writer’s block gets us all in the end, which is why it’s helpful to use ChatGPT to suggest potential topics based on the interests of your target audience, industry trends, or your business niche.

Subheadings and structuring: Good blog posts are well-structured and easy to read. ChatGPT can suggest relevant subheadings and help structure your content in a more readable way.

Content repurposing: The best way to waste your content is to only use it once. You can feed existing content into ChatGPT (like a webinar transcript, podcast, or white paper) and have it create a blog post based on that content.

Landing pages

While email, blog, and social media posts are pretty common uses of ChatGPT in copywriting, landing pages are also another crucial area where AI can help us improve on what we have. If you’re looking to give your landing pages a little TLC, consider implementing some of these strategies.

Creating FAQs: Most of us are professionals in our niche, meaning that it can be hard to put ourselves into the minds of a novice again. If your product or service is complex, use ChatGPT to generate relevant and clear FAQs for your page.

Content localization: Burro in Italian means butter, but burro in Spanish means donkey—and knowing the difference between the two can drastically change the outcome of your baking results. If you're targeting different regions, ChatGPT can assist in localizing your landing page content to better resonate with various cultural contexts.

Creating Call-to-Actions (CTAs): The CTA can make or break a conversion, with some companies reporting that their CVR increased by 124% by making a few changes. Another great application of ChatGPT is to have it generate persuasive and action-oriented CTAs that encourage users to take the next step.

Tips and tricks for maximum results

Knowing how ChatGPT can help you is half the battle, but knowing exactly how to get the content you want from the tool will save you a lot of frustration in the long run. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using ChatGPT for marketing.

Understand how the prompts work

To get the most out of ChatGPT, you should first understand how it approaches the prompts you input in the first place.

ChatGPT operates based on the input it receives and is 'context-free'—so it only responds based on the immediate prompt and conversation context provided.  When you give ChatGPT a prompt, it uses its training from lots of internet text to create a fitting and logical answer. It doesn't truly understand the text like a human would, but it guesses the next word or phrase that should come after the prompt.

For example, if you need information, ask explicit questions; if you want a story, set up the scene in detail. Otherwise, you probably won’t get the feedback you’re looking for.

Focus on the purpose of your content

Secondly, always focus on the purpose of your content. The more precise and focused your instructions, the more targeted the response. For instance, if you need a blog post on email marketing strategy, be sure to ask it to include the benefits of email marketing, an overview of what email marketing is, and what the reader should know by the end of the article.

Experiment with different formats and prompt types

Just like with humans, asking the same question in the same way is likely to get you the exact same answer.

If you’re having a hard time getting ChatGPT to give you the answers you’re looking for, try experimenting with different prompts and pieces of detail to help coax out the right messaging.

(P.S. We’ve created a huge list of the top 80 prompts for ChatGPT across all areas of marketing to save you a ton of time and effort on that front.)

Pitfalls and limitations of ChatGPT

Overcoming bias in AI output

All of us are predisposed toward an inherent bias, and ChatGPT is no different. Since AI can only be trained using the data it’s given, situations can arise where the data provided can inherently be predisposed to give an incorrect answer. 

For example, if you only ever input pictures of hot dogs into a data model, it might start to think anything red is probably a hot dog, too (which actually happened to the developers of an app on the HBO show Silicon Valley).

If you want to overcome the inherent bias that these models can lead to, try:

1. Giving clear and unbiased prompts. Since ChatGPT generates responses based on the prompts you give it, make sure to avoid using stereotypes or biased language in your prompts.

2. Diversify your perspectives: Try to simulate the perspective of different audience segments when reviewing the AI outputs.

3. Have routine audits: Under no circumstances should you copy/paste answers from ChatGPT directly without any sort of review. Keeping humans in the loop to supervise and review the content generated by AI adds an extra layer of scrutiny and helps in catching and correcting any biased outputs.

Maintaining human touch and empathy in copywriting

Even though ChatGPT can generate human-like text, it lacks true human understanding and emotional intelligence. It doesn't experience emotions or understand the subtleties of human experience.

Empathy in copywriting means understanding your audience's feelings, needs, and experiences and then reflecting that understanding in your content. While ChatGPT can generate text based on the data it was trained on, it can't genuinely empathize with your audience like you can.

Making sure to regularly review and ‘humanize’ the content that comes out of ChatGPT will not only make your content stand out creatively but also prevent you from having a word-for-word copy of someone else’s article.

Legal and ethical considerations

Though ChatGPT can seem like a miracle potion for all your copywriting woes, like all things, there are a few things to keep in mind regarding its ethical (and legal) uses.

Copyright and plagiarism: While ChatGPT generates text based on patterns and probabilities, it's possible that it might create content that closely resembles the material it was trained on. This could potentially raise copyright issues. Therefore, it's crucial to review and modify the generated content to ensure originality.

Misinformation: Since AI models generate content based on patterns, they can sometimes produce inaccurate or misleading information. If you ask ChatGPT to write a biography on the great Belgian chemist Mr. Chem Estry, it’ll generate a full profile for you—which, of course, would be 100% fictional.

Data privacy and laws: When creating content, you might want to use data you’ve curated to help get your message across. If you’re using AI tools to personalize content based on user data, you must obtain explicit consent from the users to collect, process, and use their data in this fashion or risk running afoul of data privacy laws like GDPR.

Conclusion: Will ChatGPT replace writers?

As a freelance writer, I have my own bias regarding this question. But in my opinion, the unique insights, creative flair, and, well, humanity that we bring to any creative endeavor are currently irreplaceable by AI.

The true benefit of AI isn’t to replace humans entirely but to augment, assist, and expedite the writing process so we can focus on pioneering new and exciting ways to express ourselves. Until AI can truly feel and empathize with the human experience and be able to tell fact from fiction, humans will still be required to satiate the industry’s needs for content for a long time.