When ChatGPT first debuted from OpenAI, people worried it would take the jobs of marketers and content creators. Having spent time seeing what it can do, ChatGPT for digital marketing makes sense as a powerful tool, but certainly not as a replacement. It can help you find meaningful information, offer alternative ways to present it, and assist you with crafting outlines. But your creative team is still required to make that content your own by editing and updating it accordingly.
We suspect this will be the same with OpenAI’s latest advancement, Sora, and its ability to quickly generate surprisingly detailed videos. As with most innovative technologies, there is bound to be a period of disruption and uncertainty once it becomes publicly available.
Circling back to ChatGPT, you may be wondering if using this tool is right for your business. Keep in mind that it’s more than just a solution for drafting ad copy. It can also be a means for engaging with your customers — that is, if you opt for the paid version.
Here are the pros and cons of using ChatGPT for digital marketing, including chatbots, social media, and content creation.
Pros of ChatGPT
It makes a more intuitive chatbot. Legacy chatbots were known to be a little clunky when it came to understanding the nuances of what customers were asking them. ChatGPT allows these exchanges to be more dynamic and accurate. Its ability to provide instant responses to inquiries and offer personalized recommendations helps businesses enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. These higher levels of engagement can also lead to increased sales and brand advocacy.
Better customer engagement also means 24/7 availability. Unlike human agents, ChatGPT operates round the clock, providing support to customers at any time of the day. This 24/7 access lets businesses cater to the needs of a global audience — not to mention bolster consistent customer service that can improve retention.
ChatGPT is designed to scale. Its software can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, making it highly scalable for businesses of all sizes. Whether a business receives a few inquiries or experiences a sudden surge in traffic, ChatGPT can adapt to meet these demands without compromising the quality of its interactions. This creates a cost-effective solution for companies that want to expand their customer support quickly.
ChatGPT generates valuable data from customer interactions. This data can include preferences, frequently asked questions, and pain points, all of which can better inform marketers about their buyer personas, as well as how to optimize their email marketing campaigns.
ChatGPT can offer personalized experiences. Its ability to learn from past interactions allows it to customize responses based on individual preferences and browsing history. By delivering personalized recommendations and content, businesses can create more meaningful interactions with their customers.
Now that we’ve covered support requests and customer inquiries, it’s worth diving more into the content side of ChatGPT for digital marketing.
ChatGPT lets you automate repetitive tasks. It can help you research ideas for new material, create outlines and first drafts, as well as identify relevant keywords and language for your target audience. Its ability to automate these services means that you have more bandwidth to focus on other areas of creative development and customer engagement.
Note: It’s still very important that your team members understand how to perform these tasks, and that they’re able to complete them effectively without ChatGPT.
It offers diverse perspectives. ChatGPT can share insights on various topics, helping businesses explore different angles and viewpoints in their email campaigns and blog posts. This diversity can enrich your content and allow you to appeal to a wider audience.
It can make your content development more efficient. The speed by which ChatGPT can generate ideas for your marketing content can be particularly beneficial if you need to produce a high volume of blogs, social media posts, and email campaigns on a consistent schedule.
It helps you vary your content. Have you ever felt like you were saying the same thing over, and over, and over again when sending emails or posting on social media? ChatGPT can help you vary your promotional content by generating engaging questions, informative tips, and more. This can assist you with brainstorming new ways to keep your content fresh instead of repetitive.
It allows you to make timely responses. If you integrate ChatGPT with your social media, it can generate real-time responses that allow your business to maintain an active presence with your audience. This can foster a sense of community among your followers and boost your brand image.
While there are many benefits to using ChatGPT for digital marketing, you should also be aware of its potential drawbacks.
Cons of ChatGPT
It lacks emotional intelligence. While ChatGPT excels at processing and generating text-based responses, it can struggle to pick up on the nuances of emotion from your customers, and may be unable to provide empathetic responses during sensitive situations. This can lead to customers feeling misunderstood and dissatisfied.
There are still some contextual situations where it struggles. Similar to emotional nuance, ChatGPT may struggle to understand context or infer meaning beyond what is physically typed. This means it may not be able to help customers when their inquiries are too vague. That being said, ChatGPT does have the capacity to be trained with new data, so this may not always be a concern in later versions.
It could be a security risk. Utilizing ChatGPT for digital marketing may involve sharing sensitive customer data and interactions with third-party service providers. This raises concerns about data security and privacy, especially in industries with strict regulatory requirements. It’s important that you understand what cybersecurity initiatives your third-party vendors have for mitigating data risk, like proper encryption, handling and storage practices, and compliance.
You may rely on it to do too much. Heavily using ChatGPT for customer interactions may lead to overdependence on its technology and automation. While it can enhance efficiency and scalability, ChatGPT should complement rather than replace human interactions in order to maintain authentic and meaningful connections with your customers.
It could be biased. ChatGPT’s responses are generated based on the data it’s been trained on, which has the potential to contain inherent biases. Because this has the potential to create inappropriate responses, businesses need to regularly monitor and audit its performance.
Its learning curve requires oversight and maintenance. Implementing ChatGPT for digital marketing requires initial setup, training, and ongoing maintenance. Businesses may need to invest time and resources for training it to accurately understand their brand voice, product offerings, and customer preferences. Additionally, as customer needs and market trends evolve, ChatGPT’s responses may require updating and refinement so that they remain relevant and effective.
You’ll need to make sure its tone is aligned with your brand. Ensuring consistency in tone and voice across social media posts generated by ChatGPT can be challenging. Without careful oversight, there is a risk of posts sounding disjointed or inconsistent with your established brand.
Its ideas may be limited in some areas. While ChatGPT can help you think of new ideas for your content, it may struggle to create material that always resonates with your audience. Your business may need to supplement its generated posts with your team’s human-curated content to maximize engagement and interaction, whether on social media, through email, or on your website.
Its blog posts, while unique, may lack creativity. While ChatGPT is adept at generating text based on input prompts, it may lack the creativity and originality of human writers. This could result in blog posts that feel formulaic or lack the unique voices and personalities that human writers bring to their work. If you look at enough content generated by its AI, you start to see similar phrases, word choices, and formats.
Note: This isn’t necessarily a con when it comes to creating outlines, as it can be very useful to organize and consolidate the key points you want to write about in a structured manner.
Beyond bias, it requires general quality control. ChatGPT’s content curation will require careful editing to ensure accuracy, coherence, and relevance to your intended audience. You’ll want set aside time and available team members to monitor the quality control of its material to verify accuracy, especially when it chooses to cite sources.
The Bottom Line
Like any tool, ChatGPT is beneficial when you use it appropriately and know its limitations.
If you want the latest version and the widest possible applications, you’ll have to select a paid version from OpenAI. This is also the case if you want to dabble with creating your own GPTs, as Zapier explains in more detail.
Do you have questions about digital marketing strategies beyond the use of ChatGPT? We can help! Click the link below to schedule an introductory consultation.
