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Can ChatGPT have a real impact on my marketing role?

7 mins read

So, by this point you have probably heard of ChatGPT by OpenAI - it's been coming up on my Twitter feed in pretty much every post for over a week, and it's getting pretty good exposure on LinkedIn too.

If not, ChatGPT is an AI tool which you access via a chat interface but more on exactly what is it and how it works at the end of this piece. Right now, I want to dive into the hands-on stuff.

The thing everyone does when they open ChatGPT is to have a chat with it, ask some silly questions and generally play around. Once that is out of your system you can start figuring out how it could potentially help you from a work perspective. For me, that meant trying to use it to enhance a marketing role, inbound marketing in particular. So let's jump into some tasks an inbound marketer would do and see if ChatGPT can help.


A keyword strategy

One of the first things we need to do as a marketer is to find keywords we want to target. For me, this usually means a mixture of using Google to look at things like autocomplete and 'People Also Ask' section as well as tools such as SEMRush.

This time I asked ChatGPT the question...

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Within seconds it created a list for me.

The list is actually pretty good! They have the right buying intent (by that I mean they are words people would search for when trying to find a HubSpot Partner like us, not words which are higher up the buyer's journey when people are researching. It's the type of results I would expect a keyword tool to produce and is certainly better for this task than Google Autocomplete.

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I'd certainly want to take these keywords and do more research on search volume and expand the number of keywords I consider through my usual methods but I feel like this make a very solid and quick start which I could copy and paste into a specialist tool.

The verdict - 7/10 👍

 

Turning those keywords into blog ideas

Next on the list is blog idea generation, a key component in any inbound marketing plan. Here is what it provided...

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I don't have a tool to do this for me currently, it's a manual job turning keyword themes into blog ideas. I actually think it's done a good job here. The titles are sensical and actually contain quite a lot of best practices, eg question-based titles such as "How to..." or numbered lists such as "5 Tips...".

If I am being critical the titles are a little basic but then again I did provide it was a very generic keyword. If this wasn't a topic we hadn't written about extensively I'd consider using some of these as a base to build upon.

The verdict - 8/10 👏

 

Writing one of those blogs

Ok, let's get one of these blogs written. Normally this is when I'd spend 2-4 hours researching and writing but this time ChatGPT wrote it for me in a couple of seconds...

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Again, it's done a surprisingly good job:

  1. Pretty solid introduction which ties in the title with why the reader would want to continue "stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive..."
  2. An early and accurate description of what HubSpot is and its features.
  3. A good cross-over into the benefits and tie back to the title "the real power of HubSpot lies in its ability to help you transform your business"
  4. A list to break out the piece and provide a skim read of the benefits
  5. An ending that drives action and surprisingly ties back to our early chat on the keyword research (it's actually remembered we are a HubSpot Partner from the first task) "consider partnering with a HubSpot Agency..."

Being critical it's again pretty basic but I need to remember this is a topic I have read and written about for over a decade. I've certainly read a lot of worse pieces written by people on this subject.

I feel like I could use this as a blog foundation to build out something more in-depth and probably save me at least an hour from the writing process.

The verdict - 7/10 👍

 

Ok, so far I have taken it pretty easy on the AI. These are tasks I kind of expected it to be able to do although I was surprised by the quality, speed and the way it tied them all together. Now, how about some more difficult tasks?

 

Create a web page targeting the keywords

Let's take one of the keywords and build me a web page...

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Here is the visual output when I take the HTML and put it in a preview tool...

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Ok, I don't think that's a page I could go live with. This is the first time I felt like I couldn't get the AI to produce something 'go live ready' with further and better prompting (prompts are what people call the questions/tasks people ask the AI to do - my predication; prompt writing is going to be a key skill people will hire for in the next few years).

I have heard ChatGPT is very good for reviewing and fixing code but until it can access the CMS, theme, CSS or other fundamental parts of a current website to build upon it's not going to produce spectacular results.

The verdict - 3/10 👎

 

Review an email and provide feedback

How about a task to review the work of a human? I was asked to review an email from a team member so I asked the AI to do this for me (and added some errors to make sure it found something):

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Firstly, it spotted the errors I put in straight away. So a big tick for that. ✅

Next, it provided improvements.

I feel like most of the improvements were generic although they are correct - proofread it, have a more friendly tone and write a more compelling subject line. Not wrong but not specific enough to be helpful.

However, there were two good improvements:

  1. Change the list of services to provide more specific examples to the prospect. That's impressive, it's understood the list is our services and doesn't provide too much value to the prospect
  2. Add a call to action (CTA) earlier in the email to encourage more action. It's impressive again as it knows the reason we are sending an email is to drive action and have 'thought' of ways that could be improved.

I think this is a solid effort and would save me time in my job. I'd still have to review the email but it's made a decent start for me.

The verdict - 8/10 👏

 

Create my 2023 marketing strategy

Ok, if it does this I'm out of a job 😅.

Writing, reviewing, building and suggesting are all things we'd naturally assume AI can or will do, but strategy? Let's see...

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Let's start with the glaring error - no marketer would create a marketing strategy with a £1m budget and only account for £95k of it - we always have an endless list of ideas and never enough budget to do it all 😂

Beyond that, although I am impressed it attempted to make a strategy and provided estimated costs not much of it is actually usable. It's pretty generic and the costings are a bit odd, I'm not sure it's even a useful starting point.

The verdict - 2/10 😭

 

 

The marketing meeting

Can AI be used to bring humans together and have effective meetings? Let's see...

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Quick point here, the ability to add follow-up points and for ChatGPT to reproduce the item but with the included content and context of the full chat is amazing. This really is the key to getting the most out of any AI - promoting un, then re-promoting for better results, is a game changer.

On the meeting agenda, it's actually fine. Ok, it's generic but the prompt was too. Overall I think it did what was asked spot on!

The verdict - 8/10 👏

 

 

Hopefully, this has previewed the power and potential of ChatGPT and has encouraged you to experiment with the tool yourself.

As a marketer, I believe using ChatGPT as it is right now can undoubtedly save me time. For most of the foundational tasks, it can get you into a good starting point, saving 20-30% of your time. I'll be looking into how to build this into my day-to-day working pattern. 

With my HubSpot hat on I'm super excited about it. For example, I've created some workflows using Zapier, HubSpot and ChatGPT to create email replies to website enquiries which can be drafted for the sales rep to review, tweak and send. There are a lot of ideas to test here when you combine CRM data with AI 😀

 

The interview

Want to know more about ChatGPT itself? Well, what better way to do that than me interviewing ChatGPT to ask it all the questions? (Save me writing it all 😉)

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(I created this feature imagine using MindJourney AI image generator with the prompt of an image for me interviewing AI in the Unreal Engine imagine format)

 
What are you?
 
"I am a large language model trained by OpenAI. I am designed to assist users in generating human-like text based on the input that I receive. I do not have a physical form and exist only in a digital form."
 
 
Who is OpenAI?
 
"OpenAI is a research institute that is dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence in a responsible and safe manner. It was founded in 2015 by a group of prominent researchers, including Elon Musk, with the goal of promoting and developing friendly AI. OpenAI conducts research in a variety of areas related to AI, including machine learning, robotics, and economics. It is based in San Francisco, California."
 
 
Why were you created?
 
"I was created to assist users in generating human-like text based on the input that I receive. I am a large language model, which means that I have been trained on a vast amount of text data in order to generate coherent and relevant responses to the input that I receive. My main purpose is to assist users in generating text for a variety of applications, such as answering questions, generating creative writing, or providing personalized responses to user input."
 
 
How can you help marketing professionals?
 
"As a large language model, I can assist marketing professionals in a number of ways. For example, I can help generate human-like text for use in marketing materials, such as advertisements or product descriptions. I can also assist in the creation of social media posts or other types of online content, such as blog posts or articles. Additionally, I can help with the development of email marketing campaigns by generating personalized messages for individual recipients. Overall, my ability to generate human-like text can help marketing professionals save time and effort, and allow them to focus on other important aspects of their work."
 
 
Could you replace a marketing professional?
 
"No, I do not have the knowledge or ability to replace a marketing professional. While I can assist in generating human-like text for use in marketing materials, I do not have the in-depth understanding of marketing strategies, consumer behaviour, or other important aspects of marketing that a professional would have. Additionally, I do not have the ability to interact with customers or make decisions about marketing campaigns. I am a tool that can assist marketing professionals in their work, but I cannot replace them."
 
 
What should a marketer learn more about to better utilise you?
 
"To better utilize me, a marketer should have a good understanding of natural language processing and how it can be used to generate human-like text. They should also be familiar with the specific capabilities and limitations of a large language model like myself so that they can effectively use my capabilities to assist in their work. Additionally, a marketer should have a clear idea of the types of tasks that I can help with, such as generating text for advertisements or social media posts, in order to make the most effective use of my abilities."
 
 
How can people provide you with better prompts to get the best results?
 
"To get the best results from me, users should provide clear and concise prompts that are focused on a specific topic or question. It is helpful if the prompts include enough context for me to generate a relevant and coherent response. Additionally, it can be helpful to provide any relevant background information or references that I can use to generate a more accurate response. Providing specific examples of the type of output that the user is looking for can also help me to generate the best possible results. Overall, the key to getting the best results from me is to provide clear and detailed prompts that allow me to generate the most accurate and relevant responses."
 
 
Thanks, any closing message to marketers about the use of AI such as yourself in the future?
 
"In the future, AI tools like myself will play an increasingly important role in the field of marketing. As AI technology continues to advance, large language models like myself will be able to generate more sophisticated and human-like text, and will be able to assist marketers in a wider range of tasks. This will enable marketers to save time and effort, and will allow them to focus on more creative and strategic aspects of their work. By staying up to date on the latest developments in AI and natural language processing, marketing professionals can position themselves to make the most effective use of these powerful tools in their work."

 
Well, there you go, as ChatGPT summarised for us in its closing comments I truly believe tools like ChatGPT and other AI 'will play an increasingly important role in the field of marketing' in the years to come. I'm sure we'll have some ethical and societal challenges to deal with as it evolves but for now, I'm just excited to jump in and play with the tools we have available.
 
For the first time since social media, I feel like we are at a crossroads that will truly change the way marketing operates.