In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, groundbreaking technologies emerge at an astonishing pace. Netflix, Facebook, and Instagram have left their indelible mark on society, with their meteoric rise in popularity. However, an even more recent addition to this transformative realm has captivated the world’s attention—ChatGPT.
Introduced to the world in November 2022, ChatGPT swiftly amassed an astounding one million users within a mere five days. Such unprecedented adoption has sparked widespread curiosity and discussion surrounding its trustworthiness and implications, particularly in the realm of marketing for small businesses.
To shed light on this enigmatic technology, this article aims to demystify ChatGPT, presenting you with its essence and functionality, as well as vital considerations and practical applications for small business marketing. Additionally, we will explore the boundaries that should not be crossed when utilizing this innovative tool. Prepare to embark on an enlightening journey.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. It belongs to a family of models known as GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which are designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input provided. ChatGPT is specifically trained to engage in conversational interactions, making it an invaluable tool for businesses seeking to enhance their customer communication and marketing efforts.
It’s basically just a really advanced chatbot. According to its creator Open AI, ChatGPT can “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
How Does ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT operates on a transformer architecture, a deep learning model that enables it to process and generate text. It is trained on a vast corpus of text data, including books, articles, and websites, to develop a comprehensive understanding of human language patterns and context. By leveraging this knowledge, ChatGPT can generate responses that are coherent and relevant to user queries.
6 ways to use ChatGPT for marketing
In today’s digital landscape, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into marketing strategies has become increasingly prevalent, revolutionizing the way small businesses operate. If you have ever conducted dynamic search ad campaigns within Google Ads, utilized the insightful capabilities of Google Analytics Intelligence, or employed AI-generated content to enhance your marketing copy, then you are already familiar with the transformative power of AI in marketing. This article will delve into six simple yet effective techniques to leverage ChatGPT, an advanced AI model, to meet the marketing needs of your small business.
1) Generate Engaging Marketing Copy
One of the primary applications of ChatGPT is assisting in the creation of compelling marketing content. Whether you need copy for emails, blog posts, product descriptions, ad copy, headlines, website content, or social media captions, ChatGPT can be a valuable resource. You can instruct ChatGPT to generate the content from scratch, modify existing content to suit a specific tone or persona or improve existing content for better search engine optimization (SEO). While requesting an entire blog post may be too extensive, you can ask ChatGPT for an outline to guide your content creation process.
Prompt: Write a promotional email for 50% off custom framing for the month of October.
2) Discover top marketing tool suggestions
But you can also use it to get recommendations for tools. After all, there’s a vast sea of “top ten” lists for just about any tool out there on the web. For example, ask about the best keyword research tools.
The answer spits out a similar list to our roundup of the best free keyword research tools:
Prompt: What are the best free keyword research tools for small businesses?
3) Content ideation
ChatGPT can assist you in generating ideas for your blog posts, guides, whitepapers, and ebooks. You can leverage its capabilities in various ways. For instance, you can request post ideas related to specific topics or existing content. Furthermore, you can utilize ChatGPT to conduct research on a particular subject, curate a list of the top articles regarding a specific topic, or even seek assistance in simplifying complex concepts for your readers.
For instance, if you require an explanation of how the Google Ads auction functions, ChatGPT can provide a simplified breakdown.
The Google Ads auction is a process where advertisers bid on specific keywords to display their ads on Google’s search results page or other relevant websites within the Google Display Network. The auction takes into account various factors, such as bid amount, ad quality, and expected impact, to determine the ad’s position and eligibility for display.
During the auction, advertisers specify their maximum bid and ad quality. The maximum bid represents the highest amount an advertiser is willing to pay when someone clicks on their ad, while ad quality is determined by factors like relevancy, landing page experience, and expected click-through rate. Google then calculates an ad rank for each ad by multiplying the bid amount with the ad quality score.
The ad with the highest ad rank wins the auction and gets the top position. However, winning the auction doesn’t necessarily mean paying the maximum bid. Instead, the winning advertiser pays an amount slightly higher than the ad rank of the ad below them divided by their own quality score.
By simplifying this complex concept, you can effectively communicate the workings of the Google Ads auction to your readers.
Prompt: Explain how the Google Ads auction works
4) Learn shortcuts and formulas
While relying solely on ChatGPT for reporting and analytics may not be recommended (we’ll discuss that soon), it can still provide valuable assistance by teaching you helpful shortcuts for data processing and analysis. For instance, you can ask ChatGPT for spreadsheet formulas, regular expressions, and other evergreen strings.
When it comes to spreadsheet formulas, ChatGPT can provide you with useful functions and formulas that can simplify your data manipulation tasks. Whether you need assistance with basic calculations, conditional formatting, data lookup, or complex calculations, ChatGPT can suggest appropriate formulas to achieve your desired outcomes.
Prompt: What’s the Excel formula for percent increase?
5) Generate customer surveys
Your target audience is, in essence, a constantly evolving group. While conducting your own extensive research is crucial for identifying your target audience, you can also leverage Chat GPT to assist you in generating surveys or polls. This approach can aid in gaining further insights into your audience and customers, as well as collecting valuable feedback from them.
Prompt: Generate a customer feedback survey.
6) Get chatbot ideas
Adding a chat feature to your website is an excellent strategy for generating leads, engaging customers, and collecting valuable feedback. You can leverage Chat GPT to gain inspiration for prompts and answers to enhance your own chat implementation.
Prompt: I’m building a chatbot for my website. How should I greet customers who come to my pricing page?
3 ways NOT to use ChatGPT for marketing
1) Don’t ask for marketing strategy recommendations
When seeking effective ways to promote your business, it can be tempting to rely on ChatGPT for guidance. However, it’s important to recognize that the best marketing strategies for your business will ultimately depend on your specific goals, challenges, and available resources.
Prompt: What are the best marketing strategies for local businesses?
In regards to the previous prompt, it is worth noting that ChatGPT recommends claiming your “Google My Business” listing, which is outdated as it is now referred to as the Google Business Profile. Additionally, while social media is indeed an effective marketing strategy, the response did not specifically address how to utilize social media for local marketing.
2) Don’t let Chat GPT organize your Google Ads account structure
While ChatGPT can be useful in assisting with headline and description writing for your Google Ads, it is important to leave the strategic aspects to the professionals. Although some have suggested using ChatGPT to organize your Google Ads account structure, it is not a recommended approach.
Prompt: What ad groups should I create for a Google Ads campaign for a chiropractor?
The organization of your Google Ads campaigns plays a crucial role in ensuring the relevance of your ads to their targeted keywords, which directly impacts your cost per click and ultimately your return on investment. While the example provided by ChatGPT highlights the importance of campaign structure, it’s important to note that ChatGPT lacks knowledge of other existing campaigns, your specific business objectives, and the scale of your account or budget.
3) Do not use it for keyword research
Indeed, ChatGPT is a valuable tool, but it is important to note its limitations when it comes to certain marketing tasks, such as keyword research. Since ChatGPT is not directly connected to the web and has a knowledge cutoff in 2021, relying on it for real-time keyword research can lead to outdated and unreliable data.
Prompt: Do keyword research for me for custom framing.
Prompt: Can you give me search volume, competition level, and cost per click for each of those keywords
FAQs
What are the limitations of ChatGPT?
While ChatGPT is a powerful tool, it has certain limitations to keep in mind. Firstly, it relies on pre-existing knowledge and may not have up-to-date information beyond its knowledge cutoff date (September 2021). Additionally, it can sometimes generate incorrect or nonsensical responses. It is important to verify the information provided by ChatGPT and not solely rely on it for critical decisions.
How can ChatGPT be used for small business marketing? There are several practical ways to leverage ChatGPT for small business marketing:
- Generate engaging marketing copy for emails, blog posts, ad copy, and social media captions.
- Discover top marketing tool suggestions for various purposes.
- Assist in content ideation by generating ideas for blog posts, guides, and ebooks.
- Learn shortcuts and formulas for data processing and analysis.
- Generate customer surveys to gain insights and collect feedback.
- Get chatbot ideas to enhance customer engagement on your website.
What are some ways NOT to use ChatGPT for marketing? While ChatGPT can be a valuable marketing tool, there are certain use cases to avoid:
- Don’t rely on it for marketing strategy recommendations, as the best strategies depend on your specific goals and resources.
- Avoid letting ChatGPT organize your Google Ads account structure, as strategic aspects are better handled by professionals.
- Do not rely on it for real-time keyword research, as it may provide outdated or unreliable data.
What are the practical applications of ChatGPT for small businesses?
ChatGPT can assist small businesses in various marketing tasks, such as generating compelling marketing copy, providing tool recommendations, aiding in content ideation, teaching shortcuts and formulas, generating customer surveys, and offering chatbot ideas for website engagement. These applications can help enhance customer communication, content creation, and overall marketing efforts for small businesses.
