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Things marketers should know about ChatGPT

Overnight, ChatGPT became THE topic of conversation on all channels; after only five days, it had already reached one million users. In this article, we show the possibilities that the AI opens up for marketers and content creators – especially in the creation of campaign texts – and where the limits of the technology are.

The Morgenmagazin of ARD and ZDF (MOMA) already had several features on ChatGPT in January 2023 and showed, among other things, how the AI chatbot virtually put down on paper an surprisingly beautiful “fairy tale about a cat and a wolf with 4,000 signs” in no time at all.

And for marketers, agencies and other content creators, ChatGPT creates new opportunities – but also challenges. At its core, tools like ChatGPT could fundamentally change the way marketers search for information and turn it into relevant content for their target audience. The latest version of the program, GPT 4, now uses insights and data from previous versions, improving its ability to provide better answers.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is part of the OpenAI company and was launched in November 2022. The free software uses a natural language processing tool to pull information from across the web to answer search queries or even full content requests. Unlike a search engine, the answers ChatGPT provides are customised, meaning that content is not copied and pasted from anywhere else on the web, but filtered and converted into the AI’s “own” language.

However, one of the biggest disadvantages of ChatGPT is that the tool is not able to distinguish correct from incorrect information that it obtains from the internet, which means that answers can simply be wrong. In addition, ChatGPT is limited to data from 2021, so the information available is not always the most up-to-date, depending on the topic.

Free Software
The free software uses a natural language processing tool (Source: AdobeStock / irissca).

Can ChatGPT create campaign texts?

Editors, copywriters and content creators of all kinds do not yet know what to make of ChatGPT and its possibilities. Will the tool make work easier or will human professionals slowly but surely become superfluous? We at Evernine definitely see the advantages that the AI-based software offers. News, small teaser texts and also inspirations for suitable headlines – all this is easier with the right use of ChatGPT. But does that mean it replaces the content department or agency?

Marketing content, as we understand and offer it as an agency, always follows a specific goal: reaching a predefined target group in order to address them precisely at the point in the customer journey where they are. This so-called funnel marketing only works with campaign texts that are formulated differently: customers who are far out in the funnel are reached more by painpoint-oriented, general content, whereas target persons who are further in must be addressed precisely in terms of their challenges, USP-oriented and directly. These campaign texts, which are created according to need, are usually linked to a specific action that is marketed with the content.

 

Creating targeted content therefore requires in-depth analysis and preparation in order to reach the desired target groups and make the campaign a success. This is where ChatGPT reaches its limits. Without human support and the necessary know-how of a full-service agency like Evernine, the technology can deliver grammatically correct and well-written content, but will not achieve the desired precision and impact of a funnel-optimized campaign text.

Funnel Marketing
Funnel marketing only works with variously prepared campaign texts, so that the target group can be addressed in the best possible way, depending on where they stand in the funnel. Image: Evernine Group.

So, people in charge still need to read the ChatGPT content carefully and edit it for tonality, as well as make sure that the information is accurate and helpful for the target audience involved. The reason is that the content marketing funnel looks at potential customers, their needs and media touchpoints. It aims to guide them from initial interest to a solid base of returning customers. To achieve this, communication must be holistic and coordinated at all levels to ensure seamless support along the customer journey to the next conversion.

You want to work with ChatGPT but don’t know how?
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The advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT for marketers at a glance

Advantages:

 

  • Can help draft emails, blog posts, essays, product descriptions, news and headlines
  • Can provide inspirational content for marketers who are not sure how to start a blog post on a topic, or who are unsure of the perspective from which they want to cover a particular topic
  • Can pull sources from the internet to provide content owners with a strong starting point for conducting research (however, this content needs to be vetted for accuracy)

Disadvantages:

 

  • May come from inaccurate sources and provide false information, according to experts
  • Struggles to create accurate, funnel-optimized campaign copy
  • Cannot ask clarifying questions to provide complex or nuanced answers and properly evaluate user intent
  • Cannot use data created after 2021, so information may be outdated depending on the topic

How the model learns and should avoid bias

ChatGPT Tool
The tool is constantly evolving and "learning" (Source: AdobeStock / Tada Images)

But the tool is constantly being developed and “learns”. The first step is a question like “Explain AI to a six-year-old”. The system tries to answer the question. A human colleague then goes over the answers and uncovers possible errors in order to improve and control the answers or the output behaviour of ChatGPT. This Supervised Fine Tuning (SFT) is supposed to serve “reinforced learning” and ensure that the system always provides better, more correct answers.

The second step is to collect comparative data, have the results classified and evaluated by a human and finally train the reward model. After all, it should be worthwhile for the AI to participate and progress in the training. In the third step, a so-called Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO) comes into play to improve the model and to update the system’s strategy for text output via the reward principle.

To be able to express itself so deftly in all kinds of languages, the algorithm contained in ChatGPT must have internalised and analysed millions of text documents. And that can become a problem because, as mentioned above, the AI cannot distinguish between false and correct information. Also problematic are possible biases or cognitive biases. In the context of artificial intelligence, bias also refers to faulty data or data processing.

 

OpenAI, the company behind Chat GPT, has now fixed some of these vulnerabilities with the new version GPT 4 and added enhancements. The tool works more securely and faster and is now able to process images instead of text as input and to formulate new content from them. In addition, it now also delivers images based on the textual input, for example, to create rights-free logos and symbols easily and quickly. This also expands the range of possible uses for marketers. The error rate in terms of responses from the program has also been further reduced, according to the developers. In initial tests, however, the latest version performed little better or even worse than its predecessor. For a profitable use of Chat GPT, detailed checks by human colleagues of the AI are therefore still necessary.

Conclusion

Ultimately, new services like ChatGPT offer an exciting glimpse into the potential future of AI: a future where marketers can spend less time on unimportant tasks and more time strategising, analyzing the customer journey, creating impactful content and interacting directly with prospects and customers.

But for now, there are still some challenges standing in the way of effective use. If used without careful verification of the information, marketers could end up publishing false, biased or inaccurate content for their target audiences, which runs contrary to the goal of a funnel-optimized approach and, in the worst case, can lead to distrust towards the brand as a whole.

So leaders need to use good judgement and give their content their own strategy, storytelling and tone to continue to resonate with their target audience. This requires the support of an experienced and excellent full-service agency. Evernine is ready to provide strategic advice on how to use ChatGPT and create successful funnel marketing content.

Source cover: AdobeStock/Timon