Meet Your New Marketing Assistants: AI Chatbots & ChatGPT

You’ve probably already heard about ChatGPT and the growing number of AI-enabled chatbots appearing online. Maybe you’ve already begun experimenting with it, like us here at Informatics, or you’re just trying to figure out how you can put these new technologies to work for your digital marketing efforts.

In either case, welcome to the future.

This new class of AI-enabled chatbots are part of a larger universe of AI generators, now making everything from visual art to musical scores. These tools will fundamentally change how we create content and communicate with customers as they improve in the years ahead—but their current versions are so impressive that they're already changing how we work now.

Realtors are using AI chatbots to generate listings information, while the Associated Press is using AI to write formulaic corporate earnings reports, freeing up journalists for deeper stories. Microsoft is even reportedly looking to add ChatGPT to its flagship Office365 suite, reflecting just how many businesses will find the technology useful.

Here’s what Informatics’ marketing experts have learned so far about AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and how we’re experimenting with them as a tool for creating persuasive marketing content more efficiently.

ChatGPT and large language models, at a glance

ChatGPT, developed by a company called OpenAI, along with other experimental chatbots like Google’s LaMDA and Meta’s (short-lived) Galactica are all examples of large language models (LLMs).

LLMs are complex algorithms that can recognize, summarize, predict and generate text, based on patterns gleamed from giant datasets of existing content. Their datasets span the sea of content available online—the good, the bad, and the ugly (more on this in a second).

Once the algorithms are “trained,” they can use those patterns to create text in response to user prompts, from the short paragraphs of ChatGPT to the free-flowing conversations in LaMDA. LLMs have now reached a point of sophistication where their responses generally sound like natural, human-generated content, even when presented with truly unique prompts.

OpenAI itself warns those using ChatGPT that it may “produce harmful instructions or biased content,” emphasizing that it remains a research tool.

The bottom line: Before you use an AI chatbot like ChatGPT to generate content, know you must have a human available to interpret, edit, and potentially correct its output.

If you’re not willing or able to do this, you may want to wait until these AI tools are more advanced and able to catch bad content before it’s published.

Using AI chatbots for digital marketing

Now that we understand the basics of how AI chatbots work and where their limitations are, we can start to tap their talents for generating natural-sounding marketing content. You may want to consider using ChatGPT in the following ways:

A basic persona generator

We’ve written previously about the importance of building and maintaining customer personas in digital marketing, but it’s a task many gloss over because of the time they take to write—especially if you have a lot to generate.

If you have solid market research and understand some basics about your target customer, you can use AI chatbots to sketch out new personas so you don't have to write from scratch.

For example, we asked ChatGPT to write a marketing persona for a 25-30 year old male with a wife and child, who is interested in cooking, home brewing and soccer. Here’s what it came back with:

A generator of raw content blocks

Given the right prompts, ChatGPT can write responses in a variety of styles and reading levels, from children’s content to college-level essay answers. For marketers juggling emails, landing pages, social posts, and more, AI chatbots can serve as a sort of sous-chef, serving up tasty bits of content that you can use as building blocks for bigger projects.

For example, we asked ChatGPT to write an introductory paragraph for a website selling outdoor equipment, focused around keywords “hiking,” “skiing,” “North Face,” and “Patagonia”. Here’s what it produced:

As you can see, it’s hardly a polished brand statement—but if you’re facing a blank page and a deadline, ChatGPT can give you an useful starting point.

A generator for chatbot scripting

Basic customer service duties are increasingly being delegated to chatbots, which can take a load off your staff, but someone has to write all of that (convincing) dialogue.

If your existing customer service chatbot requires a lot of scripting to navigate all of the issues your customers may have, an AI chatbot can help you put words to your workflows more quickly.

For our last example, we asked ChatGPT to respond to prompts like a customer service representative would, including “why is my package late?”

AI chatbots and the future of marketing

As you can see, AI chatbots like ChatGPT offer some useful capabilities for today and a tantalizing look into the future. Keep in mind that all of the current AI tools on the market now are simply "1.0" versions—expect this technology to evolve (and improve) at a rapid pace.

For professionals struggling to keep up with the reams of personalized content needed to run today’s omnichannel marketing campaigns, AI could be your new favorite assistant. But it's advised to always disclose when you're using it, as the norms and expectations around the use of AI-generated content are still being debated. Transparency is always in everyone's best interest.

If you're looking for ways to scale up your digital marketing campaigns (whether by AI or human hands), we can help. Reach out to our marketing experts for a free consultation, and know you're getting the best human insights and tech tools for your company!

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