ChatGPT was launched in November2022 and was quickly adapted by over a million users across various domains. The AI tool was developed by a San Francisco-based tech company, OpenAI. It is currently free to the public but the company plans to monetize it in the future.
The AI tool is essentially a chatbot with human-like responses that provides not only data-based answers but is able to generate creative content that is indistinguishable from that of its human counterparts. The platform does not use Google, nor does it crawl websites to acquire data. You can read this article to learn more about the technical aspect of the tool.
To better explain its capabilities for content creators, I asked the tool to provide and explanation itself by asking “How can ChatGPT help content creators?” Below is its introduction to the creative folks.
"ChatGPT is a variant of the GPT(Generative Pre-training Transformer) language model that was specifically designed to generate human-like text in a conversational context. It can be used by content creators to generate initial ideas or drafts of written content, such as headlines, descriptions, product titles, and more.
One way that ChatGPT can be helpful for content creators is by providing inspiration for new ideas and approaches to writing. It can also be used to generate multiple options for the same prompt, allowing content creators to choose the one that best fits their needs or to combine elements from multiple options to create a unique piece of content.
It's important to note that ChatGPT, like any language model, is not a substitute for human creativity and judgment. The output it generates should always be carefully reviewed and edited by a human content creator to ensure that it is accurate, appropriate, and effective."
Ad copy
Oftentimes, copywriters face a creative block. It may take several minutes of staring at a screen before an idea for a headline or description comes to mind. A popular solution to the creative block is to begin writing any random text to get the creative juices going and eventually achieve a state of flow where ideas seamlessly come to mind.
ChatGPT may help accelerate this process by generating very well-structured headlines and descriptions with only a few instructions.
Tip: To avoid having to finetune the results, make sure to provide the system with clear instructions. What is the topic? What is the maximum number of characters? What words to avoid? Although the instructions should be written in a conversational style, the machine still needs some structure to decipher the instructions. Segmenting instructions into multiple sentences seems to work well.
Below is an example of our request to generate 5 Google Ads descriptions for a local bicycle shop. It took only a few seconds for AI to generate those ready-to-use descriptions. Not bad for a machine!
Same process goes for headlines. In the example below, we provided additional instructions to the machine to exclude “used bikes” and “repair” or “maintenance” from headlines. Try testing other follow-up instructions to finetune the results.
Web copy
Web copy usually goes through multiple phases of iteration before it goes live. It is the last chance to convince a website visitor to either complete the purchase, submit a lead form, or perform some other desirable action. In the example below, we asked ChatGPT to generate a text that would persuade website visitors to purchase a bicycle.
Just like with headlines and descriptions, this is not the final copy to be pasted on the website. However, it gives a great jumpstart to your creative mind. Now it’s about editing rather than starting from scratch. You can also continue iterating directly in the chat by providing additional instructions.
Research
As we mentioned above, as of this writing, ChatGPT has only been available to the public for two months. The machine will continue improving and expanding its capabilities. That being said, the statistical data used by the tool was last updated in 2021. So we should not expect it to provide the most up-to-date stats. However, the AI can still be a powerful tool to perform quick research to better understand an industry or target audiences. Below are some examples that may help you get a glimpse of the capabilities of the platform. We would encourage you to run some tests as well, as you never know what type of magic ChatCPT may produce.
Demographic research
Assume you need to get a quick snapshot of your target audience as you develop new content or decide on campaign targeting. Below is an example of us asking ChatGTP to provide some insight on Toyota Prius purchasers. Again, just like with any other output, you always want to do your due diligence. However, we can all agree that the response below kind of makes you want to just copy and paste it right into your presentation deck.
Geographic research
Although we found the tool being limited when it comes to geo research, you should still give it a try. Below, we asked ChatGTP to provide a list of the top 20 wealthiest counties in the US. As you can see in the first paragraph, the data is from2019, The machine was not able to provide the same data on the zip code level. But we strongly recommend testing granular data in your own research. The capability of the machine are more related to its access to information that toa type of request.
Industry research
Just like with demographic data, you might want to get a quick snapshot of the top competitors in your industry. ChatGPT was able to generate the information on the top five bicycle manufacturers just in a few seconds. The output does not go into detail but still provides a quick overview of each company. You can always ask the tool to provide additional information if needed.
Bonus
Still don't trust the robot's creative mind? Here is a little bonus that may convince you to jump on theChatGPT bandwagon. We decided to ask ChatGPT to write a poem dedicated to the pinnacle of auto design and status. The Orange Toyota Prius.
