The internet and AI have brought about the biggest changes, and now I find myself talking about the likes of ChatGPT with my clients.  I’ve been overwhelmed by how many headlines this topic has dominated in the last couple of months.  It’s an exciting development and I can see how useful this is in some parts of marketing, so I wanted to offer some tips around usage.

In marketing terms, AI is often used to carry out a particular task – such as identifying where to place advertising to maximise efficiency or how to personalise an email or ad campaign to increase the likelihood of getting a desired reaction or sale. In this way, AI can help build more effective marketing strategies, improve the customer journey by meeting customers’ expectations throughout their experience, and change the way businesses attract, nurture, and convert prospects to increase conversions and sales across a wide range of channels.

New AI language tools such as ChatGPT introduce a new dimension. This is where AI can be used to assist in writing content – which in marketing terms could include emails, blog posts, FAQs for websites, etc.

For instance, here’s some AI-generated content that came from typing in the question, “What are the advantages of using AI for writing content?”:

“AI-assisted writing is becoming increasingly popular in the field of content creation. By leveraging AI technology, copywriters can save time and effort while creating content that is of higher quality than ever before. AI-powered writing tools can help to automate mundane tasks such as research and data collection, enabling writers to focus on crafting compelling stories with powerful messaging. Additionally, AI technology can provide insights into the performance of content pieces, allowing copywriters to optimize their work for maximum impact. Ultimately, using AI for writing content provides numerous advantages that can help to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of any copywriting project.”

Not bad, at least to get things started – and while content still requires a human editor to tweak and improve it, AI is good at answering factual questions and providing ‘base’ information.

Why and when are AI language tools useful?

Tools like ChatGPT and Rytr are giving a helping hand to marketing content writers with things like:

• Generating content ideas for social media platforms, blogs, marketing campaigns, and even recreating existing content to increase its chances of going viral
• Creating base content for FAQ pages or product descriptions, or for summarising long content passages
• Personalising content geared to particular target markets
• Handling repetitive tasks – not just writing email responses and things like social media posts, but for scheduling meetings, creating reminders, etc.
• Research into SEO-focused blog posts or articles.

When AI language tools need some caution

Just like humans, AI language tools have their limitations, and there are numerous things to be aware of, such as:

• The quality of the output depends on the quality of the input, so better directions (or questions or prompts fed into the tool) result in better-quality answers
• When you feed a question into the system, the answers you get aren’t always correct. ChatGPT is designed to provide answers that ‘feel’ right to humans, and can provide results that SEEM plausible, but are in fact wrong. Many users have discovered incorrect answers and errors as a result – so editing and proofreading are definitely still required!
• At least as of this writing, ChatGPT has only been ‘trained’ on information up to 2021, which means that it doesn’t have access to data after that time. Therefore, if you ask a question about more recent events (or software, phone models, the latest technology, etc.), you’re likely to get outdated information
• It can’t fetch real-time information or answer multiple rapid queries (like a search engine).

As we know, it’s the stories and human connections that get people to take notice and engage with our brands. So whilst not to sound biased (!), I still think that AI-generated content still needs human input, despite being a useful tool – so maybe there’s a few more years in this particular marketing consultant after all.  Maybe not another 50, though … !

Curious about incorporating AI into more of your marketing efforts? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

Chatbots, or online virtual assistants, have seen explosive growth as customer communication tools this year, especially as more people stayed home and looked for “safe” ways to get answers and communicate with businesses. But what exactly do chatbots do and how do they work?

Let’s take a look at what chatbots are, what they can do for you and explore some popular chatbot options available for businesses and marketing teams.

What exactly is a chatbot?

Chatbot technology uses language processing and artificial intelligence to understand what a human is looking for and then adjusts its response to help users get answers. Two of the best-known chatbots today are iPhone’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.

All online chat services – whether live or not – are designed to improve customer service, provide information and answer common questions. They can also provide website or mobile app visitors with a quick way to reach out for answers on more complex questions.

Live online chat services use a person from your team or from a call centre who communicates online with customers by typing. These systems use a chatbot to get a conversation going, but in live chat, the bot “pings” a human user after taking some very basic information from the customer and then the rest of the conversation is live.

With a system that doesn’t include live interaction with a human, a chatbot often collects information so that a human can follow up. The chatbot also may be able to provide answers to basic questions it can recognise.

There are currently two main types of chatbots being used by businesses:

• Rule-based chatbots are the most common. After an initial greeting and “question” by the bot, prospects select an answer and the bot responds based on their answers and guides them in the right direction (using additional questions, if needed). Ultimately, users enter their contact information so that a human can follow up.
• AI-based chatbots use artificial intelligence to recognise patterns and “learn” as they go. They’re built by developers and add to their existing base of information to become “smarter” the more they interact with people.

How companies are using chatbots

Chatbots are useful for all kinds of businesses, but retail and healthcare are two industries that have taken great advantage of them during COVID.

Hospitals, clinics and healthcare teams have been stretched to their limits, so have used chatbots to help “screen” patients for COVID symptoms, offer help and advice, steer patients to the right departments online and provide information on how to stay safe. In the future, chatbots may be used as a standard part of the triage process in hospitals.

In March, the WHO created a WhatsApp chatbot with the help of partner organisations to answer questions about the coronavirus and send updates to followers. Over time, questions have been added in more than 12 languages and the bot has allowed users to get updated case numbers, travel advice and news about the outbreak.

On the food front, international grocery chain Lidl – which operates over 10,000 stores across Europe and the United States – has a chatbot (named Margot) on Facebook to help customers learn about wines. It can provide guidance on which wine to buy, help users learn about how wine is made (there’s a quiz), recommend food pairings and answer questions on 640 different types of grapes.

Popular chatbot options for businesses

Can’t afford live chat services at your company? If you’re thinking about installing a chatbot but don’t have the money to develop one from scratch, there are a number of free or low-cost options that are also pretty easy to set up and install. Here are a few popular choices:

• ManyChat uses Facebook Messenger, a starting template and a basic drag-and-drop interface to help you create a bot for your company quickly and easily. It can also connect to software systems you already use, like Shopify and MailChimp, to improve your marketing and customer relations.
• ArtiBot is a chatbot that can help you capture leads, take payments and book appointments. It’s fast and easy to set up on platforms including Weebly, Squarespace and WordPress. All the basic tools are included free, but you can get extras like SMS notifications with a Pro plan. You can also pay the ArtiBot team to install the bot on your site for you.
• Flow XO is very easy to use (no coding required) and there’s a free version which gives you access to all of the features, but you’re limited to 500 interactions. The bot can answer questions, take payments and help capture leads – for instance, it can collect a visitor’s email address and add it to your MailChimp database. There are also paid versions starting at $19/month.

Think a chatbot might be right for your business? Need help with improving your customer communications and marketing? Contact Breathe Marketing today.