This post is by Dennis Shiao, Founder of Attention Retention. Dennis is a casual observer of ChatGPT and generative AI. He’s actively thinking about what the future holds for marketers. This post serves as initial thoughts.
For me and ChatGPT, two emotions come to mind:
😲 Amazed.
😨 Scared.
Not familiar with ChatGPT?
I asked it to describe itself. Its answer:
“I am ChatGPT, a large language model created by OpenAI. I am trained to understand and respond to natural language inputs, and can assist with a wide range of tasks such as answering questions, generating text, and providing information. My knowledge is based on the information available to me at the time of my training, which has a cut off date of 2021.”
If you’d like to try it out, go here:
The Reaction from Marketers
The natural reaction from marketers is, “Wow.” After taking a short breath, the next reaction is, “Will it put me out of a job?” While there are many aspects of marketing, writing is a significant piece of it:
- Articles and blog posts
- Social media posts
- Emails
- Web page copy
- Event and webinar promotions
- Ads
- Slides for a presentation
ChatGPT was launched a few months ago. It’s going to get better. While the copy it produces isn’t perfect, most would say it’s passable. Even pretty good. Nearly as good as we’d write ourselves.
To those of us who derive a portion of our income from writing, we’re now in competition with ChatGPT and related technologies.
First, two key thoughts
- Our life experiences are unique from every other person (and entity!) on the planet.
- We’ve all lived through and experienced historical moments. AI has not. Instead, it gets to parse and process history books.
Marketers: here are four ways you can differentiate yourselves from ChatGPT.
1) Feature Your Own Life’s Lessons
NO ONE has experienced life like you have. We know people who went to the same school, peers who did similar roles on marketing teams, friends who have the same hobbies.
But no one has done things, learned things and experienced life in the way you have. You’re a one-and-only. Feature your life’s experiences and lessons in your writing.
If you’re writing about how marketers can do Account Based Marketing (ABM) better, detail an ABM campaign you ran. Document the mistakes you made and let readers know how they can learn from those mistakes.
If you’re providing tips on email marketing, tell readers about the biggest mistake you’ve made when sending an email and let them know how to safeguard against the same mistake.
AI-based writing is pretty good, but only you can tell your story. Only you can move the reader to take action based on your life’s experiences.
2) Provide “First of its Kind” Insights
I once published a Q&A blog post featuring Andrew Davis, marketing expert and keynote speaker.
Andrew Davis (photo via Twitter)
I asked Andrew to provide a tip to keynote speakers. His answer:
“If you’re going to be a keynote speaker, build a speech around the answer to a question that Google cannot answer.”
During his keynote at Content Marketing World 2022, Andrew encouraged marketers not to focus on frequently asked questions (FAQ), but instead on rarely asked questions (Ashley Guttuso writes about it in this recap post on Andi Robinson’s blog).
The concept here is to provide “first of its kind” insights – things that you cannot find on the web, because they’ve never been published or shared before.
As ChatGPT noted (above):
“My knowledge is based on the information available to me at the time of my training, which has a cut off date of 2021.”
To “beat” ChatGPT, write content that’s not available to it at the time of its training. And to Drew’s point, share insights (i.e., in your writing) that Google has not yet seen.
3) Make Predictions 🔮 And Advise on Strategy
Generative AI is backward-looking (i.e., the cut off date of ChatGPT’s training is 2021). These days, the half-life of information is short (maybe one week?). We’re almost two full months into 2023 and ChatGPT is missing content from this year and all of 2022!
Can a tool like ChatGPT weigh in on future trends if it doesn’t know about anything that happened in 2022? Perhaps. I asked whether it could make predictions on future marketing trends. Its response:
“As an AI language model, I can analyze data and provide insights that may help inform predictions about future marketing trends based on past and current trends.
However, my predictions are limited to the data and knowledge available to me, and may not be entirely accurate or comprehensive.
It’s important to note that many factors can influence the future of marketing, including new technologies, economic and social developments, and changing consumer behaviors.
Therefore, any predictions should be taken with a grain of salt and considered alongside other sources of information and expert opinions.”
Note: Guess whom those expert opinions can come from? US!
I then gave it this prompt:
Provide 5 predictions on future b2b marketing trends in a way that helps inform a senior marketing leader’s strategy for 2023 and beyond
I won’t publish the full answer, but will provide the first sentence of each prediction:
- Personalization will continue to be a critical element in B2B marketing.
- Video marketing will become even more important in B2B marketing.
- Account-based marketing (ABM) will continue to grow in popularity.
- Voice search and AI-powered assistants will play a bigger role in B2B marketing.
- Social media will remain a critical component of B2B marketing.
Like I said: backward-looking. These aren’t predictions on future marketing trends, these are things we’ve been doing for the past 5+ years. It could have referenced itself (i.e., generative AI), but didn’t.
We marketers might cede responsibility for article writing, content curation and social media marketing soon. Go “up the ladder” and help your company (or your clients) with strategy. Help them navigate around the corners to see where the future is headed. And in a circular way — that may involve a strategy around generative AI.
4) Go Big with Live Video 🎥
AI can already generate videos featuring human-like avatars who speak from provided scripts. We might see podcasts that are 80% AI-generated, where humans provide the 20% by being interviewed as guests. The “weakness” here is that this content is consumed on-demand.
Where we humans can still make a difference is with live video. In 2018 I wrote an article titled “Why Now Is the Time for Live Video.” The benefits that I listed in the article are all still valid. Little did I know that five years later, there would be a new benefit:
To differentiate ourselves from the bots.
Live video can be a wildcard — you don’t know what crazy or unexpected things can happen. And that makes it exciting. It’s also quite human. Hop on the bandwagon now, as the window of opportunity is months, not years.
Might we see a live, AI-based commentator (i.e., with a complementary role) in next year’s Super Bowl? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Closing Thoughts
Generative AI is here to stay. Rather than panic about your job, I think it’s time to embrace generative AI. Understand how it works and how to make it work for you.
Constantly think about how you can add value in ways that AI cannot. Adjust and re-focus your marketing efforts accordingly. Good luck.