ChatGPT was unveiled on November 30, 2022 – and there has been no looking back in the marketing world.
I want to start by saying that artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new in marketing.
Just like Bitcoin brought cryptocurrency into the mainstream a few years back, ChatGPT did the same with AI. At Tech Pro Marketing – my MSP marketing agency – we’ve been using AI for years across our operations. There was always a notion that “AI will someday…”
There’s no more “someday”. That day is now – and it’s been happening for over a year.
So how can managed service providers (MSPs) use ChatGPT in their marketing efforts? We could write a book on this subject, but today, we’re going to focus on the fundamental aspect of every marketing strategy: content.
There are a lot of AI content creation tools out there, but ChatGPT is by far the best one. Now, as great as it is, it’s important to understand that it’s just a tool. There are some things it does exceptionally well and others that fall short. I’m going to discuss some of these in detail. Let’s dive in.
What ChatGPT does well
General blog writing for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) blog posts are one of the things ChatGPT does best. When you launch your MSP website, SEO is all about bringing traffic to it naturally (without an ad budget). Writing keyword-rich blog posts is one of the best ways to accomplish this.
ChatGPT can help you generate blog topics, create outlines, and even write posts for you.
Now, even with all this, ChatGPT needs some human oversight. Generally speaking, most of the blog content it pumps out is pretty bland and basic. To get a good article, you’ll still need to go in and flesh out the ideas a bit, add some expert insight, and ensure everything is accurate.
In our experience, we’ve been able to cut our time spent writing SEO blogs in half – sometimes more. Even though ChatGPT can do a lot of heavy lifting here, we recommend working with a professional content writer to provide oversight and make sure the post meets a high-quality standard.
Email writing
ChatGPT is great for emails. It knows how to format them properly, convey information concisely, and so on. For quicker messages (like replies), you can simply copy and paste an email into the prompt section and tell it to “reply to this email in a professional tone”.
Your email marketing strategy is a different story.
The big hurdle with using ChatGPT for writing is you need to give it A LOT of information.
You can’t just type in the prompt “Write me an email about cybersecurity tips” and expect perfect content.
You need to tell it:
- Who you are as a business
- The general tone you want to convey
- Who you’re speaking to in this email
- The details of the topic(s) you want to discuss
To reiterate, ChatGPT is just a tool – and the results are only as good as the information you give it.
Course writing
ChatGPT does a great job creating generalized content that’s easy to understand, making it a perfect tool for course writing. A few months ago, I wrote a course-style webpage for my team. This task used to take me a month or sometimes longer. With ChatGPT, I was able to get it done in one evening.
For example, let’s say you want to provide a free online course for your existing clients titled: Ingraining a Company Culture Around Cybersecurity. The goal of the course is to teach business owners and employees some everyday best practices for IT security.
The first step is going to ChatGPT to create a course outline.
It will give you the barebones and ideas, but you’ll need to flesh it out a bit. Maybe you want to discuss topics like how to spot phishing emails, implementing 2-step authentication, creating strong passwords, etc.
Once you have the outline, you can tell ChatGPT to fill in all the sections with information, including key takeaways.
As with all other writing with ChatGPT, you’ll need to go through it in detail to make sure the facts are both correct and being conveyed properly.
Where ChatGPT falls short
Getting the brand voice right
Brand voice is where ChatGPT struggles the most. In my experience, you can give it all the information you want about voice. It always seems to overcompensate and usually comes off as inauthentic. The good news is it will get you started and maybe about 60 percent of the way there.
Whether it’s a blog post, email, landing page, or any other piece of marketing content, you will need to thoroughly edit the content to make sure the brand voice hits the nail on the head. Believe me, inauthenticity sticks out like a sore thumb – and it’s a big turnoff.
Website copywriting
ChatGPT does great with blog posts; unfortunately, this doesn’t translate to web pages.
Blog writing and website copywriting look similar, but they are completely different animals. Blog writing is all about informing, whereas your webpages are all about selling. More importantly, your webpages are the digital face of your MSP, your blog section is just a feature.
ChatGPT can help get a page structure in place and give you a rough copy to work with. I’d say it gets you roughly 20-30 percent of the way there. Keep in mind that MSP website pages should illustrate real pain points your prospective clients are facing. They should then present solutions in a way that resonates with human emotions. This is no small task for a robot.
This is why we strongly recommend working with a professional copywriter to write your web pages. At Tech Pro Marketing, we’ve built out a proven framework for web pages, overseen by our copywriter with nearly 10 years of experience.
If you’re looking to add web pages to your site, or rewrite your website content altogether, get in touch with me.
Articulating real-world experiences
If there’s one thing robots have never been good at, it’s being human.
Real-world experiences are a big part of what makes us human.
What makes the articles on SmarterMSP so valuable?
They bring in experts to provide insight based on their personal experiences – the thing AI cannot properly do.
Using these types of experiences within your marketing content plays a huge role in your ability to connect with clients on a personal level. For example, it’s the time of year when we’re seeing business owners post on LinkedIn about what they’ve learned over the past year, their ups and downs, and plans for the new year.
This is a type of post that requires a deeply personal touch. You can still use ChatGPT to write these posts for you, but you’ll need to dump all the details, nuances, and takeaways into the prompt section. Essentially, you’ll need to do 95 percent of the writing – ChatGPT will just refine it for you and make sure it reads well.
Stay tuned for part two of this series for predictions of how ChatGPT will play a role in the MSP marketing space in the remainder of 2024.
Photo: 3rdtimeluckystudio / Shutterstock
