Generative AI has found its application in most possible industries that deal with customer service and creative tasks. Marketing shouldn’t lag behind, yet little is known about the use of the most popular generative chatbot ChatGPT for marketing purposes. Let’s shed a little light on the potential and use cases of ChatGPT-enabled marketing strategies.
What is ChatGPT?
For those of you who are still not familiar with the rapidly growing technology for some reason, we’ll give a little explanation. ChatGPT is a generative AI-powered chatbot created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence algorithm that can be used to create new content, e.g. audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos.
ChatGPT, in particular, generates human-like text and responds to queries in a conversational manner.
Since the introduction of the ChatGPT tool, millions of people have tested it to help them write essays, emails, and even code lines. Retailers have also rushed to incorporate AI functions into their customer service packages. Now, how can it be helpful for marketing purposes?
Benefits of ChatGPT for Marketing
ChatGPT can make marketing a lot easier, automating analysis and targeting of end customers. Besides, this creative service can generate numerous keywords and categorize them for your ad campaign to use in search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO).
At the same time, the tool can also be used to get theoretical knowledge about marketing itself, marketing strategies, specific tactics and approaches, etc. The ever-learning AI can give marketers helpful tips on practically every aspect of their activities, assist professionals with brainstorming for new ideas when they lack creativity, and more.
Compared to traditional search engines, ChatGPT answers are often easier to comprehend, more concise and better structured. Nevertheless, the accuracy of ChatGPT responses is still highly doubtful, as it often makes fundamental mistakes in details.
ChatGPT Marketing Use Cases
In theory, it all sounds good, but what are the practical examples of ChatGPT marketing use? Why not ask ChatGPT itself? Here is the answer we received from the popular chatbot.
PaySpace Magazine: How can I use ChatGPT for marketing?
ChatGPT: Using ChatGPT for marketing can be a valuable strategy to engage with your audience, provide customer support, and drive sales. Here are some ways you can leverage ChatGPT for marketing purposes:
- Conversational Chatbot: Integrate ChatGPT into your website or messaging platforms to provide automated customer support. It can handle common inquiries, provide product information, assist with order tracking, and guide users through the purchasing process.
- Lead Generation: Create a lead generation chatbot powered by ChatGPT. Engage with website visitors and qualify leads by asking relevant questions. Collect contact information and provide personalized recommendations or offers based on user responses.
- Content Creation: Use ChatGPT to generate marketing content such as blog posts, social media captions, email newsletters, or product descriptions. Provide prompts and guidelines to the model, and it can generate creative and engaging content that aligns with your brand voice.
- Personalized Recommendations: Utilize ChatGPT to deliver personalized recommendations to customers based on their preferences, browsing history, or previous purchases. By understanding their needs and offering tailored suggestions, you can enhance their shopping experience and increase conversions.
- Social Media Engagement: Incorporate ChatGPT into your social media strategy by using it to respond to comments, direct messages, or tweets. It can help you manage high volumes of inquiries, engage with followers, and maintain an active social media presence.
- Market Research: Use ChatGPT to gather customer feedback, conduct surveys, or perform market research. Ask the model specific questions about consumer preferences, industry trends, or product feedback to gain insights that can inform your marketing strategies.
- Interactive Campaigns: Create interactive marketing campaigns by allowing users to engage in conversations or play games with ChatGPT. This can generate buzz, encourage user participation, and increase brand awareness.
- Virtual Shopping Assistant: Implement ChatGPT as a virtual shopping assistant to guide customers through their purchase decisions. It can ask questions about their preferences, provide recommendations, and offer detailed product information to assist them in making informed choices.
And the final advice from ChatGPT is: Remember to fine-tune the model on your specific marketing domain or industry, ensuring that it understands and responds accurately to queries. Additionally, closely monitor user interactions and regularly update and improve the system to optimize its performance over time.
Now, let’s get into more detail about each of these use cases.
ChatGPT in the Role of Shopping Assistant
This type of marketing utilization is by far the most popular among retailers. Many shopping platforms have integrated ChatGPT into their websites or apps to provide automated customer support.
Typically, such chatbots are not only able to find a relevant item on the e-store “shelves” but also customize the selection for the specific customer based on their preferences, browsing history, or previous purchases.
Here are some examples, to name a few.
- Alibaba-backed Lazada Group launched LazzieChat – an e-commerce AI chatbot. Available on the Lazada app homepage, the conversational chatbot can answer users’ shopping queries, suggest relevant products or topics, look up item descriptions and link them to products available on the marketplace platform. The AI tool also provides personalized recommendations, acting as a personal virtual shopping assistant.
- Klarna introduced the built-in plugin for ChatGPT. Consumers install the plugin, request shopping ideas from ChatGPT, receive product recommendations, and send additional requests to the chatbot for more detailed product data, if necessary. Customers can then click on a link that will take them to the product page in the Klarna search and comparison tool.
- Mercari marketplace platform for secondhand items has launched its ChatGPT-powered shopping assistant Merchat AI. It helps customers receive personalized product recommendations based on their chat prompts. To avail the service, potential buyers should log in to the marketplace and engage the virtual shopping assistant in natural conversation. The AI will ask specific questions about customers’ needs to give them a series of purchase suggestions.
Personal Advisor Should Not Necessarily Be a Person
The leading travel booking platform Expedia has added the ChatGPT function to its bot for clients to get AI-enabled recommendations on destinations, hotels, transportation, and leisure activities. In the Expedia app, customers can start a conversation with ChatGPT and get AI-powered recommendations on places to visit and stay, the best ways to get around the city and get to their destination, as well as suitable activities and events, all based on the chat.
Next, the simple chat leads potential clients to a trip-planning experience enabling intelligent shopping and booking. The AI-powered bot automatically saves hotels discussed within the conversation to a “trip” in the app. Therefore, Expedia members can easily organize their trips, by proceeding directly to choosing dates, checking availability, and adding on flights, cars for rent or extra activities.
Besides retail, ChatGPT is already used for socially-oriented applications such as Be My Eyes – technology for the community of people who are blind or have low vision. Typically, the startup connects people in need with volunteers for help with hundreds of daily life tasks like identifying a product or navigating an airport.
However, the employment of ChatGPT for the same purpose has shown incredible results in the test phase. This AI assistant was able to not only interpret the captured image but also analyze the ways of its utilization or navigation, providing simple actionable insights that help visually impaired people become more independent.
Another example is the non-profit organization Khan Academy which offers thousands of free lessons in math, science and the humanities for students of all ages. It will use GPT-4 to power the pilot project Khanmigo, an AI-powered assistant that functions as both a virtual tutor for students and a classroom assistant for teachers.
ChatGPT as Conversational Chatbot
Early chatbots included a rigid question-and-answer structure as well as limited response scope. Often, the simplest chatbots routed customers to the ‘Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)’ section, without a proper analysis of the query.
Recently, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealed a disappointing situation with customer service in the banking industry. While most financial institutions deploy chatbot services to reduce the costs of employing customer service agents, many of those automated response systems are of poor quality.
That leads to customer frustration, and the inability to receive timely, straightforward answers from financial institutions, not to mention raising a concern or dispute. Besides, instead of finding help, bank clients often face “repetitive loops of unhelpful jargon”. Such inefficient interactions can diminish their confidence and trust in the institution altogether.
Only recently have organizations acknowledged the potential of generative AI for improving the level of their relationship banking. Moreover, first efforts are being made to adapt the technology for the sensitive nature of dealing with financial data.
For instance, Kasisto, the company behind the digital experience platform for the financial services industry KAI, launched the banking-specific large language model (LLM) KAI-GPT. Although this model is not yet ready to serve end customers directly, it will respond to the queries of bank employees dealing with customer service via a contextual, human-like conversational experience.
Meanwhile, with ChatGPT, developers can build customized chatbots fine-tuned to particular use cases and businesses. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it develops and improves at the speed of light. The latest GPT-4 version far exceeds the capabilities and security measures of the earlier iterations, leveraging “more data and more computation to create increasingly sophisticated and capable language models,” according to OpenAI.
Some companies that use ChatGPT for their conversations with clients include:
- Duolingo, a language-learning app, chose OpenAI’s GPT-4 for the two new features: ‘Role Play’, an AI conversation partner communicating with learners in niche contexts and “immersively”, and ‘Explain my Answer’, which explains the grammar rules when you make a mistake.
- For Stripe, GPT-4 helps developers to navigate through extensive technical documentation, able to answer technical questions or troubleshoot issues. Namely, the chatbot is able to understand the user’s question, read detailed documentation on their behalf, identify the relevant section and summarize the solution in one place.
How ChatGPT Helps With Market Research
Conducting market research is not an easy task, unless it’s automated. That involves collecting and analyzing tons of various data, such as customer feedback, industry trends or consumer preferences.
That’s where large language models (LLMs) can come in handy. Recently, financial services provider American Express (Amex) shed light on its plans to use AI tools to improve its customer experience, as well as analyze customer sentiment and interactions.
AI will be utilized to receive actionable insights from customer interaction data. To analyze customer sentiment, generative AI tools might treat customer feedback as a database, export relevant pain points and suggestions, and generate action prompts.
This will cover the vast scope of AmEx’s existing customer service portals, as well as unofficial feedback and inquiries posted on social media. Expectedly, AI services will help the firm to better understand the customers’ needs and deliver appropriate and helpful responses.
As the company doesn’t plan to invest in its proprietary AI technology, it might as well use already existing market solutions, i.e. OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase & Co started using an artificial intelligence model based on ChatGPT to conduct in-depth analysis of central bank messages that can identify potential signals for the trading sector.
This language model is based on an array of data including statements by the Fed and central bank governors over 25 years. Known as the Hawk-Dove score, the data was used by JPMorgan economists to determine the degree of significance of political utterances for the trading patterns.
Economists have found that the artificial intelligence model can efficiently decipher the degree of radicality of the Fed’s statements, and make a forecast of potential political changes and related transformations in the trade sphere.
Use of ChatGPT for Marketing Content Creation
Although there were no public disclosures of the use of AI-generated content for advertising campaigns or marketing blog posts, as ChatGPT itself puts it: “businesses often prefer to keep the technology they use for content creation confidential, especially if they perceive it as a competitive advantage.”
Therefore, we may not be able to name the exact companies that use generative AI for their marketing content, and yet … it doesn’t mean all the posts you see on social media are human-generated, especially considering the simplicity of ChatGPT use for that purpose. What I can surely tell, ChatGPT did assist me in writing a section of this article and it was 100% helpful.
