As a small business owner, time is money, and you don’t have time to waste on tasks that can be somewhat automated, like social media posts and blog writing. That’s where ChatGPT comes in.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, is a powerful tool that can help small business owners save time and increase efficiency in their marketing efforts. Although various AI technologies have been available for some time, they were mainly outside the public eye until ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November 2022.
ChatGPT gained 1 million users in 5 days (in comparison, it took Facebook 3.5 Years to hit the same milestone). More recently, Microsoft is discussing investing as much as $10 billion in OpenAI.
How can ChatGPT help with marketing your small business?
ChatGPT, the ultimate sidekick for small business owners, is like having a personal marketing assistant who never needs a coffee break and is always ready to help you out. But before we had ChatGPT, things were a bit different.
For instance, when it comes to blog writing, before ChatGPT, it was like climbing Mount Everest with a broken leg. But with ChatGPT, writing a blog post is like taking a stroll in the park, and you can sit back, relax and let the model do the heavy lifting.
Let me start by saying that ChatGPT and other AI tools should be seen as aids or advisors rather than as a complete substitute for human experience and knowledge.
Over the past few months, I’ve tested different use cases for the AI tool. I’ve found it particularly useful in three areas:
- Generating unique marketing & branding ideas,
- Automating some parts of blog writing, and
- Optimizing social media management.
We’ll look at each of these use cases in more detail below.
Now let’s talk about prompt engineering.
A key aspect of using ChatGPT for marketing is prompt engineering.
A prompt is an initial text or question you provide to the model, which it uses to generate a response. Therefore “prompt engineering” refers to crafting prompts to feed into the AI.
A well-written and thoughtfully crafted prompt can lead to highly relevant and helpful responses, while a poorly written prompt can result in irrelevant or nonsensical answers.
When creating a prompt, it’s essential to be specific and clear about what information you’re looking for.
Let’s use an example.
- Poor prompt: “What are some marketing ideas?“
- Better prompt: “What are some unique and creative ideas for a social media campaign for a clothing store targeting young adults?“
The second prompt provides clear information about the target audience and the type of marketing campaign, which leads to more relevant and useful responses.
Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind the model’s limitations. While ChatGPT is an advanced language model, it cannot understand the context or infer information not provided in the prompt.
Therefore, it’s essential to provide all the necessary information in the prompt to get the most accurate and valuable responses.
ChatGPT Use case #1: Generating unique marketing & branding ideas
As a small business owner, developing fresh and innovative marketing campaign ideas can be challenging. With ChatGPT, generating unique ideas for marketing campaigns is as simple as asking the model a question.
For example, a small business owner who owns a clothing store can ask ChatGPT for ideas for a new clothing line or marketing campaign. The model will generate a list of ideas for the small business owner to create a successful marketing campaign.
Example prompts for this use case:
- “What are some innovative ways to promote a B2B SaaS product to enterprise companies?”
- “What are some unique and creative ideas for a trade show booth for a B2B manufacturing company?”
- “What are some out-of-the-box lead generation strategies for a B2B consulting firm?”
ChatGPT can help you come up with ideas for marketing campaigns. It can save time, help you be more innovative, and make your small business stand out.
ChatGPT Use case #2: Blog writing assistant
Another area where ChatGPT can be incredibly useful for small business owners is assisting with blog writing. Blogging is essential to any marketing strategy, but writing and editing blog posts can be time-consuming.
With ChatGPT, small business owners can automate some aspects of creating blog posts by generating titles, outlines, and even entire posts.
Let’s say you’re a virtual CFO helping agencies improve their business finances. Here are some example prompts that you can test with ChatGPT:
- “Generate a list of long-tail keywords related to managing finances for agencies'”
- “Write an outline for a blog post on the topic of ‘The importance of budgeting for agencies looking to improve their business finances'”
- “Can you generate a 750-word blog post on the topic of ‘How a virtual CFO can help agencies streamline their financial operations'”
Using ChatGPT, small business owners can save time and increase productivity when creating blog content. ChatGPT can also help small business owners improve their SEO by generating ideas for keywords to write content on, optimized blog post titles, and meta descriptions.
It is essential to bear in mind that it’s not a good idea to simply copy and paste any output from chatGPT onto your website before an experienced human editor has examined the content.
As I wrote in my essay The AI decision: Is it time to say goodbye to your copywriter?
“You’ll still need a human to edit and fact-check the output of any content generated by AI. Relying entirely on the quality and accuracy of the data from AI is risky. Furthermore, Google’s latest algorithm targets and penalizes auto-generated content deemed ‘spammy.’ “
ChatGPT Use case #3: Social media assistant
Lastly, ChatGPT can be used to optimize social media content. Social media is an essential aspect of any marketing strategy, but it can be time-consuming to come up with captions, hashtags, and post ideas.
With ChatGPT, small business owners can do this with ease.
Continuing our example of a virtual CFO business, here are some prompts you could try:
- “Generate 5 captions for a LinkedIn post promoting a free consultation for agencies looking to improve their business finances.”
- “List 10 youtube video ideas for a virtual CFO service that specializes in helping agencies to improve their business finances.”
- “Generate a list of hashtags for an Instagram post announcing a partnership with a financial consulting firm for agencies.”
It’s time to play with ChatGPT and test it for your marketing.
ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can help you save time and increase efficiency in your marketing efforts.
You can use ChatGPT to generate unique marketing & branding ideas, speed up blog writing, and craft social media posts.
AI can help you develop creative and new ideas, free you up from writer’s block, and enhance your marketing capability.
Give ChatGPT a try and see the results for yourself.
