ChatGPT Use Cases For Marketing Professional Services
Using ChatGPT for firm marketing is a race to the middle. But maybe that’s a good thing for some. Hiring an in-house content marketer is costly for small to mid-sized firms. So is working with an agency.
But what if you could automate aspects of the writing process?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT program has taken many industries by storm. Educators must now use programs to verify students aren’t plagiarizing submitted papers. Engineers are using it to review and minimize code. Marketers are wide-eyed, exploring a brand-new world that could have an impact across search, social, content, and analytics.
Those who fail to harness the power of such a tool will struggle. Those who adapt will thrive.
First, it’s important to understand tools like ChatGPT cannot replace humans. Especially subject matter experts at your firm. But, it can be a powerful way to generate written content. Quickly.
It just needs to be trained.
This article will share real prompts and output that could be used to create new content.
Select a topic for content creation
The business problems a professional services firm solves are likely going to be around in the next 3-5 years. When you create content around the challenges your firm solves, you are creating “evergreen” content that will remain relevant for years to come. See the illustration below.
While ChatGPT can help you ideate your next content topic, let’s use something basic as our example: tax strategies for freelance marketers.
This topic should be a good one. If you find something egregious (or a tax strategy the AI missed), let me know on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Feed the AI detailed commands
First, give the AI a “persona” so it knows who to emulate in its response. Here is the very first command I gave to start the chat:
You are a talented CPA at a top-200 accounting firm. Coach me, a freelance marketer, on what I should do to minimize the taxes I owe. What strategies should I consider? Prioritize uncommon, expert advice.
Here’s what it returned:
For a relatively new freelancer, there is some valuable information here. I’m no CPA so I can’t verify if any or all of it is sound advice, but for the sake of argument let’s say it is and we want to create a content marketing campaign around this topic.
Let’s start creating!
ChatGPT for Blog Posts
Let’s start with the core piece of content. For this topic, we’re going to write a blog post. The keyword “how to do taxes for freelance work” gets about 30 searches per month. Let’s use this as our target keyword.
I gave the following command:
Write a blog post outline that includes the 8 tax strategies mentioned above. Use a headline that includes the keyword "how to do taxes for freelance work.
A subject-matter expert could take this outline and flesh it out with copy, or it could be used by a freelance marketing director to interview your subject-matter expert, then turn it into a first draft.
A word of caution—Google and other algorithms are likely going to catch on to AI-generated content. If the output from ChatGPT can get you 80% of a blog post, make sure a marketing professional adds a human touch to the last 20%.
For this blog post, we want to make sure our keyword is included in the title tag and meta description. ChatGPT can provide you with starting points for each.
This is just one way AI can help write blog posts. Here are a few other ways ChatGPT can help:
Ideation. Ask it to come up with topics for your next blog post.
Research. Ask it to provide a list of URLs that your target audience would likely visit.
Editing + proofreading. Ask it to review your work for grammatical errors and suggest ways to enhance your writing.
Chat GPT for LinkedIn Posts
One critical aspect of content marketing is taking core content and repurposing it for the channel. ChatGPT can help with that. Here’s the prompt I fed it:
Write a LinkedIn post about tax strategies for freelance marketers
Use these copywriting constraints:
Use strong persuasive language
Ask questions to transition between paragraphs
Back up main points with evidence and examples
Speak directly to the reader
Here’s what it returned:
Yeesh..this is too long for a LinkedIn post. I told it to make it shorter. Here was the result:
Not quite there yet. Still needs a better structure. I then gave it the prompt: Try again. This time, list out the various tax strategies as bullet points. Here was the output:
This is better, but the hook (the first line) could be sharper. I asked it to Write 10 alternative hooks for the opening line.
At this point, the output is serviceable but needs to be edited to fit the voice of the account posting to LinkedIn.
It’s probably not a good idea to copy/paste directly from ChatGPT and click publish. Algorithms will soon be able to detect AI-written content (if they can’t already), which could suppress your reach. Also, if it doesn’t sound like you it could come across as inauthentic at best and damaging to your brand at worst.
ChatGPT Content for Twitter
We saw it take a few different prompts to get to a decent-quality LinkedIn post. Let’s see how it does with Tweets.
Note: I told it to stop using hashtags.
Each of these tweets can stand on its own. With some light edits, these could be loaded into TweetDeck, SproutSocial, or whichever social scheduling tool you use. If you scheduled two tweets per day, this could be content enough for a full work week.
Want more? Just ask it to write more.
ChatGPT for Podcast/Video Scripts
We have a blog post outline, a LinkedIn post, and 10 tweets. Now let’s use ChatGPT to create scripts for multimedia content. To illustrate, I asked the AI to write a 30-second video script about the 8 tax-saving strategies for freelance marketers. Here’s what it returned:
This can be useful to provide starting points for scripts near your target video length, whether it’s 30 seconds, 2-minutes or longer.
If you have a podcast, you could prompt the AI to write a script for your next episode. Or, if you need human support for your show, I offer podcast production services for B2B and professional services firms.
ChatGPT for Service Landing Pages
Generating awareness for your expertise is an essential part of a professional services marketing strategy. But it’s all for naught if you don’t have a landing page that can convert web traffic into leads. ChatGPT can generate copy for service landing pages. Here’s the prompt I gave the AI:
Write copy for a 500-word landing page promoting a tax prep service for freelance marketers. The copy should include the benefits to the buyer as well as information about the features of the services.
Here’s the output:
Pretty robust, huh? At this point, the copy can be edited to sharpen the language, infuse differentiators, and fit your brand voice and tone.
AI is a tool, not a human replacement
You saw the output from these commands. It’s clear AI cannot replicate human expertise. While AI can process vast amounts of data extremely quickly, it is not capable of the critical thinking and decision-making of trained professionals. Even ChatGPT agrees, it is not a threat to accountants.
However, it can increase the efficiency and speed of content production. For marketers, it means we must continuously sharpen our skills by feeding commands to AI programs like ChatGPT and testing new approaches.
What other AI use cases have you experimented with?
