Should I Use AI for Copywriting? Benefits (and Risks) Explained
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a popular topic lately due to recent advances in machine learning technology and the unveiling of several large language models (LLM), notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The public has found many uses for AI chat tools, including using AI for copywriting and marketing content like images and graphics. However, if you want to be successful with AI, you’ll need to know how to use AI for copywriting, and the risks of AI content
Copywriting is a key element of any optimized digital marketing strategy and is also one of the most costly in terms of time and investment. However, with language models like Chatgpt, writing marketing content and copy that once took hours can now be done in just a few minutes.
However, is it a good idea to copy-paste from Chatgpt? Should AI copywriting even be used for your SEO content?
Our expert SEO content marketers will discuss the benefits of using AI for copywriting as part of your digital marketing strategy, as well as the risks. With this insight, you can decide the best way to leverage AI content for your marketing.
Why is Using AI for Copywriting Becoming So Popular?
By now you have heard of the numerous AI tools for marketing, but why is AI for copywriting so popular suddenly? Long story short, it can seem like a marketing strategy shortcut.
One of the popular AI copywriting tools is ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, created by OpenAI. It was released as a free research preview and now has a Pro version with the updated GPT-4 technology for $20 per month. Other chatbots are Google Bard and Microsoft Bing’s AI-powered search, both of which are free to use.
These are some of the reasons that AI for marketing has become so popular. AI copywriting tools can:
Use AI to Write Informative Marketing Content
With AI copywriting tools you can create an array of different content pieces. These include blogs, articles, case studies, white papers, and even e-books that can be written with the help of AI copywriting tools.
Typically these pieces of marketing content would take hours to complete and involve several different team members. Each piece of content would need an outline created by content marketing specialists, written by internal or external writers, edited by SEO strategists, and reviewed for grammar before being uploaded by your CMS manager.
With AI for copywriting, some businesses feel that they can reduce the number of team members needed and rely solely on the AI copywriting tool to outline, write, optimize, and review the content piece.
However, don’t fire your marketing team just yet, be sure to read the rest of the article first (or if you have a short attention span like us just click on the section on the risks of AI for copywriting)
Use Chatbots to Write Persuasive Copy
With AI entire advertisements and other forms of copywriting can be written by chatbots. Instead of taking time to brainstorm and come up with unique CTAs or section headers on your website or ad, you can prompt the AI and create numerous choices in seconds.
This reduces the time needed to create compelling site and ad content and may provide copy that you would have never considered before.
AI Can Write Newsletters and Emails
Email marketing is another important part of a digital marketing strategy that is also being allocated to AI copywriting tools. Somewhere between informative and persuasive, emails and newsletters can be written by copywriting AI tools.
While typical emails can take hours to strategize and write, AI can greatly speed up the writing process which means your team can get more time back or even create additional email campaigns to target niche segments in the time it took to write one email before.
Use AI to Provide Information
AI copywriters like ChatGPT can be used to find out information for the content you are writing. ChatGPT has access to the internet and can pull this information into your content. However, it is very important to note that ChatGPT cannot provide information after 2021.
Therefore it is extremely important that you review the content and verify its authenticity. Otherwise, you could be spreading misinformation, and damage your brand’s reputation within your target audience. You want to ensure that you are perceived as trustworthy and that citing false information will be detrimental to your cause.
Artificial Intelligence Can Help Develop Digital Marketing Strategies
If you are struggling to come up with new ideas and marketing strategies ChatGPT might be able to help. It can recommend basic strategies and concepts that you might have not considered before.
With new integrations every day ChatGPT is becoming more robust in its abilities. Recently, an integration with Canva was announced which means now ChatGPT can help you create marketing graphics and images based on a prompt.
This can provide low-cost marketing materials that can be leveraged across various channels and platforms. Business owners and marketers can seek help developing marketing strategies.
Save Time Using AI for Copywriting
With robust computing power Chatbots can do in a few seconds what takes humans hours to do. Modern Chatbots can write thousands of words in mere seconds, and they are just getting started.
Even if you only use it to brainstorm or create outlines ChatGPT can still expedite your process.
Save Costs Using Free or Low-Cost Software
Chatbots can eliminate the need for teams of writers if the AI can accomplish the company’s writing goals for free or relatively cheaply.
With new integrations and image generation AI improving every day, graphic design positions may also soon be at risk. Even entry-level coding positions may face replacement as ChatGPT and other code-writing tools are quickly improving.
These are just a few of the benefits of using AI for copywriting. As technology advances, more features may come out that could help businesses and marketers. But does AI produce quality content? Some marketers have their doubts and are also aware of the risks of AI, some of which are covered in the next section.
What Are the Risks of Using AI for Copywriting?
Although using AI for copywriting has many benefits, it also has its downsides. One of the problems is the potential for inaccuracies. It has been known to make up information without any indication of this provided to the user. It also doesn’t have information from after 2021. All of the information in its models comes from 2021 and earlier, so the AI cannot answer current questions accurately.
Another issue of AI for copywriting tasks is the possibility of plagiarism. The language models work by being trained on millions of pieces of content from the internet. They use that content to formulate likely responses to queries. That means that the outputs may be, in part, taken directly from some of the content the AI was trained on. This results in the possibility that some of the content has been taken verbatim from online sources.
In addition, chatbots can produce low-quality text that is not on level with expert content writers, especially if the user is not an expert prompter. The copy can be repetitive and include “filler.” Only AI prompt experts can achieve near-human-quality outputs, emphasis on the “near”.
Are There Risks of Using AI For SEO Content?
Long story short, absolutely. There are major risks of using AI for SEO content. Businesses and marketing agencies should be cautious when using AI for search engine optimization (SEO) content and other types of content.
One of those risks is that Google and other search engines may detect AI-written content and could eventually penalize the site, showing the content lower in the search results. Google has stated, however, that producing quality content should be the goal for appearing in search results. That means AI content can appear in search results, but if your AI-generated text is low quality, it will not rank well.
Other issues with AI content include:
- Using a chatbot can cost you more by spending time fixing the chatbot’s mistakes. An SEO content writer can get the task done properly the first time.
- AI cannot fully form an SEO strategy — you will need human SEO experts for that.
- You may miss valuable SEO opportunities if you don’t use SEO experts
- AI cannot generate quality backlinks to help your content rank higher in results. (the backlinks it does provide often load 404 errors)
There are many critical SEO mistakes that you as a business owner or manager should be aware of, and need to guide the AI to avoid these mistakes, or correct them if they are occurring. If there are SEO mistakes within your content they need to be fixed, otherwise you are losing out on potential revenue because of the harm this does to your website ranking.
Digital Marketing Strategists can take some measures to mitigate some of the above risks by editing AI-written content meticulously. This goes further than simply editing for grammar and spelling. Of particular concern is the potential for misleading, harmful, inaccurate, or potentially hateful content the chatbot may produce.
Beyond that are the technical aspects of SEO that are required for the coveted high-ranking search result positions. Without checking all these boxes, your website will struggle to capture high organic traffic levels. Only a well-optimized SEO strategy by SEO experts can get you the organic rankings results your business is looking for.
How to Leverage AI For Copywriting?
If you want to leverage AI for copywriting then you’ll need to make sure you follow the right process for using current online copywriting tools. Follow these steps to use AI for copywriting:
- Choose a chatbot, such as ChatGPT or Bard
- Set up an account
- Establish a chatbot persona (think SEO expert or Sales based persona)
- Interface with the chatbot and instruct it with preset prompts
- Submit outline or desired instructions
- Review content and feed it back to the engine for improvement
To interface with chatbots, you need to enter a prompt. Chatbot prompts are instructions you provide to the AI, which will reply to your prompt to the best of its ability. You don’t have to be a prompt expert, or AI prompt engineer to create great output parameters. Many online sources offer free prompts for AI writing tools.
Once you have established the right parameters you can ask the chatbot to come up with marketing content such as:
- SEO blog outlines
- Sections
- Introductions
- Alt text
- SEO meta descriptions or titles
- Social Media copy
- Outros
- Topic overviews
- Image captions
For example, if you want to come up with a list of blog ideas, you would write in the prompt field something like:
“Please Provide a list of 20 blog titles that relate to Social Media Marketing.”
You can further specify details such as the industry you are in, which type of blog it is, and which topics you’d like to cover. You can tell the AI how formal or informal you want the text, which style to write the text in, and any other instructions.
Use AI for Social Media
Machine learning technology has gotten so advanced that Learning Language Models (LLMs) can mimic the way people talk fairly accurately. This is important in social media when marketing posts need to blend into a user’s feed and not stick out like an obvious advertisement.
Use the chatbot to come up with content such as posts, comments, and captions. Use it for A/B testing by running the same prompt several times, regenerating answers. It can also produce content for “about” sections and bios. It can do all of this much faster and easier than a team of writers can.
For example, you can ask the chatbot in a prompt:
“Can you write several short social media posts for the manufacturing industry? Keep the tone somewhat informal but not too casual and write for a highly technical audience of manufacturing industry executives.”
The chatbot’s response would be to provide a list of social media posts for the manufacturing industry, complete with hashtag keywords, which you can change to suit your list of targeted keywords.
How To Use AI To Power SEO Content (AI For Copywriting)
Getting started using AI for SEO content can help you improve your marketing strategy when leveraged correctly. You’ll need to provide the AI with some information first, such as the industry you’re in. Then, you can provide some keywords that you want to rank for. You can ask the AI to formulate a strategy and provide blog headlines, article outlines, or even entire blogs.
For example, you can write a prompt such as:
“I need you to provide me with SEO content for the manufacturing industry. I need an SEO strategy to rank for manufacturing keywords such as ‘manufacturing,’ ‘manufacturer,’ ‘manufacturing industry,’ ‘manufacturing technology,’ ‘manufacturing assembly line,’ and ‘how to manufacture widgets.’ Provide blog titles and blog descriptions.”
The chatbot’s response would be to provide a list of blog post titles and general tips on how to use keywords to rank in search engines. If you want more specific answers, you can always ask the chatbot to expand on one of its responses or to go into further detail.
Create Headline and Keyword Variations Using AI
You can use the chatbot to come up with ideas for headlines, keywords, and keyword variations. You can have it write social media posts, blog articles, Google Ads, or any other type of text. You can paste sentences and ask the chatbot to rewrite the sentence. It can generate paragraphs based on keywords or keyword groups. The AI chatbot can also be asked to help you come up with ideas for marketing strategies.
However, your content should help augment the capabilities of your SEO team, not replace them! Without human experts reviewing the content and output, you might choose poor keywords, inaccurate content, or even keyword stuffing that will seriously hurt your website rankings.
Additionally, AI often misses key SEO opportunities that will help your content start ranking.
How to Leverage AI For Marketing Your Business
With AI capabilities continuously improving there will soon be numerous opportunities to leverage the technology. Even now there are many ways to improve your marketing with artificial intelligence. Consider these other forms of AI marketing content:
How to Use AI for Copywriting in Email Marketing
Emails are an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. They are a proven method of nurturing the relationship with your target audience, building both trust and awareness. Aside from staying in constant contact with your potential customers, you can share important industry information, share key differentiators about your brand, and highlight any promotions or sales.
However, writing emails can quickly get time-consuming, especially if you have broken down your target audience into segments and created customized emails for each of them. Obviously, this type of customized, granular approach yields better results, but it also requires a lot more work.
Fortunately, emails do not need to be SEO optimized since they are not a part of your website. While you can still follow best practices, they do not need technical audits and overall should be more conversational and sales-oriented. This is where AI can be a major asset.
Once you create a general template you can give AI copywriting tools the parameters for the email and rely on it to write the content. The chatbot can quickly write emails in the style and formatting of your choice. Then you will just need to edit, add some links to products or website service pages, include images, and schedule your email!
Using Copywriting Tools to Improve Facebook Ads
Artificial Intelligence cannot yet manage your Facebook ads so you’ll still need expert PPC marketers to handle most of your social media advertising. However, you can likely reduce the amount of work and time it takes to create ad campaign copy and CTA’s.
Chatbots can write all types of ad copy, including Facebook Ads descriptions, headlines, and CTAs. Instead of racking your brain for hours to come up with engaging content options for A/B ad testing, instead, let the chatbot get you started. It can provide numerous options in just seconds that can be viable options or provide inspiration. Sometimes all we need is something to point us in the right direction.
By leveraging content writing software this way your brand can get numerous copy options for your ads much faster, without all the headache. Of course, we’d recommend editing the chatbot output, but if you can’t then at least come up with a few organic options yourselves. Then implement A/B testing to see which content performs better within the ads. That way you can know for sure whether AI or organic copy does better within your target audience.
Can I Use AI for Writing Website Copy?
There are many different language models out there capable of writing website page content so the technical answer is yes, you can create website content using AI for copywriting. But you should keep in mind that AI copy may not be the right fit for every webpage.
Since AI for copywriting does have limitations when it comes to outputting high quality SEO content, the webpages that you want to capture high levels of organic traffic should still be done by SEO experts. Otherwise, they may not meet search engine requirements and fall in the rankings.
There are pages that you can use AI copywriting for though, which can still speed up the website content creation process and not hurt your website’s SEO. Some examples would be the About page and your team page. You can also write job postings quickly and easily, and for e-commerce, you can even draft policy pages like returns and shipping.
By identifying the pages that are not indexed for SEO, you can leverage chatbot content to expedite the content creation process.
Other types of website content like PPC ads landing pages and FAQ sections can be written by AI but you will still need to make sure an SEO expert reviews the content. These may not get indexed but they still need to be optimized since PPC options like Google still perform better when linked with SEO-optimized landing pages.
Using Artificial Intelligence for Traditional Marketing Materials
While many of us tend to think of Artificial Intelligence as limited to digital marketing strategies, you can easily leverage it for traditional marketing materials as well. Brochures and other printed materials are great candidates for AI copywriting tools.
The chatbot can easily be prompted to produce engaging, sales-based content for whatever printed (or digital) material you need. Whether it’s a brochure or a pitch deck, the content writer can help you quickly craft quality content for much cheaper.
Quickly create tailored content for any event or meeting that your business needs to be successful at. Modern AI can easily be leveraged for offline materials as well as digital materials.
Leverage AI for Image Content Marketing
Today image content marketing is more important than ever. Content marketing can include not only text but also images. Purely text content is simply not enough by today’s marketing best practices, your content needs to include high-quality engaging images.
We could write an entire article on why images in content marketing are so important, and we did! So we definitely recommend taking a quick break to skim through that article, don’t worry we’ll wait.
Now that you understand how critical image content within your content marketing is, how do you create great-quality images? AI tools like Midjourney can be given prompts to make marketing images that can be used in content marketing. As we also mentioned previously, Canva has recently integrated with Chatgpt and will offer a multitude of ways to leverage AI and image content.
All of these AI tools can help you create great image content to support your content marketing strategy. Just keep in mind the best practices when it comes to using images. If you aren’t sure or need a quick refresher, just take a quick look at our article about expert tips on image content use.
Weighing the Pros and Cons of AI For Marketing
While your marketing can benefit from the use of AI, there are potential issues as well. The following are some benefits and drawbacks of using AI for marketing.
Benefits of AI Content Marketing:
- An AI chatbot can save time and reduce costs
- Google Bard is free
- ChatGPT is free for the non-pro version
- You can easily generate new ideas and concepts
- AI can help you form strategies and brainstorm
Drawbacks of AI Content Marketing:
- AI can produce inaccuracies and even lies or harmful content
- Lower quality may be produced, which can hurt your SEO
- You can miss key SEO opportunities
- AI cannot complete all the technical SEO edits needed
- You can hurt your SEO if you’re not careful
- The content produced is not on par with expert content writers
While you may be discouraged from using AI for marketing due to inaccuracies and other risks, know that the technology is rapidly advancing. In the near future, better AI products and updated versions of existing AI may come out.
Until then it is important to ensure that you have a strong SEO strategy that is managed by SEO experts. Otherwise, your reliance on AI may result in a weaker marketing strategy.
It is also important to note that your SEO strategy is dependent on your industry. You must tailor and tweak your approach based on your business’s industry. For example, a B2B manufacturing SEO strategy would look much different than an e-commerce SEO strategy.
Unfortunately, these types of nuances can be lost on the AI, and only successfully applied by SEO experts with experience in the industry.
How to Decide if Using AI for Copywriting is Right for Your Business
Using AI in your business may make sense for several reasons including budget, speed, and idea formulation. However, if you are using AI for copywriting, be sure to edit your AI-produced content and make sure you are only using high-quality content for good SEO.
Always only post accurate information to remain trustworthy, so be sure to check any response received by an AI chatbot. You can use AI for ideas and concepts and some parts of your content, but use real content writers, editors, and SEO experts for a strong content marketing strategy.
Final Thoughts on Leveraging AI for Copywriting and Marketing
Using AI for copywriting and content writing can be an effective short-term strategy to build a body of content quickly for websites, content marketing, emails, and other forms of text content. Using AI for this type of content has its benefits but should not be solely relied upon.
SEO strategists, content writers, and editors are still needed for a good content marketing strategy. Ultimately, human readers want to read high-quality and genuine content, so this will continue to rank highly in search results and resonate well with your clients and customers. AI for copywriting has not yet reached this level.
Let us know how we can help you with marketing strategies to reach your audience.
