How AI Helped Me (or not) Market AI in DE
There’s been a lot of buzz around AI and its ability to cut hours of work down to seconds. Read about our experience leveraging the powers of AI to market an event for our client.
Leveraging AI for Digital Marketing
Marketing for events requires eye-catching images and engaging copy that persuades people to attend.
When promoting events for our client, TechForum, we had an effective marketing formula defined: an Eventbrite page + weekly emails + social media posts.
TechForum was hosting an event called AI in DE, discussing how Artificial Intelligence (AI) was being leveraged in Delaware industries.
As we began our work on event promotion in January, an AI text generator named Chat GPT was all over the news—including the NY Times.
All kinds of stories were being shared about using ChatGPT to write code, blogs, websites, and emails.
We decided to leverage AI to promote the AI in DE event.
Our goal: get ChatGPT to do the bulk of the work for us.
After all, a BOT fundamental is “Be a Lifelong Learner.” We are always curious about how we can update and improve upon the typical way we do things.
Getting the Hang of ChatGPT
Aside from a few minor glitches associated with a high volume of users, ChatGPT is fairly easy to use.
The dialogue format feels a lot like chatting with a human. After the initial response, it can adapt its answer based on further instruction provided.
It can also answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.
Step 1: Give ChatGPT a prompt.
It generated a response in mere seconds:
As with any new tool, there was a bit of a learning curve. The generic prompt meant ChatGPT had to fill in a lot of the details itself.
The more specific the prompt, the better the result.
We asked ChatGPT to be more specific. More local. Or even to change the angle and rewrite the whole thing.
Here’s the best draft ChatGPT delivered:
Step 2: Edit.
We know TechForum’s audience better than ChatGPT does.
So we expected some editing would be needed to make the ChatGPT’s version fit the brand voice and tone TechForum’s subscribers recognize.
The problem was that the email needed a heavy edit.
Even after several adaptations, ChatGPT’s email was too long, formal, and generic.
ChatGPT's email:
The finished product:
A Second ChatGPT Shortcoming: Social Media
Good marketing is about multiple touchpoints from multiple channels.
So, we put ChatGPT to the test by having it write social media posts promoting the event.
Social media posts are inherently shorter, snappier, and more casual.
But ChatGPT did not deliver to our expectations here, either.
Nearly every response it generated was cliche, generic, and lacking in any fresh language—no matter how much we adapted the prompt.
We cut our losses.
We scrapped most of ChatGPT’s writing and returned to our roots by brainstorming and writing the social media posts ourselves.
A ChatGPT Breakthrough: Finding the Right Prompt for Creative Content
All of our time spent trying to get ChatGPT to create content like a Bright Orange Thread marketer and copywriter was a bust.
So, we switched gears.
We decided to lean into the absurdity of having a robot write marketing content instead of trying to make ChatGPT sound like us.
AI in DE was an event highlighting AI advancements.
So, we had ChatGPT write some of our speaker introduction emails—from the voice of popular AI and techie movie characters.
Here’s an email ChatGPT rewrote from the voice of C-3PO:
Now, we were getting somewhere!
Sure, minor tweaks were needed to improve the flow and highlight the more important information.
But stylistically, the email was more interesting than something we could’ve written (in under 30 seconds, that is).
Balancing the Wonders of AI With a Human Touch
There’s no denying it: to market to humans, it helps to be a human.
ChatGPT wrote three emails in around one minute.
That isn’t human.
But once you look beyond the obvious excitement of watching a robot do your job for you, you realize that the content it’s producing is merely impressive in a surface-level way.
That is—unless you push its limits.
If you just ask it to write an email promoting an event, it will write an email promoting an event. But it’ll be dry and wordy.
But if you give it a fun, over-the-top prompt, it’ll create eye-catching copy.
Use AI to spur creative thinking, not do the heavy lifting.
There’s certainly room for AI in digital marketing. After all, the human brain has limitations too.
It’s better to think of it as a tool rather than an evil entity out to steal our jobs.
Not to mention, ChatGPT can write some pretty out-there content that helps you explore tone and unique language.
AI isn’t limited to writing. It can be used for coding, data collection, and even image creation.
AI is still relatively new and will likely continue to develop in useful ways for marketers.
Watch the video to hear about our experience using Dall·e—the image version of ChatGPT.
That being said, with the current state of AI, human marketer’s jobs are safe…at least for now.