Since ChatGPT launched two years ago, publicly available AI has really made its mark on the world. It’s changed the way we communicate digitally, both for personal and business purposes – but have we reached a point where the texts we produce no longer make us stand out?
Let’s take a look at what you risk losing by using AI for copywriting and how you can do it better yourself – especially in SMS and email marketing.
AI is a shortcut – which is both good and bad
Of course, with the help of AI, marketing copy can be written much faster than before, as a single prompt can generate a long, well-written response in seconds. While this might suggest that it will make copywriters redundant or at least lighten a heavy workload, there is good reason to be cautious about how much and what AI is used for.
The most important task in copywriting is to write texts that capture the audience’s attention and motivate them to take action. Therefore, it’s also important to consider how much you rely on AI when it comes to understanding people and building connections.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that AI is completely useless in copywriting – it’s great for handling large amounts of data and condensing content, and if you’re not a great proofreader yourself, there’s plenty of help to be gained there. When ChatGPT first saw the light of day, the world was blown away by how believable and natural text it could quickly produce.
But the illusion of human text created by a computer has started to crack. So while it’s tempting to hand over the copywriting to AI, there’s still good reason to stay at the keyboard yourself. When you leave your copywriting to AI, you risk your messages becoming superficial, impersonal and generally lacking the creative nuances that create a genuine connection with your audience – and you put your audience’s trust at risk.
What do you risk losing by using AI for your copywriting?
First and foremost, think about how you as a consumer react to the marketing texts you see in your everyday life: do you find yourself coming across more and more of the same wording, the same type of bullet points or just communication that seems generic or out of place?
You can most likely answer yes to the above, and an educated guess would be that it doesn’t inspire you or make you curious about the content or brand behind it. Your customers probably feel the same way.
When you rely too much on AI in your copywriting, you miss out on some essential elements:
First and foremost, you lose your unique tone of voice. AI can easily produce a correct and consistent text, but it can’t capture the tone and voice that distinguishes your brand from others. It’s hard for a machine to create a sense of authenticity and personality – especially when the content is based on all the text that already exists on the internet.
AI also works from data and patterns, which means there are limits to its creativity. This makes it difficult to avoid your messages becoming flat or monotonous. AI also lacks the ability to understand deeper human emotions and behavior, so there are natural limitations to how authentic communication it can produce in this area.
So what are the obvious pitfalls?
Where does AI fail? And why does it fail?
There is a lack of creativity and variation in the phrasing. AI works from large amounts of data, but even large amounts of data will still only provide limited suggestions for optimal wording. Many texts from AI are generic for a reason, which means they won’t be memorable – and recipients will feel more like a number in the system rather than a valued customer.
AI often uses the same clichés over and over again, meaning that texts that seemed innovative and interesting a few years ago are now disregarded or have a downright negative effect on the recipients. Especially in English, it’s easy to spot phrases that are often repeated when AI has written a text: “Stay ahead of the curve”, “In today’s digital landscape”, “embark”, “navigating” and a long list of other overused words.
In addition to fixed expressions, AI texts can also often be spotted by their formatting, as there will also be fixed bullet points and the use of colons, for example, and there is also often a lot of unnecessary filler text that may make the content sound nice, but at the same time either just repeats points that have already been written or adds too much fluff, making the text unbelievable.
You might have experienced it yourself if you’ve seen a company writing about a new feature that compliments their product but makes it sound like a solution that will “revolutionize the industry”. In this case, the AI’s creative text becomes almost too creative and the effect on the recipient goes from positive to negative.
And it may seem a little terrifying that AI fails at creativity – after all, if a machine that can search through a huge data set can’t be original, how do you stand a chance?
Fortunately, it’s quite simple, as the solution is right under our noses.
How should you approach copywriting?
The key to originality in your text writing lies entirely within yourself. You probably know this from your own everyday life – if a message ticked in on your phone right now, it would probably sound very different depending on whether it was from your best friend, your colleague or a family member. Similarly, the key to good and engaging communication for your business is for your brand to have a tone of voice that recipients can recognize – which should be unique rather than generic.
As mentioned earlier, AI has clear strengths, so you can take the best of both worlds when planning your copywriting. For example, the balance between your own writing and AI might look like this:
If you need to write a long text, you can use AI to prompt an outline that you can use as a template. If your deadline is short, using AI to provide you with keywords or a basic text that you can then adjust to fit your brand’s tone of voice can also be a good starting point.
You can also utilize AI’s large datasets to analyze your customer data and suggest optimal times to send your messages to the recipients. But the actual creative work – finding the right angle, tone and message – is something that still requires human intuition. In marketing, it’s extremely important to build and maintain strong relationships with your customers – so use your own understanding of customer emotions and behavior to write messages that speak directly to them as people.
Once you’ve written your text, AI can easily be used to help with proofreading or suggest how the text can be shortened or otherwise edited – but remember to be critical of the suggestions so that you retain control over your text.
Why your SMS and email marketing should stand out
SMS marketing and email marketing are all about creating communication that is both direct and personal. When your messages land in a customer’s inbox, you only have a moment to make an impression – and if they perceive the message as generic, you risk that they delete it before they’ve finished reading it and your work is wasted.
By taking control of your copywriting, especially in something as important as SMS and email marketing, you can create authentic, creative and contextual messages that really resonate with your customers.
There will always be nuances to your brand or audience that only you know about, and it’s important to make use of them to show your customers that your brand is authentic and the best choice for them.
Conclusion
AI can be a valuable aid in your marketing, but it’s important to understand what you risk losing by relying on it too much. By combining AI’s strengths with your own creativity and human understanding, you can ensure your messages remain personal, relevant and effective – especially in SMS and email marketing where every message counts.