Three Reasons I Didn’t Use ChatGPT to Write This Blog
I won’t lie to you. We’re both marketers so let’s be real. As professionals, no one would call us outright liars, surely? But I don’t think anyone would be shocked to find out we tell the odd fib.
Maybe we won’t even call it fibbing; let’s go for ‘bending the truth’. You understand me because as digital marketers, that’s the nature of our business — we'll say whatever we can get away with to convince people to buy stuff they never even intended to look at online.
An AI Copywriting Confession
But now’s not the time for lying, I’ll be honest with you — yeah, I use AI writers. ChatGPT and copy.ai are in my bookmarks and maybe as founder of That’s Nice Copy, I should be more wary of who I share this with.
It would be easy to take it out of context. You could get this far and insist all we deliver is the work of an AI writer, and I’m nothing but a fraud. You could insist on it, but you’d look pretty stupid because if you stay with me, I’ll explain why I didn’t use ChatGPT or copy.ai to write this blog, and I would never use them for sales copy.
The Truth About AI Writers
I, like you, work in e-commerce. My task list, like yours, is problematic for healthy cortisol levels. So, when automation tools started getting popular a couple of years back, I was fast to adopt them.
Did I try to get them to do my job? You bet. Did I call myself a “prompt engineer” overnight and study how to get the most out of AI writers like ChatGPT, and copy.ai? Of course. Did I spend an awful lot of time desperately trying to get robots to write copy that I was happy to sign my name under? Mhmmm.
It just didn’t work out how I wanted it to.
When You Should Use AI Writers for Digital Marketing
I do believe that AI can be really valuable for marketers but I’m not convinced it can be trusted to write copy that will sell your products. That doesn’t mean it can’t make your life easier, and perform a whole bunch of tasks that would usually take half a day or more. For example:
Summarising information: Copy.ai can quickly digest complex research and present it in a clear way.
Generating content ideas: ChatGPT can help brainstorm topic ideas, titles, or content frameworks based on who you’re trying to sell to.
Customer research: AI can sift through your customer feedback, surveys, or reviews to spot trends or common pain points that can be used when writing copy.
Optimising ad copy suggestions: Although not great at writing ads from scratch, the likes of copy.ai can offer variations of your existing ads to A/B test. You should always be testing copy!
Creating outlines for long copy: AI copywriting tools can structure content such as blogs before you dive into the actual writing.
So go ahead, make your day-to-day easier. All I'm asking is that you do not trust an AI writer with B2B copywriting, SEO copywriting, or the generation of copy for landing pages, email marketing, digital ad scripts, and any other touchpoint where you’re trying to connect with your customers.
Without further ado, I’ll give you three reasons why I’ll die on this hill.
Why You Shouldn’t Turn to AI Writers for Copywriting Services
No nuance
You work for a brand, I hope, if not, weird of you to be reading this? Anyway, you’re working at a brand and this brand’s TOV is unique. It has to be, because your customers have to be able to recognise it across multiple touchpoints.
Yes, visual branding helps too, but the way you speak to your customers on your website, blog, digital ads, social captions, and emails has to be consistent for a customer to become familiar with you — and then connect on a level that results in a lifelong fan.
Now, I want you to consider all the brands you compete with. You’ve got similar, if not the same, target audience. You’re all targeting the same customers, which means most of you have similar messaging.
If someone at your brand and each of your competitor brands relies on ChatGPT or copy.ai, don’t you think you might all end up sounding the same?
No, you won’t have the exact same wording, AI is smarter than that. But you will sound similar, and if you lose your unique identity as a brand, you start to decrease the likelihood of customers staying loyal — what stops them from switching if there’s nothing special about their connection with you?
2. AI writers are not emotional (nice for some)
AI writers can mimic emotions but you cannot upset them, nor can you make them jealous. You can’t inspire ChatGPT, just like you can’t incite joy in copy.ai. See the problem?
As humans, we buy things out of emotion. In e-commerce we talk about products providing solutions to “pain points” all the time — the key is in the word ‘pain’. People are buying things to release themselves from negative emotions like sadness, envy, and frustration.
Believe it or not, you, yes you, buy things to replace negative emotions with feelings of happiness, fulfilment, and pride. So, are you seriously going to tell me that ChatGPT, which cannot (yet) fully understand human emotion, can effectively write to sell to people?
I’m not saying it can’t give sales copy a good go. It can certainly look up best practices and take a whack at your brief, but it will not write with the type of feeling that can be found in these best copywriting examples.
3. Generating “that’s nice enough” copy still requires time and resource
Here’s where I get really honest. If you become somewhat of a prompt pro (which takes time), and have a decent chunk of the day to spend messing about with an AI writer, you can generate some alright, error-free (usually) content.
But is that really what you want? What your brand says, and how it sounds, has a huge impact on how it grows.
I present to you a choice…
1. You can train up a member of your team and get them to waste time using ChatGPT or copy.ai. They will come up with adequate copy that might inspire a few sales, but more than likely will miss the mark and connect with very few potential customers.
2. You go with the best alternative, that’s us.
That’s Nice Copy is a flexible copywriting subscription for online brands. We charge a flat monthly fee and offer copy written by experienced e-commerce writers.
Our turnaround time is quick and you can pause or cancel your subscription anytime, so you’re never wasting money or leaving it on the table.
Subscribing to That’s Nice Copy is far cheaper than hiring in-house, and you’ll get a lot more value out of us than if you use a freelance copywriter.
Subscribe today and get your first brief to us within 24 hours.
Still not convinced? Book a call with me; I could bitch about AI copywriting all day.
