There’s a lot of discussion and hype around AI copywriting in the marketing world at the moment. And without an expert to guide you, it can be difficult terrain to understand.
In this guide, we attempt to cover all things AI copywriting. This means everything from what AI copywriting is to how it works and pros and cons. Plus we discuss the ways you can use it to smash your efficiency targets.
Next time the topic comes up – your eyes don’t need to glaze over, you don’t need to go quiet and you don’t need to feel out of depth. We’ve got your every need or concern: covered.
What is AI Copywriting?
AI copywriting refers to copywriting generated by AI-powered software or tools. This basically means computer-generated copy, as opposed to copy written by a human.
AI copywriters can produce copy for everything from emails, to landing pages, ad copy, website copy, blogs, product descriptions, social media posts, eBooks and beyond. And can be a very helpful addition to a company’s content marketing team.
Examples of popular AI copywriting tools include: AI-Writer, Hypotenuse AI, Writesonic and SEO Content Machine.
How does AI copywriting work?
The idea of machines writing your copy might be a bit difficult to swallow. Your first question is probably: how does AI copywriting even work?
Then you might ask: How can a machine mimic human language? What can they actually write? Can a computer really produce high quality content and aid the content creation process? Can they rival humans?
The questions are likely to snowball from there.
In short, AI copywriting software works by training an algorithm to crawl tonnes of web pages on the hunt for important patterns. This knowledge is then used to generate copywriting on a requested topic.
Most AI software tools use a model like GPT-3, the third-generation language prediction model created by OpenAI, to do this.
You simply feed in your desired parameters (tone, topic, word count, keywords etc.) and your AI copywriter will spurt out the rest. The output usually needs some refinement from a copywriter who can make edits, integrate some creativity and add a human touch.
At this stage, relying on technology alone is not a clever copywriting strategy. While AI copywriting has certainly come a long way, it’s simply not able to achieve what a professional copywriter can.
We think it’s most helpful to look at AI writing tools as aids to real copywriters, working alongside them to enhance their work rather than replacing them. And also a route to stimulating creative ideas and streamlining the content creation process.
AI Copywriting Pros
1. Cost Savings
One of the most obvious pros of AI copywriting tools is that they can help companies become more cost-efficient. At this stage, these tools probably won’t replace the need to hire a human copywriter altogether, so you’ll still likely need to fork out cash on copywriting.
However, they will certainly make the job of your copywriter way easier, quicker, and less intensive, saving their time and your money. This makes AI copywriting tools desirable for a lot of businesses to invest in and very cost-effective.
2. Shorter Turnarounds
Feeding off the first point, a key benefit of AI copywriting tools is that they can cut turnaround times by a decent chunk. This means you can get copy and content out to market way quicker than you would with a human copywriter and in turn, have an opportunity to achieve your goals and targets quicker too.
An Asterix to this great benefit is that the quality is likely to be lacking so while your content may be quicker to finish, it may not achieve the results you want without edits / human enrichment.
3. Writer’s Block Prevention
One of the main terrors for writers across the globe is the dreaded writer’s block. In other words, having no ideas and being unsure where to start. This is where AI copywriting tools can be super helpful, aiding writers to generate ideas and give them some direction for where to start.
An AI copywriting tool or AI content generate is a great launching pad for human-written copy. It can provide lots of ideas on a certain content area, which can free writers time up to dive straight into their main duty: to write copy.
AI Copywriting Cons
1. Lack of creativity
One of the most blaring cons of AI copywriting is that it lacks the creativity and imagination that copywriters can bring to the table. As it works by scanning existing content, and mirroring it to create something similar, it often follows the mould of what’s already out there and can be quite bland as a result.
If you’re looking to produce an earth-shattering, feed-disrupting Facebook ad, a rank-elevating blog post or a landing page that immediately convinces your audience to convert – AI copywriting alone is unlikely to produce that effect. You’ll at the very least need to get the editing of a seasoned copywriter to sprinkle some of their magic.
This is quite a significant cross in against AI copywriting if you ask us!
2. Lack of human touch
Another downside of AI copywriting is that it is currently unable to replicate a human touch in a believable way.
As sophisticated as machine learning can be at mirroring language processing, in it’s current form, it simply cannot deliver the warmth and personalisation that a real human can. At worst, it can feel quite dull, alienating and impersonal.
This robotic feeling can really hurt your marketing efforts from all angles. No one likes feeling like their being spoken to by a robot. Especially a robot that’s asking them to do something for them. Impersonality and a mechanical tone immediately put up a natural barrier to connection and any reader will likely find it more difficult to resonate and ultimately, convert with this approach.
3. Lack of nuance
Suprise – another lack! This time it’s a lack of cultural nuance. While AI copywriters can be very good at grasping the basics of language conventions, and replicating them, they can struggle when it comes to specificity and nuance. Again stemming from AI being software, and not a human.
This means if you’re talking to a specific target audience with your copy, your AI copywriter might not hit the mark with a lot of the details. Details that are likely to convince your ICP that you understand their needs and their problems, and have an effective solution to address them.
For example, let’s say your key persona is marketing managers and you’re trying to sell them on a service that can help them get more leads.
If you were to not include terms like leads, cost per lead, cost per acquisition (CPA), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) etc., your audience may feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about. That you don’t understand the industry. Or how to help them.
This lack of nuance may seem like a small thing that can be costly when it comes to your content. It can break trust rather than build it.
4. Google devalues AI-generated content
When it comes to Google ad copy, blog posts, website pages and online resources – there’s another profound negative when it comes to AI-written content. We hear you asking: “What is it?”There have been recent algorithm updates from Google to devalue web content written by machines.
This means penalties from search engines! And it translates into difficulties ranking and performing well from a paid and organic perspective, impacting your conversion rates, and ultimately, your bottom line. This is a serious reason to reconsider relying solely on machine learning to write your content.
Human copywriters & AI copywriting software: a perfect partnership
As discussed, there are many benefits and cons of AI writers. However, these negatives only really apply when these tools are used alone.
If deployed alongside a real copywriter, with the goal of enhancing and speeding up their content generation process, AI copywriting software can truly be a game changer in your content creation process.
How would you practically use them? Consider leveraging machine learning to get your copywriter’s creative juices flowing by generating content, blog and title ideas, write the first draft of ad copy and blog posts, and help with blog outlines, briefs and other planning templates.
AI tools are great way to give copywriters a head start or acceleration boost during their writing.
While we typically wouldn’t recommend solo use, you could try using them for writing smaller, more formulaic copy pieces like product descriptions or blog post titles.
As these don’t rely as heavily on creativity, it might make sense here. It’s just important to be aware that even though they can be written by an ai writing tool, they may lack a bit of human touch.
Need a professional copywriter?
Prozely has a whole database of amazing Australian writers who can help with any copywriting needs you have. Whether you need someone to write content, email copy, long-form blog posts, product descriptions, ad copy, high converting copy or social media captions – Prozely is the website you need to smash your copywriting objectives. To learn more please learn more about us today!
