Apr 11, 2023

How Healthcare Marketers Can Make the Most of Generative AI

Whether you follow tech news or not, it’s no secret that generative AI – artificial intelligence that mines existing information to create net new content – is sweeping the world. From the launch of OpenAI’s Chat GPT in late 2022 to Google announcing its response in February 2023, AI chatbots are getting better and more widely used every day.Marketing experts from a variety of industries are already sharing their favorite prompts to use to streamline some of the most time-intensive aspects of campaign execution, including content ideation, copywriting, and more. The outputs from tools like Chat GPT are already very impressive, but are they ready to go live in your next healthcare advertising campaign? Probably not.Generative AI tools have plenty to offer healthcare marketers in terms of boosting productivity and stimulating creativity. Before trusting your healthcare brand’s reputation and campaign performance to these emerging tools, it’s important to understand how these tools work and what their limitations are.Using ChatGPT as our main example, let’s explore how generative AI works and what that means for using AI chatbots for healthcare copywriting, campaign planning, and more.

How Generative AI Works and Why Healthcare Marketers Should Care

While ChatGPT was only recently made publicly available, generative AI as a technology isn’t exactly brand new. For example, over the last several years, a number of AI writing tools have launched – including Jasper AI, Copy AI, and Copysmith, among others. Even popular proofreading tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid have started integrating AI writing capabilities into their services.So why has there been so much buzz around ChatGPT in particular? Well, unlike many of the writing-specific tools we’ve mentioned, ChatGPT is able to:

  • Perform a number of tasks other than writing that require reasoning, including writing code, creating or modifying spreadsheets, filtering large datasets, and much more.

  • Generate long-form answers that are much more similar to human writing.

  • Understand and apply creativity to follow complex instructions from a single prompt.

These capabilities are all thanks to GPT-3 and GPT-4, the LLMs that power the latest versions of ChatGPT. These have been some of the largest and most sophisticated LLMs to date, trained using massive volumes of data and trillions of parameters to simulate the way the human brain works.Many marketers are excited about the possibilities of using ChatGPT to automate tasks like ad copywriting. Because of the AI chatbot’s advanced reasoning skills, marketers have been able to instruct ChatGPT to write content or copy in whatever tone, style, format, length, or reading level they desire.That’s a powerful capability to have at your fingertips. But for healthcare marketers, there’s more to consider when deciding whether to use even an advanced AI chatbot like ChatGPT for content and copywriting.

Pros and Cons of Using Tools like ChatGPT for Healthcare Ad Copywriting

Whether directed to providers or patients, the information used to shape healthcare and pharmaceutical campaigns is inherently complex. Healthcare brands are often dealing with specific therapeutic areas and need to provide relevant, timely information to both specialized and layman audiences.That’s a difficult balance to maintain, especially as the copy in ad campaigns is often highly regulated in this field as well. So it’s no surprise that healthcare marketers, like many in their field, are looking for ways to save time, boost creativity, and streamline campaign execution.Using AI tools for copywriting seems like a promising solution – not only does it save you time, but you can also prompt AI chatbots to generate multiple options at once. There are specific limitations, however, that make relying on AI copywriting a risky proposition for healthcare marketers in particular.Although this type of technology is able to generate amazing outputs to even highly complex answers, sometimes, ChatGPT and other advanced AI chatbots simply get it wrong. (Like when Google’s Bard produced a factually incorrect answer in a promotional demonstration with disastrous results.)Although generative AI is often described as creating “new” content, in reality, what it really does is mimic the patterns it’s observed – it doesn’t truly understand the prompts it’s given. In simple terms, these tools uses the keyword phrases from your questions to draw from the data their LLMs have been fed. If there are gaps in its training data, these chatbots will at times:

  • Falsify information.

  • Use terms incorrectly or inaccurately.

  • Produce harmful or misleading information.

These limitations Let’s go over some of the ways your healthcare marketing team can start getting value from tools like Chat GPT today.

Using Generative AI to Save Time and Increase Productivity

OpenAI is constantly taking in user feedback to further train ChatGPT based on when it gets things wrong or right, but that still means the tool is a work in progress. With the proper checks and balances in place, however, you can still use AI copywriting without putting your brand at risk. Whenever writing with AI tools, you need to make sure that your brand:

  • Keeps track of what content or copy is written using AI.

  • Records the primary goal for the assets being created, such as in a content brief.

  • Has knowledgeable experts ready to review and sign off on the content quality and accuracy.

Instead of solely focusing on using generative AI for writing public-facing copy, healthcare marketers can also take advantage of these tools to accelerate the creative process, strategic planning, and other work.Try using ChatGPT for:

  • Creative idea generation for visuals and advertising concepts. Example prompt: “Give me three metaphors for explaining the benefits of physical therapy.”

  • Generating alternative copy for A/B testing of website headlines, landing page CTAs, or ad copy. Example prompt: “Take control of your heart health and talk to your doctor today. Rewrite this sentence in 50 characters or less.”

  • Speeding up research and campaign planning. Example prompt: “Summarize this information in less than 200 words. Provide links for further learning on this topic from reputable sources.”

  • Taking care of manual tasks that are ripe for human error. Example prompt: “Organize this unstructured list of contact information into a table. Highlight any entries that don’t have any columns with incomplete or missing data.”

When incorporated into a solid foundation, AI chatbots like ChatGPT don’t have to completely upend the way healthcare marketers plan, execute, and measure their campaigns in order to provide value. But it won’t be as simple as putting prompts in and getting easy results out. Healthcare marketers need to take a proactive approach to learn how to write prompts that help them save time and operate strategically without compromising campaign quality.At the end of the day, quality matters when it comes to healthcare marketing. The ads you’re serving need to match the needs of your targeted audience – their trust and engagement are too valuable to risk. Ensuring quality campaign execution is how OpenHuddle helps healthcare brands succeed. Contact us to learn how we help healthcare brands keep up with the latest marketing technology and make the most of every impression.

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