ChatGPT and Dental Marketing: Pros and Cons
Since its industry-shaking debut in late 2022, the effects of ChatGPT have been felt in practically every realm — from business and technology to academia and healthcare. Short for “Generative Pre-Trained Transformer,” ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. Essentially, it’s an AI chatbot that uses machine learning and pre-existing data to generate human-like text on a conversational interface. Thanks to its ability to respond to human queries and streamline a wide range of processes, dentists are eager to integrate ChatGPT into their dental SEO strategy and online marketing plans. Like any tool, ChatGPT is most effective and successful when used correctly. While learning how to leverage such novel technology for the growth of your practice can be somewhat tricky, we’re here to help guide you.
Pros: Generate Ideas and Speed Up Processes
There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which ChatGPT should be utilized for marketing and search engine optimization in general. Key to discovering the right approach is understanding the relationship between AI content and Google guidelines. To reiterate, Google confirmed, “Appropriate use of AI automation is not against our guidelines,” a clarification that creates room for ChatGPT to aid in the content creation process.
When it comes to dental marketing, ChatGPT can create opportunities to make content more efficient and enhanced. But more effective than copying and pasting ChatGPT’s responses into your website with rote abandon is using the chatbot to streamline research processes. AI tools like ChatGPT can help create a steady stream of quality content by:
- Brainstorming blog topic ideas
- Providing outlines for long-form content
- Performing keyword research and categorization
- Generating ideas for email campaigns and social media captions
- Assisting with identifying outreach targets for link building
- Accelerating workflow when creating content
A critical caveat of Google’s stance is their emphasis on prioritizing content written for people, rather than for search engines. Importantly, this means that leveraging AI tools with the goal of manipulating search rankings violates Google’s spam policy, regardless of whether the content in question is written by a human or a chatbot. Google’s high standards for prioritizing trustworthy, authoritative, and original pages — while condemning low-quality content — remains unchanged with the introduction of AI, and marketers who decide to rely on ChatGPT for the entirety of their content efforts will likely feel those penalties in the future.
Cons: Lacks a Human Perspective and Requires Oversight
For all its capabilities and possibilities of future development, it’s easy to wonder whether AI content is the future of SEO. ChatGPT and other machine learning tools will no doubt continue to help shape the landscape of online search, but we would be remiss to overlook the fact that ChatGPT wasn’t designed to be an instrument for SEO — the technology doesn’t account for elements such as search volume, relevance, or keyword competition that more specialized SEO tools are able to evaluate. That said, ChatGPT has many limitations which truly highlight why AI content can never replace humans in SEO or digital marketing at large, including:
- Trained on old data which may be outdated or incorrect altogether
- Pulls content from other websites, creating concerns of duplicate content — a “black hat” SEO tactic penalized by Google
- Can only offer machine-based language patterns, which may sound unnatural and alienate potential patients
- Comes with the risk of getting flagged as spam by search engines
- Lacks the intuition and expertise provided by a human perspective
New and innovative technologies are being rolled out every day, but some things never change. One fact that seems to be immutable is Google’s prioritization of high-quality content that ultimately benefits the user, whether the information was produced by humans or machines. ChatGPT can be highly useful for a myriad of different dental marketing processes, but only under the irreplaceable expertise of human oversight.
Ready to Dive In?
AI content can be overwhelming to wrap your head around, but a qualified dental marketing company knows how to help you optimize ChatGPT and other AI tools to your advantage. Reach out to Rosemont Media to learn more about staying competitive with your marketing strategies!