AI copy gets a tough rap. (And that’s fair enough, because a lot of it is crap.)

But for small brands that don’t have the team or the bandwidth to keep up with the big dawgs, spending a bit of time to turn ChatGPT into your own junior copywriter is an absolute game-changer.

All those bits of social media copy, product descriptions, landing pages, headlines, calls to action… that used to take a whole week to plan, write and edit? Now, you could get all of them done before EOD on a Monday and still have time to spare.

And when you’ve got a to-do list the length of your arm, that’s the productivity equivalent of smashing down 3 coffees, setting your Pomodoro timer and unleashing your inner Tim Ferriss.

But there’s also a flip side: by its very nature, AI churns out the most generic dross imaginable every single time.

The trick? Making sure you’ve trained ChatGPT to write for your brand, not do its usual “here’s some generic dross” thing. All it takes is 30 mins and you’re good to go.

Under the hood: why does AI churn out generic crap?

The first step to stopping AI from producing dreck is to go all Art of War on it and understand why the heck it writes like that in the first place.

Luckily, the answer is pretty simple. ChatGPT’s training model is made up of websites, marketing copy, social media posts and pretty much everything else on the internet.

So when it writes copy without guidelines or training, it doesn’t actually create anything at all. All it does is create an amalgamation of the stuff it already knows. It’s quite literally designed to shit out the most milquetoast copy you can imagine.

So when you ask it to write something, it…

👉 repeats your competition: AI looks at its training data for your type of product and then creates an average of all the styles, structures, and language commonly found in your industry and then uses them for your brand.

👉 aims for painfully generic: AI has no creativity at all, all it does is rearrange elements it has found elsewhere and write them in a vaguely different way. It’s very much “copy my homework but don’t make it obvious” on steroids.

👉 tries to speak to everyone: AI’s default output is trained for mass appeal – AKA, to try and talk to everyone – not for talking to your audience. And that’s a big copywriting no-no.

👉 shoots for blending in: if your competitors’ copy uses a certain tone and vocabulary, AI will give you copy that sounds like that too. (That’s the reason so many pieces of AI copy contain tell-tale words like ensure. It’s not because AI loves them, it’s because so many brands use them everywhere.)

The end result? The most middle-of-the-road copy you can imagine.

And to be fair, the copy isn’t technically bad. AI is actually pretty good at following copywriting formulas, including hooks and all that other good stuff that copy needs to do.

The real problem is that the copy it writes is blander than unseasoned mashed potato.

👆 And in a world where you’re vying for every second of your audience’s attention, that’s worse.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that your customers can tell if they’re reading something churned out by AI in seconds. (A recent study showed that 50% of customers can tell whether something is written by AI or a human.)

And when customers start wondering if your copy was written by AI, they start to think of your brand as “impersonal, lazy and untrustworthy”.

Using out-of-the-box AI to write copy is like using a template logo or a landing page template, it’s fine. It’s meh. It’s not the worst thing you’ve ever seen.

But it’s never going to make your brand stand out.

But if you train AI, you can transform it into your own junior copywriter that writes stuff that only the most trained of eyes would be able to tell that AI had a hand in.

💡 Important note: even with your AI assistant dialed all the way in, we’d never recommend you publish AI content without giving it a good edit first. Adding a human touch here and there or throwing in emojis – AI always uses emojis like a boomer – makes a huge difference. Plus, you need to make sure it’s all on-brand.

How to turn ChatGPT into your own junior copywriter (with prompts)

Here at Do Words Good, we help our clients use AI in their day-to-day work to do everything from fighting Blank Page Syndrome on a Monday morning – AKA, the Haunting Stare of the Blinking Cursor – to sketching out really rough drafts that they can then tear apart and rebuild.

And to get to that stage, we train ChatGPT about the brand and how we want it to write.

The end result? An AI copywriter that isn’t going to win any awards, but gets you from a blank page to ready-to-edit in 15 minutes flat. Then you just need to give it a polish, add some pops of personality and hit publish.

👆 And when you’ve got a billion other things to do, that’s worth its weight in gold and then some.

Before you get started, don’t forget to do this 👇

If you’ve got ChatGPT Plus, double-check that you’ve got the Memory function turned on in your settings.

All of the tips in this article will work without it, no worries. But turning it on just makes your life a bit easier as it allows ChatGPT to remember information from different chats. That way, you don’t need to keep pumping in the same stuff every time 👇

Once you’ve got memory switched on, get started by giving it some basic information about your brand, what you need it to do and how you want it to do it.  Start a new chat and enter this prompt:

Customise this script to kick things off 👇

You are a copywriting assistant for our [product-type, e.g coffee, beer, skincare, etc…] brand. The brand is called [brand name].  

You follow all of the best practices of [your industry] copywriting, including but not limited to:  

Focusing on benefits not features. 

Maintaining a clear brand voice  

Focusing on our customers, not our products  

I'll send more messages after this to train you on our brand, our products and how we want our copy to sound. Does that make sense?

👆 This first message gives ChatGPT the lay of the land and a clear job to do. (Putting ChatGPT in a box with a clearly defined role makes an immediate difference to the quality of its output, too.)

Step 1: Teach ChatGPT about your brand

Think of briefing anybody – freelancers, your team, etc… – on writing for your brand. You wouldn’t just rock up and say “hey, can you write me a whole website? Cheers.”

You’d give them a brief introduction to your brand, your products, your history, your pricing, your market, etc…

AI is no different. Treat it like a junior member of your team and get it up to speed before you ask it to write a single word.

Here’s how to do that in 5 minutes or less 👇

Start by teaching it about your products and USPs

The first thing you’ll want to do is get it up to speed on all of the information about your brand that it’ll need to do its job well.

If you’ve already got a website, it’s as simple as pasting in a few URLs and asking it to learn about your brand and your products from there.

💡 We’re assuming that you have a website at this stage: if you don’t have a website yet, then you need to do a bit more legwork.

In plain, straightforward language, describe your brand and products to ChatGPT. Think of it like a distant aunt at a family party and avoid any complicated industry jargon, etc…

Better still, if you have a deck you’ve sent to investors or a business plan you’ve put together (or anything that gives it a broad sense of your business/product, really), upload them and let ChatGPT learn from those instead.

Top tip: paste in separate URLs that focus on different parts of your brand and offering. (Your homepage for brand messaging, your about page for your brand story, your product pages for each of your products, etc…)

Then, in the same conversation as the previous prompt, paste this 👇

Once you get this message back, make sure to correct any mistakes that it might have made (it’s never going to be 100% perfect) and to explain any nuances that it might have missed.

Now we’ve established your role as a copywriter for our brand, I want you to learn as much about our brand as possible.  

Here are the key pages from our site for you to read.  

[homepage URL]. 

[about page URL]. 

[product page URLs]. 

Please read those carefully and learn about our brand, our story and our products.  

When you have completed this, please write a 200-word overview of our brand and our offering to show us that you understand it properly.

👆️ Don’t overthink this part. Just write a message like you would to a coworker in Slack. “Hey, this bit isn’t quite right, our brand actually…”

(AI doesn’t have feelings, so be as honest as you want.)

Spend the time to make sure you’re confident ChatGPT fully gets your brand early and you’ll save hours and hours of time rewriting stuff down the line.

Next, then tell it about your customers and target audience

Now that ChatGPT understands about your brand, it’s time to fill in the other side of the equation: your customers.

Load it up with as much specific information as you can possibly think of around your target audience. Tell it why they are interested in your products, the average age of your customers, an idea of who they are and what’s important to them, their values, why you think your brand is for them, etc…

Better still, get a bit braggy: tell Chat why you think your target audience should buy from you and not your competitors. Highlight why your brand is the best choice.

Copy and paste this prompt into the same chat 👇

Now you understand our brand and offering, we want you to understand our target audience. Every piece of copy you write will need to speak to these customers, unless we specifically tell you otherwise.  

Our target audience is:  

[demographic information – give it rough demographic markers like Gen Z or millennial]. 

[interests – tell it about your audience’s hobbies and interests]. 
 
[values – tell it what matters to your audience and why]. 

[attitude to money – tell it whether your audience like to save money or invest in experiences]. 

[lifestyle information – tell it about how your audience live their life e.g busy and on the go or chilled and laid-back]. 


Our main competitors are:  

[Competitor 1]. 

[Competitor 2]. 

[Competitor 3]. 
 

Our product is better for these brands because:  


[Insert bragging here.]. 


That gives you a good idea of who we’re targeting when we write copy. Is there any other information or details you need to get a clearer idea of our target audience? 

Once you’ve answered any of Chat’s follow-up questions, ask it to describe your products and brand back to you.

Don’t worry about the tone of the AI copy just yet, just look for gaps in its understanding or where it decides to take HUGE leaps of judgment.

(It does this sometimes. It’s weird.)

Step 2: Train it to write like your brand

Out of the box, ChatGPT is already pretty good at nailing the fundamentals of copywriting.

It knows the difference between brand copy and sales copy, between social media and website copy and it knows all of the headline formulas to write technically decent copy.

The problem is with how mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly vanilla the copy is. 😴

That’s why you need to gently coax ChatGPT out of its tendency to churn out beige crap and get it to give you stuff that’s always on-brand and almost good to publish.

Luckily, that bit is dead easy to do:

If you’ve already got your brand voice dialed in, edit and paste in this prompt:

Now that you understand our products and our audience, we want you to learn about how we write.   

It is important that our brand has a distinctive voice, so please analyze and learn our tone of voice from this link: [link to the page on your website that shows off your voice best].  

When you’re done analyzing the tone, please break down your understanding of our tone of voice and write a new product description for this product [link to product] in that tone.

If you’re still figuring out your brand voice, use this prompt instead:

Now that you understand our products and our audience, we want you to learn about how we write.  

We really like the tone of these three brands: [brand 1], [brand 2] and [brand 3].  

Please analyse what these brand voices have in common. Once you have done that, please break down (with examples of copy) how we can write in a similar way that’s distinct to our brand. 

This process isn’t fool-proof. It takes a bit of back and forth and – ultimately – it’s always going to give you something a bit wonky from time to time.

But it makes a huge, massive difference to the quality of the copy it kicks back.

Step 3: Put ChatGPT to work for your brand

Now you’re done with the training stage, you can move onto actually getting some copy written.

However, if you ask too much of ChatGPT right off the bat, it tends to go a little off-script.

(Sometimes more than a little off-script.)

Here are some of the things we do to keep AI on-brand and on-point 👇

#1: Break all of your tasks down into chunks

The more you ask ChatGPT to do at once, the more it’ll go rogue and ignore everything you’ve ever taught it.

So instead of asking it to do massive tasks in one hit, break them down into manageable chunks and get it to go step-by-step.

(This also gives you more control over the structure, style and strategy of your copy.)

Don’t say: Write me a homepage for our brand. ❌

Do say: Write the hero section of our new website, include a h1, subheadline, 3 bullet points and a CTA to start shopping. ✅

#2: Always ask it to give 3 or more versions of the copy you need

As much as we’ll pretend otherwise, even us real-life human copywriters don’t write the perfect copy first-time every time. The first draft of anything is always a bit shit. The second draft is alright. The third draft is where the magic happens.

AI is exactly the same, so ask for three versions (or more) for everything you need.

To get even better results, ask it to make each piece of copy bolder than the previous option. That way, you’ll can Goldilocks that shit to find copy that’s just right.

Don’t say: Write me a headline for our new website. ❌

Do say: Give me three options for headlines on our website. Make each headline bolder than the previous version so that they grab attention. ✅

Remind ChatGPT of your brand voice before you start tasks. (Sometimes it gets a bit overexcited.)

The new memory feature is great, but even with that switched on, ChatGPT can get ahead of itself. Luckily, the fix for this is simple, just gently nudge it to remember what you’ve taught it before it starts a task.

Don’t say this: “please write me a product description for our espresso blend” ❌

Do say this: “Referring back to our brand voice and USPs, please write a product description for our espresso blend.” ✅

🧠 Top tip: You can also do this after it writes your copy, too. Once it’s written something, ask it if it thinks the copy lines up with your brand and your voice. It’ll usually say something “you’re right, it could be more on brand, here’s a better option”.

Here’s the difference it makes 👇

To show you the difference that spending 30 minutes doing this exercise can make, we’re going to get ChatGPT to write two hero sections for a microbrewery the two of us have always dreamed of opening.

For the first one, we’re going to just ask it to produce copy based on the kind of prompt people usually whack into ChatGPT.

We’re a microbrewery specializing in crafting alcohol-free beer that’s just as good as regular beer. Please can you write us an h1, sub-headline and call to action for our brand?

And this is the result 👇

It’s not bad at all, is it?

It focuses on customers by default. It sells the benefits. And it gets in the USP.

But it’s painfully generic. Discover 🤮

Now watch what happens when we use our prompt to train AI on our brand 👇

By taking the time to teach ChatGPT about our brand, it’s gone from generic AF to actually, that’s really not half bad.

Sure, we’d be tempted to change the h1 to focus on customers a bit more (“Crack open the beer brewed for beer lovers, not hangovers.”) and change that CTA to something more tangible, but it’s not too bad for 8 minutes work (yep, we timed it).

👆 Got 15 minutes? Go paste those prompts into ChatGPT and see what a difference it makes to the copy you get for your brand. You might just buy yourself enough time to get to all those other things on your to-do list. (We know, who are we kidding?!)

Oh! And one last tip: remember to always say please and thank you to your AI. You know, just in case 👇