I was just in a meeting with a client the other day, who wanted to move the writing of his blog content in-house so he could write it himself. We had been using an amazing copywriter, a veteran writer in the financial advisor space for over 20 years. However, he wanted to write about certain core features of his firm's offering that he could not really delegate. This led to a conversation about ChatGPT and how it can help financial advisors jump-start the content creation process.
ChatGPT is a technology that has recently taken the internet by storm, and it could revolutionize how you start creating content by streamlining the process. It can enable you to either create the content yourself or provide a content creator with an outline, some authoritative sources to refer to, and other SEO things like keywords, and all in a matter of minutes. In short, it can help you to start to get the content you need to build trust and authority in your relationships with your prospects and current clients.
ChatGPT can provide the building blocks of content creation, while you (or a content writer who works exclusively in the financial advisor space) put it all together.
What is ChatGPT?
OpenAI is the AI research and deployment company that invented ChatGPT to interact with its users in a conversational way. It’s similar to the chatbots you’d encounter in online customer service chats but more sophisticated. In a dialogue format, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT answers follow-up questions, admits its mistakes, challenges incorrect premises, and even rejects inappropriate requests. It is programmed to give as detailed responses as possible based on the information available in its database, according to ChatGPT itself. The database, says the AI, is based on information curated from the internet.
It can come up with headlines and subtitles, outlines, and even entire blogs. Although I don’t recommend using a blog written exclusively by ChatGPT without reviewing the information and adding your unique value proposition, personality, and authority in the article (something I will explain shortly).
And yes, it can even answer basic finance questions. Such as, “How much should I invest with a million dollar portfolio?”. But, as you can see below, these answers are generic and are barely advice at all.
ChatGPT is not replacing sound investment advice. In fact, it actually really just shows how powerful and unique your “advice” is. What is funny is if you put the following question to ChatGPT “Are you going to replace financial advisors?” ChatGPT will give this response:
It's important to note that financial advisors bring a human element to financial planning, which can be crucial in understanding clients' unique situations and providing personalized advice. They can also help clients navigate complex financial decisions and provide emotional support during times of financial stress.
Unlike financial advisors, ChatGPT cannot gather the necessary information to give personalized advice. You know the right questions to ask to build the right financial solution for each of your clients. You have empathy and understanding of each person’s experience, while AI does not. ChatGPT won’t ever be able to ask the right questions, nor will the average individual know what information to provide ChatGPT to get the right financial advice. Plus there is a whole host of advice that is not even curated by ChatGPT.
While it will never replace a financial advisor, ChatGPT can be of assistance to financial advisors, as we have already started to discuss, in helping with various marketing tasks.
How can ChatGPT Benefit Advisors?
ChatGPT can help financial advisors like you with various marketing tasks, enabling you to build trust and authority in your relationships with prospects and current clients. Here are a few ways:
- Create new ideas for customer engagements;
- Write social media posts;
- Help you write blog posts through writing prompts and outlines;
- Help edit your current content; and
- Suggest sources that will enrich your content and make it more authoritative.
While ChatGPT can help you write blogs, it’s important to remember that it is a supplemental tool that should be utilized in an overall content writing strategy. Its real role at this time is to help jumpstart the content creation process.
You can try out ChatGPT by signing up for free at chat.openai.com with an email address, your Google account, or your Microsoft account. Once you sign in, you can immediately start using ChatGPT for free. I go into detail about how to download the app and how to use it to write a blog, including a demo, in a follow-up article on ChatGPT: ChatGPT for Financial Advisors, Part II: How to Write an Article Using ChatGPT.
What are ChatGPT’s Limitations for Advisors?
While ChatGPT can be helpful for financial advisors in creating marketing content such as blogs and customer service emails, it’s important to remember that there are common limitations in its application to the marketing copy that you would create with it.
- First of all, ChatGPT cannot communicate your unique value proposition (UVP) to your prospects. A UVP answers a prospect’s question as to why they should use your financial services over the competition’s. It addresses your prospect’s specific pain points, struggles, and needs while highlighting your unique benefits and customer experience.
- You’ll also need to review any information provided by ChatGPT as it cannot possibly know your client or prospect’s financial experience. You know the financial situation of your prospects and current clients. You know what struggles they face so only you can ensure the information is pertinent to their situation. While ChatGPT can provide information, it’s unable to empathize. The empathy you can provide is required for sound financial advice.
- Furthermore, it only provides information based on what can be found on the internet. We all are aware that not everything on the internet is accurate, true, and helpful. So you need to be the gatekeeper of good advice. This means you will always have more information to provide than ChatGPT, information that is not on the internet. For example, you might have a glossy brochure that really captures your UVP and your process or there might be some unique approach to investing that is not accessible to ChatGPT. In that case you will need to supply the missing information to the prospect because AI can’t.
- Your website could be penalized on search engines for using ChatGPT exclusively to write your blogs for you. This means, you could lose your ranking. According to Google, any automated generated content is in violation of their guidelines. Their algorithms view it as spam, even those AIs that have anti-detection algorithms. This means you will be penalized for posting an entire blog written by ChatGPT (or any AI) without editing it and even rewriting it with your own voice and words.
ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for financial advisors to help jumpstart the content creation process for various marketing tasks. While you hold the unique value proposition, ChatGPT can help you communicate that UVP in an efficient way. It is a starting point for helping you communicate your UVP to new prospects and current clients.
But it’s important to remember that it does have limitations. Its most glaring one is that it will never understand the human experiences that allow you to connect with your prospects and clients. Furthermore, you run the risk of harming your SEO strategy by using any content generated by automation without first making it authentic to your brand.
Christopher P. Wendt is president of Midstream Marketing, a digital agency that generates predictable leads for independent financial advisory firms.