If, like me, you work with just a couple other folks or maybe as an indie software developer, you know the challenge of marketing. There’s so much to write, so many people to tell. Sometimes, you’re not sure how exactly to say what’s great about your app. Or, maybe you do have a pretty good idea of what to say, maybe even a content marketing or drip email strategy rolling around in your head but just haven’t found the time to write it all down yet. ChatGPT can help.
Like seemingly everyone else in the geekosphere, Jacob Gorban and I have been playing around with how OpenAI’s ChatGPT might help us with our app marketing and other writing. Here’s some of what we’ve learned, along with some tips from others (credited and linked).
There’s plenty of useful content you can get right now from ChatGPT that will help you get your app to market faster, better communicate with users and maybe even help you think through what to tackle next from your backlog.
Read on to learn how you can:
- Get valuable responses from the chatbot for content creation, marketing and other product writing scenarios.
- Teach the bot about your app. The more context you share, the more relevant and useful responses you’ll get back.
- Edit what comes back so the writing sounds you and so you catch any creative embellishments the bot has not-so-helpfully snuck in.
Writing app marketing materials with ChatGPT
Here’s some of what we’ve tried and what others have reported, loosely ordered by what seemed to work the best. Example prompts and comments follow.
- Writing email pitches
- Writing blog posts
- Brainstorming further content marketing
Writing an email pitch with ChatGPT
A fundamental ongoing challenge in marketing is getting the word out. How do you let potential users know that you have an app that could make their life easier? One great way is if someone else writes about it for you and lots of people read what they wrote (or listen to what they podcast, or watch what they share on YouTube). Tech journalists, we love you, and that’s why we keep cold emailing you our pitches on why you should cover our apps.
Here’s how ChatGPT can help.
- Start by telling the chatbot about your product.
A simple way to do this is by typing learn and then pasting in whatever writing you already have. At Apparent Software, we’re working on a dog training app, for which we already have a video available. I spent some time on the video description and am pretty happy with it, so I used that as the starter text, copying and pasting the whole description from YouTube Studio into ChatGPT.
2. Then ask for the output format you want:
please write an email pitch for a tech journalist so they will cover Calm My Dog
Here’s what came back:
Dear [Tech Journalist],I am reaching out to you on behalf of Apparent Software, a developer of innovative and user-friendly apps for Apple devices. We are excited to announce the beta launch of our latest app, Calm My Dog, which is designed to help owners of dogs with separation anxiety train their pets using a proven method used by dog trainers.
Calm My Dog is an iPhone app that allows users to track their progress as they gradually desensitize their dogs to their absences, using a customizable schedule and alerts to remind them when it is time to depart and return. The app also offers tips and advice from professional dog trainers on how to effectively and safely train their dogs, as well as a community forum where users can share their experiences and support each other.
We believe that Calm My Dog is a unique and valuable tool for dog owners, and we would be honored if you would consider covering it in one of your upcoming articles. We would be happy to provide you with additional information, screenshots, or a demo of the app, and we are available for interviews to discuss its features and benefits in more detail.
Thank you for considering this request. We look forward to hearing from you and hope that you will be able to share the news about Calm My Dog with your readers.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Apparent Software
3. Copy the response to wherever you keep your marketing materials.
4. Carefully review and edit the AI-generated text before sending it. In this case, we do not have tips from professional trainers in the app, nor is a community forum yet part of the MVP, although those are good ideas that were not mentioned in the video description.
Writing an App Store description with ChatGPT
Thus far, Jacob and I have hand-crafted (meaning written with just our own brains), the Apparent Software App Store descriptions. That said, I would definitely consider an AI-assisted approach to get started. Similarly to writing the email pitch, here are the recommended steps:
- Provide the bot with some context including your target market and how you think your app will help these users. You don’t need to fit this all into one prompt — you can just keep chatting. I tried just highlighting and copying all the text on Cashculator.app, then pasting it in to the bot:
learn <paste in the whole web page>
It will summarize what you’ve pasted.
2. Ask the chat bot for your desired deliverable:
can you help me write an app store description for Cashculator?
3. Save the response, then tap Try again to see more choices.
4. Edit before using to make sure the description is accurate and reads in the voice you want for this product.
Some indie developers reporting good luck with this approach thus far include Noam Efergan, author of the upcoming Baby Wize app and Johan Forsell, author of BarTab:
Writing content marketing with ChatGPT
One great way to draw potential users to your app’s website and hopefully actual provide some value at the same time is to write meaningfully about topics of interest in and around your app. Apparent Software has a fairly deep bench of such content for our ImageFramer digital framing product, but we know we need to build this still for our Cashculator personal finance app.
We had already looked into AI writing tools to help with this before the launch of ChatGPT’s research preview, but the results here are better than anything we’d tried. (We had only spent a couple hours trying and only with free tools, so your mileage may vary.)
Because we had already brainstormed what we’d like to cover, it was fairly straightforward to come up with prompts. Both of these produced decent results, definitely usable as starting points and possibly as publishable posts:
Write a blog post explaining how to plan and forecast family finances
Write a blog post about how to use hashtags on Instagram to promote one's art
Because the chatbot iterates within a session, you can ask it to hone what it’s provided thus far, like:
Add headings before informational paragraphs
Suggest an SEO keyphrase for that blog post
Rewrite the blog post to include the SEO keyphrase
If you have content briefs at the ready, try feeding them into the chatbot and seeing what you get back. And if you don’t have topics to hand, ask the bot for suggestions!
Sample ChatGPT Content Marketing Prompts
Here’s some of what we tried:
suggest blog post topics of interest to Cashculator users
suggest Instagram posts for Cashculator
suggest Twitter posts for Cashculator with call to action to try Cashculator on the Mac App Store
suggest a DALL-E prompt to generate an image to include in your first Twitter post suggestion aboveSimplifying ChatGPT’s writing
A great trick to get the bot to simplify what it’s written is asking how would you explain that to a child? In the same session where the chatbot helped me write an email pitch, I also asked it for our dog training app’s value proposition. It replied with:
“The value proposition of Calm My Dog is that it is an iPhone app that helps owners of dogs with separation anxiety train their pets using a proven method used by dog trainers. The app offers a customizable schedule and alerts to remind users when it is time to depart and return, as well as tips and advice from professional dog trainers on how to effectively and safely train their dogs. By using Calm My Dog, dog owners can help their pets overcome their separation anxiety and improve their overall health and well-being.” That’s decent, but dry for customer-facing use.
This struck me as much improved:
“To explain Calm My Dog to a child, you could say something like:
“Calm My Dog is a special app that helps dogs who get scared or upset when their owner is not around. It gives their owner a schedule to follow, so they can leave the house for a little bit and then come back, and do this more and more each day. This helps the dog get used to being alone, and not be so scared anymore. The app also has advice from experts who know a lot about dogs, so the owner can make sure they are doing the right thing to help their dog feel better.” Better! There’s language in there we could use to label screenshots or make future videos or blog posts.
Communicating with customers
One known use of chatbots that ChatGPT will tell you itself if you ask is to help you communicate with customers. We don’t use AI for this — it’s real Jacob you’re interacting with when you write in — but we did try it. We started by pasting in the email to support, then trying the following prompts:
What is the sentiment of the following customer support request?
How to politely reply to the customer, asking about how the crash occurred?
ChatGPT’s response was pretty close to how Jacob already answered, but for now, we’re sticking with the human touch.
Wondering about the legalities of using AI-generated text? Here’s what the chatbot replied when I asked:
“As a language model trained by OpenAI, I do not have the ability to create or hold copyright. The text I provide is generated based on the input I receive, and it is not subject to copyright restrictions. You are free to use the text I provide in any way you see fit, without needing to obtain permission or give credit to me or OpenAI. However, it is always a good idea to double-check any information you receive from a source like me, and to verify that it is accurate and up-to-date before using it in any important or official context.”
Even if you end up choosing to use the generated text verbatim, always take the time to read it aloud and think through whether it’s accurate and sounds like what you want for your audience. Copyright guidance may well evolve, as with everything in this area.
ChatGPT3 as late night product team buddy
Once you’ve taught ChatGPT about your app, you can start asking questions like:
What new features can Cashculator benefit from?
Which online publications are likely to publish articles about Cashculator?
What more information about the app would help you to be more precise in your answers?
Iterating in these discussions and combining them with a traditional search engine might lead you to some interesting new ideas for your next release!
Further reading
Here are some places I’m exploring to learn more:
Respond here or come join me on Twitter @SuzGupta and let’s talk more about this. For sure there are concerns about how we can and should use AI tools going forward. As we struggle together to understand, let’s also enjoy the time saving and brainstorming help this and future tools can bring now. There’s so much to do as small-shop and indie developers — I’m grateful for any help!