By Craig Foster, Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Director of Digital Media.
Everywhere you look these days you see people talking about Artificial Intelligence or AI. They talk about the use of programs like ChatGPT to write articles, school papers, and more. And that brings up the question for financial advisors and their marketing efforts. Should you be using AI to create the ads you use for lead generation? In this article, I am going to attempt to answer that question for you.
What Do AI-Written Ads Do Well?
When using AI to write anything, the number one advantage it has is the ability to produce finished products much faster than a human can. For example, it took me over an hour to write this article and get to a finished product. I asked ChatGPT to write a similar article and it produced something at least readable in under a minute.
When asked about this topic, ChatGPT responded with, “AI-generated copy has the advantage of being able to quickly analyze large amounts of data to identify patterns and insights that humans might miss. This can be particularly useful for creating ads targeted towards specific audiences or for optimizing the language of an ad for maximum impact.”
One of the key features of advertising for financial advisors is targeting and reaching the correct audience with the correct message at the correct time. The audiences that we target are a small subset of the overall available audience on many of these platforms, and you do not want to miss your chance to be able to connect with these prospects.
What Advantages Do Human-Written Ads Have?
While AI has the advantage of speed and being able to analyze data better but where it falls short is being able to create that human connection that will drive someone to take the action you desire of them, human-generated ad copy sounds more authentic and is written on a level that could potentially convert better and get the desired results. Even ChatGPT agrees with this assessment as the AI-generated version of this article says “AI-generated copy may lack the nuance, creativity, and emotional intelligence that a human writer can bring to the table. Human writers can often craft more engaging and persuasive ad copy that resonates with audiences on a deeper level.”
Both sides of this discussion, AI-generated ads, and human-generated ads have their own advantages, but let’s ask the big question: which one works better in the real world of Social Media Marketing?
The Human vs. AI Ad Experiment
To find this out we, at Simplicity Lone Beacon, ran an experiment as part of a recent campaign. I wrote copy for one ad and had ChatGPT write copy for another ad. These ads were aimed at a download campaign with the goal of getting people to sign up and read a 401(k) guide. For fairness, both ads used similar images.
The results of the experiment showed that even though some of the metrics’ cost-per-click and click-through rates were very similar, the human-generated ads produced a much higher conversion rate, which in the end is the most important metric. As of the writing of this article, the human-generated ads were getting 7 leads for every 1 lead the AI-Generated ads created. It did not surprise me that the human-generated ads were converting better but it did surprise me by how much better they were performing. In the end, I knew the human-generated ads would perform better, but I expected the comparison to be closer to a 2 or 3 to 1 ratio, not a 7 to 1 ratio.
The ChatGPT version of this article did bring up a good point that is worth exploring in the future. It said “Ultimately, a combination of both AI and human-written copy might be the best approach. AI can be used to identify patterns and generate initial drafts, which can then be refined and polished by a human writer to add a personal touch and creative flair.” And evidently, the personal, targeted, creative touch makes all the difference when it comes to your ads.
Crucially, this is true given how I wrote this article with a combination of both my own hands and brain as well as that of a computer. If you know what you’re doing, you can potentially get the best of both worlds, the speed of analysis that AI brings, and the human touch that a talented person can bring.
For now, we will stay with what we know has been working best to produce thousands of leads for our clients but in the future, we will continue to test and grow our usage of AI to see if it can help us produce quality leads for financial advisor clients.
About the Author: Craig comes to us after 7 years at an agency and working independently in digital marketing, focusing on digital campaign creation and strategy. He did most of his work solving data problems and coming up with data-driven solutions and strategies. Craig grew up in the Boston area and graduated with a BS in Business Administration from Johnson and Wales University. When not working on digital marketing you might find him coaching a CrossFit class or spending time with his daughter.
