Using ChatGPT and Claude to Write Marketing Content That Is Neither Bland Nor Wrong
How to use AI for marketing content from brief to review, with practical prompt examples and cautions about wrong facts and brand voice.
You open ChatGPT and type: write a post selling sunscreen. Within seconds you get a long text that starts with In today's world and ends with ten hashtags. It is grammatically fine, but it sounds nothing like your brand and nobody wants to share it. The problem is not the tool. It is what we feed it. This article shows how to use ChatGPT or Claude as a writing assistant that produces usable work, while you stay in control of the direction.
How much can AI help with marketing writing?
ChatGPT and Claude are Generative AI tools that write text quickly on request. They are good at generating many ideas fast, drafting posts or articles, writing several headline or caption options, adjusting length or tone, and shortening long material. What AI does not know is your brand's internal information, your real customers and the latest facts about your product. If you do not tell it, it guesses, and that guessing is what makes work bland or wrong.
Start with a brief, not a short prompt
Think of AI as a talented writer on their first day in your team. What would you brief them on?
- The product and its real strengths: include accurate information from product documents.
- Target audience: for example, office workers who ride a motorbike to work every day.
- The goal of the piece: do you want people to message you, click a link, or just remember the brand?
- Brand voice: include 2 to 3 past posts the team likes.
- Restrictions: words you do not use and claims you must not make, such as medical claims.
An example prompt that works better
You are the copywriter for a sunscreen brand for working people. The audience is office workers who ride a motorbike to work. According to the product sheet, the key strengths are a light texture that does not feel sticky under a helmet. Write a Facebook post of no more than 80 words in a friendly tone like the examples below. Do not make medical claims. Give me 3 versions with different openings.
Notice that everything the AI needs is in the prompt, and asking for several versions lets you choose and combine.
A workflow marketing teams can actually use
1. Use AI to brainstorm before writing
Ask for 10 storytelling angles based on customer problems, then pick the 2 to 3 that fit your brand best. This saves time thinking alone.
2. Let AI draft, then write over it
Use the AI draft as a skeleton, then add details only you know, such as real customer quotes, stories from the shop floor or the brand's running jokes. This is what keeps the work from being bland.
3. Ask AI to critique your work
Ask it: reading as the target audience, which sentence is boring? Or: which message could be misunderstood? AI is often good at catching what you missed. Read more about building the whole workflow in an AI content creation workflow.
Cautions
- Convincing but wrong information: AI may invent numbers, studies or product features. Check every fact against the original source before posting.
- Confidential company data: do not paste customer data, sales figures or unannounced plans into tools your company has not approved. Check your organisation's AI policy first.
- Advertising laws and rules: some products, such as cosmetics, supplements or financial products, have restrictions on advertising claims. AI does not always know them, so have the responsible person or a professional review.
- Brand voice slowly fading: if every post comes from AI without human editing, your brand starts to sound like everyone else.
How to start this week
- Collect your 3 best past posts as brand voice examples.
- Write a one-page brief template with the headings above and save it for reuse.
- Write the same post twice, once with a short prompt and once with a full brief, and compare.
- Set up a fact-check checklist to use before every post.
- Review the basics in copywriting fundamentals, because people who can write use AI better.
AI helps you write faster, but what makes people stop and read still comes from your own understanding of customers. To practise more, browse AI and marketing courses from our partners on Plants.work courses.