Human Copywriters VS Chat GPT and AI Bots: Why Human Connection Always Wins

AI Copywriting is on the rise – but it’s falling short where it matters most. Discover when to utilise AI to boost your business’ growth, and when to steer clear to avoid putting your marketing (and business) at risk.

It’s time to address the elephant-sized robot in the room:

AI.

Some people claim it’s the death of all creatives…

Others will tell you they’ll never use it and that it’s all just hype.

Then you’ve got the doomsayers who predict it’s the end of the world as we know it and we must simply bow down to our new robot overlords.

And hey… we know everyone and their dog has an opinion on AI right now.

From the barista at your local cafe to that weird person you went to high school with on Facebook, it feels like everyone has a hot take on Chat-GPT…

(Trust us, we’re about as sick of hearing them as you are!)

But given ALL this talk around AI and copywriting, it’s about time we gave you some insights from deep inside the digital marketing industry that can help YOU weed out the lies and uncover real opportunities available to you.

Including the very real darkside of selling your soul, business IP, or marketing success to a robot.

Without further ado, here’s our 2 cents (that may save you a helluva lot more than that in wasted marketing dollars):

Copywriting and marketing are about getting attention, persuasion, and positioning yourself as an authority…

The end result of achieving all this is that you get people to take the exact action you want them to take.

Whether that’s buying your product, booking a strategy session, downloading a report… copywriting is about moving people to action.

Whenever you’re creating copy for your business, that’s your fundamental goal. Whether you’re aware of it or not.

There’s no doubt AI makes it possible to produce copywriting faster and at scale.

But when it comes to copywriting, are speed and scale really your no.1 goal?

Sure, in some instances, perhaps. When your goal is to fill a blog with hundreds of articles as quickly as possible to try and swindle Google’s algorithm into ranking your site higher.

But let’s put it in a slightly different context.

Take for instance Michelin Stars…

Michelin Stars are the highest honour restaurateurs can attain.

They’re awarded for the quality of food, ingredients and the cooking art form.

Tens of thousands of chefs dedicate their lives to claiming one. But only a select few do.

As of right now, there are 2,817 Michelin Star restaurants in the world.

417 2-Star Michelin restaurants.

And just 142 3-Star Michelin restaurants.

So, knowing the criteria that’s used to award them, if you wanted to start a Michelin Star restaurant, what would you focus on?

Speed or quality?

Naturally, quality.

Because this quality and the ability of the food to engage, delight and entice consumers that matters most when it comes to restaurants.

(If they gave out Michelin Stars for speed, every McDonalds in the world would be a 3-Star Michelin Restaurant.)

It’s no different with copywriting and marketing.

If your goal is to connect with your audience, persuade and ultimately get them to take action to buy from you, then it’s the quality rather than speed that’s important.

Like Michelin stars, it’s about the art form and the ability of your words to make the audience feel and respond in a certain way.

Your target audience isn’t impressed by the fact your copy only took 10 minutes to write.

They’re impressed by how well it talks to their needs, wants and desires and how it makes them feel, think and respond.

That leads us to: the non-artificial human element of copywriting and marketing.

Almost all of us have known how to read and write for as long as we can remember.

With these near-universal reading and writing skills, it’s only natural to read copy and think ‘that sounds great!’

But sounding great isn’t what gets marketing to work to grow your business.

It’s actually converting and getting results that do.

The final words you see written in an email, on a website or in an ad are not even 50% of the copywriting equation.

They mask the inputs behind the words, a combination of psychology, empathy, emotional intelligence, and creativity — the very traits that make us human.

There’s no doubt, with the right prompts, algorithms and AI can do amazing things.

Often much better and faster than us humans can. Like reading thousands of scientific papers to find potential breakthrough medical treatments.

Or unearthing complex patterns in huge data sets that aren’t apparent to the human eye.

But understanding your business and your customers deeply is not one of them.

Simply, it’s emotional intelligence and creativity that set humans apart from all other species on earth.

Including AI.

Our success as a species can be credited to our creativity and the power of storytelling, ever since the first story was told on cave walls around 40,000 years ago.

Human copywriters are as clear a demonstration of this as you’ll find.

Copywriting is true collaboration built on emotional intelligence.

Any good copywriter will talk to your customers, interrogate your business and see the big picture and what makes your business unique, based on years of expertise and strategy.

AI can be used as a tool to make humans more efficient and it has so much potential to help you with marketing…

But be careful of thinking it can help you with your brand’s most intimate, personal communication.

Here’s a few reasons why:

Lack of creativity and originality – AI creates content based on patterns learned from existing data. They are good at mimicking human writing but AI lacks the ability to create truly original content, ideas and thoughts.

A lack of contextual understanding – AI can struggle with complex, nuanced, or context-specific topics. They don’t have real-world experiences or understanding. They haven’t lived the day-to-day of your life and business and customers.

Emotion and empathy – AI tools can mimic emotions in text, but they don’t truly understand or feel emotions. This can impact how your brand is perceived and it’s why a lot of AI writing has an empty or soulless feel to it. Stirring up emotions is one of the keys to copywriting success and getting people to buy from you… so if it’s so important, can you trust something without emotions or empathy to get this right?

Language nuances and subtleties – Customers in different niches use different phrases, styles and slang. Not being entrenched in your niche, AI will struggle to speak the same language your customers do.

And this is just the start…

These limitations are essentially what make the human mind so unique. And so difficult to replicate, even with the world’s most advanced AI technology.

Here’s an example…

But in all seriousness…

While what it produced is actually rather funny and not half bad for a content piece…

Entrusting your marketing success and livelihood to a being that can never fully understand your business and customers is playing with fire.

Sure, you might have some luck trusting AI with some of your content marketing… to generate ideas, map out a blog, create social media posts, and complete other often low-return pieces of the pie.

In fact, as long as you give it the right prompts and don’t follow the age old garbage in, garbage out (GIGO rule), we’ve actually seen some fairly impressive pieces of content being pumped out (many that sound generic, but it can definitely spit out a half-decent first draft to edit…)

But when we’re talking about the parts of your marketing that REALLY move the needle…

Like your website, funnels, emails and sales pages…
The highly-strategic, high-converting pieces of copy that you’re betting your marketing dollars and business revenue on…

That’s where the reward isn’t worth the risk.

Think of it like this: would you let an untrained salesperson sell your products or services to customers? No? Didn’t think so.

What most people don’t understand is that great copywriting is salesmanship in print.

Copy is selling in written form. It’s nothing like writing an email to a contact or the kind of writing most people do day to day.

Copywriting is an intricate balance of sales, psychology, research and artful communication…

And the reality is that people buy from people.

People who they can relate to.

People who understand their needs.

People who feel their problems (and know how to solve them).

People who talk their language.

And while, with the right prompts, AI might be able to pull existing information from corners of the internet, and spit out its perspective on the answer to these things…

What it won’t do is get on the phone with your ideal client. Speak with the people who lay awake at night, desperate for your products or services. Hear their stories. Uncover the burning desires they’ve never shared before.

And, harness all this incredible information in a way that sounds authentic to YOUR brand.

…And that’s something only a good human copywriter will do.

Sure – as these tools learn more and get smarter, perhaps it will be possible for you to give them some prompts, and expect a half decent result.

But there’s no going around the fact that a human HAS to be involved.

So the other question is, should that person be you?

Even if you DO have a load of free time handy (said no business owner ever)…

Can you confidently say that you deeply understand marketing? Do you know exactly what your copy needs in order to demonstrate your authority and credibility (in a way that matters to your ideal clients?)

Do you know how to structure a homepage, sales page, or landing page in order to maximise conversions and stand out from the billions of other webpages out there?

AI might be able to pump out suggestions for what these things could be – but do you have the experience and expertise to look at those suggestions, and know whether they’re worth investing your hard-earned marketing dollars and time to put into action?

OR…

Like in the same way you trust an expert to service your car, fix your plumbing, and take your wisdom teeth out…

Are you better off entrusting your business’ copywriting to someone who has taken the time and developed the skills your marketing needs to stand out, connect deeply, showcase your value and ultimately convert?
An expert in direct-response marketing and high-converting copywriting.

Sure, we’re biased. There’s no getting around that.

But we’re also incredibly confident in the superpowers we have, and the difference they make.

Because we’ve seen it on thousands of projects, for hundreds of businesses, for over a decade. From A-list celebrities (like Sylvester Stallone) to sports stars, to local dentists, to poop dog products and accountants.

We know (through a helluva lot of trial, error, and our OWN dollars on the line) what works. We know what doesn’t. We know how to filter through the marketing BS. We know when to embrace new strategies, and when to utilise old-school marketing that has stood the test of time.

And, we know how to distil all this knowledge into an approach that is customised to work for YOUR business.

Afterall, copywriters should never be order takers. They should ALWAYS strategically guide you down the right path for you in order to increase conversions and maximise success.

Like helping you identify what pages you actually need to get more leads and clients…

Understanding your cold, warm and hot audiences, and the best way to speak to them (in the right order) on your website…

Determining how to share your story in a relatable way, and infuse an unforgettable ‘human’ element into your brand that sets you apart from every competitor out there…

And so much more.

What works for one business won’t work for another. AI simply doesn’t get that – but good copywriters (like us #humblebrag) do.

We know how to make sure your website isn’t just-another-website, but is a strategic, authentic, client-attraction machine that converts.

That’s the difference a human-copywriter can bring.

And don’t forget, to be effective, your marketing has to be remarkable and different in some way. Otherwise it’s not going to do what it’s meant to do.

And that’s a problem with relying on AI for copywriting.

If everyone uses it, it becomes unremarkable.

It ends up being commoditised and neutralises the benefit of it for all.

The problem isn’t just that AI doesn’t work like humans in creative tasks like copywriting; it’s that it works the same for everybody.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett calls this a “crowd at a parade” problem.

Imagine you’re standing on a crowded street watching a parade go by.

A few people decide to stand on their tip-toes to get a better view.

Then everyone has to stand on their tip-toes to see.

Once everyone is on their top-toes, no one can see any better.

You end up with sore legs, not a better view.

So how does this relate back to AI?

If everyone relies on AI to write the same robotic copy, it’s no longer an advantage. (If it was at all in the first place)

In other words, everyone is standing on their tip-toes…

We’ve seen this “tip toes” problem time and again with technology changes.

The people who discovered SEO first dominated Google. Until everyone figured out how to do SEO…

The first people to start using Facebook ads saw huge returns. Now every business uses them, costs have gone up and ROI is way down.

Early adopters of TikTok racked up millions of views with every post. Now every kid who can dance is doing the same thing and views are harder to come by.

On and on it goes with every new technology.

There’s no getting around it: When everyone plays the same game as everyone else, it becomes harder for anybody to win.

So, are we saying you should never go near AI?

Not at all.

Like we said earlier, you’ll hear a lot of people cursing the gods about AI taking over.

But that’s not the way we see it.

If you have played around with AI for even an hour of it, you’ll know the power and potential of AI is incredible.

We see it as a tool not a takeover.

We wholeheartedly believe in the mantra that it’s AI for humans; not AI or humans.

In fact, we’re super excited about what’s coming.

It’ll allow you, us and anyone else who does marketing to spend more time being creative and focused on results by offloading the non-creative, rote tasks.

But therein lies the key to using AI…

By not relying on AI entirely to write for you and trusting the right human to help you, YOU may in fact become the outlier.

In a world where people create robot-to-human interactions, you’ll maintain human-to-human connections.

Simply, your marketing becomes remarkable. While everyone else’s is routine.

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