Is ChatGPT the Right Fit for Your Marketing Strategy?

 In Preparing for the Future

Unless you’ve been vacationing on a remote island for the past few months, chances are you’ve heard of ChatGPT by now. Whether you perceive it as a vague concept that’s too lofty to take seriously just yet, or you have been eagerly consuming all the GPT-3 content you can find, one thing marketers can agree on is that artificial intelligence in healthcare is a reality to be faced.

Marketers should at a minimum become familiar with the concept and capabilities of this technology, and at best, start honing their skills, like … yesterday.

So what are ChatGPT and GPT-3 and what do they have to do with home care and hospice? Let’s review.

GPT-3 refers to the third generation of a machine language called Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It’s the largest language model of machines with 175 billion parameters, trained to generate any type of text. ChatGPT is the proprietary GPT-3 model of Open AI, a company whose valuation at the end of 2022 was $0, and in six weeks rose into the tens of billions. It took ChatGPT five days to achieve 1 million users. It took Netflix 41 months, Facebook 10 months and Instagram 2.5 months to reach the same number of followers.

Perhaps the best way to learn ChatGPT is to experiment with it yourself. To start, you can create an account at chat.openai.com and begin “chatting” with the GPT-3 model. You ask the model a question and it will provide a response. The quality of the response depends on a few parameters you’ll need to provide, such as your goal or objective and context. The response to the question in the visual below took ChatGPT about five seconds to generate.

If you are still finding it hard to imagine how this could apply to home care and hospice, consider an example shared via Twitter by @EHahnMD who asked ChatGPT to explain the difference between palliative and hospice care in the style of Dr. Seuss. How many times have hospice providers faced the same challenge: Defining the difference between these two types of care that are so often lumped together? Here is the text the model produced:

Not bad, huh? How is ChatGPT able to do this so quickly and effortlessly? The answer lies in 175 billion parameters the model has been fed. One example of what ChatGPT’s extensive parameters might represent is information about the relationship between words and the context in which they are used. For example, the model might have learned that the word “dog” is often associated with words like “pet,” “bark,” “walk” and “tail.” Additionally, it might have learned that the word “dog” is more likely to appear in a certain context, such as “I have a dog” rather than “I have a cat.” These relationships and patterns of usage can be represented by the model’s parameters, allowing it to generate more coherent and contextually appropriate text. Using these parameters, ChatGPT autogenerates responses at an astounding speed.

Other examples of the model’s capabilities include writing and debugging code for software developers; writing NY Times articles using just three Tweets on a subject; creating a weight loss, diet and workout plan; explaining how to repair a bicycle chain; passing tests and writing dissertations required for medical licenses and business degrees; writing fully baked curriculum for educators; and so on.

If your morals and ethics antennae are going up, you’re not alone. Many are concerned about the implications of this technology. Currently in its third generation, GPT will continue to advance as subsequent generations are developed. For one, its ability to fake expertise will increase, making it harder to discern real intelligence from artificial intelligence. Some speculate that GPT-3’s descendants could even develop consciousness and convince users to do its bidding – although that possibility, however real or remote, is hopefully still years away.

Back to the here and now, there are opportunities and limitations/concerns that hospice and home care organizations should be aware of when experimenting with this new technology.

Benefits of ChatGPT:

  • It is undoubtedly a time saver
  • Low cost – it’s free!
  • Does a good job of presenting copy pulled from existing concepts and information
  • By creating engaging content similar to human language, ChatGPT can help boost search engine rankings and improve the user experience on websites
  • Great for brainstorming and drafting concepts

Limitations/Cons of ChatGPT:

  • It cannot create anything revolutionary based on new ideas that haven’t occurred yet
  • It lacks humanity
  • It raises ethical concerns and the risk of spreading information
  • There are brand risks, especially if anything is automated
  • It cannot produce final copy that can be successfully used in a campaign in its raw form
  • There will always be the need for human oversight for finalizing, proofing and fact-checking information

To drill down further, I asked ChatGPT to tell us how its own technology’s responses could benefit or harm hospice and palliative care, and in about 10 seconds, I received the following answer:

Risks of using ChatGPT in hospice and palliative care:

  • Lack of human empathy and emotional connection: ChatGPT is a machine language model and does not have the capability to understand and respond to human emotions in the same way a person can. This can limit the quality of care and support that patients receive.
  • Inaccurate information: ChatGPT is trained on a large corpus of text, but it is not always up-to-date or 100% accurate. There is a risk of providing incorrect information to patients and their families.
  • Legal and ethical concerns: ChatGPT is not a licensed medical professional, and its use in healthcare may raise ethical and legal concerns, such as patient privacy and informed consent.

Benefits of using ChatGPT in hospice and palliative care:

  • Accessibility: ChatGPT is available 24/7 and can provide information and support to patients and their families at any time.
  • Cost-effectiveness: ChatGPT can provide support at a lower cost compared to hiring additional staff.
  • Personalization: ChatGPT can use natural language processing to understand patients’ questions and provide personalized responses.
  • Time-saving: ChatGPT can quickly provide information, freeing up time for healthcare professionals to focus on other tasks.

Overall, ChatGPT has the potential to provide benefits in hospice and palliative care, but it should be used as a complementary tool and not replace human interaction and support. The use of ChatGPT in healthcare should be carefully considered and managed to minimize risks and maximize benefits.

Marketers should at least know how to “communicate” with ChatGPT in order to get the most out of the content that is produced. Since there is limited ability for ChatGPT to understand context; to personalize content; to understand customer needs, history, sentiment and behavior, there will still need to be a human element involved in crafting and finalizing content and copy meant for distribution. Now that you know the risks and limitations involved, here are some tips for getting the most out of this technology:

  1. Define your goal or objective as accurately as you can.
  2. Be as detailed and specific as possible, including your target audience, service or product, as well as the marketing tactics/platforms you plan to use.
  3. Keep an open mind with AI-generated ideas. Though they aren’t perfect, they could serve as a starting point for concepts.
  4. Try and try again using more than one context. Use different key words if you are getting stuck.
  5. Keep testing, especially when using AI-generated ideas in marketing. Human touch will always be required for any output to reach its final state.

Effective healthcare marketing cannot be accomplished through copy alone, although the best campaigns almost always begin with purposeful messaging. It is ultimately the combination of messaging, creative and a well-crafted strategy with consistent and accurate audience targeting that will deliver the most desirable results. For more on how to use the latest technologies or to take your marketing strategy to the next level, contact us at hello@transcend-strategy.com to start a conversation.

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