BY REBECCA DECZYNSKI, STAFF EDITOR, INC. @REBECCA_DECZ
Over the past few months, Matt Bahr, founder and CEO of the New York City-based post-purchase survey company Fairing, noticed an emerging trend. When asked how they first heard about a product or brand, customers increasingly gave a new answer: ChatGPT.
While those responses weren't exceptional in number, there were enough to pique Bahr's interest. In his experience, the early adopters harbinger many more to come. "In the first month that we saw 'TikTok' listed as a response, there were about 50 mentions, and now there are hundreds of thousands," he says.
So far, customers are finding products through ChatGPT by searching relatively open-ended queries, Bahr says. One response to a post-purchase survey for a jewelry brand said that the shopper had prompted ChatGPT to recommend a gift for their wife.
That may unlock a slew of new opportunities for retail brands to capture new customers. But they'll have to commit to playing the long game: Currently, ChatGPT is trained with data that cuts off at September 2021, so any products released after that date or website updates made since then won't have an impact on what a person asks the large language model today. In ChatGPT Plus, the platform's paid model, users can turn on up-to-date web browsing, although some websites have blocked the platform.
The general expectation, however, is that ChatGPT and other generative A.I. models will eventually be able to crawl the internet in real-time--so it may be wise to act sooner rather than later. Brands can optimize their product listings and marketing efforts to get ahead of the curve, says William Underwood, CEO and co-founder of Optiversal, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based content and merchandising solutions provider that works for large retail partners such as Petco and Best Buy.
The best way to optimize for ChatGPT, he says, is through "an extension of what in-house SEO specialists at large retail brands are already doing, like targeting longer-tail, high-intent, research-oriented keywords." To figure out the best keywords to use in a site listing, you'll have to think about the reasons a product might appeal to a customer. Looking at customer reviews can give you a better understanding of shopper sentiment. For instance, if a customer of a jewelry brand writes in a review that they gave a diamond necklace to their wife, then it could be beneficial for that brand to frame that necklace as a giftable item in its product description and in paid search ads on Google.
Brands should also use Google to understand what questions shoppers have about their products, says Ryan Pamplin, co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based portable blender company BlendJet and ChatGPT enthusiast. "Look at the top 10 things that Google suggests after typing in your brand's name," he says. "You should write content that answers all of those questions in a way that you would like them to be answered." For instance, customers are likely to ask questions about what they can make in their BlendJet blenders, so the company publishes recipes on its blog. It's all in the vein of ensuring ChatGPT can pull results that may be more favorable to your brand, Pamplin adds.
So the more you understand shopper intent, the better. "It's really about the quality and quantity of mentions of your brand in content. You want to get as much good press coverage as you can get. You want a lot of social media content to be created for your brand and posted on all different social media networks. You want press releases. You want a lot of comments on the posts you're making," Pamplin says. "It's really about, 'How do you become a good brand for humans to find?' because ChatGPT is emulating human behavior." If ChatGPT sees a specific item recommended as a gift on several listicles by reputable publications, then it's likely that ChatGPT will recommend that product as well, he explains.
While customer sentiment should drive this optimization strategy, Underwood adds that brands should be mindful of the ways they position themselves. He gives Optiversal client Sephora as an example: The global beauty retailer avoids attributing gender to products. So even if "lipstick for women" is a high-traffic keyword, it may not be worth incorporating in a product's description, FAQ section, or content marketing materials. "We may pass up opportunities because we want to make sure that we stay aligned with brand voice," he says.
Smaller businesses, he adds, should look for specific niches their products can fill: "You have to be a little more specific if you're going to compete." Instead of promoting a bicycle as the "best mountain bike under $500," for instance, it would be better to highlight a specific use case, like "mountain bike for riding the Appalachian Trail."
Although ChatGPT hasn't yet taken over as a go-to product-discovery channel, Pamplin says, in time it just might. For now, he suggests businesses get familiar with the new technology and make sure their websites aren't intentionally blocking ChatGPT. To do this, he recommends a straightforward course of action: Using ChatGPT Plus in browsing mode, search your business's website. If GPT says that it's not available, while still in browsing mode, go to IP Chicken (or any other IP lookup site) to find the user agent of the ChatGPT browser. Then, tell your site hosting partner or IP personnel to make sure that user agent isn't blocked.
Pamplin particularly expects ChatGPT to generate considerable leads for B2B software since many entrepreneurs have become enthusiastic early adopters of the technology. As more consumers embrace generative A.I., it could emerge as a compelling B2C channel, too. "The really big opportunity goes beyond search engines, because if I were to type into Google, 'I love Frappuccinos but I'm going camping and there's no Starbucks nearby. What do I do?' it's not going to give me an answer," he says. "But if I ask that question to ChatGPT, it could say, 'Buy a BlendJet and make a ready-to-blend latte.'"
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