Custom GPTs for B2B Content: Where Most Teams Get It Wrong
- Caroline Warnes
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Custom GPTs are having a moment. Every week, there is a new announcement, a new tool, a new shortcut promising to fix AI-generated B2B content once and for all. For teams under pressure to move faster, it's tempting to believe the answer lies in the next tool announcement.
In practice, most custom GPTs fail for the same reason generic AI tools do: they optimise for output rather than judgement.
And in B2B content - whether that's marketing, brand, investor, reputational or executive comms - judgement is the whole game.
The real problem with AI content in B2B
The issue with AI-assisted content has never been speed. We all know it can deliver quickly. It's more about sameness of tone and editorial quality.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are excellent at reproducing what already exists. They are far less capable of knowing when language has crossed the line from clear to generic.
That matters more in B2B content than almost anywhere else.
Your audience may not be able to articulate exactly what feels off, but they register it quickly. Content that sounds interchangeable chips away at your credibility. Over time, it weakens trust in the thinking behind the brand.
This is why so many teams say, “The AI draft is fine, but something is missing". That something missing is editorial judgement.
Why most “custom GPTs” do not solve this
On paper, a custom GPT sounds like the answer. In reality, many are just prompts with a nicer wrapper.
They tend to focus on:
output formats
word choices
surface-level tone instructions
What they rarely encode is restraint and judgement.
Very few custom GPTs are built to actively avoid things. Fewer still are designed to recognise emerging language patterns before they become overused. A GPT that produces fluent copy but can't sense when phrasing has become formulaic is not solving the real problem - which is establishing trust and credibility with your audience.
In other words - you've solved for speed and volume, but not the rest.
What “custom” should actually mean in B2B
A genuinely useful custom GPT for B2B content starts with standards. That means:
clear editorial boundaries
rules about what not to say
discipline around sentence rhythm and structure
explicit guardrails against common AI patterns
It should behave more like a senior, experienced content strategist than a junior copywriter.
This is where most teams go wrong. They ask AI to generate better content, when what they actually need is a system that governs quality.
Our approach: editorial first, tools second
At Only Good Content, we track how AI language patterns show up in real B2B environments and in live client work: across marketing content, strategy documents, thought leadership, websites, investor materials and internal communications. The patterns change, but the failure modes repeat.
So when we decided to build our first custom GPT, we put editorial standards at the heart of it.
The result is the Senior B2B Content Editor, a custom GPT designed to review, refine and elevate B2B content using senior editorial judgement.
Rather than linking users to a shared GPT, we designed it to run your own ChatGPT account. This keeps the model controlled and free from external interference. The standards are visible, governed and intentionally restrictive.
Once activated in your ChatGPT account, it can be used like a normal ChatGPT conversation. The difference is that the editorial guardrails are always on.
Why governance matters more than generation
There is a lot of excitement around what AI can produce. Much less attention is paid to what it should be prevented from producing.
In B2B, that imbalance creates risk. Generic language and repetitive language patterns signal a lack of thinking. Over time, that perception affects how brands are evaluated, particularly in complex or high-trust environments.
Custom GPTs that prioritise governance help B2B teams use AI content without diluting their voice. They reduce the cognitive load on humans, not by replacing judgement, but by enforcing it consistently.
That's the gap most custom GPTs miss.
The future of custom GPTs in B2B content
Increasingly, we see custom GPTs becoming infrastructure in B2B teams. We are getting more and more requests from our clients to build them for organisation-specific use cases.
As AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, the differentiator will not be who uses it fastest, but who uses it with the most discipline. Editorial standards will matter more than ever. Speed is easy - judgement takes work.
📞 Get in touch to discuss custom GPTs for your organisation
