Three ways GenAI is making me a more effective marketer

I recently read Tom Roach 's article in Marketing Week : "Generative AI isn’t marketing’s future, it’s already part of its present" and I loved seeing practical examples about ways other marketers are applying AI to their work.

I've been eagerly experimenting with generative AI (GenAI) tools ever since I had the opportunity build my first chatbot last year. I was seeing the impact of GenAI first-hand, and like everyone, was hearing about what it could do for productivity in nearly every article and LinkedIn post in my feed (and now here's one more, ha!)

My eureka moment was seeing research from 麦肯锡 that identified marketing as a critical function for unlocking value through GenAI:

Our analysis of 16 business functions identified just four—customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development—that could account for approximately 75 percent of the total annual value from generative AI use cases

Seeing that put me on notice and made me excited to uncover what this could look like in my role. I'm curious by nature and have enjoyed the challenge of exploring how Generative AI could help me unlock value for my audience, and my company—faster.

Inspired by Tom, I decided to share examples that others could use, specifically in response to some items in McKinsey's research that piqued my interest:

Knowledge workers spent about a fifth of their time, or one day each work week, searching for and gathering information

Not sure about you but I felt seen by that, and got even more excited by this opportunity:

Generative AI–enabled synthesis could provide higher-quality data insights, leading to new ideas for marketing campaigns and better-targeted customer segments. Marketing functions could shift resources to producing higher-quality content for owned channels, potentially reducing spending on external channels and agencies.

If you're a marketer looking for how to use Generative AI to gather customer insights, refine segmentation, and develop tailored positioning this post is built to walk you through the marketing task I wanted to achieve, and how Generative AI helped me make meaningful progress on tasks that could take days or hours but can now move forward in as little as 30 minutes. While GenAI alone doesn't finish a marketer's job, it can be a helpful partner in completing essential work that lets you as the marketer do what you do best: apply insights to marketing strategy and tactics.

So let's dig in!

Three ways GenAI is making me a more effective marketer

Example One: Researching an audience to define their key needs, segment them, and develop tailored value props and research strategies

Marketing task:

• I need to quickly understand a new audience and what needs they have so I can conduct effective qualitative research with prospective customers.

What I did:

• Source relevant threads from Reddit with hundreds of comments from real people! related to the product I'm trying to market
• Download those threads as pages with comment threads expanded (or copy and paste threads directly into ChatGPT)
• Prompt ChatGPT 4 with:You are a market research expert. I will upload a series of discussion threads from people who are deciding if they need a degree and when. You will review these threads to identify the key drivers for WHY someone decides they want a degree and WHEN they decide they need one in their career. Please wait to analyze until I instruct that all threads have been uploaded.
• That's when the fun began. Based on the analysis I received from the threads I uploaded, I further prompted to get what I needed that could improve my marketing:Thank you. I'd now like you to group threads into crisp, actionable themes. Include the number of times a quote appears for each theme, and a snippet of the quote relating to the theme. Do it in a table format.
• I found more great prompt ideas from Shavin Peiries in this article that inspired where I went next with prompts like:Now could you write these themes in the job stories format starting with When I... (my circumstances or situation), I want to... (my motivation for change), So that... (my desired outcomes)
• AndGenerate 5 problem statements in the HMW format so that we can be discovered by these types of customers
• OrGenerate 5 problem statements in the HMW format so that we can convert these prospects into customers
• And finallyHow would you group themes into specific customer segments?
• From there I asked questions like: are there segments you excluded and why? Help me estimate the market size of these segments and cite relevant sources you've used. Here is the product I'm looking to sell [product value props]. Of the segments you've identified, which would be the best fit for this product and how would you position it to them? How would you define customer research interview questions to learn more about what this audience needs or values from a product like this?

In about 30 minutes I had developed:

• A synthesis of user needs
• Target segments with tailored value propositions
• Strategies for how to reach and convert those segments as well as how to conduct research to build on this initial framework

Example two: Ingest product details to help me quickly tailor promotional activities mapped to a key customer requirement

Marketing task:

• Identify target roles and salary expectations someone would be qualified for after completing a specific curriculum so we can surface those in consideration materials

What I did:

• Copy the full curriculum for a given program
• Paste the curriculum into Perplexity along with the instructions: please review this curriculum and identify the roles someone would be qualified for based on the skills they will gain from this curriculum, and identify the average salary for that role in the United States using Payscale, Indeed, or Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
• Based on the outputs, I'd further refine by exploring the sources Perplexity cited and linked to

In about 30 minutes I had developed:

• A set of target roles with examples of how the skills someone would learn in that program connected to the role and an average salary with a source I could provide to my legal team for compliance verification.
• This information could then be leveraged in program description pages, emails, social copy, etc to help guide the consideration process for this program

Example three: Ingest information about a target segment, key problems for that segment, and product value props to develop tailored positioning statements

Marketing task:

• Develop a series of positioning statements to bring into user research with a target segment to gain information about how to improve marketing messaging for future conversion campaigns

What I did:

• Define a target customer segment using demographic, behavioral, and psychographic features and a list of key customer unmet needs / problems [aided by work done in example one along with other synthesis work from internal data sources]
• Identify value propositions that met those needs [again, aided by example one!]
• Prompt Chat GPT 4 with relevant informationYou are a marketing positioning expert, specifically in the space of high quality online university degrees. I will provide you details about a persona, key problems they face, and propositions we can use and I want you to craft succinct, personally relevant positioning statements we can serve to a learner in response to a specific problem statement they identify with. I will upload brand writing guidelines you will need to adhere to. Any questions before we begin that can help you best achieve a quality output?
• I then proceed to share information including brand writing guidelines, persona details, problem statements, and relevant value propositions for the product. For each problem statement, I then asked GPT to provide a tailored positioning statement using the information I provided
• Based on output I'd further push to include missing value props or adjust for compliance requirements

In about 30 minutes I had developed:

• 7 refined positioning statements we could bring into customer research with a target persona to gather feedback on the appeal of each statement so we can ultimately develop tailored marketing campaigns in email, paid, and on-platform channels to reach that segment and present tailored messaging to improve conversion.

If you're a marketer wondering where to start with GenAI, I hope this post can show you that it's really all about experimenting and seeing where GenAI tools can offer value. I'm learning new approaches every day, and really enjoying the process of comparing different tools to see how they can help me create value faster for the world of learners who can benefit from the products we offer.