When I begin work with a client, I often go to my network to find people I know, or friends-of-friends, who are part of their target audience. This helps me understand who we’re marketing to, and I use it to inform all the work I do, from FBAs, to obstacles/objections and how to overcome them, to pulling terms they use into the copy.
I’ve always found this useful. I usually offer to pick up coffee or lunch in return for their time. But this would be impractical to do with each element of the marketing foundations, and/or each email message. I wouldn’t have the time nor the funds, and they either wouldn’t have the time or would want to be paid for it.
Enter generative AI.
Generative AI allows me to create a custom persona GPT, based on the specifics of my target audience. Then I ask the custom persona GPT to review the marketing materials, from foundations to first drafts of deliverables, and provide feedback. I then use this feedback to fine tune the materials (yes, I collaborate with my custom marketing strategist and copywriting GPTs for this).
It would be time- and cost-prohibitive to do this with a real person or group of people. But a custom GPT makes it cost-effective and time-efficient. And it’s fun!
You can create your own custom persona GPT to get these same benefits. Here’s how:
I start by enhancing and expanding the target audience description in my marketing foundations document; to do this I collaborate with my custom marketing strategist GPT. Once we’re done, my custom marketing strategist GPT and I collaborate on one or more personas based on the target audience description.
The next step is to build the instructions to create the custom persona GPT. Here we start with the persona information, but then we provide information on the feedback structure, evaluation criteria, response style, and more. Then we create the custom persona GPT.
Once created, we provide the custom persona GPT marketing materials and ask for feedback.
Here’s a quick example.
I provided the custom persona GPT this first draft of an email message, which was written collaboratively with my custom copywriter GPT based on the marketing foundations I had created with my marketing strategist GPT. The details here are blurred for anonymity:
I asked the custom persona GPT to review it and provide feedback, and in less than 60 seconds it came back with this:
The AI came up with some good points:
- It liked the focus on a hassle-free meal solution, free shipping and flexible delivery options, and group-friendly portions.
- It made suggestions on optimizing the subject line, highlighting the budget-friendly aspects sooner, providing more assurance on reliability, and enhancing the focus on logistics in the P.S.
I agreed with all the suggestions, which doesn’t always happen. Often I need to tweak and fine-tune the feedback with the AI. But this one did a good job.
Then on to the next step – providing the suggestions to the custom marketing strategist GPT so it can revise the copy. I did that, and got this:
Could I have done this myself? Maybe. I would have had to bring in someone who matched the target audience or put myself in the mindset of the target audience. But even then it would not have been as effective, since I had crafted the first draft of the copy (collaborating with the AI) targeting this audience.
Would it have taken me more time to do it without the custom persona GPT? Yes. And truth be told, I probably would have skipped this specific step, thinking that since the GPT and I had collaboratively written the copy with the target audience in mind that I didn’t need it.
So this added a step – but it also improved the final product. And if you use custom GPTs collaboratively, as I do, you’ll still save time over doing without any AI assistance. That’s where the value comes in – using generative AI in this way saves me time while maintaining or improving the quality of the deliverables. It can do the same for your marketing teams.
Do I still need to proof and edit this? Yes.
In another iteration of this analysis, a different custom persona GPT (this one based on one of the B2C target audiences) gave me some good feedback, but also some that I disregarded. For instance, it suggested that I broaden the ‘holiday’ focus to include birthdays and summer parties. But this campaign is specifically for holiday, so I disregarded that.
This is just one of the ways that I use AI to increase my productivity while maintaining quality output – and it’s one of the things I teach in my ‘Master AI for Marketing’ workshops.
The custom GPTs that I talk about in this example – in the workshop you’ll learn to create your own custom GPTs, by actually doing it. That’s right. Attend my workshop and you’ll leave with three custom GPTs that you’re created specifically for your projects. One for marketing strategy, one as a persona to provide feedback, and one to write copy.
In addition to creating these three custom GPTs, you’ll actually use them to work on a project, one that you’ve brought with you to the training (don’t worry; we have sample projects you can work on if you don’t bring your own).
So give this a try at home – or if you want to get up the learning curve faster, sign-up for one of my ‘Master AI for Marketing’ workshops.
The super early bird price is just $425 per person, which covers a total of 6 hours of training (Two 3-hour sessions on consecutive days).
Best of all, the workshops are online, live, interactive, and hands-on. There’s no need to leave your desk. And we limit each class to 6 attendees, so you get personal attention.
You’ll leave the workshop with 3 of your own custom GPTs that you’ve created as well as the start of a marketing campaign you can finish and launch.
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