ChatGPT has developed somewhat of a reputation as a writing tool — whether that’s blog posts, essays, or emails — but it can do so much more.
It’s an incredibly effective “partner” in strategy, planning, brainstorming, and analysis. Here are a few ways that generative AI like ChatGPT can help with your GTM strategy.
(Note: We use “ChatGPT” throughout because it’s the most widely known, but this advice applies to any chatbot powered by one of the “frontier Large Language Models” — i.e. Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet.)
Developing Buyer Personas
Generative AI can be incredibly useful in building detailed buyer personas. For example:
1. Persona Drafting
Large Language Models (LLMs), the technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, excel at summarization. By inputting known data about your customer segments, you can ask ChatGPT to craft detailed narratives that represent each persona. This might include existing buyer persona profiles, CRM notes, customer feedback, call transcripts, etc.
2. Role-playing Scenarios
Start a chat with ChatGPT and ask it to role-play as one of your buyer personas. Include your buyer persona profile to set the stage with the target customer’s job title, pain points, motivations, etc. Then ask it questions — This can help you to dig deeper into customer expectations, discover challenges and pain points you might not have considered, and uncover new ideas for content and campaigns that might resonate with this audience.
Analyzing Customer Data
ChatGPT can also help you interpret and explore customer data in new ways:
3. Sentiment Analysis
Aggregate customer reviews, social media posts, and support tickets, and then ask ChatGPT to analyze the sentiment. You might ask it to categorize sentiments as positive, negative, or neutral, to summarize the key themes, or highlight commonly used language. LLMs are excellent at parsing natural language and can help you analyze customer data in new ways.
4. Data Exploration
Generative AI can be helpful with analyzing data, but it can be equally valuable in helping us think about our data in fresh new ways. ChatGPT can suggest new angles or data points to explore further. For example, you might input a data set and ask: What else should I be thinking about? How could I enrich this data set? What questions could I ask about this data that would lead to interesting strategic insights? What are some creative ways we could visualize this data? Etc.
Developing Targeted Messaging
ChatGPT can also assist in building out targeted messaging for your GTM strategy. For example:
5. Personalization
Provide ChatGPT with descriptions of your buyer personas and the core message or value proposition. It can then help draft personalized marketing messages, from emails to social media posts, that resonate with each persona.
6. A/B Testing
While you can’t run A/B tests using ChatGPT, you can feed existing messages into ChatGPT and ask for variations or improvements. This can help you generate dozens of iterations and fresh ideas for A/B testing.
7. Response Simulation
Testing how messages might resonate before they go live can be invaluable. Similar to the role-playing example above, you can simulate potential customer responses to your messages with ChatGPT, and get a preview of how your target audience might react.
Tips for AI-powered GTM
With all of these examples, it’s important to remember:
- Remove or mask any personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive data before feeding it into generative AI, and comply with your company’s generative AI policies.
- When prompting ChatGPT, provide as much detail as possible about your target audience, goals, and brand voice. The more specific you are, the more likely you are to receive accurate and helpful results.
- Generative AI can produce inaccurate or biased work. Review any output generated by ChatGPT before sharing it with your audience or your team.
- AI is a powerful tool, but it shouldn't replace human judgment. Use ChatGPT's suggestions as a jumping-off point for further refinement and decision-making by your marketing team.
... These are just a few ideas I discussed recently with Smartsheet. For more on building your GTM strategy — and how generative AI can help — check out the full article:
How to Create a Go-to-Market Strategy & Plan: Step-by-Step with Templates
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