Using ChatGPT for Marketing - Part 1: Buyer Persona Creation

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Key Takeaways:

• Buyer personas are vital for personalized marketing.
• Manual persona creation had limitations, including scalability and potential bias.
• AI offers speed, scalability, and objective insights for precise persona creation.
• How to create buyer persona using ChatGPT and pitfalls to avoid

What are buyer personas?

Before we delve into creating buyer personas, let us get on the same page about what buyer personas are.

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“I should have spent more time on finding out who the typical buyer of Front is. Without this information, outbound or paid acquisition cannot be successful.” - Mathilde Collin, Front

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Identifying your buyer is crucial.

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A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. It is based on research and data about your existing and potential customers, and paints a vivid picture of who they are, what they do, what their motivations are, and what their goals are. Buyer personas help you focus their marketing efforts on the most likely buyers, and can inform everything from product development to website design.

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At first glance the buyers are simple, and straightforward.

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But you need to learn a lot more about them to target them well. What is their title? How mature is their company? What do they do? What do they care about? What is hard about their job?

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Traditionally, creating buyer personas involved manual data collection from sources like surveys, interviews, and website analytics. However, this process can be time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often challenging to gather accurate and complete data. Moreover, manual persona creation can be subjective and may lead to misalignment among stakeholders regarding the final personas.

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Why use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT not only avoids the downsides of manual methods, like being slow and needing lots of effort, but also brings extra benefits.

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Scalability: If your business operates in multiple regions or markets, ChatGPT can help you create personas for various customer segments quickly. This scalability enables you to tailor your marketing efforts to different audiences with ease.

Prompt Customization: ChatGPT's flexibility allows you to customize prompts to suit your specific needs. You can request personas with particular attributes, goals, challenges, and criteria, ensuring the generated personas align precisely with your target audience.

Quick Iteration: If you need to create multiple personas for different customer segments or make adjustments to existing personas, ChatGPT can quickly generate iterations based on your requirements. This agility is especially useful in rapidly changing markets.

Language and Content Alignment: ChatGPT can provide insights into how your target audience describes their challenges and preferences in their own words. This helps you align your marketing language and content with the language that resonates most with your customers.

Continuous Improvement: ChatGPT can be used to regularly update and refine your personas as new data becomes available. This ensures that your personas remain relevant and accurate over time.

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How to create your buyer persona using AI?

Before we start, remember that AI personas should be validated with real customer data to ensure accuracy.

Let’s dig in.

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Step 1 - Create a basic persona to get you started

Creating an AI marketing persona with ChatGPT is a straightforward process. By providing specific attributes and goals, you can instruct ChatGPT to generate a persona that represents your target audience.

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Example prompt:

You can instruct ChatGPT as follows: "Create a marketing persona for eco-conscious buyers seeking furniture made from recycled materials. Include details about their goals, pain points, and decision criteria for purchasing."

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Response recieved:

_{“Marketing Persona: Eco-conscious Furniture Buyer}

_{Name: Emma Green}

_{Background: Emma Green is an environmentally-conscious individual with a strong commitment to sustainable living. She is in her early 30s, holds a bachelor's degree in environmental science, and works as a sustainability consultant. Emma's dedication to green living is deeply rooted in her upbringing in a family that prioritized environmental responsibility.}

_Goals:

1. _{Sustainability: Emma's primary goal is to furnish her home with environmentally-friendly furniture made from recycled materials. She aims to reduce her carbon footprint and promote sustainability in her lifestyle.}
2. _{Aesthetic Appeal: While sustainability is crucial, Emma also desires furniture that matches her modern and minimalist interior design preferences. She seeks pieces that are not only eco-friendly but also visually appealing.}
3. _{Quality and Durability: Emma values quality and durability to ensure her furniture lasts for years, reducing the need for replacements and further resource consumption.}

_{Pain Points:}

1. _{Limited Availability: Emma often struggles to find a wide variety of eco-friendly furniture options at local stores, limiting her choices.}
2. _{Pricing: Sustainable furniture can sometimes be more expensive than conventional alternatives, posing a challenge for Emma, who must balance her budget.}
3. _{Lack of Information: Emma faces difficulties in finding comprehensive information about the materials, manufacturing processes, and certifications of eco-friendly furniture brands.}

_{Decision Criteria for Purchasing:}

1. _{Sustainable Sourcing: Emma prioritizes furniture brands that source materials responsibly, using recycled or upcycled materials in their products.}
2. _{Certifications: Brands with recognized environmental certifications, such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or Cradle to Cradle, gain Emma's trust.}
3. _{Durability: Emma examines customer reviews and product specifications to ensure the furniture is built to last.}
4. _{Aesthetics: The furniture must align with Emma's modern, minimalist style, enhancing the overall look of her home.}
5. _{Price and Value: Emma evaluates the cost of the furniture relative to its quality and sustainability features.”}

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Step 2 - Add details to the persona

Once you have the basic persona created, the secret to perfecting this is to add layers to the response recieved. Let’s look at some examples to understand this better:

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Language Alignment: Effective communication with your audience requires speaking their language. Ask ChatGPT to describe your persona's challenges in their own words. This helps you understand their perspective and use language that resonates with them in your marketing materials.

Example:

You can prompt ChatGPT with: "How would the eco-conscious buyer describe their challenges in their own words?"

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Information Sources: Knowing where your target audience seeks information is invaluable. By asking ChatGPT about the resources your persona relies on, you can tailor your content and communication channels to align with their preferences.

Example:

You can inquire: "What resources would the eco-conscious buyer use to research and find furniture made from recycled materials?"

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Understanding Triggers: Identifying the triggers that prompt your audience to seek help or solutions is crucial for crafting effective marketing strategies. ChatGPT can help you pinpoint these triggers, allowing you to address your audience's needs precisely.

Example:

Ask ChatGPT: "What are some reasons that might motivate the eco-conscious buyer to start looking for furniture made from recycled materials?"

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Moving Down the Sales Funnel: To guide your audience effectively through the sales funnel, you must provide them with the right information at the right time. ChatGPT can help you determine what information your persona needs to make a purchase decision, ensuring you have a well-rounded content strategy.

Example:

Inquire: "What information would the eco-conscious buyer need to make an informed decision when purchasing furniture made from recycled materials?"

By adding these layers, you can create a persona that offers a deeper understanding of your target audience.

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An exhaustive list of questions/layers you can add to create a more specific and detailed persona:

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Depeding on your marketing or functional goal, you can add as many and as specific details as you want to create the perfect buyer persona.

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Pitfalls to avoid when using ChatGPT

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As much as we would love to replace chatgpt with manual labor, we are not there yet. Generative AI has its limitations and must be used with high alertness. Here are some things to look out for:

1. Data Accuracy: AI-generated personas are based on the data and information provided in your prompts. Ensure that the input you provide is accurate and relevant to your target audience.
2. Fabricated Data: AI can generate fictional or fabricated information if the prompts aren't well-constructed. Be cautious and validate the data by comparing it with real customer data.
3. Stereotyping: AI may inadvertently create personas that rely on stereotypes. Review the personas to ensure they are diverse and representative of your actual audience.
4. Lack of Context: AI-generated personas might lack the context that real customer interviews provide. Use the personas as a starting point and consider supplementing them with insights from real customers.
5. Limited Emotional Understanding: AI may not fully grasp the emotional aspects of your audience. Incorporate emotional insights from real customers when crafting your messaging.
6. Over-Reliance on AI: While AI can expedite the process, it should not replace human judgment entirely. Use AI-generated personas as tools to enhance your understanding but validate them with real customer data.

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In summary, buyer personas are crucial for effective marketing. Yet, manual persona creation has limitations like scalability, biases, and resource demands. AI, led by ChatGPT, addresses these challenges by offering speed, scalability, and objectivity. By adopting AI for persona creation, businesses can enhance their marketing, reaching and resonating with diverse audiences more efficiently.

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Upcoming posts in this series:

• Evaluating your Website/ LP copy with ChatGPT
• Creating brand style/guide with ChatGPT
• Using testimonials for marketing with ChatGPT
• Write twitter threads with ChatGPT

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