Be Water, My Friend: Thriving as a Product Marketer in the Generative AI Era

Survival as a product marketer in the AI era requires practitioners to learn to go with the flow and adapt to new circumstances or risk being left behind.

The Impact of Generative AI

The rise of generative AI has heralded a new age of technological advancement that promises to touch all aspects of professional life. It has been compared to the industrial revolution, the invention of electricity, and the advent of the internet for its transformative power and potential impact on society.

Popular AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and slews of others promise to boost workplace productivity to previously unimaginable heights by speeding up or automating many tasks, eliminating drudgery, and enhancing decision-making capabilities.

The economic impact of these tools will be huge. A McKinsey & Company report estimates that generative AI could add approximately $4.4 trillion annually to the economy. However, this technology may also lead to job losses, particularly in marketing and sales. Notably,  highly educated and well-paid knowledge workers are expected to be most acutely affected. McKinsey predicts that by 2045 half of today’s work activities could be automated.

Let that last sentence sink in. It sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it? The coming years are going to bring a lot of AI-induced disruption and chaos. Feeling anxious about a future dominated by ruthlessly efficient, inexpensive AI entities is understandable. However, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, “in the midst of chaos there is also opportunity.” Rather than wallow in fear and angst, we can use these emotions as an impetus to change.

The Application of Generative AI in Product Marketing

Product marketing is a dynamic field, sitting at the nexus of Marketing, Product Management, Sales, and Customer Success. Coordinating between teams and balancing a wide variety of tasks requires practitioners to don many hats. Efficiency and effective time-management are essential to survive the demands of the job. In other words, it is ripe for a generative AI assist.

The role of a product marketer overlaps with product management, sales, customer success, and marketing.

Sample Applications

I used my own personal Orion Prout Consulting AI Assistant, which I built in ChatGPT Plus, to generate a list of ways it can be used within each of the functional areas described above. I’ll talk about how I built that and about what alternatives are available in later posts. For now, here are a few examples it came up with for how generative AI could be used by a product marketer in each of these cross-functional parts of the job.

Go-To-Market (GTM)

• Market Research and Segmentation: Analyze data to identify market trends and customer preferences, aiding in effective market segmentation and tailored GTM strategies.

• Content Creation for Campaigns: Quickly generate content for marketing campaigns, including blog posts, email content, and social media updates, ensuring consistent messaging and brand voice.

Customer Success

• Automated Responses for Common Inquiries: Handle routine customer inquiries with quick, consistent answers, enhancing customer experience and freeing up customer success teams for complex queries.

• Personalization at Scale: Automate personalized communications, generating tailored emails or messages based on customer interactions, purchase history, and preferences.

Product Management

• Feature Feedback Analysis: Analyze customer feedback on features, identifying patterns and themes to provide actionable insights for prioritizing feature development.

• Roadmap Planning Assistance: ChatGPT drafts product development roadmaps by analyzing market trends, technological advancements, and competitive benchmarks.

Sales Enablement

• Sales Script Development: Create detailed sales scripts tailored to the product's unique selling points and customer pain points, suitable for different customer journey stages.

• Training Material Creation: Produce comprehensive training materials, including FAQs, feature benefits, objection handling guides, and best practices, ensuring sales team preparedness.

Conclusion

As you can see from this list, there are many potential applications of generative AI in product marketing. In fact, this is only about a quarter of the possible uses that ChatGPT came up with.

Recently, a friend asked me if learning generative AI skills could boost his earning potential. My answer was unequivocal: yes. But it's more than that. AI isn't merely a trend; it's a seismic shift in how we operate professionally. Ignoring this force puts your future at risk, potentially sidelining you in a world that's rapidly advancing.

As Bruce Lee wisely said, “be water, my friend.” In essence, adapt or be left behind. Embrace AI, transform your skills, and ensure you thrive amidst this technological revolution.