If you have ever stared at a draft marketing persona and wondered whether anyone in your membership would actually recognize themselves in it, this is a workflow worth borrowing.

For one association client, I had the anonymized narrative summaries from ten focus groups and the "about us" content from our website. So I uploaded both into my custom chief marketing officer assistant in ChatGPT (our paid account) and asked it to draft three to five marketing personas from the material. I had already created a custom GPT that takes on the role of an association chief marketing officer, thereby accessing that expert knowledge (meaning I didn’t have to specify what a marketing persona looked like).

What came back was four personas, and on first glance, needed very little editing. Each persona had a name, a description, goals and pain points, the challenges that person faced, and even draft language for how to communicate value to them. It was, frankly, close to spot-on.

I will not pretend I did something heroic here. I did not build a model or write clever code. I gave a good tool good inputs and asked a clear question.

Why it worked

The inputs were real. Focus group summaries beat my assumptions about what members want. I had also primed my custom AI assistant with marketing expert knowledge.

The ask was specific. "Three to five personas with goals, pain points, and value messaging" is very different from "tell me about my members."

The content was grounded in the members' own words, not generic marketing fluff.

The step that kept it honest

This is the part I will not let you skip: validation.

I validated the personas with members of our newly-created member engagement task force. First, I assigned each task force member their designated persona based on the traits and needs I knew about each member, long-time association volunteers. Then, I sent each task force member their persona and a 5-question survey about how well the various aspects of the personas fit them.

The results? About ninety percent held up as written. I used member feedback to tweak the personas and raised the validation to 94% accuracy. That validation is what turns an AI draft into something you can actually plan a campaign around.

A persona you made up in a conference room is a guess. A persona drawn from member voices and checked against real people is evidence.

Your Monday move

Find the member input you already have sitting in a drive somewhere: survey comments, focus group notes, support emails. That is your raw material.

Get the instructions for building your custom CMO assistant here or see how mine works by trying it here. Use it, and when you are ready to turn validated personas into a marketing plan that grows membership, revenue, and engagement, book a call with me.