Enjoy three meditations: something to think about, a “how-to” resource, and a marketing deep dive. Ommmmmm.
Something to Think About
“How-To”
Map the Customer Journey in AI
The days of writing monolithic AI prompts are quickly giving way to chain prompts or ensemble prompts.
A chain prompt is a sequence of prompts that helps break a large task or process into smaller jobs that an AI can answer clearly with fewer confounding variables.
Chain prompts also allow users to ask a series of questions that build naturally on each other and on the previous entries in the chat transcript.
A great example of this comes from Christopher Penn, Chief Data Scientist at Trust Insights, in a talk he gave at Hubspot’s Inbound 2024 last September.
It’s about mapping the customer journey using AI. The full talk is free (although gated) and quite good.
To whet your whistle, I’ll share the first chain as Chris builds effective training content for his AI model.
He mentions that the more relevant words we can give the AI, the better the output.
So he primes it by asking in sequence:
- What do you know about best practices for building [topic] (Data-driven customer journey maps)
- What are some common mistakes less experienced marketers make when building [topic]? (Data-driven customer journey maps)
- What are some commonly believed things about [topic] that are believed to be true but are actually false?
- What are some things that are believed to be false about [topic] but are actually true?
- What are some expert tips and tricks about [topic] that we have not discussed yet?
I love how this approach can be used for virtually any marketing topic.
[Note: The video is gated, but Chris respects opt-outs should you not be interested in his newsletter—I thought it was worth it.]
A Marketing Deep Dive
Flying in Formation
I have a couple of guilty pleasures.
One of them is Master Class.
I don’t know if I will ever become a great chef, negotiator, or novelist, but who knows?
And I’m struck by the gestalt of expertise.
It’s so easy to believe others have their act together and that we never will.
I’ve been teaching graduate students courses in venture capital at the University of Utah going on 17 years.
Guess what?
I’ve never been a venture capitalist.
How could I possibly teach these students anything about venture capital?
I mean, I’ve been on the entrepreneur’s side of a raise.
But still, I have raised only token amounts compared to others.
So every year I head back to the classroom with a big lump of imposter syndrome in my throat.
I mean, after 17 years, I’m not new at this anymore.
I still feel it.
And after a few minutes in front of the students, it goes away.
I have answers to their questions. I see their eyes get wide as I explain a new concept. I see them light up at the opportunity to talk to a guest.
And whatever I was afraid of never came true.
That’s what I think Seth Godin is talking about. Because we all have a choice in that moment of fear.
We could back down.
We could stay in bed.
We could NOT show up.
But if you do show up and act in spite of it all, pretty soon, you find yourself dancing with the fear.
I was watching Master Class the other night.
And the instructor told a story of her daughter, who was getting ready to test for a new belt in karate.
She was very nervous.
Her instructor came and asked if she had butterflies.
She said yes.
He told her, “Get them flying in formation.”
No dismissing them. No ignoring them. No denying them.
Using them.
Take that energy and put it to use, serving you in this moment.
I remember that story more than the whole Master Class.
So here’s my CTA. Join me in getting our butterflies flying in formation.
Have a bias for action despite imposter syndrome.
And maybe we can all get through by learning to dance with the fear.
Namaste.
