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The ChatGPT prompt began, “You are a creative entrepreneur looking to generate new product ideas…” Last September, Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch made headlines when he tested whether ChatGPT could generate product ideas better and faster than business school students.
In 15 minutes, the AI-powered model generated 200 ideas (versus an average of 5 ideas every 15 minutes for humans). Terwiesch and his research partners surveyed potential customers to see if they would like to buy the products. The average purchase probability of a ChatGPT product was 47%, compared to 40% for students’ ideas. Ultimately, Terwiesch recommended using ChatGPT as a co-pilot to generate ideas.
The utility of ChatGPT begins with the prompt, which has become a craft itself. For founders, the right prompt can empower AI to handle more tedious tasks and free them to focus on more meaningful tasks, ultimately boosting the type of productivity that matters.
Here’s a closer look at some ChatGPT prompts founders can use to achieve more.
1. Improve Email Communication
A well-formed email can streamline workflows, clarify meaning, and elevate the sender’s profile. But the price is valuable time. Instead of fretting over every word, let ChatGPT act as your email editor. You can quickly draft an email and ChatGPT can edit for accuracy, clarity, and tone.
The prompt can be:
“I want you to act as an editor. I will provide you with an email that will be sent to a [manager/colleague/client]. I want you to edit the text to ensure the tone is professional and the message is clear. Also, please check for grammatical and spelling errors.”
If your voice is key, you can even train ChatGPT to learn your writing style.
2. Come Up With Content Ideas
To save time in crafting compelling content and ensuring high quality, you can use ChatGPT to generate content ideas. Imagine you’re tasked with a bi-weekly blog post for the company website. The ChatGPT prompt would be:
“You are [role] of a [industry] company looking to generate ideas for blog posts for the company website. The blog will target prospective customers in [region]. The blog posts will focus on [topic(s)] Please generate 10 ideas. Each idea should be 50 words or less.”
Remember to give context—who you are, the target audience, the type of content, the goal, the platform, etc.
3. Describe The Benefits Of Your Product
Instead of fretting over how to word descriptions of your product or service for marketing materials, founders can tap ChatGPT to create a description almost instantly and use that as a jumping-off point. The prompt could be:
“I want you to act as a marketing specialist. Please generate a description of my [product or service], to be used in marketing materials. The tone should be [fun and engaging/serious and professional/etc.]. Please use the following text to create the description: [brief description of your product/service].”
Remember: ChatGPT isn’t error-free, so always edit your results.
4. Ask For Marketing Ideas
For launching marketing campaigns and growing your user base, ChatGPT can help brainstorm ideas to get the ball rolling. This can be an especially powerful tool for bootstrapped founders whose companies don’t include marketing specialists or teams. The prompt might read:
“I want you to act as a marketing specialist. Please generate ideas for growing a company's user base. The company is [description] that serves clients in the [region]. Please come up with innovative ways to reach new customers. Please give five ideas. Each idea should be 50 words or less.”
5. Write Social Media Posts
Nowadays, content is only as valuable as the reach of the posts that promote it. Founders can use ChatGPT to generate concise and catchy captions for any social media platform—hashtags suggestions and all. Try a prompt such as:
“I want you to act as a social media expert. Please generate five captions for [content type] to be shared on [platform]. The [content type] is about [description]. The audience is [description of the target audience].”
6. Generate Ad Copy
Writing compelling ad copy is a vital part of launching a business. Founders can streamline the process by using ChatGPT to come up with first drafts, then refine, test, and optimize. It’s important to give the goal of your ad, be it promoting a new service or reaching new audiences, and details about the relevant product or service.
The prompt can be:
“I want you to generate engaging ad copy for my company’s [product/service]. The copy should emphasize [the specific purpose of the ad or unique selling point of the product]. The target audience is [describe target audience].”
7. ‘How Can I Solve This Problem?’
Founders face an endless number of novel challenges every single day. If you’re not sure where to begin finding a solution, ChatGPT can be a cost-efficient way to start your research, rather than hiring an expert. Simply ask ChatGPT to generate some ideas with the following prompt:
“How can I solve my [issue] problem? Provide five suggestions.”
The more specific you are in describing the issue, the more tailored ChatGPT’s solution.
8. Create Additional Value For Customers
Founders can create new products and services for customers by asking ChatGPT to generate ideas based on existing products. To this end, you may want to reimagine your mission statement to leave wiggle room for future innovations. To create new tools for customers, the prompt could be:
“You are an entrepreneur looking to expand the range of products and services that your company offers clients. Your existing clients are [demographic]. I want you to review the below description of the company’s products and services and come up with additional ideas that customers may want to use. Please provide 25 ideas, with descriptions of 30 - 50 words.”
The onus is on you, the human, to evaluate and refine those ideas. But by letting ChatGPT do some of the grunt work during the idea generation stage, founders can save mental energy for delivering users the best quality product.
