"Everyone knew of ChatGPT, but when you clicked one zoom level further, the thing that came up was: I don't know what to use it for."
Everyone has heard of your product (awareness is a non-issue)
The real friction: customers don't understand use cases
Marketing's job shifts from visibility to illumination
Create "use case epiphany" moments for customers
Framework
The DATE Framework: How to Actually Market
Top of funnel issue?
Hire demand gen
Bottom funnel issue?
Hire product marketer
Step 1 - Diagnose: Understand whether your problem is top-of-funnel awareness or bottom-funnel conversion. Look at your closing rate once people enter the room.
Step 2 - Analyze: Study competitors not to copy, but to identify gaps and opportunities in the market you can own.
Step 3 - Take a Different Path: Intentionally choose differentiation. Don't compete on being cheaper or the "same but better."
Step 4 - Experiment: Test rigorously. Fail fast. Give teams psychological safety to discard work that doesn't work, no matter how much effort went into it.
The anti-playbook principleCopy the context and thinking, not the tactics. Every company's competitive landscape, timing, and zeitgeist are unique.
Real World
Marketing When Demand Is Already There
ChatGPT & OpenAI: Awareness wasn't the problem. The problem was helping people discover what ChatGPT could actually do. Marketing became about revealing use cases, not generating demand.
Retool: Strong product-market fit with enterprise developers, but low awareness. The marketing challenge was visibility in a crowded space.
Stripe: Inbound-driven—so much latent demand that the company was fighting people off. Marketing's role was different: positioning, trust-building, enterprise enablement.
The ChatGPT Enterprise launch
Turned on a contact form for ChatGPT Enterprise and the lead volume increased 40X overnight. Marketing had to pivot to lead qualification and scoring rather than demand generation.
The differentiation principle
Being cheaper is a race to the bottom. True differentiation comes from understanding the problem space, aligning with customer values, and pairing a fantastic product experience with matching marketing.
Operations
Building Quality Into Marketing
Create a Marketing Review forum: weekly meeting or async Slack channel where all marketing work gets transparent review
20% checkpoint: Strategy review at the concept stage—what, for whom, how?
80% checkpoint: Near-final review where substantive changes can still be made
Skip the 99% review—by then you can't actually improve anything
Brand consistency empowers faster execution, not slows it down
Consistency = speedWhen the organization understands what the brand stands for, people move faster with confidence. Brand isn't a constraint; it's a framework for good decisions.
Contrarian
What Most Marketers Get Wrong
✗You need a playbook from successful companiesINSTEAD →✓ Study the thinking and context, not the tactics. Every company's situation is unique. Copy the framework, not the output.
✗Being cheaper or better is a winning differentiatorINSTEAD →✓ Cheaper is a race to the bottom. Differentiation comes from understanding the problem space and aligning with customer values.
✗Vanity metrics (clicks, views, impressions) prove marketing worksINSTEAD →✓ Track actual customer understanding and use-case adoption. Did they have an epiphany about what the product can do?
✗Brand consistency slows you downINSTEAD →✓ A clear brand gives the org guardrails to move fast. Consistency empowers velocity because people know what good looks like.