How to Use AI for Customer Insights

In short, these are the best AI prompts to simulate customer interviews. AI makes market research easy and fast – as well as then creating a marketing strategy: it does it all! Today we’re going to learn how to get AI to create and interview our target customers; in marketing-speak, the personas. Latin is all fancy.

Imagine being able to sit down with 50 of your readers and ask them all the questions you are dying to know.

• What posts most resonate?
• What makes them click that button?
• Why did they subscribe?
• What makes them click away on a post?
• How often do they read on the blog or email or somewhere else?

Thanks to ChatGPT, we can do it! The results are amazing – and informative. But remember – it isn’t human. See my post on interacting with AI. You can create detailed customer personas, conduct in-depth interviews, and do a ton of market research, without spending a dime. Here’s how.

how to create customer personas with AI

To get the best answers from ChatGPT clones, you need to frame the scenario clearly. Think of it like directing an actor before they begin. Try this:

Prompt:
You are a respondent in an in-depth interview. You’ve been selected with a few others across the country to share your thoughts. I’ll guide you through an online discussion of the respondent’s experience with my lifestyle blog.

ChatGPT is really good at this type of creation and language. It is less research and more ‘pretend’. It will respond like a real human during a real interview… it’s scary good at this!

Add Details to the Persona

The magic happens in the details. Include demographic, lifestyle, and emotional context.

Prompt:
Your name is Linda. You are a 52-year-old Caucasian female living in Toronto, Canada. You recently signed up to follow my blog on Instagram and subscribed to my newsletter. For the rest of this discussion, we’re going to talk about your experience as a reader of my lifestyle blog. Please share your thoughts in detail.

You’re not just getting answers — you’re building a character. This is important: when you’re looking for marketing-relevant details you need to create a whole character.

ChatGPT Prompts to Create a Customer Persona Target Group

Once you’ve got one detailed persona, ask AI to generate a broader sample:

Prompt:
We want to understand people’s attitudes and behaviors before during and after reading my blog. What would be a good representative sample of people to talk to? What demographic qualities should we include?

AI will return suggestions like age range, household makeup, income levels, region, and lifestyle factors — helping you shape your actual or synthetic audience.

Now, plug the criteria into this prompt and create a group of 50 of your target customer.

Prompt:
Generate 50 unique personas of people who recently subscribed to my blog. Each should include [add criteria from last step here ie: age, location, job, lifestyle, and unique preferences.]

Now we can ask ChatGPT to answer our questions as each of these personas. Here’s how to do that.

How to Use ChatGPT for market research

Once you have your persona, start asking them the same questions you’d ask a real focus group.

Here are a few to try:

10 Qualitative Research Questions:

1. What brings you online most days?
2. How did you find my blog?
3. Which types of topics of posts do you most enjoy?
4. Which apps do you spend the most time on?
5. Describe a typical session where you’re online.
6. What’s your biggest fear in this time of life?
7. What makes you trust or enjoy my writing?
8. What kind of content do you look for on my blog?
9. Where do you go to ask questions about lifestyle topics?
10. What would you like to see more of on my blog?

10 Quantitative Survey Questions:

1. On a scale from 1–10, how confident do you feel as an empty nester?
2. How many hours per week do you spend online?
3. How often do you purchase online?
4. Rank the top 3 sources of lifestyle advice you trust.
5. When purchasing online, which features are most important to you? (Convenience, Price, Sustainability, Brand Name, Reviews)
6. How much did you spend in the last 30 days in online shopping?
7. How likely are you to try a new brand? (1–10)
8. Would you be willing to pay for exclusive access to me?
9. Do you prefer subscription services or one-time purchases?
10. How important is it that a brand reflects your values?

Now get customer feedback without surveys!

Take your 50 personas, and ask them to answer a specific question.

Prompt:
For each persona, answer this question: What brings you online most days? Please place the question at the top of a table, each of the 50 personas, numbered, in the left column, and their answer in the right column.

Then go deeper:

Prompt:
For Persona #5, please expand on the part where they said they didn’t listen. Is that at home? or everywhere that the volume is off?

This kind of data — detailed, specific, and based on persona-driven responses — can help you craft a better experience for your readers, garner trust and get increased visibility.

Final Thoughts

You don’t need a big research budget to deeply understand your audience. With ChatGPT, you can simulate customer interviews, run focus groups, and test messaging — all before you spend a dollar!

Just remember: your results are only as good as your prompts. Include details. Write like a human – because the best answers come from AI that thinks it is one.

Want help creating these personas or prompts for your brand? Check out our newsletter, The Creator’s Edge, where we break down smart, ethical AI tricks like these every other week.