Hello go-to-market leaders, strategists, and innovators! 👋 Thank you for dropping by to learn practical AI applications and gain strategic insights to help you grow your business and elevate your team’s strategic value.

Quick Take

Every team achieving early success with AI has something in common: Trailblazers. These are the people who spot problems AI can solve and take action. They show up in any department. They start small and get real results.

A global marketing team cut translation time from weeks to days. A product marketing team saved a full week’s worth of work updating pitch deck sections. These wins inspire others to follow. By using tools like custom GPTs and AI-powered martech tools, trailblazers don’t just solve problems, they show the whole team what’s possible.

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How AI Trailblazers Drive Change

People drive AI success. In every marketing team I work with, certain people step up naturally as change agents. We call them trailblazers. (More on AI adoption categories of people here.)

These pioneers spot AI opportunities fast. But here’s their real superpower: they show others what’s possible through quick wins. They prove that AI, when used responsibly, can make work both better and more meaningful.

You’ll find trailblazers in surprising places. I’ve seen content strategists lead the charge in one company. In another, it was the marketing ops team. Their job title doesn’t matter. What counts is their drive to solve real problems, curiosity, and growth mindset..

Proof in Numbers: From AI Workshops to Wins

In our applied AI workshops, we start with the big picture: how AI is reshaping customer behavior and market dynamics. We inspire how to adapt to those changes with real-life AI use cases relevant to each marketing function.

Then we get even more practical and ramp the impact. Workshops are just the beginning. We guide teams as they apply AI to their own challenges, advising them on approaches to solve the problem with AI, considering the right tools, and using it responsibly.

The goal isn’t just to show what’s possible, it’s to help teams become good at using AI tools themselves and guiding AI with their unique knowledge and expertise.

Let’s look at how one team turned inspiration into real impact below:

The results came fast. After just a few two-hour workshops, the team was using AI in 15 different ways. Team members started finding their own uses for AI in both strategy and daily tasks.

Growth Marketing and Product Marketing saw the biggest wins. They saved time, cut costs, and produced better work. Best of all? Teams had more time for creative, strategic thinking.

For more examples of quantifiable benefits across marketing functions, check out our recent analysis here.

Jill Axline, Senior Director of Global Marketing at Morningstar, believes in success breeding success, starting with these AI champions. She is a trailblazer herself.

“The key to successful AI adoption is creating an environment where early adopters can thrive while helping others see the possibilities.

Champions become the best teachers because they focus on solving real problems that their team faces in their individual roles. They are given the support, resources, and time to explore, do their best work, and bring others along.”

Scaling Success: Trailblazers Share Their Wins

Let me share how teams use custom GPTs – specialized AI tools you can build for specific tasks – to transform their work. These tools combine OpenAI’s technology with your team’s expertise and guidelines. Here’s what two teams achieved:

Translation and Localization Success

A global marketing team had a common challenge: translating and localizing content into eight languages. The process was slow and expensive, taking weeks to complete.

Two team members spotted an opportunity. They built custom GPTs for English to German and French translations, using their brand guidelines and local market expertise. Within a week, they had a working solution.

Native speakers with subject matter expertise review all AI translations and regularly update the GPTs with their feedback. This human oversight keeps quality high while still delivering speed.

Translation time dropped from weeks to days, saving thousands in agency fees.

Their success spread quickly. Other marketing teams saw the potential and requested their own AI tools. The ROI easily justified more AI licenses.

Product Pitch Deck Creation

Another win came from Product Marketing. A trailblazer tackled pitch deck creation using custom GPTs. The goal was to build targeted decks quickly, with the right message for each persona.

They fed the GPT everything it needed while protecting sensitive information: product details, messaging, persona information, customer quotes, and brand voice. Soon, multiple PMMs were using it for their sections. One PMM saved a full week’s work updating their product sections!

This success sparked new ideas. The team is now planning to build GPTs for FAQs, battle cards, one-pagers, and sales training. This frees up PMMs to focus on deeper work like understanding customer needs, tracking competitors, and crafting GTM strategy.

A big customer advocate, Melissa Carey, Director of Product Marketing at DHI Group, Inc., believes in the responsible use of AI as a teammate to not only make PMMs more efficient but also more effective.

“Product Marketing’s deep understanding of customers, messaging, and the buying journey provides a strong foundation for AI tools. We can use this knowledge to create custom GPTs that maintain consistency across all customer touchpoints.

Our work naturally guides the development of AI tools to help create pitch decks, FAQs, and sales materials, ensuring that every piece of content speaks directly to customer needs.”

Building Custom GPTs: Scaling Trailblazer Impact

Many trailblazers multiply their impact by creating custom GPTs for their teams. These AI tools carry your team’s knowledge and best practices.

Here’s how teams build effective custom GPTs:

1. Start with a clear purpose

2. Add conversation starters to guide users

3. Feed it your key documents – brand guidelines, messaging, templates

4. Give it specific instructions for creating and delivering work

5. Test, refine, and update regularly based on human oversight and feedback

Note that GPTs need ongoing maintenance and human oversight. Teams regularly review outputs, catch mistakes, and update the tools with their expertise. This keeps the GPTs accurate and aligned with your standards.

Below is a demo of both how a sample custom GPT works and how it’s built. Our Content Topic Creator GPT helps teams develop content ideas for specific buyer personas.

The demo shows how the GPT guides users through tasks and includes a behind-the-scenes look at its instructions and knowledge documents.

Remember: GPTs can do much more than create content. Teams use them to analyze data, derive insights, automate tasks, develop and assess strategy, and personalize experiences. The key is matching the tool to your team’s needs.

Marketing Team 2.0: Where Trailblazers Are Leading Us

What does the future marketing team look like? Our trailblazers are showing us that it’s a blend of human talent and AI support.

The org chart below shows how teams are evolving. AI tools, both custom GPTs and AI-powered martech, support specific marketing functions. But these tools also work across teams, connecting workflows.

Humans lead with strategy and creativity. AI handles the tasks that slow teams down.

Sean McCaffrey, Director of Marketing Operations at Cin7, believes in the even greater potential of AI when used to connect workflows across teams.

“I started by using AI to identify our most engaged accounts from marketing data. That worked well, but I saw bigger possibilities.

Now we’re connecting those insights to help sales personalize their outreach. We’re also sharing what we learn from sales conversations with customer success for better onboarding. What began as one focused solution has become a connected workflow.

The key is to solve immediate needs while staying open to broader opportunities.”

What Sean described is just the beginning of AI enabling connected and personalized experiences for buyers. AI will push companies to break down Marketing, Sales, and CS silos. Read my newsletter on AI is Raising Customer Expectations: How to Unify Go-to-Market Workflows for practical insights on this topic.

These teams track and manage their AI tools systematically. Here’s what good tracking looks like:

1. Every AI tool has a clear owner

2. Teams document what works (and what doesn’t)

3. Learning gets shared across departments

4. Results are measured in business impact

Below is a template we use to track custom GPTs. The first entry shows you what a completed entry looks like. Feel free to adapt this for your team.

Want to learn more about this Marketing Team 2.0 vision? Check out my newsletter on this topic.

The Path Forward: Your Trailblazers Are Ready

AI success starts with trailblazers. They see what’s possible and help others get there. Your trailblazers are ready, they just need the right environment to thrive.

Here’s how to accelerate AI adoption in your marketing team:

1. Start with inspiration – show teams how AI helps them adapt to changing customer behaviors

2. Identify your natural trailblazers

3. Give them room to experiment and prove value

4. Let them build tools like custom GPTs to share their expertise

5. Support them as they bring others along

6. Build toward that Marketing Team 2.0 vision

Your trailblazers can lead the way to something powerful: a marketing team that’s both more capable and more human. Give them the support to make it happen.

The Practical AI in Go-to-Market newsletter is designed to share practical learnings and insights in using AI responsibly for go-to-market strategy, product, brand, demand, content, and digital, and growth marketing. Subscribe today and let’s learn together on this AI journey!

For those who prefer more interactive learning, explore our applied AI workshops, designed to inspire teams with real-life use cases tailored to specific go-to-market functions.

Also check out this team transformation case study and step-by playbook of how we helped transform a lean GTM team into a human-AI powerhouse with human and AI teammates.

Or, if audio-visual content is your style, here are virtual and in-person speaking events where I’ve covered a variety of AI topics. I’ve also keynoted at many organization and corporate-wide events. Whether through the newsletter, multimedia content, or in-person events, I hope to connect with you soon.