He Used AI to Make $70,000 in a Weekend — Here's How A guide to building a powerful promotional campaign using free and low-cost tools like ChatGPT.

Ever wish your business could go for bigger marketing opportunities, but you simply don't have the employee bandwidth or extra budget to hire an outside agency?

You may be right about the resources. But you're wrong about pursuing those opportunities.

These days, with a few handy tools like ChatGPT or Claude AI, which are free or around $20 a month depending on your usage needs, you can quickly create a highly effective, standout promotional campaign targeted expressly to the audience you want to reach — no need for a marketing team. Once you're familiar with generative AI's potential, there's no end to how imaginative and profitable you can get. To see how this can play out, consider the following case study.

Related: AI for the Underdog — Here's How Small Businesses Can Thrive With Artificial Intelligence

Jeff J. Hunter is an entrepreneur who helps companies use AI and build virtual teams to enhance productivity; he has also hosted a podcast called Savage Marketer. But even with all this expertise, when one of his former students, Samuel Young, asked, "Got any plans for Black Friday?" Hunter said no. Between running his business and managing high-ticket consulting contracts generating over $300K annually, he felt too busy to orchestrate a sales campaign himself. Young, now a fellow marketer, pushed. "I have a plan for how we can use AI to fully automate and optimize an entire Black Friday promo," he said. "And I think if we work fast, we can hit $50,000 in sales — in one day."

Hunter was naturally intrigued. He agreed to move forward, and he brought Young onto the project. By then it was November 4 — less than a month before Black Friday. To do something ambitious would be a furious race against the clock. And it was. But ultimately, they would surpass Young's expectations.

As you read how they did it, keep in mind that, while Hunter's product was a course about using artificial intelligence, it could have been anything. A fancy backpack for hikers. Software for architects. A new collection of handbags or jewelry or dog raincoats. And although Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, the tactics Hunter and Young used can be applied to building all kinds of campaigns, from Mother's Day to a 10th anniversary sale to Pride Month.

Check out their game plan and test drive your own version for similar innovations and results.

Related: 5 Practical Ways Entrepreneurs Can Add AI to Their Toolkit Today

Begin with lead generation.

Hunter and Young tackled this question first: How could they generate high-quality leads? They knew that would be the key to their campaign's success. The best way to go, they decided, was to create a super compelling lead magnet, such as a free asset or special deal offered to customers in exchange for their contact details.

What could it be? To brainstorm a concept, they turned to Claude AI (similar to ChatGPT, but better for training on large datasets and copywriting). They gave it information about the AI-related course they were selling, which is called the "AI Persona Method." Then they asked: "Provide me with five lead-magnet ideas." Among the several options Claude suggested, the one that most resonated was "100 AI-Powered marketing prompts," which aligned perfectly with their promotion's focus. But instead of just running with Claude's initial phrasing for the prompts, Hunter and Young refined them extensively by hand to ensure maximum quality. This hybrid approach enabled them to tap into AI for ideation while still delivering a polished, human-crafted marketing asset. Once finalized, the prompts were placed behind an opt-in form as a free downloadable resource.

Now Hunter and Young needed to drive traffic to this lead-capture landing page. Once again, they called Claude AI to the task. They fed it their new asset and wrote this prompt: "Create an opt-in page for my lead magnet below. Lead magnet: '100 Marketing Prompts.' Do not use the word 'Lead Magnet' in the copy; it should be referred to as prompts. Follow the StoryBrand Framework [a seven-part process using narrative principles to clarify a brand's message] to create the copy."

Next, Hunter and Young focused on stirring up excitement by enticing their contacts, including those they gathered from the lead magnet, to join a waiting list for their upcoming promotion. They used ChatGPT to generate email copy and social posts for this list-building outreach effort.

Within days, hundreds of people subscribed to their waiting list, clearly signaling high anticipation for their Black Friday launch, whatever it might be. Hunter and Young had yet to nail it down.

Related: How Small Businesses Can Leverage AI Without Breaking the Bank

Get a crystal-clear view of your audience.

Rather than just guessing what their audience might want from a Black Friday deal, Hunter and Young decided to go directly to the source and survey customers about their needs.

They used ChatGPT to generate the questions and chose these seven:

1. What are the top three most time-consuming tasks in your business?

2. What are the top three biggest expenses in your business?

3. What are one to three things that would help you grow your company that you do NOT have time for right now?

4. What are your top three questions about AI?

5. What are the top three things you want to learn about AI?

6. What challenges have you had with AI in the past, if any?

7. What is your total budget for the next 12 months for AI training if it helped you save a lot of time and money?

The questions were open-ended, allowing respondents to explain their own contexts and interests in detail. Over 140 people completed the survey, drawn in by the lead magnet incentive. While open-ended questions provided richness, analyzing all that qualitative data would be time-consuming for a human. Instead, Hunter and Young had AI take on the job by creating a dedicated ChatGPT data analysis persona.

An AI persona is basically a simulated virtual employee with specialized skills. (This, of course, is exactly the thing that Hunter teaches in his business.) To create one, just as you would train a new human team member, you feed a tool like ChatGPT information specifically related to the task you want completed. For example, you could provide frameworks, datasets, and other contextual and experiential materials. To create their AI data analyst, Hunter and Young shared survey results so that the AI tool could quickly analyze and recognize customer patterns and extract insights. They would train several AI personas for their campaign, convinced that by doing so, they'd enable superior performance for each workflow need versus taking a blank-slate generic AI approach.

Once they were satisfied with their AI data analysis persona, they prompted it: "Analyze this new research survey with data from my audience. Summarize the resulting data and create a list of the top three most common answers in each category." ChatGPT came back with a wealth of information, capturing metrics like:

→ The most frequently cited time-consuming tasks

→ Top business expenses

→ Budget ranges and willingness-to-pay levels

Typically, Hunter sold his training for between $29 to $297 in special promotions, but the data told a different story about what potential customers would be willing to pay. Respondents shared that they longed for more robust, higher-priced solutions aligned to real pain points versus shallow insights at a discount.

Convinced, Young proposed disregarding conventional wisdom and creating a premium, AI-powered bundle packed with value and bonuses that could command top dollar. Seeing the figures himself, Hunter agreed to bet against his Black Friday pricing assumptions and aim higher, designing a high-end offer anchored at $997.

Related: How AI Tools Helped My Company Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Craft an irresistible deal.

Now that they had quantitative data on their audience's needs and constraints, Hunter and Young were ready to formulate the offer. But rather than just relying on their own ideas, they wanted to tap into time-tested direct-response principles. Once again, they turned AI into the expert they needed, taking the novel approach of actually training ChatGPT on the fundamentals of high-converting offers. They gave it the "$100M Offers" training by Acquisition.com cofounder Alex Hormozi; to do this, they uploaded transcripts that covered multiple hours of Hormozi's video content. This enabled ChatGPT to internalize Hormozi's frameworks on risk reversals, fast action bonuses, and stacking value. With ChatGPT now trained on structuring offers, Hunter and Young could incorporate their survey data and intended core program to script the perfect promotion.

Once they had a draft offer, they ran it through one more AI-based analysis. To see how it stood up in the real world, they uploaded lead offers from their competitors onto ChatGPT and had it compare them to their proposed deal. ChatGPT provided additional suggestions for improvement, which they used to further refine specifics around the deliverables and bonuses they were including.

Ultimately, they settled on bundling Hunter's foundational AI Persona Method training with over a dozen hours of supplementary trainings in areas like marketing, copywriting, and social media growth. These modules directly addressed the time-intensive activities and expensive optimizations their survey data indicated customers needed the most help with.

With the core offer in place, Hunter and Young added limited-time "fast action" bonuses for those who were first in line, like one-on-one strategy consultations with an AI consultant and a live lead-generation workshop. They capped these extras to the first 10 and 25 customers, to further crank up the excitement and evoke FOMO among people still on the fence. This strategy played a key role in accelerating sales velocity out of the gate.

The final step was to construct two upsells to increase the average cart value. They decided on Hunter's AI consulting program for $1,497 and high-ticket consulting for $9,000, both of which would dramatically increase profits during the sale.

Here's how they presented it.

Related: How Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Can Leverage AI to Compete With Large Companies

Create a video sales letter.

The next step focused on converting visitors to buyers. Hunter and Young knew that having an exceptionally compelling video sales letter (VSL) would be critical. But writing an effective 10-minute script and filming high-quality footage would normally demand extensive resources, not to mention time, which they were running out of.

Luckily, AI could automate the heavy lifting as long as they provided enough relevant training data. They used ChatGPT to create a dedicated VSL creator persona. To do this, they trained it on a framework by Kevin Anson, an expert on video ads, along with other sources to internalize high-level sales psychology and storytelling. They also uploaded Hunter's own materials to help ChatGPT capture his distinct personality, voice, and positioning. After sufficient priming, ChatGPT was ready to script an initial VSL outline. After a few rounds of revisions, Hunter and Young arrived at the final story arc they felt flowed logically while embedding their core offer details.

With the script locked in, they were ready to tape it — but that would normally take ages. So rather than memorize lines or use cue cards, Hunter simply read the words off his computer to get the VSL recorded before the end of the day. The only catch? This meant that he was staring at his screen, and not into the camera lens. Two additional AI tools came to the rescue here: They used Descript, an audio/video editing app that transcribes speech to text, and Captions, which, among other magic, can correct eye contact in post-production. (Descript has this feature too, but they preferred Captions' version of it.) Using footage of Hunter looking directly at the camera for a few seconds, these apps overlaid his glance into the clips so his gaze held viewers' focus. Simple lighting adjustments reduced any uncanny valley effect, which is that creepy feeling that something's almost human, but not quite.

Young also used Descript to effortlessly insert pickups and overdub lines, and tweak verbiage after the fact instead of refilming parts of the video. Envato — which provides stock media and other ready-made digital assets — helped spice things up with slick graphics and editing effects in between cuts of Hunter speaking. By blending AI and human creativity into an impactful final cut, the 10-minute VSL went live just days before the Black Friday launch.

Related: The Next AI Tool in Your Arsenal Is Here — How AI PCs Will Make Businesses More Competitive

Generate traffic.

With their sales page and VSL complete, Hunter and Young now turned to driving traffic across media assets. They repurposed sections of their VSL transcript into email sequences and social media content. Rather than just using what they had, they asked AI to tweak the content for each marketing channel. Once again, they created a special AI persona that could specially tailor emails. For this one, they supplied ChatGPT with training data on successful copywriting approaches and summarizing key patterns from their market research. This allowed them to communicate their offer's applicability toward resolving recipients' precise pain points and challenges with further personalization. These emails aimed to progressively warm up the audience, showcasing solutions, highlighting benefits, and finally ushering visitors to the sales page once it was live. Here's an example:

Hey [first name],

I know what you're thinking . . .

"AI sounds complicated."

"I don't have time to learn it."

"It doesn't work for my business."

"AI-generated content sucks and makes me sound like the Terminator."

Believe me, I've heard all the objections before. But here's the truth: My method makes AI simple and practical for any business. As a business owner myself, I know you don't have time for overly complex technology. My method breaks AI down into easy-to-implement steps tailored specifically to your business needs.

It's been tested now by a couple hundred business owners. You'll be able to start small by automating repetitive tasks like content creation. Then build up your AI capabilities as you become more confident.

I can't give you all the details of what I'm working on just yet...But I can tell you that spots will be extremely limited! If this sounds like something you don't want to miss then here's the deal: Reply "AI" back to this email to join the waiting list today and be one of the first to learn about my crazy Black Friday offer. When you join right now, I will send you my 100+ Proven AI Marketing Prompts so you can start leveraging AI right away. Reply "AI" back to this email to join the waiting list today!

Jeff J. Hunter

Founder of the AI Persona Method

Related: Going All in on AI? Here's How to Navigate the Psychology of Artificial Intelligence

Along with the emails, Hunter and Young got extra exposure through Facebook and Instagram retargeting ads, which automatically show customers the most relevant promotion asset or product based on their previous interaction with your business. This cross-channel effort enabled them to reach their audience at multiple touch points when visibility and conversion inclination were highest.

As new customers purchased the product, Hunter and Young kept fine-tuning aspects of the funnel as well as audience targeting across media channels for maximum response. For instance, they expanded their retargeting beyond just past site visitors to incorporate look-alike audiences that mirrored their existing customer profile. New visitors from these expanded pools proved highly qualified.

All this paid off. Hunter and Young saw over $50,000 in sales — and that was before Black Friday even arrived. By the time the deal ended, over 50 additional customers were acquired, generating over $70,000 in total sales.

Looking back, in only 25 days, they'd carried out an ambitious promotion with just the two of them. They'd bolted out of the gate, getting AI to handle time-consuming processes like copywriting, design, and video production to hit their deadline, but didn't stop there. They also used the technology to come up with creative assets and drive exposure. Then they combined all that with carefully crafted scarcity and urgency elements, again sharpened by AI to knock it out of the park. There's something about a sprint like Hunter and Young did that creates a dynamic effect. When you speed toward an impending event, it seems far more exciting than if it were happening over a long period of time, and your customers feel it too. Going that fast in business is tough, but it is a lot easier now — if you intelligently use AI to build a hyper-efficient marketing machine. And the more you train the tools, the faster and better they get for the next promotion.

Related: How AI Is Revolutionizing the Marketing Landscape (and How to Use It Ethically)

AI Tools Used in the Campaign

Here's a quick glance at the AI products Jeff J. Hunter and Samuel Young deployed to create their successful Black Friday promotion.

Claude AI: An advanced natural language model capable of generating longform, humanlike content — with minimal editing needed—from raw outlines. Claude is better than ChatGPT for training on large datasets and copywriting.

ChatGPT: A popular conversational AI that can dynamically understand and respond to multifaceted prompts. Leveraged for ideation and creation across assets and analyses, ChatGPT is great for a fast workflow and handling multiple tasks.

Descript: An audio/video editing application with integrated AI speech to text allowing seamless voice overdubbing and manipulations to footage by editing the transcript.

Captions: A cost-effective video service that uses AI to auto-generate text captions and enables footage augmentation like eye and head movements.

Envato Elements: A stock media marketplace providing ready-made digital assets to incorporate in video and other projects. You can use the AI search tool to find exactly what you need for your video project.

Facebook Ads Manager: Facebook's advertising platform features advanced targeting capabilities powered partly by AI, enabling fine-tuned and optimized ad delivery.

Related: 8 Budget-Friendly AI Tools to Boost Your Marketing

This essay was adapted from the book No B.S. Guide to Successful Marketing Automation, by Dan S. Kennedy and Parthiv Shah, published by Entrepreneur Press.