Definitions
ChatGPT, a growth tool, or a consultant — which do you actually need?
An honest comparison of using a general AI assistant, a dedicated growth product, or hiring a consultant. Cost, what each is good at, and where each falls down.
- 3 August 2026
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Can I just use ChatGPT instead of a growth tool or consultant?
A general assistant like ChatGPT is excellent for drafting and thinking out loud, but it forgets your business between sessions, so you rebuild context every time and get generic answers. A dedicated growth product keeps that context and ranks moves by payback. A consultant brings judgement and costs more in a day than either costs in a year.
Last updated 3 August 2026
| Option | Cost | Best at | Falls down on |
|---|---|---|---|
| General AI assistant | $0–$20/mo | Drafting, brainstorming | No memory of your numbers; generic ranking |
| Dedicated growth product | $0–$49/mo | Ranked, costed plans that stay current | Does not do the work for you |
| Consultant | $1,000+ per engagement | Judgement on hard calls | Cost; the plan ages quickly |
Do this
The steps, in order.
- Step 1
Use an assistant for drafting
Emails, ad copy, outlines. It is genuinely good at this and costs almost nothing.
- Step 2
Use a dedicated product for ordering the work
The hard part is not generating ideas — it is knowing which three to do first, given your stage, budget and numbers. That needs persistent context.
- Step 3
Use a consultant for the calls that are hard to reverse
Pricing changes, moving upmarket, a pivot in positioning. Worth real money because they are expensive to get wrong.
- Step 4
Do not pay for two of the same thing
If you already have a marketer who owns the plan, a planning product adds little. If you do not, a consultant's document goes stale in a quarter.
Worth knowing
The bits people get wrong.
The practical difference is memory. A general assistant answers well and then forgets. Anything that ranks moves for your business has to remember your site, your uploads, your budget and what you already tried, or the ranking is guesswork dressed up.
The second difference is honesty about cost. A plan is only useful if each move carries hours and money, so you can cut the bottom half. Free-form answers rarely include either.
Questions
Follow-up questions.
Is ChatGPT good enough for a marketing plan?
It will produce a plausible plan. What it cannot do is rank the moves against your actual numbers, remember what you tried last month, or tell you what each move costs in your situation — so the plan reads well and is hard to act on.
When is a consultant worth the money?
For decisions that are expensive to reverse: pricing, positioning, moving to a different customer segment. For weekly execution planning, the economics rarely work.
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