The Most Effective Prompts for AI Marketing Content [Prompt Engineering]

Ever since the Generative AI Revolution caught on steam with ChatGPT3 — and everybody became an AI Content Expert overnight—”prompt engineering” became one of the most important buzzwords in the space, and, arguably, an important part of getting the most out of your AI Generating tools.

We’ve seen dozens if not potentially hundreds of lists and tips from creators and marketers with prompts that apparently have helped them generate really strong, good copy content for their marketing purposes.

But how can you know if what worked for them and their audience, will work for you and your audience?

As with all things marketing, storytelling, content creation, and human communication in general; prompting any Generative AI Content Tool successfully, starts with some fundamental strategic considerations.

Here, we’ll explain how to think strategically about prompting, and how to strategically create or “engineer” your own prompts which will help you save the promised amount of time and effort, while at the same time maximizing quality, speed, and output of content with the help of AI.

Near the bottom of the article, as promised in the subtitle, we’ll provide some examples by way of Mailmodo’s library of AI copy gen prompts — to help get you started.

Chapters

The most effective prompt is strategically designed

The most effective prompt takes into account some key strategic communication fundamentals. Why? We’re glad you asked.

Because no matter how good your AI tool — be it ChatGPT, Jasper, CopyAI, or your friendly neighborhood AI Storytelling Super-suite, StoryLab.ai — and no matter how creative your input;

If you don’t take into account basic marketing communications and storytelling principles, your outputs aren’t likely to amount to anything good.

The Strategic Storytelling Fundamentals you want to cover in your prompt

Storytelling is important in marketing and communication in general, for various reasons:

• It helps engage your reader/viewer/listener like nothing else can;
• It helps bring clarity and focus to your message;
• It helps people remember your key points and makes them much more likely to want to engage with them and take action.

Remember though, “storytelling” does not mean starting everything you say or write with ‘Once upon a time…’ or ‘Last week, when I was…’. In stead, storytelling refers to using basic story structure and principle to improve the communicative power of your message.

The Seven Strategic Story points we’ll share with you here, automatically help you build the basic structure of a story into your content, regardless of the form or platform you’re trying to cater to. They also help you cover the most important marketing/communication basics.

These are the strategic storytelling fundamentals you want to think about and have an answer to, before you create your prompt and start writing with the help of AI:

1. What is your topic?

And this also means; what language and keywords are your audience or potential customers using to talk or search and learn about this topic? Depending on your content type, when doing the final edit, this should inform your title, or the first line or sentence.

2. Who is your audience?

What do you know about these people; their problems, their goals, and their values; their knowledge, and knowledge gaps?

3. What is your goal with the piece of content you’re trying to create?

And how does it relate to your higher-order marketing strategy and goals, if you have them?

4. What is the main thought you’re trying to express?

Because your message will become fuzzy if you don’t have a clear answer to that, and keep it central. Depending on your content type, in your final edit, this should inform your title, or the first line or sentence.

5. What is a hook that could help make it relevant to your audience?

This could be a short anecdote, and/or some surprising fact or statistic. This is also where you can make your unique personality and experience shine — instead of leaving that up to the machine to try and create. Depending on your content type, this informs your title, hook paragraph, first line or sentence, and so on.

6. What are your (no more than three) supporting thoughts?

Depending on your type of content and the channel, you will want to structure this along the Need, Solution, Result Story structure. Structure will help bring clarity and flow to your message, regardless if it’s a blog post, e-book, video script, or ad copy you’re creating.

7. What is your Call-to-Action?

If people consume and are inspired by your content, what is it they can do, right now, to take the next step? How does it connect them to their goals? And how does it connect to your own?

To help you think about your Prompt — but, while we’re at it, also to help you think about storytelling in general — more strategically, we’ve compiled these steps into the Seven-point Strategic Storytelling Canvas, which you can download free, right here:

As you can see, if you walk through this canvas, you automatically end up with a short summary in terms of keywords and phrases that can be the start of any manually written story or content piece, or the core of the input you give your AI copy generator tool.

Finally, tone — Or: Who is The Best And Highest ROI Copywriter for Your Product, Brand, and Audience?

We see a lot of prompt examples that start with “Imagine you are the Best Copywriter…” or “You are the Most High-Converting Sale Copywriter of the…” and so on and so forth.

We get it, we’re trying to get the most out of what these tools — and specifically for most people, it seems, ChatGPT — have to offer.

Who is this illusive, Greatest and Best Copywriter in the galaxy?

What you mustn’t forget, is that the tactics, knowledge, and skills truly exceptionally effective copywriters use, are:

1. General rules that always work, such as the above strategic points, and:
2. Highly specific knowledge of your industry, your brand, your products and services, and very importantly, your audience — which evolve all the time.

This is why there’s hardly any prompt imaginable that will always garner the best results, in any situation, for anyone. It depends, as any smart marketer, copywriter or consultant will tell you in many, many cases.

If you follow our guidelines here above, you will be above and beyond 97.3% of marketers and content creators out there when it comes to getting the most out of your AI copy generator tools, because you’re figuring out how to get the best out of yourself and the tool, combined.

Now, when it comes to tonality:

It totally depends on all of your answers to the questions in our Seven-point Strategic Storytelling Structure, what the right tone-of-voice for your content should be. If you are also building a brand, make sure your tone of voice doesn’t stray too much from your brand voice, and at the same time make sure it fits the specific message, goals, content type, (sub-)audience, and platform.

StoryLab.ai, where the strategic building of prompts is partly done for you

You didn’t think we were going to give you all of this value without at least subtly promoting our own tool, too, did you?

Just kidding; we’d gladly just have you read up until the above subtitle, skip the current section, and move on to the next.

But we did want to — in case you’re interested — let you know this one little thing about our own Copy Generator Tools:

Unlike in many other tools, the way the StoryLab.ai copy content generator tools are set up, is designed to help you along the process in such a way that it helps you strategically think about your prompt. At the same time, your selection of a given content type, your channel, and the work that we’ve done which takes your inputs and translates them to copy that works for the content type and channel you’ve selected — make it so you have to do less work when coming up with the perfect input.

Check out this video to see what I’m talking about:

The Mailmodo Prompt Library to help get you started

As with all things new, and all things copywriting and storytelling: it can help to see examples. It can even help to be able to search for and find examples that are close to what you need, so you can use those as a basis and build your own stuff out from that, instead of starting from an empty page.

That’s where Mailmodo’s Prompt Library comes in.

Mailmodo is an interactive e-mail marketing tool that helps you save 50% of time, while helping you achieve up to 2X open rates and 3X conversion rates. We’re happy to be partnering with our friends at Mailmodo on the following:

“Creating mind-blowing content in minutes”

Here’s Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo:

“I’ve spent hours on ChatGPT prompts trying to ‘create mind-blowing content in minutes’.

I tried to research and I found many marketers sharing the prompts that got them results.

But that too was a long process as the knowledge was scattered.

And that’s how “Prompt Hunt” was born — a single platform with prompts for marketers by marketers.

It’s a library of AI prompts where you can:

• Get 300+ expert-verified AI prompts for marketing use cases.
• Explore specific prompts for SEO, content, email, and GTM tasks
• Submit, rate, and review prompts to help other marketers.”

You can find Mailmodo’s ultimate Prompt Library here. You can also access it through ProductHunt. What you’ll notice is that near the bottom of the page, our logo is showing as we’ll be one of the partners helping Mailmodo build and maintain this library.

FAQ

What are AI marketing prompts?
AI marketing prompts are inputs or commands given to an AI system to generate marketing-related content, such as ad copy, social media posts, or email marketing content.

How do AI marketing prompts enhance content creation?
AI prompts help streamline the content creation process by providing specific guidelines or ideas that the AI can use to produce creative, relevant, and targeted marketing materials.

Can AI marketing prompts be customized for different campaigns?
Yes, prompts can be tailored to suit various marketing campaigns, adjusting for tone, style, target audience, and specific marketing goals.

What types of marketing content can be generated from AI prompts?
AI can generate a range of content, including ad headlines, product descriptions, blog post ideas, social media updates, and email marketing campaigns.

How do AI marketing prompts ensure brand consistency?
Prompts can include specific brand guidelines, such as tone, voice, and key messaging, to ensure the AI-generated content is consistent with the brand’s identity.

Are AI marketing prompts effective in SEO optimization?
Yes, AI can incorporate SEO strategies into the prompts, using targeted keywords and phrases to improve search engine rankings for the generated content.

Can AI prompts create personalized marketing messages?
AI can personalize marketing messages based on customer data inputs, creating content that resonates more with individual preferences and behaviors.

How do AI marketing prompts adapt to different marketing platforms?
Prompts can specify the platform, like Instagram, LinkedIn, or Google Ads, and the AI will adjust the content format and style to fit the platform’s best practices and audience.

What role do AI marketing prompts play in data-driven marketing?
AI prompts can integrate data analytics to create content that reflects audience insights, engagement metrics, and market trends for more effective marketing strategies.

How user-friendly are AI marketing prompt tools for non-technical marketers?
Most AI marketing prompt tools are designed to be user-friendly, allowing marketers without technical AI expertise to easily input prompts and generate high-quality content.

Author bio:

Erwin Lima: What inspires Erwin is helping people, teams and brands to become the best version of themselves. Guiding them with curiosity, empathy, and Growth Storytelling.

Over the past 10+ years as a copywriter, author, consultant, and coach, he’s helped dozens of Brands, Teams, and individual human beings to grow their sense of motivation and focus, but also their reach, engagement, and revenue— through the power of their own story. You can find Erwin on LinkedIn and on his website.