{"id":1131,"date":"2026-05-06T16:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artificialintelligencesummit.com\/blog\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:10:52","slug":"top-genai-prompting-techniques-for-marketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artificialintelligencesummit.com\/blog\/p\/top-genai-prompting-techniques-for-marketers\/","title":{"rendered":"10 GenAI Prompting Techniques for Marketers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AI adoption in marketing is practically complete. Most teams now have access to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and the vast majority of marketers (a whopping 91% according to Jasper\u2019s latest report<\/a>) use one of these tools daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, adoption hasn’t always translated into value. According to Salesforce research<\/a>, 43% of marketers admit they don’t know how to get the most out of generative AI tools, even though three-quarters of them are using or planning to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, better prompting goes a long way to fix this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the discipline of \u2018prompt engineering\u2019 \u2013 which attempts to guide AI using complex, engineered prompts \u2013 became slightly obsolete as AI improved, your prompt inputs still dramatically affect outputs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below are 10 prompting techniques marketers can try at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>1. Be Specific: Define Goal, Audience, and Deliverable<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Vague prompts produce vague outputs. If you brief a human colleague with “write something about our new product,” you’d expect a useless result, and the same goes for AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg Kita, Senior Manager of Strategic AI Enablement at TechTarget, recommends starting every prompt<\/a> by clearly defining three things: the goal, the audience, and the exact deliverable. So instead of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u274c Write a subject line for an email about cybersecurity<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2714 In 75 characters or fewer, write an email subject line for a C-suite audience that promotes a blog about risk management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second prompt has scope, audience context, and an explicit constraint. The model has something to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a quick, reusable template:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m the [role] at a [company type]. I need [deliverable] for [audience]. The goal is to [outcome]. Constraints: [length, tone, format].”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above<\/strong>: A simple, specific prompt for a specific result<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We’ve compiled a library of prompts<\/a> like this one for marketers looking to build out their own toolkit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Give the AI a Role<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Classical prompt engineering nearly always involved giving AI a role, sometimes strange ones. Back in 2024, Forbes drew attention<\/a> to a study where \u201cmentioning Star Trek when prompting in generative AI can be beneficial.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While you probably don\u2019t need to do that, telling the AI who it is changes how it writes. An “award-winning copywriter” produces different output to a “research assistant.” A “B2B content strategist” produces different output again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drop a single role-defining sentence at the start of any prompt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You are a senior B2B content strategist with 15 years of experience writing for SaaS founders. You write punchy, opinion-led prose, not vague corporate fluff.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role primes the AI’s vocabulary, sentence rhythm, and decision-making for everything that follows. Some marketers go further \u2013 defining the role with stakes (“you are a copywriter whose job depends on writing subject lines that beat a 28% open rate”) \u2013 and report sharper outputs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above<\/strong>: Using role-play for better outputs is a perennial prompt technique<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

3. Show, Don’t Tell \u2013 Give Examples<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you want a specific style, give the AI an example. Better yet, give it a good one and a bad one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In nearly all cases, examples beat instructions. Telling the AI to “write in a confident, founder-led voice” is vague. Pasting in three of a founder’s past LinkedIn posts and saying “write in this voice” gives it something concrete to match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This applies even more strongly to visual work. Words are poor at describing aesthetics \u2013 “clean,” “modern,” “premium” mean different things to different people and across different models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visual references don’t have that problem. For any image or design tool \u2013 Claude Design, Midjourney, Sora, ChatGPT’s image generator \u2013 paste in two or three screenshots of the look you want, plus one or two of what to avoid. It could be existing brand kit assets, competitor pages, or any tropes to steer clear of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above<\/strong>: Using visual examples is critical for text-to-image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Above<\/strong>: The final result of the above<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. Tell It What TO Do, Not What NOT to Do<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There’s a quirk in how language models handle negative instructions. Tell someone “don’t think about a white bear,” and a white bear is the first thing they picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI behaves the same way. Negative instructions (“don’t be salesy,” “avoid clich\u00e9s”) are weaker than their positive equivalents (“write conversationally, like you’d talk to a friend”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, there’s one situation where blacklists earn their keep: telling the AI to avoid words and phrases that make content sound AI-generated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Creating AI Blacklists<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We all probably know a few AI \u2018red flags\u2019 that give away AI content immediately, but these do change over time. In 2024, you\u2019d find words like delve, tapestry, realm, leverage, and navigate topping the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most newer models have been retrained out of overusing those words, but you\u2019ll find some of the worst offenders, like shift, approach, and navigate, popping up far too often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also structural giveaways to AI writing, like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n