Three battle-tested prompting techniques for AI-powered marketing

Natalie Lambert

7/23/20244 min read

DALL-E generated image based on content in this post
DALL-E generated image based on content in this post

View this eBook in Google Slides.

This eBook is based on the recent report entitled ‘The Prompt Report: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Techniques,’ which analyzed over 1,500 papers on prompting and assessed various prompting techniques. GenEdge Consulting reviewed this comprehensive report and distilled the top three prompting techniques for marketers, aligning them with marketing workflows to maximize effectiveness and efficiency.

Objective of “The Prompt Report”:

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) systems are becoming more prevalent across various industries and research settings. People interact with these systems through prompting or prompt engineering. Despite its widespread use, there's still a lot of confusion around the terminology and understanding of prompts due to the emerging nature of the field.

The Prompt Report, authored by experts from Learn Prompting, OpenAI, Microsoft, Stanford, University of Maryland, and more, aims to clarify this by providing a structured understanding of prompts. It offers a comprehensive vocabulary of 33 terms, a taxonomy of 58 text-only prompting techniques, and 40 techniques for other modalities. Plus, it includes an analysis of the entire literature on natural language prefix-prompting.

This report is designed to give you a solid framework for using and understanding prompts in GenAI. While it's not specifically for marketers, the insights can be adapted and applied to enhance your marketing strategies, helping you stay ahead in the fast-paced world of AI-driven marketing.

Read the full report here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.06608

Aligning prompting techniques with marketing activities

There is no one way to prompt.

But, are there prompts that will generally provide better outputs than others? Yes.

While Marketers have their favorite prompts for certain activities—I certainly do and train hundreds of marketing teams on these prompts—these prompts are often more experiential than scientific. This is why when an organization like Learn Prompting has the capacity to rigorously test thousands of prompting techniques and best practices to identify the best, it’s important to take note.

In this eBook, you will find three techniques discussed in the report that I believe are best for various marketing activities:

  • Few-shot prompting

  • Chain-of-thought prompting

  • Role and emotion prompting

Each of these data-backed techniques is presented individually; however, the best prompts often combine these techniques to achieve your desired output and elevate your marketing.

Leverage few-shot prompting to personalize content

Why use it: Few-shot prompting allows you to provide specific examples within prompts to generate content that closely aligns with your brand’s voice and target audience. Including a few relevant examples (shots) can guide AI to produce more tailored and contextually accurate content, making it more engaging and effective.

Where to use it:

  1. Personalized campaigns: Use few-shot prompting to create personalized marketing emails, social media posts, and advertisements that resonate with different customer segments.

  2. Consistent branding: Ensure that all generated content maintains a consistent tone and style that reflects your brand’s identity.

  3. Rapid prototyping: Quickly generate and test different content variations to find the most effective messages for your campaigns.


How to use it: Include a few examples of successful past emails or ads within the prompt to guide the AI in creating new, similar content that fits your marketing goals.

Few-shot prompting example

Utilize chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting for source content creation

Why use it: Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting enhances the AI’s ability to handle complex tasks by breaking down the reasoning process into intermediate steps. This is particularly useful for generating detailed content that requires logical structuring and clarity, such as long-form articles, white papers, or product descriptions.

Where to use it:

  1. In-depth articles: Use CoT prompting to generate detailed and well-structured articles or blog posts that cover intricate topics comprehensively.

  2. Product descriptions: Create rich, informative product descriptions that highlight features and benefits clearly and logically.

  3. Educational content: Develop training materials, guides, and tutorials that provide step-by-step instructions or explanations.


How to use it: Prompt the AI with an example of a detailed product description and ask it to generate similar descriptions for new products, ensuring each step of the reasoning process is included.

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting example

Enhance customer engagement with role and emotion prompting

Why use it: Role and emotion prompting allow you to customize the tone, style, and emotional appeal of your communications, making them more relatable and engaging for your audience. By instructing the AI to adopt a specific persona or evoke particular emotions, you can create content that connects more deeply with your customers.

Where to use it:

  1. Social media: Create posts that resonate emotionally with your audience, driving higher engagement and interaction.

  2. Sales copy: Use emotion prompting to craft persuasive sales messages that appeal to your customers’ needs and desires.

  3. Customer support: Train chatbots to adopt a helpful, empathetic tone when responding to customer inquiries, enhancing the overall customer experience.


How to use it: Instruct the AI to generate a social media post from the perspective of a friendly and knowledgeable brand ambassador, emphasizing excitement and enthusiasm for a new product launch.

Role prompting example

AI attribution disclosure:

This eBook was created with a mix of AI techniques.

AI-augmented: GPT-4o summarized the paper, which I have also read, and wrote the initial drafts of the objectives and recommendations sections. As my prompts provided my point of view for inclusion in the output, I only had to make final edits to the wording, punctuation, and grammar to make it more digestible and reflect how I write.

AI-directed: GPT-4o wrote the prompts for each technique based on the goals I provided and its knowledge of prompt best practices. Who better to know how to prompt AI than an AI tool?

AI-assisted: I wrote the introduction based on my understanding of the report combined with my experience as a marketer and training marketing teams. I used GPT-4o to shorten my responses, although I didn’t always take its feedback.

For more information on the AI Contribution Scale (ACS) please click here.

Emotion prompting example