AI Prompts for Marketing: Positioning, Messaging and Campaigns

Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) is a method for identifying the result a buyer is trying to achieve, rather than the product category they buy. It often shows that the real competitors are not the obvious ones.

• The job: Verity’s buyers want to avoid failing their next compliance audit. Training is only the means.
• The real competitors: the consultant a company hires after a failed audit, at around $180K, and the spreadsheet it already uses at no cost, rather than the six other training platforms.
• The buying trigger: budget becomes available after a specific event, such as an auditor finding a gap eleven days ago, not from a general need for compliance.

A competitive frame of reference is the set of alternatives a buyer compares when choosing a supplier. When every company in that set uses the same phrases, the phrases no longer help the buyer decide, and price becomes the deciding factor.

• Crowded claims: “engaging” and “employees actually finish” each appear on 5 of 6 competitor websites, and “mobile-first” on 4.
• Open claim: no competitor claims audit-ready evidence. A usable claim must be true of Verity, unclaimed by competitors and important to buyers; only this one meets all three.
• Supporting evidence: competitors’ one-star reviews repeat the same complaint: reporting fails when an auditor asks for it.

Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) is a three-step process: divide the market into groups with similar needs, choose the groups to serve, and define how the product should be seen by those groups. Positioning also means deciding which groups not to serve.

• Target segment: regulated companies with 200 to 800 employees and an audit finding in the last twelve months. This group has a deadline and budget already allocated.
• Segments given up: large enterprises, which build their own training, and companies under 50 employees, which cannot afford the product. Together they are 38% of current pipeline.
• Positioning test: the first two positioning statements were rejected because a competitor could have used them unchanged.

Points of parity (POP) are features buyers expect from every supplier; points of difference (POD) are the benefits that make buyers choose one supplier over another. Parity features prevent rejection, but only points of difference win deals.

• The competitor test: each claim is checked for whether a named competitor could make it truthfully. “Engaging content employees actually finish” fails.
• The result: five claims are parity (such as security and integrations), three do not differentiate, and one, audit-ready evidence, is a real point of difference.
• Proof audit: each remaining claim is marked PROVEN, CLAIMED or NEEDS PROOF. One claim still lacks evidence.

A value proposition states the main benefit a customer receives; a messaging hierarchy organises it into one main message, three supporting points and the proof for each. Without a hierarchy, each team describes the company differently.

• Main message: training that produces the evidence your auditor asks for.
• MECE supporting points: the three points are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive: they do not overlap, and together they cover the whole message.
• Proof ranking: measured results are the strongest proof, followed by named customers, third-party validation, demos and customer logos. The third point has no proof yet, so it is not used.

Brand voice is the consistent style a company uses in all its writing. It is best defined as writing choices, such as plain over clever, because a writer can apply a choice to a sentence. A description such as “professional yet approachable” gives no direction.

• The original headline: “Unlock seamless, engaging compliance enablement for the modern workforce.” It has an empty verb (unlock), empty adjectives (seamless, engaging) and a vague audience (the modern workforce).
• Signs of AI-written copy: grand opening statements, verbs such as unlock and elevate, lists of three, “not just X, but Y” sentences, and closing lines that repeat the text.
• The rewrite: “Compliance training that hands your auditor the evidence, not a spreadsheet.”

A communication objective is the single change a campaign must create in its audience: awareness, comprehension, preference, trial or purchase. Campaigns that try to achieve all five usually achieve none.

• Current belief: buyers think all compliance training vendors are the same.
• Target belief: the evidence the training produces matters more than the training itself.
• Objective: comprehension. Buyers already know Verity exists but do not understand how it differs, so the $180K budget should explain the difference, not increase visibility.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) means every channel, including the website, ads, email and social posts, delivers the same message. A traceability table links each headline and claim to its supporting point and its evidence.

• Ad testing: each ad variant changes only one element, such as the headline or the call to action, so the result shows what caused the difference.
• Held back: two claims had no proof and were not published.
• AI search: buyers now ask assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude for recommendations, and these tools quote single sentences. Each claim is written as one complete sentence, with its evidence in the next.

Customer journey analysis examines each stage from first contact to purchase to find the binding constraint: the stage that limits results the most. The stages checked are reach, relevance, comprehension, credibility, friction and fit.

• The constraint: credibility. Demo-to-opportunity conversion fell from 44% to 26% because the website offers no proof of Verity’s main claim.
• The cost: $2.1M of pipeline lost every quarter.
• Test design: the fix is tested with one change, a minimum improvement worth acting on, enough traffic for a reliable result, and stop criteria agreed before the test starts.

Brand guidelines are a short document that tells anyone creating content who the brand serves, what it claims and how it writes. Long strategy decks are rarely read by the freelancers and agencies who produce the work.

• Content: the target customer and the customers it does not target, the point of difference with its proof, and the brand voice.
• Brand rules: what the brand never says: “engaging”, any suggestion that a regulator approved the product, or a customer’s name without written permission.
• Review triggers: events that require updating the brief, such as a competitor’s move, a new target segment or a product change.