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Shoppers buy around sales events, holidays, and school calendars, so the prompt set needs prompts for each product category and for each peak season, including gift guide and “best X under $Y” questions. Put shipping, returns, and ingredient claims under FactCheck so you can see where AI answers get them wrong.

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Create your prompt set

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Topics to cover

Replace [brand] and [product] in the example prompts with your own values.
Make prompts more specific. Instead of “What are the best moisturizers for sensitive skin?”, try “I’m in my 30s with rosacea and my moisturizer stings. What are the best moisturizers for sensitive skin under $40 and fragrance-free?”

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Best practices

  • Leave your brand name out of discovery prompts. Putting your name in the question inflates your Visibility Score. Use it only in validation and FactCheck prompts.
  • One prompt = one topic. Topics shouldn’t overlap. Put funnel stage, campaign, and season in tags instead.
  • Ask it like a person would. Write the full question someone would type or say.
  • Track only prompts that matter to the business. Thousands of small variations of the same question make trends harder to read.
  • Keep coverage and depth apart. Coverage topics include broad prompts for each business line. Add two to five depth topics for your priorities, and keep new prompts out of the coverage topics.
  • Retire seasonal prompts. Disable seasonal and news-driven prompts once they go stale. If you reword a prompt, you’re measuring something new, so don’t compare trends across the change.

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Refine your prompt set

The first prompt set you build gives you a baseline. Here’s how you can expand it:
  1. Tag every prompt with a category and a funnel stage.
  2. Add “best X under $Y” and gift guide prompts before each peak season.
  3. Add FactCheck prompts for shipping, returns, and ingredient claims.

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Ask AI Marketer

Use AI Marketer (Aim) to make your prompts better. Paste one of these questions to an Aim chat to see which prompts to add, cut, or tag. Swap the [values in brackets] for your own.

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Add tags to your prompts

Tags can span topics, and one prompt can have several. Use these tag examples and rename them to match how you work.
IF YOU’RE STUCK
  1. Pick the five topics that matter most to the business.
  2. Write one prompt per funnel stage. Four stages (Informational and Commercial, each for top and bottom of funnel) give you four base prompts per topic.
  3. Add about 10 variations. Change the persona, use case, company size, or wording.

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Advanced tips

  • Use words like “brands” or “stores” in your prompts. For example, “What should I look for in a running shoe?” returns a checklist of features, and “Which brands make the best running shoes for flat feet?” returns a list of brands, which is the answer you can measure your brand against.
  • Give every comparison a use case. A “[brand] vs [competitor]” prompt alone returns an “it depends” answer. Add who is asking and why: “[brand] vs [competitor] for a 50-person team that already uses Salesforce” gives the AI enough context to pick one.
  • Spell out any unclear term the first time. An acronym or internal product name can derail the answer. Write “generative engine optimization tools” rather than “GEO tools”, and name the product category rather than using a code word only your team uses for it.
  • Say what you want without pushing toward your own brand. The question “Which project management tools, like [brand], are best for marketing teams?” nudges the AI toward your brand and tells you nothing about whether it would have named you on its own.
  • Test your prompts. Run each prompt once in an answer engine and read what it returns. A discovery prompt should list brands, a comparison should pick one, and a validation should say yes or no. Learn more about different types of prompts in Profound’s AEO guide.
  • Tag every prompt you add. Learn more in Categorize Your Prompts With Tags.

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Next steps