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THE MARKETING PROMPT, IN BLOCKS
Five labelled blocks that snap together into any marketing
prompt. Use one, use all five.
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  Fill these in once for your product and your audience. After
  that, most jobs are a copy, a paste, and one edit.

  Block 1 alone is worth more than nothing. Blocks 1 and 4
  together handle most of what you write in a week.


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BLOCK 1  AUDIENCE
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AUDIENCE
Who: [role, seniority, and the kind of company]
They already know: [what you don't need to explain]
They don't care about: [the parts you find interesting and
  they don't]
After reading, they should: [the one action, or the one thing
  they now believe]

  "Marketers" is a category. "A marketing manager who has to
  defend this spend to her CFO on Friday" is a person. Write
  until a person appears.


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BLOCK 2  VOICE
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VOICE
Match the register of this, which I wrote: [paste 100 words of
  your own]
This sample is for tone and sentence length only. Not structure,
not content, not subject matter.
Never use: [your own banned list]

  The "tone only" line matters. Left off, a pasted sample gets
  treated as a template and you get your own post back with the
  nouns swapped.


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BLOCK 3  FORMAT
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FORMAT
Length: [a number, not "short"]
Shape: [e.g. four short paragraphs, no headings, no bullets]
Opening: [e.g. start with the claim, not a question]
Ending: [e.g. one line, no call to action, no hashtags]

  Every line should be checkable by looking. If you can't verify
  it at a glance, it's a wish rather than an instruction.


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BLOCK 4  SOURCE
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SOURCE
Everything below is the only material you may use.
[paste the release notes, transcript, brief, or research]

If a fact, figure, name, or quote is not in the source above,
leave it out. Do not estimate. Do not illustrate with an example
customer. Write "not stated" if a gap matters.

  This is the block that keeps you out of trouble. Marketing
  copy is where invented numbers and invented customer quotes
  turn up, because that is the shape of writing it has seen
  most of.


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BLOCK 5  THE BOUNDARIES
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DO NOT
No preamble. Start with the first real point.
No summary paragraph at the end restating what you said above.
No em dashes.
Do not use: [the words your industry has worn out]
Do not claim any benefit that isn't in the source.

  Long prompts drop instructions, and negatives go first. Put
  this block last, where it gets read last.


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ASSEMBLED, FOR ONE JOB
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Write a LinkedIn post announcing our new reporting feature.

AUDIENCE
Who: operations managers at mid-size logistics firms, existing
  customers.
They already know: what our product does. They use it weekly.
They don't care about: how it was built, or that it was hard.
After reading, they should: click through to the release notes.

VOICE
Match the register of this, which I wrote: [paste 100 words]
Tone and sentence length only. Not structure, not content.
Never use: "excited to announce", "game-changing", "solution".

FORMAT
Length: under 120 words.
Shape: four short paragraphs, no bullets, no headings.
Opening: start with what changed. Not a question.
Ending: one line pointing at the release notes. No hashtags.

SOURCE
Everything below is the only material you may use.
[paste the release notes]
If a fact, figure, name, or quote is not in the source, leave it
out. Do not estimate. Do not invent an example customer.

DO NOT
No preamble. No closing summary. No em dashes.
Do not claim any benefit that isn't in the source above.


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WHEN IT BREAKS
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  Still generic
      Block 1 is a category, not a person. Narrow it until one
      specific reader appears with a specific Friday problem.

  Sounds like you, says nothing
      Voice block landed, source block didn't. Check the source
      is pasted rather than referred to.

  Invented a customer or a number
      Source block wasn't last enough or firm enough. Move it
      later and restore the "not stated" line.

  Gave you your own sample back, reworded
      The voice block is being read as a template. Add the
      "tone and sentence length only" line.

  Obeyed the format, lost the point
      Too much block 3, not enough block 1. Halve the format
      rules, add a line on what the reader does next.

  Fine but boring
      A source problem, not a prompt problem. It can only
      rearrange what you gave it. If the release notes have
      nothing worth reading in them, no prompt fixes that.

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bringwhatyouknow.com
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