5 Prompting Tips Every Marketer Should Know to Get the Most from AI

When you were a child, did you ever think, “I want to be a prompt engineer when I grow up”? Probably not. But in today’s agentic era, every marketer needs to be a master at AI prompting – giving clear instructions – in order to stay competitive.

AI is powerful, yes – but here’s the catch: even the smartest AI agent is only as good as the instructions you give it.

Think of prompting like making a wish to a genie. Be vague –“Make me dinner” –and you might get a single boiled potato, which is probably not what you had in mind. Be specific –“Cook me spaghetti with turkey meatballs and sautéed zucchini on the side” –and voilà, it’s exactly what you wanted.

Prompts are your creative brief for the AI era. When marketers get them right, they get faster campaign creation, smarter personalization and deeper customer engagement. When prompting is off, well, your marketing can be the equivalent of a boiled potato.

Here are five ways to prompt like a pro and stay ahead in the age of agentic marketing.

1. Define the goal 

AI doesn’t read minds (yet). Be clear about what you want it to achieve with goals, audiences and guardrails.

Weak prompt: “Make me a campaign for our fall sale.”

Stronger prompt: “You’re a marketer working for [Company]. You’re creating a marketing campaign for the fall sale with the goal of re-engaging loyalty members in NYC who haven’t purchased in the last 30 days.”

2. Be specific

Generic asks lead to generic outputs. Tell AI exactly what you need: the channel, tone, audience and offer.

Weak prompt: “Promote our fall sale.”

Stronger prompt: “Draft messages for email, SMS and WhatsApp in a friendly, just-for-you tone for loyalty members. Offer 15% off.”

3. Ground with data

Here’s where AI gets really powerful. The future of marketing is 1:1 personalization at scale, and this becomes possible when AI uses trusted customer and business data. That way, every output feels personal, relevant and timely.

Weak prompt: “Give the customer an offer.”

Stronger prompt: “Personalize each message with the customer’s most browsed product category, and recommend a next best product.”

4. Embrace iteration

Test, refine, and push AI until it nails your brand voice and meets your goals. Think of prompting less like a one-and-done wish and more like a creative back-and-forth with a smart team member. 

5. Scale with templates

Once you’ve found prompts that work, you don’t need to start from scratch every time. Use Prompt Builder to capture best practices, turn them into templates and scale them across teams. That’s how AI stops being a one-off tool and becomes a company-wide machine.

How Salesforce can help

With Agentforce Marketing, these best practices aren’t just theory, they’re built-in. Agentforce Marketing is Salesforce’s agentic AI solution for the entire customer lifecycle. It’s the evolution of marketing orchestration, where humans and AI agents work together to grow customer relationships and revenue. 

With Agentforce Marketing, every prompt can spark a smarter campaign, a deeper connection or even a whole new way of working. Out-of-the-box agent templates, like Campaign Creation, even come with built-in prompt frameworks so you can start using best-practice prompts immediately.

Bottom line: Better prompts, better marketing results 

At the end of the day, prompting well isn’t about turning every marketer into a “prompt engineer.” It’s about giving AI clear, strategic instructions so it can handle the busywork, scale personalization, and free you up to focus on building real connections with customers.

So the next time you sit down to “make a wish” to AI, remember: the better the prompt, the better the magic.