Many of us use various generative AI tools to generate marketing ideas and improve ad campaign outcomes.

Prompting can be a powerful alternative to working solo or brainstorming with colleagues. It improves productivity and expands your options.

In this article, I’ll cover some of my favorite marketing prompts for ad campaigns. Use these suggestions to spark ideas for your own prompts.

Why use prompts for online ads?

Prompts quickly give you a range of ad elements — triggers, emotions, actions, and audiences.

You can often repurpose prompt outputs across channels and initiatives — ads, email, landing pages, social media, and offers.

When you get closer to optimal campaigns from the start, you save cycles. That’s especially useful for lower-budget efforts that take longer to generate feedback.

The prompts themselves matter. You need to ask strong questions to get useful output from large language models (LLMs).

Feeling stumped? Ask AI tools which prompts they recommend for your situation.

Or use mine. Here are several prompts I use for online ads.

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Emotional trigger prompt

Purchases are often emotional, so it helps to understand your buyers’ emotions.

Use this prompt: “What are the top emotional triggers that would make X audience buy Y product?”

For example, I asked which three emotional triggers would make parents buy math learning software for their kids. The LLM identified key triggers and provided hooks and language with scarcity and urgency:

• Fear of falling behind: Anxiety and a protective instinct. Example: “Make sure your child never falls behind in math.”
• Desire to give kids a competitive advantage: Ambition and pride. Example: “Give your kid the math skills top students develop years ahead.”
• Relief from homework stress at home: Relief and peace of mind. Example: “No more math homework battles at home.”

Purchase intent prompt

Ask these questions to understand who is ready to buy your product or service:

• Who is most likely to buy immediately?
• Who needs convincing?
• Who will never buy?

To avoid wasted ad spend, focus on audiences likely to purchase and avoid those who won’t.

Keep asking which audiences are most likely to convert. Use the LLM’s rationale for more specific inputs for your ads.

In the math software example, the LLM suggested parents of kids struggling in math would convert best, citing high urgency and low friction.

The second-best group was homeschooling parents, who are motivated because they manage the full curriculum.

We were already targeting parents of kids struggling in math, but hadn’t considered homeschooling parents. From there, it was easy to create ads and test whether that audience drove conversions.

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Overcoming objections prompt

Overcoming objections is key to making sales. Ask for three to five objections someone might have to buying your product.

In the math software example, the LLM identified these objections:

• My child already has too much screen time
• Will this actually improve my child’s math skills?
• It’s too expensive

Then write a persuasive rebuttal for each using logic, emotion, and proof. For “it’s too expensive,” you could use:

• Logic: “Less than the cost of a tutor.” This sets a higher anchor, making the price feel more reasonable without calling it inexpensive.
• Emotion: “Don’t let your kids fall behind in math.”
• Proof: “80% of students improve by one letter grade in two months.”

Psychological profile prompt

Ask an LLM for a detailed psychological profile of your ideal customer. Use questions like:

• What are your ideal customer’s fears?
• What are your ideal customer’s frustrations?
• What do your ideal customers envy?
• What do they pretend doesn’t bother them?
• What keeps them up at night?

In the math software example, I asked: “What or who do my ideal customers envy?”

One answer suggested parents envy kids in enrichment programs or advanced classes, reflecting a desire for future opportunities.

A message for this target audience: “Help your child stay ahead instead of playing catchup.”

The lifetime value prompt

To thrive long term, focus on customer lifetime value (LTV), not one-and-done sales.

Ask questions like:

• Why might your customers stay longer?
• Why might your customers buy more?
• What retention strategies work best?

For a higher-end furniture brand, we expanded these into a short playbook to increase LTV. The LLM grouped ideas under: “Shift from a transactional relationship to a long-term design partner.”

For example, it suggested segmenting your customer base and using direct mail for your highest-potential group (sending a lookbook). It’s unexpected and sounds old-school, but the potential for higher LTV than broad, generic mailings makes it worth testing.

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Fix lagging average order value prompt

When performance lags, it’s easy to ask broad questions about metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS).

But that’s what everyone else does, and it often leads to generic checklists.

We deal with overlap between B2C and B2B search queries. Focusing on B2B users isn’t always easy, but it’s critical for acquiring high-value, long-term customers.

We noticed a likely driver of a B2B materials client’s lagging ROAS: average order value (AOV), shown in Google Ads as Value/Conv., had declined. Smart Bidding had shifted toward high-converting but lower-quality sessions, hurting performance.

We asked an LLM to help diagnose and correct the issue.

Using Ads Advisor (Gemini) in Google Ads, the first response focused on trivial consumer use cases, like holiday themes.

After refining the prompt, it returned more targeted, actionable suggestions, saving significant time.

We leaned further into audience targeting, using value rules to emphasize specific Google audience segments and first-party audiences.

AOV increased. This didn’t guarantee higher order values, but it refocused spend on B2B intent and reduced low-priority consumer purchases.

Other business metrics also improved, moving toward growth and profitability.

Better prompts lead to better campaigns

Start simple — test one or two of these prompts in your next campaign, refine the outputs, and build from there. Over time, you’ll develop a repeatable system that turns AI from a novelty into a core part of your marketing workflow.