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Prompt engineering a marketing plan

10 Feb 2025 🔖 prompt engineering
💬 EN

Table of Contents

Enterprise software adoption wasn’t the only thing I gave in an played with an LLM about last month.

As I’ve mentioned before, just like if you work in tech, congratulations, you now maintain the printer at all relatives’ houses. For me, that means:

  1. I built a restaurant web site in exchange for bubble tea.
  2. I’ve always considered the web site of a musician in my friends-and-family circle, Robert Bell, one of my favorite case studies / mental challenges in information architecture and web development.

”‘Backend’ content strategy” for Robert has eluded me each time I’ve tried to doodle an entity-relationship diagram so I could configure him a CMS. With the help of NotebookLM, for the first time in my whole career, I finally feel hope that content architecture for effectively representing this quadruple threat: live performer, leader, arrangers, and studio producer.

Below is the story of my journey from despair to hope.

Sources: existing web presence

First I fed the AI 28 different links from key parts of Robert’s web site (including his list of 1,000+ “past performances,” which he’d long described as a page that he suspected potential private party clients skim to validate that he has relevant experience) and from a few articles from around the internet around his work.

Observation: robot researcher

Right away, I noticed that NotebookLM thought exactly like Robert and latched onto his past performance history as a supplement to his official biography page when building these pre-suggested summaries of the sources I’d fed it:

  1. overview
  2. study guide
  3. FAQ
  4. briefing doc
  5. timeline
  6. podcast-style audio overview about what’s in his website

Immediately, I recognized that an LLM could do something no user experience consultant would have the patience to do for a price Robert could afford: it could very thoroughly read all 1,000+ of his gigs and keep them all at the top of its mind when asked different questions about patterns within.

Prompt: studio services

I noticed that NotebookLM’s overviews only focused on Robert’s live performance skills, but he’s incredibly passionate about studio work.

So I prompted NotebookLM with two questions written in an aggressive, contrarian tone, so as to encourage it to dig deep to defend him:

  1. Is Robert Bell as good a he says he is at producing?
  2. Is Robert Bell as good a he says he is at arranging?

It fired back:

The sources suggest that Robert Bell is a capable and versatile producer / arranger, though they do not directly evaluate the quality of his work as a producer / arranger. Here’s what the sources indicate about his production / arranging skills and experience…

Ouch. We’ve always known his studio services were a little under-marketed, but did you have to be so blunt about it?

Nevertheless, NotebookLM pointed out that:

  1. He’d produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered his own album in six weeks, so he’s probably efficient and organized in a studio.
  2. He’d overdubbed, so he probably understands the technology and principles behind creating a full sound.
  3. He’s a bandleader, so he’s probably made a lot of decisions regarding the sound, arrangements, and overall presentation of music.
  4. He’s released not only studio recordngs, but live recordings as well.
  5. The COVID-19 virtual event he produced indicates he can produce under various circumstances implies he has a broad understanding of various production requirements.
  6. Bell’s albums include covers and period-inspired originals, so he’s probably skilled at arranging and creating new pieces in the same style as a source work.
    • One of the things I loved about NotebookLM is the way it writes so differently from me and composes text in the style of the English language’s best writers.
    • For example, it said that the source material suggests he “brings a fresh approach to well-known songs.”
    • He should use that phrase in the future – bam, what a zinger!
  7. He changed a jump swing number as a ballad, which indicates a talent for changing the style and mood of a piece when arranging. He also spreads out “his romantic sensibilities” in pieces like “I’m Confessin’,”
  8. His Music Director role for a theater production implied arranging tasks and a comfort with leadership roles around them.
  9. His live performances in diverse ensembles implied a deep understanding of different instrumentation and musical styles.

In conclusion, NotebookLM reiterated that Robert needs to brag more explicitly:

While the sources demonstrate that Robert Bell is a versatile and experienced musician and bandleader with production / arranging experience, they do not offer direct qualitative evaluations of his production / arranging work compared to others. … The sources do not provide an assessment of how well his work is regarded. Therefore, the question of whether he is “as good as he says he is” cannot be fully answered by the given sources.

Prompt: client value

This was interesting, but also got me despairing about how hard it might be to fix the problem.

Inspired by experiences with StrengthsFinder, I decided to reassure myself that we weren’t starting from scratch. That there was some sort of story that had business value to Robert hidden in all of the text.

Again, I took a confrontational tone and asked NotebookLM:

Why should I care about knowing that Robert Bell exists? What’s in it for me?

It replied so sweetly and politely:

Here’s a breakdown of what you might gain from being aware of Robert Bell, based on the provided sources:

  • Exposure to High-Quality Music: … If you are a fan of guitar music or jazz, discovering Bell could lead you to enjoy a new artist who is considered a “virtuoso performer”. His music is available on platforms … so you can easily access it and see if you like it.
  • Appreciation of a Dedicated Artist: If you admire artists who have dedicated their lives to mastering their art, Robert Bell’s story is inspiring.
  • Exploration of music in the style of Django Reinhardt:
  • Discovering Local Music: If you live in or near Minneapolis, Robert Bell is a local artist who has been performing extensively in the area for many years. Knowing about Bell can help you connect with the local music scene and discover new performance opportunities.
  • Learning about Music Production: If you are interested in music production, Bell’s approach can be an interesting case study for an artist who handles many aspects of music creation independently.
  • Appreciating Versatility
  • Connection to Cultural Events: Robert Bell is frequently involved in cultural events and festivals that connect to different traditions. This can connect you to other cultures and communities.
  • Potential for Live Music at Your Event: If you are interested in hiring a professional musician to perform at your special event, knowing about Bell can provide you with another option.

In short, if you care about discovering talented musicians, exploring new genres, connecting with a local music scene, understanding independent music production, or simply being exposed to versatile and dedicated artists, Robert Bell’s existence is something that might be interesting to you. He represents a blend of artistic passion, technical skill, and adaptability, which can be relevant to anyone who values music and the arts.

Prompts: improving his web site

From there, I did a variety of prompts, trying to get it to help me think through how to market him better.

My conversation with NotebookLM meandered as follows:

  1. Can I afford to hire Robert?
    • answer: He plays all kinds of events – so event type may impact cost. As might the duration of your event, number of musicians, distance, technical requirements of the venue, and special song requests.
  2. What kinds of events should I consider hiring him for?
    • answer: weddings, corporate, festivals, dances, theaters, concerts, literary events, educational events, fundraisers, special occasions, funerals, private clubs, restaurants, etc.
  3. I’m overwhelmed by the idea of communicating everything we’ve talked about. Can you please draft me a blog post for his web site that could potentially go viral?
  4. No, not like that – that’s just a summary about him. Please do a deep dive into one specific thing he could likely write about with expertise.
    • answer: the process of getting into playing music in the style of Django Reinhardt – broken down into having a “hook” at the beginning of the article, etc.
  5. How could Robert spice up his web site?
    • answer: (see podcast, below, for the takeaways of this and all subsequent questions)
  6. What’s missing from his web site that potential clients might care about?
  7. You forgot to cover what potential arranging and production clients might care about. What’s missing for them?
  8. Please draft content for a landing page advertising his production services.
  9. Please draft content for a landing page advertising his arranging services.
  10. What should he do to reconfigure the navigation structure of his website to better advertise his production and arranging services?
  11. How can he better search engine optimize (“SEO”) for his music business?
  12. Okay, but what really converts visitors into clients? What does he need to do to his web site to focus on if he wants to actually drive inquiries?
  13. What else should someone like Robert consider about how his web site should be a part of his real-world strategy for acquiring business?
  14. How can he make his web site more appealing for returning customers who have already hired him or watched him play before?
  15. Please make me a strategic roadmap about this whole conversation about marketing to potential clients.
  16. You mentioned “social proof.” What, exactly, should Robert do?
  17. Can you show me a content management system entity-relationship schema for his ideal web site?
  18. How about page navigation headings?
  19. Are you sure it shouldn’t have 2-level navigation? He offers a whole lot of different services.
  20. You forgot about arranging and production. How should we incorporate that so that the page navigation doesn’t get too crowded?
  21. Please redo the CMS and navigation examples in light of our conversation, now.
  22. Please draft example content for the “corporate events” landing page you suggested.
  23. Please draft example content for the “weddings” landing page you suggested, and edit the “corporate events” copy if necessary so they’re not too redundant to each other.
  24. Awesome. Now please do it for 6 of the event types you’ve pointed out a lot of his performance history falls into: 1. weddings, 2. corporate, 3. private, 4. festivals, 5. concerts / stage, 6. restaurants / clubs.
  25. Well done! Now please dig back into how I’m supposed to fit all of those in when we’re trying to keep navigation simple, but we have all of this content to make discoverable.

Podcast

Want to hear what it thought? NotebookLM put together the user experience (“UX”) consultation I’ve been dreaming of for years in the style of a podcast.

It’s astounding:

I’ve included an audio player above, but here’s the direct link to the MP3 file, if you prefer.

(I’ve found, on my devices, that the direct link is more likely than the embedded player present playback speed controls.)

Next steps

At some point, I’ll write up the work that NotebookLM, together with a more coding-focused LLM agent, did to teach me a new approach to architecting the entities and relations in a content management system to facilitate not only his ability to edit the website, but mine to implement a frontend.

The takeaway from that, interestingly, was:

“Why am I even thinking about build instead of buy, other than my own amusement? He should just use a website builder like Bandzoogle, Squarespace, Wix, etc. Brochureware is difficult and fragile to build from scratch these days, by comparison.”

Which is funny, because I’ve never felt more confident about “build” for his web site, thanks to these chat agents’ help.

And yet, also thanks to NotebookLM’s help, as summarized in the podcast, for the first time ever:

  • I have an opportunity to not worry about whether his 1,000+ long gig history is importable into the website builder or not. Now we have a partner in writing marketing copy to summarize the gist even better.
  • I have an opportunity to not worry about a website builder botching the schema.org structured data. Now we have a partner to remind us that a compelling review is worth a thousand SERPs. So spend time asking an old client for a testimonial, not playing with JSON-LD.

Takeaways

I’m proud of all I’ve done in my career to understand the problem domain well enough, and broadly enough, that I prompt-engineered NotebookLM this well.

It’s a beautiful marriage of my own hard work and the hard work of many, many, many other people on the planet.

I’m still not thrilled about the planet-burning or the profitized theft of humanity’s creativity (I saw a great point raised: it’s our words it trained on, so shouldn’t it be free to get back out, like NIH-funded studies should be published for free in academic journals?).

Also, the ability to access the whole English language’s “best-of” in UX and marketing “expertise” gives Robert and me, for the first time ever, the ability to become, as a guest on Humans of New York put it:

You’re {working on behalf of} the algorithm. I couldn’t do it anymore. You can never feed it enough. You start out making art, and hoping that the door will open. You’re looking for that viral moment so it opens up the door and you can do the thing full time. But you start to compromise just to get the door to open: guessing what it wants, debasing yourself, alienating yourself. Until you’re not even in service to your art anymore. You’re in service to the algorithm. Deep down every artist just wants to be seen. Everyone does. And that’s how it controls you. The algorithm makes you behave in a certain way, create in a certain way, in exchange for being seen. And if something can change what you do, it can change who you are. And I didn’t sign up for that. I didn’t sign up to become a content creator. Art was supposed to be a way for me to be in search of, in service to, in community with. It was my ministry. Art was supposed to be my ministry.

Nevertheless, I feel incredibly lucky to have had the ability to access this expertise.

It’s been a deeply transformational experience.

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