13 Prompts for Banks Deploying AI to Build Essential Marketing Collateral
Even the best marketing strategy can fail if it is not supported by the right collateral. Yet many marketing teams underestimate the importance of collateral or wait till the last minute to tackle it. Here’s a practical guide on how to use AI to cut that job down to size, including sample prompts.
By Ben Udell SVP Digital Innovation & AI
The pressure to deliver impactful campaigns that resonate with internal teams, customers, members and prospects is relentless. The success of any campaign hinges on seamless alignment between marketing strategies and the bankers who bring those strategies to life.
Marketers must provide collateral and support to maximize campaigns, yet this support is often the last item on the to-do list — or left off entirely as you move to the next project, limiting your campaign impact. This is where the power of using generative artificial intelligence (AI) can transform your productivity and the impact of your campaign results.
Financial marketers are well-versed in the need for marketing collateral like rollout emails, FAQs, campaign overviews, sales support guides and manager training guides. They all play a crucial role in bridging the gap between marketing vision and successful execution. Creating these documents is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. By using the capabilities of AI-powered tools, financial marketers can streamline the creation of high-quality supporting collateral, improve the results of their campaigns and free up valuable time to focus on other initiatives.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer looking to optimize your workflow or new to the world of AI, here is a guide to equip you with the knowledge and tools to leverage AI effectively to maximize your marketing campaigns.
First, Upload Content to Enhance AI’s Knowledge Base
The first step is to give your AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini, material about your campaign, so it has specific knowledge it can use. Most models will allow you to upload a PDF or Word file. This easy process creates your knowledge base which will be used for building your collateral. This could include:
- PDFs or Documents: If you have existing campaign materials, product brochures, or internal documents that contain relevant information, you can upload or copy and paste sections into AI. This allows AI to tailor its output accordingly.
- Websites or Links: If you have a campaign landing page, a product page, company webpage, or any other online resources that provide context about your campaign, you can share the URLs in the prompt. AI can then access and process information from these sources, enriching its understanding and generating more relevant content. (Note, some websites do not allow AI to read its content.)
- Copy and paste information: For specific data points, statistics, or key messaging that you want to ensure are included in the generated content, you can simply copy and paste them directly into the prompt. This guarantees accuracy and ensures that critical information is not overlooked.
Julie Zeimet, VP of Digital Banking and Payments and AI leader at Lake Ridge Bank, notes, "The ability to upload hundreds of pages from a PDF file helps you quickly create dynamic content. The time savings and ability to weave together large of amounts of information quickly will transform your productivity."
Using these simple options enhances AI’s ability to create content that’s tailored to your specific expectations and brand. Throughout this guide, you’ll see actual examples you can use that provide additional direction.
Prompt guidance: Ask AI to use the document(s) as a reference.
"Use the uploaded document for my marketing campaign. You will then act as a marketing director and use this information to write [insert direction]."
How to Direct Your AI Effectively
Success with AI-generated resources is driven by providing AI with specific objectives and directions, also called prompts. A good rule of thumb to great prompting is to treat AI like a person. Be specific, as though you were telling your new intern the requirements for the project.
- Kickoff emails: These serve as the initial introduction to your campaign for the banking team. Your prompts to AI might include directions about the target audience, desired length, key messaging or points, tone, important dates and other descriptions and objectives.
- FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions documents anticipate and address common queries bankers may have about the campaign. Your prompts to AI might include number, style, level of detail, or other specifics that provide consistency for your brand.
- Campaign overviews: These documents offer a comprehensive deep-dive into the campaign, or you may prefer a summary. Be specific with your direction to AI. Your prompts to AI might include specific objectives to focus on, a request for different versions for different internal employee groups, length of writing such as summary or fully detailed, or format such as paragraph, bullet point, or executive summary.
- Manager training guides: Designed specifically for team leaders, these guides support your campaigns with customer and member facing employees. Your prompts to AI might include a request for key topics, in-depth campaign knowledge, role-playing scenarios, best practices, quizzes and an agenda with timing.
- Sales guides: These documents provide additional fact finding questions or insights into potential objections. Your prompts to AI might include a request for five great profiling questions, three common objections and how to overcome them, or examples of a call to action.
By creating these supporting documents, you provide bankers with the resources they need to understand, embrace and effectively promote your marketing campaigns.
Prompt guidance: These prompts support the collateral mentioned above and can be easily modified for your specific needs.
"Use the uploaded document for my marketing campaign and write me an email to introduce the campaign to employees. Your email should take two minutes to read, have a placeholder for a link to the document in SharePoint, and include a call to action to read the documents by November 1 so they’re prepared to help clients."
"Write a list of 10 FAQs to support this campaign. My audience will be bankers with no previous knowledge of this campaign."
"Write a campaign overview which starts with key insights, then provides an executive summary of the campaign, then add specific details about the offer and what requirements the prospect needs to meet to qualify for the promotion."
"Write a manager training guide that can be used in a 15-minute meeting. Script out the key points for the manager and include three questions the manager can ask to test to see if the bankers read the material. Provide three open-ended questions the manager can use to get the bankers talking about the benefits of the campaign. Give the manager three questions they can ask to get buy in from bankers to ensure they’re selling the product."
"Write a sales guide for bankers on this product. I want you to include five open-ended questions bankers can ask to understand if a need exists. Then give me three objections bankers might get and how to handle them. Script out a call to action the banker can use to set follow up expectations with the prospect."
These prompts are starting points to see how transformative and powerful AI can be to support your campaigns. Provide AI with follow up direction, edit and refine the output to efficiently build collateral that fits your specific needs.
Streamline with Templates and Advanced AI Usage
As you become more adept at using AI for content creation, you’ll discover strategies that can significantly enhance your efficiency and the quality of your output.
Let’s explore two key approaches: using templates and adopting an iterative refinement process.
Leveraging templates for consistency
One of the challenges in creating marketing collateral is maintaining consistency in tone, style and messaging across various documents. This is where templates can prove invaluable. By providing AI with a well-structured template or example, you establish a framework that guides the generated content, ensuring a cohesive and unified brand voice.
To create a template, simply provide AI with a sample document and ask it to replicate the extract structure, key elements and formatting. You can then use this template as a foundation for future content generation, customizing it with specific campaign details as needed. Julie Zeimet shared, "The time savings when you use templates is huge. You can input dictation, or a super rough draft of your content, and AI will not only write it so it’s grammatically correct. AI will write it in the desired format so we have a consistent internal and external brand."
For example, you could provide the AI with a successful rollout email from a previous campaign and ask it to create a template based on its structure. You could then use this template to generate rollout emails for future campaigns, ensuring consistency and saving valuable time. This applies to sales training guides, FAQs, or any other document you’d like to replicate. The stronger your template or example, the better and more consistent output you’ll create.
Prompt guidance: A prompt to replicate content is easy with a basic prompt.
"Use the uploaded file titled Manager Training Guide Template to use as a template for your output. Use the file titled New Checking Campaign to write a manager training guide to help managers coach bankers on our new campaign."
Iterative refinement: treat AI like a person
Experienced AI users understand that the first output is rarely the final product. Instead, they view AI as a person, capable of generating valuable content but requiring guidance, refinement and fact-checking. Just like you’d engage a human on your team, you’ll engage AI the same way. Plus, the speed of AI allows you to explore different approaches and ideas in minutes.
Prompt guidance: These prompts allow you to explore the creative process with AI at lightning speed.
"Rewrite the content you created and create a version for Baby Boomers, Millennials and Gen X prospects. Include relevant financial examples that would resonate with these generations."
"Rewrite the content to help me explore alternative approaches. Give me three versions, the first focusing on being more persuasive, the second should be more educational and the third should be aspirational."
"Give me 25 tag lines and 25 email subject lines that are engaging and will prompt readers to open the email and read my content."
Want to read more from Ben Udell?
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- How ‘Voice Cloning’ Will Disrupt Customer Verification
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AI is Never the Last Step: Review and Refine
While AI can generate impressive content, it’s crucial to remember that it’s not infallible. Always review and fact-check the AI-generated content to ensure accuracy, relevance and brand consistency. Look for potential biases and fact-check output. Additionally, you can leverage AI’s capabilities to further polish your final product and give you one last review before publishing.
Prompt guidance: These prompts will help you polish your writing.
"Proofread this content and suggest any grammatical or stylistic improvements. Look for areas that could be more concise or clear. Do not rewrite this document. Show me alternative suggestions and corrections."
"Review my content and look for areas of bias and provide alternative ways to write the section that is problematic."
"Act as a compliance manager for a financial institution. Review my content and look for areas that could be regulatory red flags or gray areas I should bring to the attention of bankers. Highlight those areas and why they are concerning."
By combining the power of AI with your own expertise and critical thinking, you can create marketing collateral that inform and engage your audience. Embrace the process, leverage templates for consistency, and always prioritize review and refinement to ensure the highest quality output. AI is never the last step.
