Think Before You Prompt

Applying the Worksheet

You have the framework. Now you need the reps. In this lesson, you will apply the Pre-Prompt Worksheet to two real marketing scenarios -- without touching AI at all. The whole point is to build the muscle of thinking before prompting, so keep your AI tools closed.

Scenario 1: LinkedIn Thought Leadership Series

You are the content lead at a fintech startup that just raised a Series A. Your CEO is sharp but not a natural writer. She has strong opinions about how traditional banks are failing small businesses, and she wants to build an audience on LinkedIn. Your job: plan a 4-post LinkedIn thought leadership series for her.

The company's product is a cash flow management platform for businesses with 10-50 employees. Your CEO's key thesis is that small business owners should not need a finance degree to understand their own cash position.

Before you even think about what AI could write, fill out the worksheet. What is the specific outcome? What does success look like for a CEO thought leadership series on LinkedIn? What are the failure modes that would make these posts embarrassing or ineffective? What constraints do you know that AI does not?

See a sample completed worksheet for Scenario 1

Scenario 2: Re-engagement Email Campaign

You are the lifecycle marketing manager at a B2B SaaS company that sells project management software. You have a segment of 2,400 users who were active 6 months ago but have not logged in for the past 90 days. Your VP of Marketing wants you to "win them back."

You know from your data that the top three reasons users churned (from exit surveys) were: "too complicated for our small team," "we switched to [competitor]," and "the person who managed it left the company." Your product has shipped a simplified onboarding flow and a new "quick start" mode since most of these users were last active.

Fill out the worksheet. Think carefully about failure modes -- re-engagement emails are one of the most abused formats in marketing, and getting this wrong means these 2,400 users unsubscribe permanently.

See a sample completed worksheet for Scenario 2

What You Should Notice

Look at both completed worksheets. Before writing a single word of prompt, you now have:

A specific, measurable goal (not "write some emails" but "get 192 users to log back in within 30 days")
A clear picture of what success looks like (so you can evaluate AI's output against a standard you set, not one AI invents)
A list of predictable failure modes (which become "Do NOT" instructions in your eventual prompt)
Constraints that only you know (which close the gap between AI's assumptions and your reality)

This is the work. The prompt is just packaging.

Hands-On Exercise

Complete Both Worksheets

~15 min

Instructions

1.Pick one of the two scenarios above (or use a real marketing task you're facing this week).
2.Open a blank document -- not an AI tool.
3.Fill out all four sections of the Pre-Prompt Worksheet from memory.
4.Be specific: name real numbers, real constraints, real failure modes.
5.When you are done, compare your worksheet to the sample reveals above.
6.Note any sections where the sample was more specific than yours -- that's your growth edge.

What to Submit

A completed Pre-Prompt Worksheet for one marketing scenario.

Self-Check

3 minutes now, 30 minutes saved later

The worksheet takes 3 minutes. It saves 30 minutes of iteration. Every minute spent clarifying your thinking before prompting is worth ten minutes of revising AI output after. The marketers who get the best results from AI are not better at prompting -- they are better at thinking before they prompt.