Tips for Strong AI Marketing Prompts
Follow these steps to get the best responses.
Apartment marketers: Did you know that artificial intelligence can be your secret weapon?
Savvy apartment marketers already use AI as a valuable tool to not only create killer content that differentiates their communities from the competition but also to handle data analysis and automate day-to-day tasks that would otherwise monopolize staff time.
Even as the construction of new apartments slows across the country—according to a research bulletin released in April by Yardi Matrix, about 536,000 new apartments will be delivered this year, but only 422,000 are forecast for 2026—the multifamily market remains competitive in many metros, and apartment marketers are under increasing pressure to make their communities stand out from the competition. That’s where generative AI can help, whether you’re using ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or a similar platform.
A prompt is just a series of instructions that you write out in natural language and give to a tool like ChatGPT. It’s a way to tell AI what to do in a specific way to get really good output.
—Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer, Marketing AI Institute
But experts say that many apartment marketers lack the training or experience to use AI effectively. There’s a learning curve to crafting the best prompt—the query used to elicit the response you want from the AI platform—and with AI, like with many other things, the more you put into it, the more you get out.
“A prompt is just a series of instructions that you write out in natural language and give to a tool like ChatGPT,” commented Mike Kaput, chief content officer for Marketing AI Institute. “It’s a way to tell AI what to do in a specific way to get really good output.”
Kaput said that the biggest mistake he sees users make when using AI is failing to construct a really good prompt. “It’s tempting to say: ‘Write me a blog post about AI for apartment marketers,’ but you’re going to get a terrible output with that prompt,” he noted. Instead, he suggested taking the time to include information that the AI can tap, such as useful examples and specifics as to what you’re looking for. This will yield much better results.
What’s the downside of not improving your AI prompt-crafting skills? “Creating forgettable generic stuff,” shared Andrew Davis, a best-selling author who gives keynote speeches on the magic of AI, among other topics. “Generative AI creates generic content, and in an industry where differentiation is everything, generic AI-generated apartment listings and website content is just marketing suicide.”
Here are some prompting tips to get the most out of AI:
➡ Define its role. Instruct the AI first about its angle and point of view. If you are asking it to generate keywords for a Google Ads campaign, for example, start with: “You are an expert at SEO and apartment marketing.”
➡ Remember to set the tone. When using AI to generate content, let it know whether you want a friendly email reminder or a business letter.
➡ Write your prompt in natural language, and keep it simple. “Think about writing for a third-grader,” recommended Ellen Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Respage. Give clear instructions.
➡ Create a prompt library. To make it easier to provide the AI with all the background information it needs on your particular community or brand, create boilerplate to keep on hand. “You have to remind and reeducate ChatGPT, so we keep a prompt library to copy and paste,” said Jeff Klotz, CEO of The Klotz Group of Cos. “Consistency in your message is very important.”
➡ Don’t expect to nail it the first time. “It may take a fair amount of back and forth to get exactly what you want,” according to Mike Kaput, chief content officer for Marketing AI Institute. “These tools really reward experimentation and trial and error, so don’t give up.” If the response you receive isn’t exactly what you were seeking, just let ChatGPT, or whatever platform you’re using, know that. Tell it where it failed to meet your expectations, and ask it to try again.
➡ Don’t be intimidated by the technology. As you use AI more, your prompts will improve. If you’re nervous about interacting with it, Kaput suggests asking it to write a poem or song for your kids or to plan the itinerary for a trip. “Start with your hobbies, not your work,” he said. “That’ll help you stop being scared of it and to see what it can actually do.”
Prompting AI for inspiration
Sure, AI can generate website copy, social media posts or even Google Ads campaigns. But it can also inspire apartment marketers to create the best content they can.
Christine Gustafson, vice president of marketing for The Breeden Co., used Microsoft Copilot’s AI to help her draft website content for The Pinnacle on 31st Street, a new lease-up in Virginia Beach, Va. The community, which features one- to three-bedroom apartments with luxury amenities, is not your typical beach building. Instead of the traditional beachy tones of blue and gray, The Pinnacle has vibrant reds and oranges. Gustafson needed to come up with a concept to market it.
She typed some information about the community into Copilot, as well as a prompt, asking it to “provide creative taglines for an architecturally strong apartment community at the oceanfront, where other apartment communities have muted beach tones.” In the copy generated, Copilot used the word “interplay.”
“That was my inspiration,” she said. “It stoked my creativity so I was able to write the other paragraphs.” Building on the word “interplay,” Gustafson came up with a tagline to describe the property: “An interplay of architecture and landscape,” which she describes as “sexy and a really great way to define in one statement what I was trying to say about the community.”
Prompting for branding, not just content
With the proper prompts, AI can be tapped to help you brand your individual properties.
Jeff Klotz, CEO of The Klotz Group of Cos., recently used ChatGPT to help brand two new properties in Atlantic Beach, Fla.: The Reef, a five-story luxury community with a two-story clubhouse that’s the largest in northeast Florida, and Surf Apartments, which has a more casual vibe and branding that’s all about flip-flops, the beach and tropical colors. The AI tool helped the company create brand identities for each community.
“When we were leasing them up, we needed ChatGPT to understand that they are two separate properties with two distinct brands and audiences,” said Klotz. “We spent a lot of time on brand notes and themes that we dumped into ChatGPT to educate it on what our goals were, and we asked it to articulate the difference between the two brand identities so we were confident it understood the difference and matched our vision for the brands.”
Best Practices for AI Prompts
So how can you get the most out of AI?
First, always remember that AI may not be accurate. Be especially wary of Fair Housing Act violations in the responses you get.
“It’s easy to write a prompt and get a response, but it can still mangle things,” pointed out Ellen Thompson, co-founder & CEO of Respage. “You can’t just use what ChatGPT spits out—you have to make sure it’s correct.”
What a Good AI Prompt Should Look Like for Apartment Marketers
Example of a prompt that needs improvement:
“Write me a blog post to help market ABC Apartments in Austin, Texas.”
A better option:
You are an experienced apartment marketer with knowledge of AI trends, multifamily housing and the Austin apartment market. You specialize in creating high-performing blog content to help differentiate apartment communities and market them to prospective residents.
Write a compelling, informative blog post of no more than 250 words that is SEO-optimized for Austin apartments that are pet-friendly. ABC Apartments has one- and two-bedroom units. Please incorporate the features and amenities on the attached page and follow the style of the blog posts I have included as examples.
Structure the blog post to include:
① A catchy title and introductory paragraph to hook the reader.
② A description of ABC Apartments and its competitive advantage over other apartment communities in the market.
③ Specific features and amenities ABC Apartments offers.
④ A conclusion with a call to action (call or email for more information about available units or to speak with a leasing agent).
While you do all of this, take your time and work step by step, thinking critically along the way. If you get stuck, ask the user for help.
