AI prompts for small business owners who do not have a marketing team

The rule that decides whether a prompt is worth keeping

A prompt earns its place if it ends with something I would have had to type anyway: a quote, a reply, a listing, a checklist. If it ends with advice, it is a conversation, not a tool, and it does not go in the file.

The second rule is that I paste the real material in. My real prices, my real policy, the customer's real message. A prompt with no true input returns something that sounds like every other small business on the internet, because that is exactly what it was built from.

• Name the artifact before you press enter.
• Paste the real numbers, policy or message rather than describing them.
• Tell it to ask instead of invent whenever the output faces a customer.
• Keep the ones that worked in one file. That file is the asset, not any single prompt.

Prompt — Quote a job without underpricing it

Most underpricing happens because you quote the visible work and forget the wrapper: the calls, the revisions, the chasing. This makes the wrapper visible before you send a number.

Job: {describe the job in plain language}. My rate or target: {number}. Break this into every task the job actually needs, including admin, calls, revisions and follow-up. Estimate hours per task. Total it, then tell me which three tasks are most likely to overrun and what boundary in the quote would protect me. Do not soften the total.

Prompt — Chase money without damaging the relationship

The invoice chase is the message people rewrite five times. Give it your terms and let it stay short.

Invoice: {amount}, sent {date}, due {date}, now {n} days late. Relationship: {new client / long-standing / one-off}. My terms: {paste terms}. Write a follow-up under 90 words that states the amount, the due date, one payment link line, and a specific next step with a date. Firm, not apologetic, no chasing language like 'just checking in'.

Prompt — Write the listing from what you actually sell

Feed it the literal contents. Every time I have described a product instead of listing it, the copy came back with a promise I could not defend.

Here is literally what the buyer receives: {paste the file list or contents}. Price: {price}. Write a listing with: one line on the problem, a bullet per real item above, who it is not for, and what happens immediately after purchase. Do not describe a result that is not produced by an item in that list. Flag anything you had to stretch.

Prompt — Answer the question you have answered ten times

The tenth time you type the same answer, turn it into a saved reply. This is how a support inbox stops eating evenings.

Here are three real messages asking roughly the same thing: {paste}. My policy and the true answer: {paste}. Write one reusable reply under 120 words that covers all three, plus two short variants: one for a frustrated customer, one for a pre-purchase question. Stay inside the policy text. If the policy does not cover a case, say so rather than filling the gap.

Prompt — Decide what to do on a short week

Some weeks there are eleven hours, not forty. This prompt is a triage tool, and it works because it takes the real list rather than an idealised one.

Hours available: {n}. Everything on my list: {paste the list}. For each item, estimate hours and label it revenue-now, revenue-later, or maintenance. Then give me the schedule that produces the most revenue-now inside {n} hours, and name what I am explicitly dropping. Do not tell me to work more hours.

What I do not use AI for

Pricing decisions, refund calls and anything that becomes a promise to a customer stay with me. The model can lay out the reasoning and draft the words, but the judgement is the part of the business that is actually mine, and outsourcing it produces the generic, slightly dishonest tone you can smell on a lot of small business pages right now.