"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." – Peter Drucker, SuperMarketer and Consultant.  

Perplexity.ai is the tool that understands your needs and can sell itself.

Let’s see if I can explain it well enough in this email to get you to give it a try….

In short, Perplexity is an “answer engine”: it answers any question you have directly like ChatGPT), while including links and sources.

Here’s an example of a broad question, “How do I create a brand strategy?”:

Why Perplexity.ai?

Forget the endless scroll through search results (Google 😉).

Perplexity.ai cuts through the noise, delivering concise answers and reliable sources directly to your fingertips. It's the edge every marketer needs: swift, accurate insights without the hassle.

A few other reasons why it’s great:

• Efficiency Redefined: Speed up your research with real-time data and comprehensive answers, ensuring your content is always relevant and impactful.

• Organization: Keep your searches organized in threads and create collections, streamlining your workflow.

• Depth on Demand: Dive deeper with Copilot, exploring topics interactively. It’s like the People Also Ask feature of Google, but part of your chat with Perplexity.

• Use Any AI Model: You can use GPT-4, Claude, Gemini or others. You choose. Each model has their own strengths. Note: this comes on the paid plan of $20/mo. So essentially you can skip paying the $20/mo for ChatGPT and Claude, if you can do without the custom GPTs of ChatGPT (GPTs are an amazing feature, so use both if you can swing it).

💡 Strategy: Streamline Content Creation with Perplexity.ai

Perplexity.ai stands out as an indispensable tool, transforming the way marketers research, analyze, and produce content.

Here’s how to make Perplexity work for you:

• Initiate with Custom Instructions: Kickstart your content process with Perplexity's custom instructions to zero in on exact insights, such as detailing the latest digital marketing trends with an AI focus. This precision fast-tracks your research phase. In your Perplexity settings, you can add your background. You can use the Custom Instructions from your ChatGPT profile to make it easier:

• Leverage Real-Time Data: Use Perplexity’s real-time capabilities to keep your content fresh and relevant, ensuring you’re always ahead with the latest data and trends.

• Visualize with AI: Elevate your content with Perplexity-generated visuals and data interpretations, making complex information digestible and engaging for your audience. I’m not sure if it’s on par with Midjourney or DALL-E 3, you make the call at the end of the email where I have an example.

Because Perplexity is the best research tool (with citations, sources), you can do your research in the same thread that you actually create your content.  

🔍 Use Case: Research, Write, Create Visuals and More

Let’s dig in to a few more examples of how Perplexity can help you with the scope of your marketing needs.

• Research and Synthesize: Use Perplexity to gather data, synthesize information, and write content, all within a single workflow. But even better, you can focus your searches on specific sites—YouTube, Reddit, Academic sources, etc.

• Visual Content Creation: Generate images and interpret charts for your content, making complex data accessible and engaging for your audience.

• Keyword research: You can do keyword research and content planning for a given topic — find the entities, Latent Semantic Index keywords:

• Find Charts, Graphs, Statistics For Your Content - Perplexity can find the additional elements you need to take your content up a notch. In the same thread, you can just ask for the type of additional content that you’re looking for, and Perplexity can help you:

  

🤖 Prompt: Create Detailed Content with Perplexity.ai

It still blows my mind how good the content output can be with minimal prompting.

Yes, you definitely want a human to review and edit and improve (see the part above about tables, charts, graphs etc).

But here’s a prompt that you can use to create a long form (2000 words) post in just a few minutes!

h/t to the Words At Scale YouTube channel for this prompt, it’s simple yet the output is great in Perplexity.

Prompt Overview:

I want you to execute the following steps. 
Step 1 - generate 10 popular questions about "[enter your target search term]"
Step 2 - take the 1st question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 3 - take the 2d question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 4 - take the 3d question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 5 - take the 4th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 6 - take the 5th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 7 - take the 6th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 8 - take the 7th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 9 - take the 8th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 10 - take the 9th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article, 
Step 11 - take the 10th question from the list from Step 1 and write a 500 word article

Curious to see how Perplexity writes about SEO changes in 2024:

You can see the process of understanding the question, searching the web, and finding sources. Then it comes up with 10 popular questions:

Here is the first section of the output.

You can see for yourself, it is comprehensive, detailed, and you can do your own research with the cited sources:

🔬Experiment: Expand Your Capabilities with Perplexity.ai

To truly harness the power of Perplexity.ai and elevate your content strategy, it's essential to explore and experiment with its advanced features.

By optimizing your use of Perplexity, you can not only deepen your research and refine your content but also discover new ways to engage and inform your audience. Here’s how to expand your toolbox:

Follow-Up Questions for In-depth Analysis

• Deepen Research: After receiving an initial answer, ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into the topic. This iterative process allows you to uncover nuanced insights and hidden gems that can add significant value to your content. This is how you can use the Copilot feature.

Switch AI Models for Diverse Perspectives

• Enhance Content Breadth: Different AI models can offer varying interpretations and insights on a subject. By switching between models like GPT-4, Claude2, and Gemini Pro, you can gather a wide range of perspectives, making your content more comprehensive and multifaceted.

Custom Instructions for Tailored Content

• Specify Content Needs: Craft custom instructions to guide Perplexity in generating information that's directly relevant to your content goals. For example, if you need data-driven insights, instruct Perplexity to focus on the latest studies or statistics in your field.

📖 Resources: Words at Scale for More

Words at Scale has a lot of great content on using AI for SEO and content. I appreciate the detail and transparency, a great resource to learn more. He’s covered Perplexity recently (he is in Russia, so not needing a VPN is another benefit to Perplexity):  

✍️ Prompting Best Practices

Here are some helpful tips on general prompting I saw this week.

Some quick takeaways:

• Direct and Concise Communication: Removing unnecessary politeness phrases like "please" or "thank you" makes prompts more efficient, leading to faster and more to-the-point answers. This is crucial because it streamlines interaction with LLMs, saving time and reducing potential confusion.

• Audience Integration: Tailoring the explanation to the knowledge level of the intended audience ensures the information is accessible and comprehensible. This is key for effective communication, as it ensures that the content is relevant and understandable to the audience, enhancing learning and engagement.

• Breaking Down Complex Tasks: Simplifying complex inquiries into a series of simpler steps facilitates a more manageable and interactive learning process. This approach is essential for tackling intricate topics or tasks, making them more approachable and ensuring a thorough understanding.

• Employ Affirmative Directives: Using positive language and clear instructions ("do" instead of "don't") promotes a more straightforward and actionable response. It's important because it guides the LLM towards providing solutions rather than focusing on limitations, fostering a more productive and positive interaction.

• Utilize Example-Driven Prompting: Incorporating examples within prompts helps to clarify the task at hand and set expectations for the type of response desired. This method is crucial for enhancing the accuracy and relevance of the LLM's responses, as it provides a concrete reference point for generating answers.

So that’s a wrap for the week.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Perplexity has a free 7 day trial on the annual plan, so you can check all this out for free!

Until next week, stay Super, Marketers.

Gen