AI Search (GEO) Playbook

WEEK 1 (Educate → Entertain → Showcase → Educate → Sell → Behind-the-scenes → Entertain)

Mon · Educate · Hook: "Most niacinamide serums are water with a marketing budget." · Format: carousel, 5 slides · CTA: save this
Tue · Entertain · Hook: "Okay, controversial: your skin does not need 12 steps." · Format: talking-head reel, 20s · CTA: reply with your step count
Wed · Showcase · Hook: "Tested the new cleanser on a real face for 6 weeks. Notes inside." · Format: before/after photo · CTA: link in bio
Thu · Educate · Hook: "Weirdly, the most-asked question this month: safe during pregnancy?" · Format: single image + long caption · CTA: share with someone who asked
Fri · Sell · Hook: "Discontinued the toner. It wasn't pulling its weight." · Format: product photo · CTA: shop the 3 that stayed
Sat · Behind-the-scenes · Hook: "Our lab at 7am looks nothing like the ads." · Format: 15s b-roll · CTA: none
Sun · Entertain · Hook: "Things dermatologists say at dinner parties." · Format: text-on-screen reel · CTA: tag a friend

Never sells twice in a row; each week opens with a save-worthy educate post.

Day 1 — Opener
Subject: eight AEs, one playbook
Sam — you posted eight AE roles this month, and the Head of Enablement seat has been open since April. Eight new reps and no owner for onboarding usually means ramp drifts past a quarter. Vanta had the same gap; our playbook cut their ramp from 14 weeks to 6. Is ramp time something you are measuring this quarter — yes or no?

Day 4 — Follow-up 2 (proof)
Sam — one number from the Vanta work, in case it is useful whether or not we talk: week-3 call volume per new AE doubled once the playbook replaced shadowing. Happy to send the one-page summary. Want it?

Day 8 — Follow-up 3 (question only)
Sam — genuine question, no pitch: when the eight AEs start, who owns their first 30 days?

Day 14 — Breakup
Sam — I will stop here. If ramp becomes the problem in Q3, the playbook summary is one reply away. Good luck with the cohort.

Cadence rule: every message carries something new — proof, a question, or an exit. Never "bumping this".

Use case: Product teaser (template 1)

| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Subject | A matte black ceramic pour-over coffee dripper with a thin polished copper rim, sitting on a clear glass carafe |
| Action | 1) A thin stream of dark coffee trickles from the dripper into the carafe while soft steam curls up from the rim; 2) the dripper and carafe turn a slow quarter turn; 3) the final second holds still on the dripper's front, copper rim catching the light |
| Scene | A walnut kitchen counter by a window, early morning just after sunrise, a faint haze of steam in the air, uncluttered background |
| Angle / Move | Vertical close-up at counter height, slightly above eye level / slow dolly in |
| Lens | 85mm-style telephoto feel, shallow depth of field, kitchen background in soft bokeh |
| Light / Palette / Mood | Soft low-angle morning sunlight from a window on the left with gentle fill and a warm rim on the copper / matte black, warm copper, honey-brown walnut, soft cream highlights / calm, quiet, unhurried |
| Style / Time | Premium commercial look, photorealistic / real-time pace, steady trickle throughout, still hold in the last second |
| Audio | Close, clear coffee trickling into glass, a faint soft drip, quiet low morning room tone, no music |
| Negative | text, logos, letters, labels, hands, people, clutter, reflections of people, plastic look |

Final prompt (paste into Veo / Gemini / Flow):

Premium commercial look, photorealistic, vertical close-up at counter height of a matte black ceramic pour-over coffee dripper with a thin polished copper rim, sitting on a clear glass carafe on a walnut kitchen counter by a window in the early morning just after sunrise. A thin stream of dark coffee trickles from the dripper into the carafe while soft steam curls up from the rim, and the dripper and carafe turn a slow quarter turn. Slow dolly in, 85mm-style telephoto feel, shallow depth of field with the kitchen background in soft bokeh. Soft low-angle morning sunlight from a window on the left with gentle fill and a warm rim light catching the copper, palette of matte black, warm copper, honey-brown walnut and soft cream highlights, calm and quiet mood. Real-time pace; the final second holds still on the dripper's front.
Audio: close, clear sound of coffee trickling into a glass carafe, a faint soft drip, quiet low morning room tone, no music.
Negative prompt: text, logos, letters, labels, hands, people, clutter, reflections of people, plastic look

Settings: 9:16, 8 seconds, audio on.

Settings: model `sora-2` · size `1280x720` · seconds `8` · characters: none

Before

A cool cinematic shot of a woman drinking coffee in a nice cafe, make it 10 seconds.

After

Style: Contemporary 35 mm film look, natural and understated, soft contrast, fine grain, warm-neutral grade.

A small neighbourhood cafe on a quiet weekday morning. A woman in her early 30s with shoulder-length dark hair tied loosely back, wearing an oatmeal knit sweater, sits alone at a round marble table by a large street-facing window. In front of her: a white ceramic cup of black coffee on a matching saucer and a folded paper napkin. Behind her, out of focus, a wooden counter with an espresso machine and a barista moving between shelves of cups. Thin steam rises from the cup and catches the window light.

Cinematography:
Camera: medium close-up, eye level, from across the table at a slight angle; slow dolly-in
Lens: 50 mm feel; shallow depth of field, sharp on her face and the cup, background soft
Lighting: soft morning daylight through the window from camera left as key; warm tungsten pendant glow from the counter as background fill
Palette anchors: cream, warm walnut brown, soft white, muted sage, coffee black
Mood: calm, quiet, unhurried

Actions:
- She wraps both hands around the cup and lifts it slowly (first two seconds).
- She blows lightly across the surface, then takes one small sip.
- She lowers the cup to the saucer and looks out the window with a faint, relaxed smile (final two seconds).

Background Sound:
Low hiss of the espresso machine, soft clink of cups at the counter, muffled murmur of a few voices; no score.

What changed and why

- Removed "make it 10 seconds". Duration is an API parameter, not prose, and 10 is not a supported value (4, 8, 12, 16, 20). Set `seconds: 8` in the call; the prompt now fits 8 seconds of action.
- "Cool cinematic shot" became a named style. A specific aesthetic instead of a vague adjective, set first so it frames everything else.
- "Drinking coffee" became three timed beats. Lift, blow and sip, lower and look out. Beats with timing cues are far more reliable than a single vague verb.

[five more changes in the full answer: subject anchors, concrete nouns, one camera move, named light sources, background sound]

Pricing audit: Draftwell pricing page

Input: pasted copy (no screenshot) · Product type: B2B SaaS · Value metric: seats plus AI credits (5 credits per draft) · Goal: more paid upgrades to Team from the 14-day no-card trial

Score: 8 / 27

| # | Criterion | Score | Evidence (quote or point at the page) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plan architecture and count | 1 | Four plans, two of them for one person: Starter "1 seat, 2 projects, 300 AI credits" and Basic "1 seat, 3 projects, 800 AI credits" overlap. No plan says who it is for. |
| 2 | Anchor and decoy | 1 | Team carries "Popular", but its button is the same "Get started" as every other card. |
| 3 | Value metric clarity | 1 | Cards say "300 AI credits"; what a credit buys is only in the FAQ ("a draft uses 5 credits"). Nothing says what happens when credits run out. |
| 4 | Feature-table weight | 0 | "Compare plans (38 rows)" opens with "Post scheduler ✓✓✓✓, Content calendar ✓✓✓✓", features every plan has. |
| 5 | Free tier / trial logic and upgrade trigger | 1 | "All plans include a 14-day free trial." No card terms, no day-15 behaviour, no named trigger for moving to Team. |
| 6 | CTA hierarchy | 1 | "[Get started]" on all four cards, same weight. |
| 7 | Price presentation | 1 | "Annual: save 20%" states the saving, but prices appear only as "/mo" and no billed-annually total is shown. |
| 8 | Trust and risk reversal | 1 | Refund terms exist only as "Footer: Terms · Refunds · Privacy". |
| 9 | Entry points | n/a | Pasted copy only. |
| 10 | Copy and "why now" | 1 | "Plans that grow with you" is generic; benefits are feature names. |
| 11 | Mobile layout | n/a | Pasted copy only; need a phone screenshot. |

Read: an agency trialist sees two cheap one-seat plans, four identical buttons and credits they cannot translate into posts, so nothing pulls them up to Team.

Fixes

P0: Make Team the agency plan (criteria 1, 2, 6)
Problem: four "Get started" buttons and no "for" line give agencies no reason to pick Team over Basic.
Before:
> Team $39/mo (badge: Popular): 5 seats, 10 projects, 2,000 AI credits, approvals [Get started]
After:
> Team: for agencies with clients to approve
> $39/mo · 5 seats · 10 projects · about 400 drafts a month · approvals
> [Start 14-day Team trial]
> No card required

and on Basic: "Basic: for one freelancer · [Try Basic]".

[The full answer continues with P1 (price credits in drafts: 300 credits is about 60 drafts), P2 (spell out the trial and the switch to Team), one experiment with hypothesis, metric and guardrail, and the benchmarks used with their source labels.]

Pack: `references/pack-product-shots.md`.

Three options

1. PS-09 Strawberry Milkshake Product and Infographic. A ready-made premium cold-drink hero shot: seamless pastel backdrop, realistic condensation droplets and "premium café advertisement" styling, which is exactly the look a chilled cold-brew can needs.
Prompt by @Strength04_X (𝐌), source: https://x.com/Strength04_X/status/2090665058980462697, via awesome-nano-banana-pro-prompts, CC-BY-4.0.

2. PS-02 Luxury Chocolate Ad Still Life. The only prompt in the pack that is a full ad layout with on-image copy, but you would have to delete its placeholder copy and invented logos and rebuild most of the props.
Prompt by @AiwithLucas_ (Lucas AI), source: https://x.com/AiwithLucas_/status/2089231817916420518, via awesome-nano-banana-pro-prompts, CC-BY-4.0.

3. PS-01 Premium Beverage Advertising Photography. Written for a beverage-brand hero ad and works from your attached references, but the prompt is only one line long, so lighting and composition would come from what you attach.
Prompt by @exywuu (Exywuu), source: https://x.com/exywuu/status/2092222318084788564, via awesome-nano-banana-pro-prompts, CC-BY-4.0.

Pick: PS-09

What to attach. Image 1: a clear, front-on photo of your real Northbound can, logo facing the camera.

Adapted prompt (4:5 Instagram ad)

Image 1: product photo of the Northbound cold-brew coffee can. Use this exact can.

A vertical 4:5 Instagram feed ad. A high-quality professional product photograph of a premium cold-brew coffee can, the 330 ml matte navy aluminium can from Image 1 with its white logo, standing upright and centered against a soft pastel pink seamless studio background. Preserve the can's exact shape, proportions, matte navy finish, white logo and label from Image 1; do not redesign it, recolour it or add any new graphics to it. The can sits on the same seamless surface with a few clear ice cubes and a small scatter of dark roasted coffee beans at its base. Realistic condensation droplets cover the can with soft reflections from the studio lights. Elegant soft lighting creates subtle natural shadows beneath the can. The can fills about 55% of the frame height in the lower two thirds of the image, logo facing the camera.

Text: the headline "Cold. Bold. Northbound." across the top third of the image, centered, in a bold clean white sans-serif with generous letter spacing, large enough to read on a phone. Render this headline exactly once, spelled exactly as written. Apart from the can's own logo from Image 1, no other text, no prices, no taglines, no extra logos, no watermark.

Ultra-sharp focus, DSLR macro beverage photography, premium café advertisement style, hyper realistic, clean commercial composition, 8K.

Tool settings: aspect ratio 4:5; in AI Studio or the API also set the output resolution to 2K so the headline stays sharp.

Prompt by @Strength04_X (𝐌), source: https://x.com/Strength04_X/status/2090665058980462697, via awesome-nano-banana-pro-prompts, CC-BY-4.0. Adapted: subject swapped from a strawberry milkshake in a glass to the Northbound can, Image 1 reference and preserve-the-product line added, 4:5 aspect ratio and headline added, the original's second (infographic) paragraph removed.

[The full answer ends with a one-fix-per-turn table for headline contrast, product drift, garbled text and framing.]

Template used: #2 YouTube thumbnail from `templates/use-cases.md`, with one extra line for the chart.

Defaults I chose, and why
- No numbers on the chart. The only figure in your request is 60%. If I asked for axis labels or dollar amounts, the model would make them up. The headline carries the number; the bars just show the drop.
- The "-60%" is spelled out. A minus sign next to a number is a common place for text errors, so the prompt names each character.
- `quality="high"`. The template defaults to `medium`; close-up faces and exact text both call for high.

Final prompt

A 16:9 YouTube thumbnail for a video titled "How I cut our AWS bill by 60%".

Scene: a dark, near-black navy studio backdrop, softly blurred, with a faint vignette and a subtle cool rim light. Simple and uncluttered, high contrast against the subject.

Subject: a photorealistic man in his early-to-mid 30s, fictional (not a real person), short dark hair, light stubble, plain charcoal crew-neck t-shirt. He fills the LEFT half of the frame, framed from mid-chest up and large in frame, head and shoulders slightly turned toward the right side. His expression is genuine surprise: eyebrows raised high, eyes wide, mouth open in an "O". One hand is raised near his cheek, palm open, fingers natural. He is looking toward the chart on the right, not at the camera. Sharp focus, bright key light on his face, real skin texture.

Chart: on the RIGHT half, a bold, simple bar chart of 5 glossy red (#E53935) bars that step down sharply from left to right, the tallest bar on the left and the shortest on the right. A thick red arrow runs diagonally downward along the tops of the bars, ending in an arrowhead at the bottom right. Flat, clean graphic style with a soft glow. No axis labels, no numbers, no gridlines and no legend on the chart.

Text (render exactly once, verbatim, no extra characters): "AWS BILL -60%". Spelled A-W-S, space, B-I-L-L, space, minus sign, 6, 0, percent sign. Heavy, condensed, all-caps sans-serif in bright yellow (#FFD400) with a thick black outline and a slight drop shadow. Placed on the RIGHT half, above the bar chart, the text block filling about one third of the frame height, left-aligned, never overlapping the man's face.

Style: bold, saturated, high-contrast YouTube thumbnail, readable at phone size. Yellow and red pop against the dark background.

Constraints: no other text anywhere, no AWS or Amazon logo, no other logos, no borders, no watermark, no emoji. Keep the bottom-right corner free of key detail (YouTube's timestamp sits there).

Settings: `model="gpt-image-2"`, `size="1536x864"`, `quality="high"`, `n=2`.

[The full answer also shows the filled template table, the Python call, and a one-change-per-turn fix table with a preserve list.]

Page type: paid-traffic landing page. Goal: trial starts. Traffic: Meta ads promising "bookkeeping that files itself". Method: HTML source read locally; load time and the rendered mobile layout were not checked.

| # | Dimension | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Value proposition clarity | 4/5 | Subhead is concrete: "Connect your bank, review once a week, export tax-ready reports in one click." Audience named. |
| 2 | Headline effectiveness | 3/5 | "Bookkeeping that files itself." matches the ad, but step 3 says "Export the report when tax season arrives" and the FAQ says it doesn't replace your accountant. Nothing is filed. |
| 3 | CTA placement, copy, hierarchy | 2/5 | "Start free" is above the fold but links to #pricing; every plan button also points to #pricing, so the trial path loops back to itself. The word "trial" appears nowhere. |
| 4 | Visual hierarchy | 3/5 | Clean sections, good contrast on the mint CTA; the hero visual is a placeholder div. |
| 5 | Trust signals | 2/5 | "Trusted by" strip is five plain-text names. No testimonials, user count or reviews. |
| 6 | Objection handling | 4/5 | FAQ covers accountant, data on cancel, bank coverage, 14-day refund. Missing: bank-access security, setup time, what happens when the trial ends. |
| 7 | Friction | 2/5 | CTAs never leave the page; full nav with 4 links on a paid page. |
| | Overall | 20/35 | |

Quick wins
1. Point every trial CTA at the signup flow, not #pricing. A Meta click that hits "Start free" currently just scrolls.
2. Say "trial" on the button: "Start 14-day free trial", with "No card needed · cancel anytime" under it (only if true).
3. Replace the placeholder hero frame with a real screenshot of the weekly review screen.
4. Remove the nav links on the ad variant. Keep the logo and one CTA.
5. Pull the refund line and "read-only bank access via Plaid/TrueLayer" out of the FAQ and put them under the hero CTA.

Test ideas (from references/experiments.md)
- Headline: ad-exact vs ad-exact + definition. Defining "files itself" raises qualified trial starts and cuts early trial churn.
- CTA text: "Start free" vs "Start 14-day free trial". Naming the trial raises trial-start rate; "Start free" may be pulling people into the Free plan.

Copy alternatives, headline A: "Bookkeeping that files itself. You just check 10 minutes a week." […]