How do you know if you are tracking the right prompts that will drive ROI? Read more below to find out.
You set up your SightAI dashboard. You picked 20 questions or prompts that your ideal client would type in AI and you’re watching the data roll in.
Here’s an important question: Are you tracking what your buyers actually type?
Because if you’re tracking prompts like “best law firm in Dallas” or “top construction company,” you’re watching the wrong game. Those are vanity prompts. They feel important but they don’t reflect how real buyers actually use AI to research, compare, and shortlist firms.
The prompts you track are the lens through which you see your AI visibility. Choose the wrong lens and everything looks fine or everything looks broken and neither picture is true.
This post will walk you through how to build a better prompt list so your SightAI dashboard is tracking what actually matters.
The shift you need to understand first
Traditional search was about keywords. Someone typed “IP attorney Chicago” into Google and clicked through results.
AI search is different. People talk to it. They describe their situation, their constraints, their goals. They ask for recommendations, not links. They say things like:
- “We’re a mid-size construction firm in Texas looking for a partner to help with OSHA compliance training across three job sites. Who should we talk to?”
- “Our firm is evaluating outside counsel for patent litigation. We need someone with experience in medical devices who’s handled cases in Northern California. Who are the top options?”
- “We’re a 200-person firm that needs help with our marketing. We’ve been doing SEO for years but traffic is declining. What companies specialize in legal marketing?”
These aren’t keywords. They’re conversations. And the prompts you track in SightAI should mirror that reality.
Why most initial prompt lists fall short
When people first set up prompt tracking, they tend to do one of three things:
They go too broad.
Prompts like “best law firm” or “top AEC company” are so generic that the AI response is essentially a Wikipedia page. Nobody actually prompts that way when they’re ready to buy.
They go too branded.
Prompts like “tell me about [your firm name]” are useful for one thing; seeing what AI already knows about you. But they don’t tell you anything about whether you show up when a prospect doesn’t know your name yet. That’s the whole game.
They forget the buyer’s context.
Real buyers include details about their industry, their size, their geography, their problem, and their timeline. Your prompts should too.
A better framework: Think like your buyer, not your marketing team
Here’s how to build a prompt list that turns your SightAI dashboard into something genuinely actionable.
Step 1: Define who’s searching for you
Before writing a single prompt, get clear on your buyer. Not your “target market” in the abstract. The actual person sitting at their desk, opening ChatGPT or Gemini because they need to find a firm like yours.
Ask yourself:
- What’s their role? (CMO, General Counsel, Director of Operations, Owner?)
- What’s their company size and industry?
- What problem just became urgent enough that they’re looking for outside help?
- What do they already know about what they need?
- What are they worried about getting wrong?
Write this down in plain language. Keep it under 100 words. This is your buyer profile, and every prompt you build should come from it.
The more detail you put into your buyer profile, the better the output. If you have documented ICPs, persona research, or keyword data, pull from those. If you don’t, try this quick-start prompt first:
“Visit [your website URL] and infer the most likely buyer. List their role, company size, industry, geography, what problem they’re solving, and what triggered their search. Keep it under 100 words.”
Take that output, clean it up based on what you actually know about your buyers, and then use it as the input for the prompt generator below. You should also make sure that this is in your SightAI dashboard under the audience profile.
Step 2: Let AI generate your prompt list for you
Here’s where it gets good. Instead of guessing what your buyers might type, you can use AI to predict it for you. Take the buyer profile you just wrote and feed it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini with a prompt like this:
Using the buyer profile below, generate 15 realistic search prompts this buyer would use when looking for a provider in this vertical. Base the prompts on the buyer’s responsibilities, goals, constraints, and evaluation criteria. Write each prompt in the natural language this buyer would actually use. Make them specific, not generic. Keep each prompt under 15 words where possible.
Buyer Profile: [paste your buyer profile here]
They are researching partners that are possible options for [your industry/service].
Choose prompts that span key buying stages: discovery, shortlist, comparison, validation, and problem-specific research. For each prompt, note which buying stage it represents.
Why this works:
AI is trained on millions of real conversations. When you give it a specific buyer profile, it’s remarkably good at predicting the kinds of natural-language questions that person would ask. You’re essentially using AI to reverse-engineer AI search behavior which is exactly the kind of prompt list your SightAI dashboard needs.
One important note:
Don’t just copy the output blindly. Read through each generated prompt and ask yourself, “Would my actual buyer say this?” Cut anything that feels too polished, too generic, or too much like marketing-speak. Add your own based on what you hear in real sales conversations. AI gives you a strong starting point. Your experience makes it accurate.
An alternative method to this is to take your Google keyword data, along with AI, to create your prompts. Read more about that here LINK.
Step 3: Make sure your prompts span the full buying journey
Your buyer doesn’t ask one question. They ask several, at different stages. Review your generated list and make sure you have coverage across all of these:
Discovery stage — They know they have a problem but haven’t started evaluating firms yet.
- “What should a mid-size law firm look for when hiring a marketing agency that understands legal?”
- “How are AEC firms improving their online visibility in 2026?”
Shortlist stage — They’re actively looking for options.
- “Who are the top digital marketing companies that work specifically with law firms?”
- “Recommend agencies that specialize in SEO and content for architecture and engineering firms.”
Comparison stage — They have a few names and want to evaluate.
- “Compare [Competitor A] vs [Competitor B] for legal marketing services.”
- “What are the pros and cons of working with a legal marketing agency vs a general B2B agency?”
Validation stage — They’re almost ready to decide and want to confirm.
- “Has anyone had good results working with [your firm] for law firm SEO?”
- “What do clients say about [Competitor] for AEC marketing?”
Problem-specific stage — They’re searching based on a specific pain point, not a category.
- “Our firm’s website traffic dropped 30% this year. Who can help us figure out why and fix it?”
- “We need help getting our construction company to show up when people search for commercial contractors in Phoenix.”
If your AI-generated list skews heavily toward one stage, go back and ask it to fill in the gaps: “Generate 5 more prompts focused specifically on the comparison and validation stages.”
Step 4: Make prompts sound like a human, not a marketer
Read each prompt out loud. Does it sound like something a real person would type into ChatGPT at 9 PM while trying to solve a problem? Or does it sound like a keyword you’d put into Google Ads?
Good prompts are conversational. They include context. They’re specific but not overwrought. They’re usually 10–25 words, sometimes more if the buyer has a complex need.
Bad: “best legal marketing agency” Good: “We’re a 40-attorney firm in Denver that’s never done content marketing. Who should we talk to?”
Bad: “AEC SEO services” Good: “What companies help engineering firms show up in AI search results and Google?”
Step 5: Include competitive and category prompts
Some of the most valuable prompts to track aren’t about you at all. They’re about your category or your competitors. These reveal:
- Whether AI even knows your category exists
- Who AI considers the leaders in your space
- What criteria AI uses to recommend one firm over another
Try prompts like:
- “What factors should I consider when choosing a legal marketing partner?”
- “Who are the emerging companies in AI visibility and GEO for professional services?”
- “What’s the difference between traditional SEO and AI search optimization for law firms?”
When you track these in SightAI, you’re not just watching your own score, you’re watching the playing field.
Step 6: Test your prompts before you commit them
Before locking your prompt list into SightAI, run each one manually in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. Look at what comes back and ask:
- Does AI actually return firm or company recommendations, or does it give generic advice? If it gives generic advice, the prompt is too educational — rewrite it with more commercial intent.
- Do competitors show up? If not, the prompt might be too niche or too oddly worded. Adjust until you see a competitive set.
- Does your firm show up? If yes, great — track it so you can monitor that over time. If no, even better — now you know exactly where to focus your optimization.
This five-minute test saves you from wasting a tracking slot on a prompt that doesn’t produce useful data.
Step 7: Refresh your prompts quarterly
Buyer behavior changes. AI models update. New competitors emerge. The prompts that mattered six months ago might not matter now.
Set a calendar reminder every quarter to review your tracked prompts. Ask:
- Are any of these prompts no longer relevant to how our buyers search?
- Have we added new services or entered new verticals that need coverage?
- Are there competitor names we should be tracking that we weren’t before?
- Are there new prompt patterns we’re seeing in sales conversations?
Your SightAI dashboard is only as smart as the prompts you feed it.
The payoff: A dashboard that tells you the truth
When your prompt list reflects real buyer behavior, your SightAI data stops being a curiosity and becomes a strategy tool. You can see:
- Where you’re winning — which buyer scenarios lead to AI recommending your firm
- Where you’re invisible — which prompts return competitors but not you
- Where the opportunity is — which prompts show weak competition and room to grow
- What’s changing — how your visibility shifts over time as you optimize
That’s the difference between tracking prompts and tracking the right prompts.
Quick-start checklist
Use this to audit your current SightAI prompt list:
- Do at least half your prompts include buyer context (role, industry, company size, or problem)?
- Do your prompts span discovery, shortlist, comparison, and validation stages?
- Do any prompts reflect specific pain points your buyers mention in sales calls?
- Are you tracking at least 2–3 prompts that don’t include your brand name?
- Are you tracking at least 1–2 prompts that include a competitor’s name?
- Do your prompts sound like things a real person would type into ChatGPT?
- Have you tested each prompt manually before adding it to your dashboard?
- Have you updated your prompt list in the last 90 days?
If you answered “no” to more than two of these, it’s time to rebuild your list. Log into your SightAI dashboard and start swapping out the vanity prompts for ones that match how your buyers actually search.
Need help building a better prompt list? Our team can walk you through it. Book a 15-minute SightAI prompt review and we’ll help you dial in the prompts that matter most for your firm.
