INBOX INSIGHTS, October 9, 2024: AI and Annual Planning, Economic Indicators Part 2 - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: AI and Annual Planning, Economic Indicators Part 2 (10/9) :: View in browser

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Where Does AI Fit Into Annual Planning?

Stop leading with generative AI. Just stop it.

I feel like Susan Powter screaming, “Stop the insanity,” minus the shaved head.

Why do I want you to stop? Because everywhere I turn, we’re talking about AI.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all in with AI. I see the potential. I use it myself. However, it cannot do everything. This is the insanity that I want you to stop.

Just about every day when Chris and I talk to clients and peers, there is a comment about AI. Many times it’s about using AI to solve a problem. When we dig deeper, we often find that it’s not a problem for AI to solve. It’s a human problem, a process problem, or a combination of the two.

So, why can’t you use AI for these problems? You can, but let me step back and give you the full picture.

To get organized, we like to use the Trust Insights TRIPS Framework. This simple framework allows people to organize and score their tasks. When you go through this exercise, you can prioritize which tasks are appropriate to give to generative AI. The next step, once you have your prioritized list of tasks, is to examine the process. Ideally, there should be solid documentation for the process. You should also be able to execute in a consistent manner.

This is where things usually come to a screeching halt. I’ve talked a lot about process development and why it’s important. This is not a new message from me. The challenge that we’re seeing is that the more we dig into these processes, the less they exist.

We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day, keeping our heads above water, trying to survive. We have a lot on our plates. Too much to do, too few hours and resources in which to get it done. We just do it. We don’t think about whether there is a better way to do it. So when we’re asked about the process, the response is cobbled-together pieces.

I’m not knocking survival. It’s important right now. Things need to get done.

What I am saying is that a lack of process is the likely culprit for the lack of efficiency. Layering AI on top isn’t the solution. That said, you can use AI to assist you when you are documenting your process. It can feel confusing and overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be.

Think about generative AI this way. Instead of a solution you just hand everything to, think of it as a great assistant, ready to help. You have to give direction, data, and goals to an assistant. You can do the same with generative AI. But you have to play an active role. You need to stay engaged.

I bring this up today because as you’re in your annual planning, you’re likely thinking about where AI fits in. That’s fantastic, and exactly what you should be thinking about! That said, make sure you have a good handle on the problems you’re solving and the processes needed. A good starting place is the Trust Insights 5P Framework. You can use the 5Ps as a checklist for each initiative.

Stop the insanity of leading with AI as a solution for everything. Take this time as you’re revamping your marketing plans to ensure you have a solid foundation. From there you can experiment and pilot generative AI.

Is generative AI overtaking your planning conversations? Reach out and tell me, or come join the conversation in our free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss using generative AI for strategic planning. You will learn how to leverage AI to translate data into actionable insights, overcoming the common struggle of understanding what to do with your marketing data. You’ll discover how to use AI to identify the “why” behind your marketing results, going beyond simple “what’s working/what’s not” analyses. Finally, you will explore how to utilize AI even if you lack readily available data, uncovering creative ways to gather the information you need for effective strategic planning.

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

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In this week’s Data Diaries, we’re picking up from where we left off last week when it comes to economic indicators. This week, we’ll be using generative AI’s capabilities to help us select and build an economic indicator dashboard.

Generally speaking, leading indicators are more useful for forecasting and prediction than lagging indicators; we covered the difference last week. For the average marketer or business strategist who wants a more accurate crystal ball, leading economic indicators will tend to be more helpful.

First, before you begin, you’ll need to write out a detailed explanation of your company. This should be a plain text file, ideally formatted in Markdown, but regular text is fine too. Here’s a portion of the Trust Insights one, which goes on for several pages:

You will need this to choose economic indicators. You’ll also want to have an ideal customer profile as well, because we especially want to know what economic indicators will impact our customers positively or negatively. Your ICP should contain lots of rich information about your ideal customers, their industries, challenges, etc.

Here’s what your prompt should look like. We’ll use FRED, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, as the example, but you can swap in any publicly available data source like OECD indexes, the EU’s Europa data, etc. You should also use the foundation model of your choice – tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude will all be roughly equally skilled at this task. OpenAI’s o1 model may be slightly better out of the box, but all 3 can be prompted to deliver quality results.

Prime the model:

You’re an economics expert with a specialty in leading economic indicators. What do you know about FRED, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank’s Federal Reserve Economic Database (at fred.stlouisfed.org), especially with regard to data series about leading economic indicators?

Next, provide the model your background information:

Today we want to choose leading economic indicators from FRED for Trust Insights. I’ve attached background information about Trust Insights as well as as Trust Insights’ Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). We want to select economic indicators that will help us predict how macroeconomic conditions will affect our clients as well as us. Choose economic indicators from FRED that are most focused on our business; broad economic indicators are often too general. Based on this information, what 5-10 economic indicators from the St. Louis Reserve Bank’s FRED system would be most useful to our business?

Gemini will return its best guesses; from here, have a conversation with it to refine its results.

Next, in terms of gathering the data, there are two different ways to do this – the low-tech way, and the high-tech way. The low-tech way is manual labor, downloading and copying data from FRED to a central storage location (like a folder on your desktop). The high-tech way is to have an AI write the necessary code to connect to FRED’s APIs automatically and download the data for you, with no additional effort on your part. Choose the approach that aligns best with how you work.

In the next part, we’re going to look at how to use generative AI to analyze the data you get out of FRED.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

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