INBOX INSIGHTS. March 5, 2025: Finding Joy in AI, Deep Research Prompting - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: Finding Joy in AI, Deep Research Prompting (2025-03-05) :: View in browser

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Finding Your Joy in Generative AI

I’ve never been the person who gets excited about new tech just because it’s new tech. When everyone was raving about the latest shiny object, I was thinking, “But does it actually solve a problem I have?” I’m not someone that loves to “tinker” with tech.

Last month, I found myself staring at a pile of seed packets on my kitchen table. I had grand plans for my garden this year, but the thought of manually creating a planting schedule made me want to abandon the whole project. Every seed packet has different but similar instructions. Seeds are temperamental if you get the timing and temperature wrong. I was totally overwhelmed.

That’s when it clicked. What if I used generative AI to create my gardening schedule? Not because I wanted to play with AI, but because I wanted to get to the gardening part faster. I wanted to be outside, with my hands in the dirt, getting things going.

The Problem with Tech Adoption

Most tech demonstrations focus on the technology itself:

“Look at this amazing LLM that can write poetry!”
“See how this AI can generate images from text!”
“Check out the code this model can write!”

That’s all fascinating to tech enthusiasts, but for the rest of us? It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry. No wonder adoption can be slow. I promise, this isn’t an attack on those of you who are tech enthusiasts. I love you all.

The problem isn’t the technology—it’s how we’re introducing it.

Finding Your Meaningful Use Case

What made generative AI click for me wasn’t its technical capabilities—it was how it connected to something I actually care about. The key is identifying where technology can remove friction between you and activities that bring you value or joy:

Identify your friction points. What tasks do you consistently avoid or procrastinate on? These are prime candidates for technological assistance.
Recognize your motivation drivers. What activities energize you? Understanding what pulls you forward can help you find where tech can accelerate your path.
Look for the “necessary but not fulfilling” tasks. These transitional tasks—like my garden planning—are perfect for technological intervention.
Consider your learning style. Some people learn by doing, others by observing. The right tech introduction should match how you naturally process new information.

My AI Gardening Experience

When I used Gemini to create my gardening schedule, I simply:

Uploaded photos of my seed packets
Provided the Old Farmer’s Almanac planting guide based on my zip code
Asked it to create a planting schedule based on my hardiness zone
Requested it to organize everything in a spreadsheet format with reminders

Was it perfect? Nope. I had to make some adjustments. But it saved me hours of research and organization that would have kept me inside instead of where I wanted to be—in my garden.

The tech wasn’t the star. Getting to gardening faster was.

Making Tech Click for Others

If you’re trying to encourage tech adoption, try this approach:

Start with their motivation. Ask: “What’s something you love doing or need to do, but find certain parts tedious?”
Connect the technology to that specific need. Explain: “This tool can handle the tedious part so you can spend more time on what matters to you.”
Make it practical, not theoretical. Show: Don’t explain how AI works—show how it creates more time for what matters.
Focus on results, not features. Emphasize: “You will spend 70% less time on paperwork and more time with clients.”

Finding Your Own Use Case

Here’s a simple exercise I use with my clients:

List five tasks you do regularly but don’t particularly enjoy
For each task, ask: “What would I rather be doing instead?”
Consider: “Could technology handle part or all this task?”
Start small: Pick one task where tech could help, and experiment

If you want to take this exercise to the next level, I’d recommend the Trust Insights TRIPS Framework.

The most powerful tech adoption happens when we stop talking about the technology itself and start focusing on the freedom it creates. Now that I have a schedule for when to start my seeds indoors and outside, I can focus on what really makes me happy. All I have to do is execute the plan and then watch my reap what I sow.

Too corny?

Too bad.

What’s a task that stands between you and something you actually want to be doing? That might be your perfect AI use case. I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Reply to this email to 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 the rise of SEO for AI, also known as Generative AI Optimization. You’ll discover how generative AI is changing the rules of search and what it means for your content strategy. You’ll learn how to use AI tools to uncover hidden insights about your online presence and identify what needs optimization. You’ll understand why high-quality content is still the most important factor and how to adapt your SEO efforts for this new AI-driven era. Tune in to learn practical steps you can take now to optimize for generative AI and stay ahead of the curve!

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

Last time on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Livestream, we did an AMA about generative AI. Catch the episode replay here!

This week on So What? we’ll be tackling SEO for AI and some practical use case tips. Are you following our YouTube channel? If not, click/tap here to follow us!

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In this week’s Data Diaries, we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to AI-enabled deep research:

For manual deep research, there’s Google’s NotebookLM
For automated deep research there’s:
- OpenAI o1 Deep Research (paid)
- Google Gemini 1.5 Deep Research (paid)
- Perplexity Deep Research (paid, but free users get 5 uses per day)
- xAI Deep Search (paid, free users get an unknown but small number of uses per day)
- Deepseek R1 with Search (free, though the web search part is unreliable)

Here’s the catch: all deep research tools use generative AI. Which means all deep research tools still must obey the basic tenets of prompting generative AI tools. What does that mean?

A prompt like:

Write a report on how to optimize a landing page

Is going to net you… well, let’s just say the results will be far from stellar. So how do you write a great prompt for a deep research tool?

Here’s the challenge. Each of the tools operates differently, but using a framework like the Trust Insights 5P framework will generally yield good results.

Purpose: What are you commissioning the deep research for? What’s the point?
People: Who is the deep research for and what are their requirements?
Process: What are the essential components of your deep research? What areas do you want to explore? What time ranges are the data? Almost all deep research tools use chain of thought, so you don’t need to tell it what to do step by step, but you should absolutely focus on what should be allowed or disallowed.
Platform: Which data sources should be allowed or not?
Performance: What’s the final outcome expected to be? How should it be structured?

Here’s an example deep research prompt, the same as before, but structured with the 5Ps. For clarity, I’ve kept the 5P structure exactly; this is exactly what I’d paste into a deep research tool:

Let’s set up our deep research project. You’re an expert researcher in the field of CRO, or conversion rate optimization. Here are the project details:

Purpose: Write a paper on the best practices for building high-converting landing pages in 2025.

People: The audience of the paper is a CRO expert, so do not dumb down, simplify, or reduce extremely technical concepts. Technical language is encouraged.

Process: We want the paper to focus on UI, design, copy, persuasion, writing style, structure, and expert tips and tricks. Use your knowledge to identify all the major topic areas of CRO and landing page optimization.

Platform: Use publications from 2024 and 2025 only; do not use any content earlier than 2024. Focus on marketing and marketing technology publications.

Performance: Be sure the paper is well structured and logical, ordering the categories in the order that a CRO expert would build a landing page.

Using the 5P framework does two things. First, it forces us to think through exactly what we’re asking for. It makes us consider the ways that a deep research tool might go off the rails, from pulling in old knowledge to extracting sources that aren’t credible.

Second, it helps the LLM understand the structure of what we’re asking as well, calling out the discrete parts of the inquiry. When we structure it with the 5Ps, including the 5P headings, the LLM has less ambiguity. It knows who the audience is, what is expected, what success looks like.

As Katie often says, prompting AI is like delegating work to a human. The more clear you can be in your instructions, the better the human or machine will perform. Use the 5Ps to help structure your deep research prompts!

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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Imagine a world where your marketing strategies are supercharged by the most cutting-edge technology available – Generative AI. Generative AI has the potential to save you incredible amounts of time and money, and you have the opportunity to be at the forefront. Get up to speed on using generative AI in your business in a thoughtful way with our workshop offering, Generative AI for Marketers.

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