INBOX INSIGHTS, February 19, 2025: Finding AI Wins, AI Use Case Formats - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

INBOX INSIGHTS: Finding AI Wins, AI Use Case Formats (2025-02-19) :: View in browser

👉 Take our new course, Mastering Prompt Engineering for Marketers!

Finding Your First AI Win

Last week, a member of our community shared something that hit home: “My CMO is pushing us to implement AI, but with our workload and deadlines, finding time to experiment feels impossible. What if we pick the wrong place to start?”

That tension – between the pressure to innovate and the reality of running a marketing department – is something I’m hearing from leaders across our community. Let’s talk about how to find the right starting point that actually makes your life easier, not harder.

What “Easy” Really Means in Marketing AI

One of our clients, a content marketing manager at a B2B tech company, made a discovery that changed her team’s approach. She realized that their first AI project didn’t need to be customer-facing content or complex campaign automation. Instead, they started with something they could confidently evaluate: internal briefing documents.

“We were spending hours creating briefs for our creative team,” she explained. “We knew exactly what good briefs looked like, could easily spot any issues, and had plenty of past examples. It was perfect for testing AI.”

Finding Gold in the Mundane

Another community member, a digital marketing director, shared an approach that revealed surprising opportunities. His team tracked their “productivity thieves”—those marketing tasks that felt like they were always getting in the way of strategic work:

Transforming analytics data into narrative reports
Creating first drafts of social media calendars
Converting technical product specs into marketing bullet points
Summarizing customer feedback into actionable insights
Writing initial outlines for blog posts and whitepapers

Let’s look at how one team turned these insights into action using our 5P Framework.

A Real Marketing Team’s First AI Win

A marketing team at a mid-sized SaaS company was buried in monthly reporting. Every month, they spent days pulling data from multiple platforms and crafting it into meaningful narratives for stakeholders. Here’s how they approached their first AI implementation:

Purpose

They needed to reduce report creation time without sacrificing insight quality. The goal wasn’t to automate the entire process, but to speed up the first draft while maintaining their analytical rigor.

People

The marketing analysts on the team were:

Skilled at interpreting data
Confident in spotting numerical errors
Ready to try something new
Clear about what made a good report

Process

They started small—using AI to help with just the executive summary section. They created a simple prompt template:

“Analyze the following marketing metrics for [Month Year]:

[pasted metrics]

Create an executive summary that:

Highlights key changes from last month
Explains significant trends
Suggests potential factors influencing changes

Use a professional but conversational tone.”

Platform

They chose a tool that:

Could handle data and narrative together
Integrated with their existing workflow
Had strong privacy features for sensitive data
Fit within their existing tool budget

Performance

The results after one month:

Report creation time reduced by 6 hours
Consistency improved across different team members
Stakeholder feedback remained positive
Team had more time for deep analysis

Red Flags: When a Task Isn’t Ready for AI

Through our community’s experiences, we have identified warning signs that a task might not be the right starting point:

No clear quality criteria – if you can’t quickly determine whether the output is good, start elsewhere
High strategic risk – avoid starting with tasks that are directly tied to revenue or major stakeholder relationships
Complex approval processes – tasks requiring multiple reviewers are harder to iterate quickly
No existing examples – AI works best when you can show it what “good” looks like

Your Next Step: The Marketing Task Audit

For the next 24 hours, notice which marketing tasks make you think:

“This basic work is keeping me from strategic thinking.”

“I do this repetitive task every week/month.”

“I know exactly what success looks like here.”

“Any mistakes would be easy to catch and fix.”

These are your potential first AI projects—tasks where you can build confidence while reclaiming time for strategic work.

Making the Case to Leadership

Once you’ve identified your starting point, frame it in terms of concrete business impact:

“We’re starting with our monthly reporting process because:

We can measure time saved precisely
Quality is easily verifiable
Risk is minimal
Success here unlocks strategic thinking time
ROI will be clear within one month”

Remember, you’re not just looking for an easy win – you’re building a foundation for strategic AI implementation while solving real problems in your marketing workflow.

What repetitive marketing task is consuming too much of your team’s time? Let’s discuss whether it might be your perfect starting point. I’d love to hear about your experience and what you’ve learned in the process.

Reply to this email to tell me, or come join the conversation in our free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

Do you have a colleague or friend who needs this newsletter? Send them this link to help them get their own copy:

https://www.trustinsights.ai/newsletter

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss deconstructing AI use cases. You will learn how to cut through the hype and understand how to truly use AI to solve real problems. You’ll discover a practical framework to break down complex AI initiatives into manageable steps. This episode will show you how to avoid common pitfalls and ensure your AI projects deliver measurable results. Watch this episode to gain actionable insights and start making AI work for you today!

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

Last time on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Livestream, we covered using generative AI reasoning models to build a skills matrix assessment. Catch the episode replay here!

This week on So What? we’ll be deconstructing an AI use case live. Are you following our YouTube channel? If not, click/tap here to follow us!

Here’s some of our content from recent days that you might have missed. If you read something and enjoy it, please share it with a friend or colleague!

Take your skills to the next level with our premium courses.

Get skilled up with an assortment of our free, on-demand classes.

You could be reaching 32k+ marketers, analysts, data scientists, and executives directly with your ad. Want to learn more? Reach out and contact us.

In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s talk about the ingredients for a good use case. To be clear, a use case isn’t the same as a case study – a case study tells you what happened, whereas a use case tells you what’s going to happen if it’s built correctly.

There’s no shortage of use case templates, but one of the easiest to wrap our heads around is the humble recipe, the same one you see in cookbooks, cooking shows, etc. Why? Because most people understand what a recipe is, what it does, and how to use it.

A recipe has a lot in common with the Trust Insights 5P Framework. There’s a purpose – a reason we’re making the recipe. There’s a performance measure – the finished dish. (Even if it looks like it should be on Nailed It) And then there’s the people – who’s cooking and their skills, what they’re cooking with (platform), and the recipe they’re following (process).

When we think about AI use cases, if we approach them with this framework, it’s much easier to understand how to put them together, how to package them so that people understand what we’re trying to express. Let’s say our AI use cases is to improve the content we post on LinkedIn. We could have some long-winded, HBR-style brain dump, or we could make something like this:

Improving LinkedIn Content With AI

Purpose: As a content marketer, I want to create more engaging content on LinkedIn so that my posts are seen by more people.

Performance: LinkedIn posts that exceed 500 views per post.

People: I’m the one doing the work, but I want to focus on the last 8-10 people who engaged with my LinkedIn content.

Platform: For me, Google Gemini 2 Flash Thinking.

Process: Here’s the basic recipe.

Ingredients

LinkedIn Profile PDFs
Customer persona prompt
LinkedIn post draft

Appliances

Generative AI reasoning model (ChatGPT o1, Gemini 2 Flash Thinking, Deepseek R1)

Directions

Download the PDF versions of the last 8-10 people who engaged with my content on LinkedIn.
Feed their profiles to generative AI and infer a synthetic composite customer profile.
Write a LinkedIn post.
Have AI score the post against the customer profile and tell me what’s good, bad, and missing from my post.
Accept the corrections and publish the post.

This recipe takes what could be a very long-winded explanation and boils it down to something that we can easily understand, a clear use case for generative AI that has a defined purpose, a clear outcome that can be measured, and how to accomplish it.

When you’re presenting use cases to managers, peers, subordinates, or partners, consider something as simple as a recipe format. Many people understand it intuitively, and can follow along, if not execute it entirely themselves.

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

Are you a member of our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 3000+ like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today. Members also receive sneak peeks of upcoming data, credible third-party studies we find and like, and much more. Join today!

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.

Workshops: Offer the Generative AI for Marketers half and full day workshops at your company. These hands-on sessions are packed with exercises, resources and practical tips that you can implement immediately.

👉 Click/tap here to book a workshop

Where can you find Trust Insights face-to-face?

Social Media Marketing World, San Diego, March 2025
Women in Data Science, WPI, Worcester, MA, March 5
TraceOne, Miami, April 2025
Content Jam, Chicago, April 2025
SMPS, Washington DC, May 2025
SMPS, Columbus, August 2025
SMPS, West Coast, Fall 2025

Going to a conference we should know about? Reach out!

Want some private training at your company? Ask us!

First and most obvious – if you want to talk to us about something specific, especially something we can help with, hit up our contact form.

Where do you spend your time online? Chances are, we’re there too, and would enjoy sharing with you. Here’s where we are – see you there?

Read our disclosures statement for more details, but we’re also compensated by our partners if you buy something through us.

Your ad for your product or service could have been here. It could have reached over 30,000 analytically-minded marketers and business professionals.

Well, there’s always next week’s issue. Want to be in it? Contact us for INBOX INSIGHTS sponsorship options.

Some events and partners have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, Trust Insights receives financial compensation for promoting them. Read our full disclosures statement on our website .

Thanks for subscribing and supporting us. Let us know if you want to see something different or have any feedback for us!

Need help with your marketing AI and analytics?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter

Pin It on Pinterest