AI Use Case Formats

This data was originally featured in the February 19th, 2024 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS, February 19, 2025: Finding AI Wins, AI Use Case Formats

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

1. Download the PDF versions of the last 8-10 people who engaged with my content on LinkedIn.
2. Feed their profiles to generative AI and infer a synthetic composite customer profile.
3. Write a LinkedIn post.
4. Have AI score the post against the customer profile and tell me what’s good, bad, and missing from my post.
5. 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.

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.