How to plan an AI pilot in marketing
A pilot should answer whether a defined workflow becomes more useful, reliable or economical with AI. This framework sets out the decisions a marketing or e-commerce team needs to make before expanding a language-model application.
1. Select one workflow and its owner
Define the input, expected output, frequency and recipient of the work. Examples include classifying support requests, preparing a first product description or summarizing customer feedback. Each has different quality requirements. Give one person responsibility for deciding whether the output is useful.
- Describe the current workflow and its cost in time and rework.
- Identify the decision or action the output supports.
2. Prepare representative evaluation examples
Include ordinary cases, difficult cases and examples that should trigger escalation. Separate the examples used to develop the workflow from those used to evaluate it. Check that the team has permission to use the information and define what may be sent to an external provider.
- Preserve the context required to judge correctness.
- Remove unnecessary personal or confidential information.
3. Define quality before comparing tools
Choose criteria that match the job. A product description may need factual accuracy, approved terminology and complete attributes. A classification task needs an error analysis by category. Evaluate the severity of mistakes alongside the percentage of outputs that look acceptable.
- Write acceptance and rejection examples for reviewers.
- Measure disagreements between reviewers and clarify ambiguous criteria.
4. Count the operating cost of the whole workflow
Include model usage, preparation, integration, retries, review, correction, monitoring and maintenance in the cost calculation. Compare the resulting workflow with the baseline using the same volume and quality threshold. Record which assumptions depend on scale.
- Measure time saved after review and corrections.
- Record failed cases and their recovery cost.
5. Set human review and escalation rules
Decide which results can be used directly, which require approval and which must be rejected. Keep a responsible owner for customer-facing claims and consequential decisions. The handoff should include enough context for a person to act without reconstructing the entire interaction.
- Make escalation and rollback part of the workflow.
- Keep a record of recurring errors for the next evaluation.
6. Make an explicit expansion decision
At the end of the pilot, compare observed results with the original criteria. Expansion may require a larger evaluation set, a narrower scope or better data. A pilot can also show that the current workflow should remain in place. Record the decision and the conditions for reviewing it.
- Separate measured improvements from expected future benefits.
- Re-evaluate material model, prompt or data changes.
Related experience and research
Apply this to your business
A consultation can help turn these questions into a scope, a data request and a sequence of decisions for your team.