One Small Step: Getting Started with AI Doesn't Have to Be a Big Deal

AI Adoption Lessons from My Client Work: Start Small and Build

In recent months, I’ve worked with three very different clients on AI adoption projects: a large education and training company, a fast-growing private California university, and a large regional medical center in a highly competitive market. Despite their differences in size, industry, and budgets, all three faced a common challenge: keeping up with increasing demands for marketing efficiency and innovation while integrating AI strategically. These experiences have reinforced an essential lesson—successful AI adoption doesn’t require a massive investment upfront. Instead, it starts with focused, practical steps that fit into your current workflows and align with your goals.

Here's how I approach AI adoption with my clients:

• Start with an AI adoption survey. I use Typeform to create super simple surveys to help me understand the team’s AI attitudes, use, comfort, and concerns. This gives a strong starting point for future conversations on opportunities and impediments.

• Talk with key stakeholders. Like any other marketing project, it’s critical to hear from the people most impacted by a project or new technology. For my university client, I had separate meetings with the Operations team, the Content team and the Creative team so I could understand the challenges they were facing and how technology was (or wasn’t) helping.

• Visualize the opportunity. After the survey and discovery meetings, I created a Miro board to capture the marketing process, technologies being used and challenges the team was facing. Then, using the trusty robot 🤖 emoji, I identified specific places in the journey where AI could help (see Miro board screen cap in the image slider below).

• Identify the possibilities. Every organization is different, which means every opportunity to effectively use AI will be different. Combining survey results, stakeholder conversations, process challenges and an understanding of the tools in the martech stack, I identify a few specific use cases where you can implement AI to help you meet a specific goal or challenge.

• Try one thing. AI is moving quickly and there’s a feeling that if you don’t do it all – and do it now – you’ll fall hopelessly behind. But AI adoption doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) be an “everything-all-at-once” process. Pick one challenge to address, start small, pilot an AI technology, evaluate the effort, and adjust based on what you learn. Broader success with AI adoption will come from small, focused wins.

• And, finally, start with the tech you’re already paying for. Most martech tools already have AI capability baked in. Before going out to the market to find a new tool, first see if your current tech can do the job.

  • Ask your current tech provider for a demo of their AI capabilities – or ask what’s on their roadmap if they don’t currently offer AI functionality.

  • Review their AI usage guidelines to understand what they’ll do with your data. Share this with your IT and Legal teams for review.

  • Share your specific use case and see if they can help.

  • Ask for free pilots, discounted licenses, etc. Every company is trying to get their AI tech into customers’ hands; take advantage of this.

AI adoption can feel overwhelming, but to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, “Take one small step toward AI adoption and it will turn into a giant leap for your marketing organization.”

Ready to Start Small?

If you're looking to implement AI in your marketing organization, but aren't sure where to start, shoot me an email and let's find a time to talk. We can discuss the best starting point for your organization, create an actionable plan, and integrate AI in ways that deliver real value. 

For a large regional medical center, I delivered a State of AI presentation that helped the Marketing Team understand industry trends and what impact AI will have on their work.

Simple surveys help us quickly understand AI attitudes, usage, aptitude and interest. They act as the foundation for deeper discovery processes that identify specific opportunities for beneficial AI adoption.

Using an interactive tool like Miro helps visualize marketing processes that could benefit from the use of AI. In this graphic, the robot emoji represent opportunities for AI to add value.

Looking at AI adoption through the lens of top marketing challenges helps focus the effort and connect the dots between AI and true business impact.

Putting foundational elements in place like AI policies and councils is a great way to embed ethical, responsible and strategic use of AI into your organization.