The Power of AI for Small Businesses: A Comprehensive Guide
As a small business owner, you may think that AI is only for big companies with huge budgets and vast amounts of data. However, AI has the power to transform how you do business and can help you decrease costs and increase revenue. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the use cases and tools available for small businesses to adopt AI without breaking the bank or requiring an advanced degree in data science.
Understanding AI: A Non-Technical Overview
Before diving into the use cases and tools of AI for small businesses, it is essential to understand what AI is and how it differs from traditional software. AI is an umbrella term that covers many different technologies of varying maturity levels. AI-powered technology has the ability to analyze data at scale and make accurate predictions. AI is different from traditional software in that it can learn and improve on its own through machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of AI, and it’s the technology that gives AI most of its power. An AI tool is trained on data by human specialists, and it learns how to achieve an outcome based on that data. Then, it's turned loose on new data, where it applies what it knows to achieve the outcome on its own. Over time, the AI tool can look at what it did in the past and learn from it, improving its outcomes in the future.
Use Cases for AI in Small Businesses
AI use cases and tools cover areas like product and service delivery, operations, finance, customer service, and marketing and sales. Here are some of the most powerful use cases for AI in small businesses:
Automate Newsletters
AI has the ability to automate newsletters that small businesses send to prospects, customers, or partners. AI can source content from different online sources, then choose which articles to include in your newsletter--automatically. Over time, AI-powered newsletters can learn each recipient's preferences and send them content they're more likely to open and click.
Create Content
Small businesses can use AI-powered content marketing tools to generate natural language that sounds like a human wrote it. AI can write short-form and long-form content for small businesses, including posts, product descriptions, and social posts. AI can also augment your writing by automatically editing your work or suggesting which tone will be most effective in your content.
Predict Ad Performance
AI for advertising can predict the performance of your ads before you even run them. AI tools exist that learn which ads and audiences are most effective. Then, these tools recommend how to structure your ads for maximum results. They'll even make suggestions on what images and words perform best across audiences.
Improve Customer Service
AI chatbots are widely used today to automatically converse with customers looking for service. These bots have gotten so sophisticated that customers often don't know they're not talking to a human. And they make it much easier and cheaper to offer immediate service at scale, even if you only have a small team.
Follow Up with Leads
Conversational AI can also follow up with leads. Today, AI tools can actually follow up with each lead via website chat, text, and email. They can make sure no leads fall through the cracks and have authentic conversations to nurture and qualify them. When the time is right, AI bots then hand off the leads to humans who can carry on the conversation.
Make Accounting Easier
AI can even make small business accounting easier. AI tools exist to answer questions about your accounting data, so you don't have to go digging through spreadsheets. There are also AI tools that can learn over time how to organize and tag your accounting information, automating a common, manual process you might otherwise have to do yourself or hire someone to do.
Get More Insights from Your Data
AI analytics tools can help small businesses better understand the data being generated by their website. These tools can answer common questions about your website data, find insights that humans miss, and even build conversion models for you to better attract new customers.
AI Tools for Small Businesses
While there are plenty of AI tools out there, here are some of the ones that small businesses can easily adopt and afford:
AI for Accounting
Xero: Xero is an accounting software package that uses AI to automate basic accounting tasks and forecast cash flow.
AI for Advertising
AiAdvertising: AiAdvertising is a cloud-based Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS) advertising platform that eliminates guesswork in advertising and connects advertising investments to financial outcomes.
AI for Content Marketing
Frase: Frase is an AI-powered answer bot that responds to site visitor questions with the right piece of content to answer their query. Frase also uses these questions to help you create content that ranks better in search.
Grammarly: Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that automatically corrects your grammar, improves your writing, and offers recommendations on what tone and language to use in your writing.
HyperWrite: HyperWrite is a personal AI writing assistant that actually writes short-form content for you.
Jasper.ai: Jasper.ai is an AI-powered content generation tool that writes social media posts, website copy, and blog posts for you.
AI for Customer Service
Zendesk: Zendesk is a market-leading customer service platform. Among its features, the platform boasts an AI assistant that can answer common customer service questions.
AI for Email Marketing
Rasa.io: With AI from rasa.io, you can create an automated newsletter that is personalized to each individual recipient, which boosts email open rates and engagement.
AI for Sales
Drift: Drift uses conversational AI to accelerate revenue by having personalized conversations with your prospects and customers at the right time.
Exceed.ai: Exceed.ai is a conversational AI marketing platform that helps you engage every lead and set more qualified meetings using authentic two-way email and chat conversations.
How to Get Started with AI for Small Business
Now that you understand the use cases and tools available for small businesses to adopt AI, it's time to get started. Here are four steps to take that can help you quickly find a use case for AI in your business:
Make a list of everything you do.
Give each task a time estimate.
Rank the list.
Prioritize the top three tasks.
Once you have your use cases, you need to research and demo technology. As you find tools, look for free trials and demos, and don't be afraid to ask companies questions about what their AI can do.
The Bottom Line
AI has the power to transform how small businesses operate, decrease costs, and increase revenue. While AI was once accessible only to big companies with huge budgets and vast amounts of data, AI use cases and tools now exist that small teams and modest-sized firms can adopt. Small businesses can use AI to automate newsletters, create content, predict ad performance, improve customer service, follow up with leads, make accounting easier, and get more insights from their data. By prioritizing tasks and researching and demoing technology, small businesses can adopt AI without breaking the bank or requiring an advanced degree in data science.