It’s hard to go anywhere these days without hearing about AI. (Sorry if you’re sick of it, but we’re jumping in on it too!) Because, when push comes to shove, we’re all definitely still wrapping our heads around it. What can we do with it? How should we be using it? Is there a way it can help me? Where does it make sense to work it into my business? And as much as we know AI is going to keep changing (and faster than we can all keep up with), it’s important to know how you can use it right now as a way of setting yourself up to use it in the future—without feeling like the learning curve is impossible. So today, we wanted to do a V1 on answering the question, “How can small businesses use AI?” Think of this as a living blog post—because we’ll have V2and V3 answers as things change!
AI impact on small business
It can definitely be overwhelming when something new hits the scene and you feel like you have to figure it all out—especially when your main focus is running a small business! But instead of being cynical, suspicious, or resistant to AI, we want you to keep an open mind about it because AI’s impact on small business (read: on your small business) can be a really good thing. And that’s mainly because AI is an accelerant and 100% can help you complete certain tasks faster—and by faster we mean faster.
Think about it. What are the things you have to do on a regular basis that you consider to be a time-suck? You can probably come up with at least a handful of tasks you are responsible for that are important to your business but simultaneously feel like a waste of time—those are the things you should be open to exploring how artificial intelligence can help. Things like:
- Writing. All. The. Things
- Analysis
- Repetitive tasks
- Things you’d like to outsource but can’t afford to (yet)
And while there are so many ways for you to think about using this technology to your benefit, let’s focus in on AI for small business marketing next, shall we?
AI for marketing
Ah, marketing. It’s the thing you know you need to do but just feels like a never-ending list of chores. And while we definitely wouldn’t describe it that way—we get it—marketing is something that can eat up a lot of your precious time. Which makes it the perfect problem to fix with the help of technology.
When it comes down to it (and as we see it), there are 3 big ways you can leverage AI marketing:
- Customer insights
- Copywriting
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Customer insights: This is really a fancy way of saying “understanding your customers”. But, when you get past the jargon, better understanding who your customers are is one of the pieces to a strong marketing foundation. Because (moment of truth here) you are not marketing your business for you—you’re marketing your business for them. Which means you have to know what is motivating them to come to you in the first place.
Whether you are a service-based business or one with products, you are sitting on a gold mine of customer insights. Namely, your inquiry emails, reviews, and customer service requests. And we bet you’ve never thought about analyzing them…or maybe you did and decided against it because it was too big a project. Well, now you have the ability to use AI to read through them all and look for the answers you want—so go do that.
Copywriting: The other thing we bet? We bet you pretty much will do whatever it takes to not have to write stuff. And whether you’re avoiding writing anything other than the emails you have to—another moment of truth here—the truth is you’re avoiding a lot of important marketing tasks. You know, those blog posts, social media captions, and pin descriptions—just to name a few.
That’s exactly why we chose an AI copywriter as the first new feature we’d build—because writing is such an unavoidable part of marketing your business in the age of the internet. So now you have access to an AI marketing tool that can help you save tons of time (and brain power) because you’re letting technology take care of the heavy lift—all you need to do is review and revise it to take it from good to great!
SEO: Speaking of “marketing in the age of the internet,” we can’t talk about this without talking about search engine optimization (SEO). And while an AI copywriter can help you create the content you need, there is also the research and optimization part of the puzzle. AI can help you get the wheels spinning with keyword ideas as well as help you complete all those SEO settings you always skip over (which is why we baked writing meta descriptions and suggesting a URL into our blog prompt!).
Quiz lead magnets: These are a great way to collect zero party data from your customers (just another fancy way of saying “understanding your customers”). But even more so, quiz lead magnets help you get to know them better. What are their goals? What do they care about? Where are they struggling? By using a quiz lead magnet, you don’t just collect their name and email but all of their responses and quiz results so you can send specific emails they actually want to read!
Quizzes also drive SEO traffic to your pages. Likely, quizzes are the best lead magnet out there but they can be hard and take time to write. Enter, InteractAI, where—you guessed it—you can use AI to create an entire quiz lead magnet in minutes!
So, to answer the question, “How can I use AI in my business?”
You can use AI in your business however it is going to help you! Don’t force it but do stretch yourself to find a smart way to save yourself time and effort as you keep working to build your business! And, if an AI copywriter sounds like a place you’d like to start, give ours a spin! You can start your 14-day trial here and see how fast it cranks out a blog post for you.
