Using AI To Grow Your Small Business

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used to boost businesses for a long time, but up until recently it was only affordable for large companies and conglomerates. Now, that’s changed. Today, small businesses can afford to utilize AI as a tool to help them grow, and they should. Here are some practical ways to use AI to grow your small business:

Automate menial tasks to boost productivity.

Administrative tasks take up a lot of time and energy, and they can cost a company a lot of money in the long run. AI can be used to automate administrative tasks like scheduling, generating reports, and tracking workflow throughout the day to save time and money as you grow your small business. This will give your team more time to focus on complex tasks, like generating leads, nurturing relationships, and innovating processes to make your business more efficient.

Analyze customer data.

AI can be used to draw inferences about the behaviors and preferences of your customers to improve your understanding of your target audience. You can have AI analyze large sets of data and pull out patterns such as spending habits, cross-sell opportunities, and target audience psychographics that you can use to enhance your sales and marketing efforts. While humans can do this, AI can do it much faster and more efficiently, saving you money in labor costs.

Improve customer service.

AI customer support can be a great option for businesses that are too small to hire a dedicated customer service team, and it can also be a solid addition to an already existing support team as a company begins to expand. Human customer service attendants are limited to working with one customer at a time and may spend a great deal of that valuable time fielding frequently asked questions. That’s why AI customer service representatives can be a great addition to your team. Chatbots use natural language processing to understand intent and emotional connotation to provide a well-rounded, reactive experience to most requests. This tool can be used to answer questions that have unchanging or uncomplicated answers, leaving you or your customer service team more time to handle more complicated requests. This tool can also allow for quality service around the clock, and can result in happier customers that return for future business.

Enhance cybersecurity.

Hackers have access to AI as well, which is why using AI and machine learning is almost essential for adequate protection. AI can detect threats and respond immediately, limiting damage. AI can also detect anomalies in large sets of data, such as unusual money transfers that might have eluded human detection, to prevent any nefarious activity internally.

Create marketing content.

AI image generation is a powerful tool for marketers, as it allows them to create any image they want at a moment’s notice (instead of hiring a contractor to perform the service at their own pace). This allows teams to experiment with new ideas without committing financially, saving money for small businesses. AI also makes it easier to edit marketing content. You might need to edit out a shadow, convert a horizontal image to a vertical one for an ad on the side of a building, or scan large volumes of advertisements for non-compliant language, all of which can be expeditiously performed by AI. You can even use AI to predict ad performance, lessening the chance of an unsuccessful marketing campaign.

While some see AI as an unfamiliar and even scary innovation that’s beyond their scope of understanding, small businesses can and should utilize it to grow efficiently. Check out our blog for more tips on how to grow small businesses, and stay tuned for more information about how you can use AI to grow and enhance your business.