Until a few years back, AI and its use were limited to big corporations with huge budgets.
However, the strides of AI have changed. It is now easily accessible to small businesses at cost-effective rates.
According to a survey, 75% of the small businesses in the US are already using AI tools. Yet, even today, there is much more talk rather than practical implementation when it comes to leveraging AI in different capacities.
Maybe AI will remain mysterious for a long time. However, if you are wondering about the uses of AI for a small business, this blog post is a must-read for you.
It discusses different AI use cases for a small business and also introduces top AI tools to leverage.
Ready to get started? Let’s dive right in.
How AI can help small businesses?
Artificial Intelligence can transform the way you do business. From increasing efficiency to reducing time to streamlining operations- small businesses can benefit greatly from implementing AI in their business functions.
Let’s explore a few definite ways AI can be helpful to your business:
- AI can help in automating the repetitive manual tasks.
- AI can help in increasing the efficiency of a business function.
- AI can be used to analyze data and patterns from large documents.
- AI can enhance the efficiency of your operations.
- AI can help in reducing the dependency on people.
- AI can help reduce costs and enhance productivity.
- AI can help in conducting thorough market research.
Now, implementing AI is not difficult. All you need is a business challenge that can benefit from using AI.
How to use AI for your small business
Here are 7 different ways you could start using AI in your business.
1. Business planning
Business planning is quintessential for any business, be it new or established. However, conducting extensive research, analysis, and creating documents manually can be extremely time-consuming.
AI tools can simplify this process to a large extent by helping you prepare business plans, financial forecasts, and investor pitches.
For instance, depending on an AI business plan generator, you can whip out actionable business plans in less than an hour. This is only possible because of AI assistance that can write the contents of your business plan effectively in your desired tone.
Without AI it can take up to a few weeks to complete a business plan and other planning documents. However, even then they may lack an accuracy mark.
So it is better to use AI and focus your energies on important business aspects and strategy implementation.
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2. Content creation
AI tools can strengthen your content game by generating a variety of long-form and short-form content. From blog posts to landing pages, emails, newsletters, social media posts, and product descriptions—name it and AI can write it.
If you are looking for AI tools that can create content in natural language (human-like content), Chat GPT, Google Bard, and Jasper make a great choice.
Further, you can use AI tools to generate new images and videos, as well. For instance, Dall-E is an excellent AI tool that generates realistic images based on your prompts. Such tools are quite cost-effective and require a minimum learning curve.
3. Sales and marketing
Small businesses can use AI to increase sales, customer satisfaction, and the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.
To begin with, you can deliver a personalized customer experience by using AI to analyze the customers’ preferences and future trends. Additionally, AI models can be used to increase lead engagement and conversions.
For instance, NLP-trained AI bots can engage with the leads using natural conversation and can effectively direct them to humans for final conversion.
Additionally, AI can also be used to predict the performance of your ads. It offers insight as to what will work and what won’t, thereby helping you tailor your strategies accordingly.
Lastly, AI can be used to identify hidden opportunities in the data, foster decision-making, and save time.
4. Project management
AI in project management can be used to automate manual tasks like data collection, tracking, and reporting which are extremely time-consuming and monotonous.
From scheduling a meeting to managing timelines, streamlining communication, and transferring data- everything can be automated with AI tools powered by Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.
Automating these operations can save considerable time for your employees allowing them to focus on rather important tasks.
Additionally, you can use AI to increase the success rate of your projects. Modern AI tools can anticipate the risks and offer a mitigating strategy to overcome those risks. This will help you overcome the problems much before they turn into a huge rubble.
5. Customer service
Small businesses can implement AI platforms to streamline and enhance their customer service. It is now possible to extend your support services for after-work hours allowing your brand to be more accessible.
Let’s start with the most common AI for customer service- chatbots. AI bots can resolve common queries by offering accurate and satisfactory solutions to the customer. This will help your support team to focus more on complex queries in the pipeline.
Most of these AI tools are powered by NLPs and can offer answers in the natural language, thereby increasing the satisfaction of your customer.
Additionally, you can integrate your AI tool with CRM to capture customer interactions and analyze customer sentiment. Doing so can help in gathering insights to enhance your product and service offerings.
6. Accounting
Small businesses can streamline their accounting functions and strengthen financial planning by incorporating AI technologies into their business processes.
AI in bookkeeping can be used to automate repetitive tasks, nullify data entry errors, and manage complex processes relating to payables and receivables.
However, that’s not it. The possible benefits of incorporating Artificial Intelligence tools are endless.
For instance, Natural Language Processing(NLP) is a type of AI technology that can accurately analyze large financial documents to generate instant insightful reports that would otherwise take days to complete.
Another AI technology, Machine Learning(ML) can detect fraud and irregularities in the financial processes much earlier to help businesses make informed decisions.
Well, as we said, the use of AI in accounting is indeed extensive. Whether you implement AI to automate bookkeeping or to perform advanced predictive analysis benefits are inevitable for your small business.
7. Boost efficiency
AI can be used to automate mundane and repetitive tasks so that you can direct your efficiency towards important matters.
Small businesses can begin by identifying the top 3 time-consuming business functions. They can then identify opportunities to implement AI in retrospect to save time and resources.
For instance, if data analysis is an important business function taking up a lot of time, you can implement AI to make quick analysis and predictive forecasts.
This will help in bringing down the time taken to finish the manual tasks.
AI toolbox for your small business
Small businesses can benefit from a variety of AI tools that can help with different business functions like marketing, sales, content, business planning, and much more.
Let’s explore these top 11 AI tools for small businesses:
- Upmetrics: A business planning tool with AI functionalities to write business plans, make financial forecasts, and prepare pitch decks.
- Click Up: Cloud-based project management tool to prepare click-up docs, marketing emails, and new tasks.
- Jasper AI: AI-powered content creation tool helping you generate different forms of textual content.
- Zoho Zia: Sales tool with an AI assistant to automate lead management, customer support, and business performance reports.
- GrammarlyGO: AI personal assistant acting on text prompts to brainstorm content ideas, prepare outlines, and much more.
- ChatSpot by Hubspot: AI-powered sales and marketing tool for small businesses.
- Dall. E 2: An open Generative AI tool that creates realistic images and art using text-based prompts.
- Manatal: AI recruitment software to simplify the hiring process.
- Motion: AI calendar app to build your schedule and to-do lists.
- Lumen5: AI-powered video editing platform that will turn any content into engaging videos.
- OtterAI: AI meeting assistant to transcribe the interviews and summarize the meeting.
These tools are quite affordable making it possible for small businesses to benefit from AI without spending a fortune.
Getting started with AI
Leveraging AI has become easier with easy accessibility to AI tools. However, as a starting point, you can incorporate AI in the most demanding business areas before you scale it to other levels.
Considering that you are still emerging, you can benefit greatly by incorporating AI into your business planning. After all, a strong foundation and a roadmap will eventually weave the success story of your business.
So take the first step and use Upmetrics if you want to plan and grow your business effectively.
