AI Marketing: The Complete Guide for Small Businesses

Throughout history, we’ve gone through many revolutions that have systematically changed how society functions. The industrial one from the 1800s was one of the most notable, but it wasn’t the only one. While it might be too early to say for sure, it seems we are currently at the beginning of the AI revolution.

Within the last year, we’ve seen AI take over the art industry, become really good at writing, and do a number of other astonishing things. It’s safe to assume that this is only the beginning. While some people fear what’s to come through AI advancement, others fully embrace it. This is particularly true in the business world.

Many large companies are finding new ways to integrate AI with their regular processes, especially in marketing. However, they aren’t the only ones capable of harnessing it. Using AI marketing is possible for small businesses as well, and this complete guide will go over what it is and how you can use it for your emerging company.

How Does AI Improve Marketing?

However, to better understand how the implementation of AI in your marketing strategies can benefit your small business, you need to know how it actually improves marketing processes in general. While AI can’t fully take over any single section of the marketing process, it can vastly improve how these parts operate and the results they achieve.

Analyzes Patterns

One of the best ways to use AI in marketing is to put it to work analyzing data. This is something that companies have been doing to some extent for years, but it’s much more advanced now. Instead of simply compiling data for someone to read and analyze on their own, AI can analyze it for them. While its results might not always be perfect, many companies have found it to be surprisingly effective.

When used well, AI can determine your ideal target market, figure out where they spend the most time, and predict how well your ads will do within those parameters. It does all of this before you spend a single penny in ad revenue. Of course, customers can be unpredictable at times, so you should still do your own market research by figuring out how to narrow and later expand your target market. However, AI will give you a good starting point.

Makes Data More Readable

Even though AI’s ability to make predictions is quite impressive, it still hasn’t gotten to the point where it can make decisions in all areas of marketing. You’ll still need trained professionals to do some of the more complex work.

However, data still fuels those decisions, and that data is the very thing AI excels with. That means you can utilize AI algorithms to put all your company’s information together in a more digestible format. Longs lists of numbers can be difficult to read and interpret. A graph compiled with all your data from the last quarter isn’t. AI is quite good at turning your data into readable charts and diagrams.

In fact, Google has made its newest version of Analytics with this core concept in mind. Many companies are finding new ways to have AI interpret their data, and they’re spreading those tools to the public. All you have to do is use the programs that use them.

Automates Content

As mentioned, AI writers have taken off in the last few months. We’ve seen plenty of examples of programs writing articles so well that we likely would never know that a computer wrote them unless someone tells us. Despite that, these programs still aren’t perfect and can get some things wrong. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they can be insanely useful for your company’s content creation.

With an AI writer, you can create blog posts, social media updates, and customer newsletters in a matter of minutes. These processes would normally take a team of writers much longer to do. Now you can have that same team review the work the AI has created, fix grammatical and factual errors, and tailor it to fit your company’s branding. This will be a much better usage of their time, and it’ll help ensure you have some of the best content on the internet.

Responds to Customers

Not only is AI intelligent in the way that it puts words on a page but also in the way it can respond to real-life people. In the past, programs like chatbots were notorious for never understanding what people were asking and doing more harm than good in the customer’s eyes. However, with the rapid advancement of AI chatbots, most people don’t even recognize that they’re not talking to a human anymore.

This can expand to other parts of your website as well. AI can analyze customer shopping patterns on an individual level and make suggestions for other products based on things they bought or looked at. You can set this up as an AI assistant that people can message like a chatbot, or you can bake it into the very core of your website. Either way, AI will be able to help you increase your sales and customer satisfaction.

How Does AI Marketing Benefit Your Company?

While it might seem a bit obvious at this point, we still want to go more in-depth on how AI marketing can benefit your company. Before making a major shift in how you operate, knowing what kinds of bonuses you should expect from the change is crucial.

Boosts Productivity

One of the biggest pluses of AI marketing is the boost in productivity you’ll achieve. Many people worry about AI taking their jobs, but that’s simply not the case. AI’s main goal is to remove the more tedious parts of a person’s job, allowing them to focus on more pressing matters.

This helps make certain positions much less mind-numbing, which can help employees feel more motivated and productive. Letting AI do monotonous tasks, then taking over once it finishes them will be much more fulfilling.

This is before we even consider how much faster the AI will be at these tedious tasks than a human ever could be. There’s no competition here. The speed of a computer doing the same thing over and over will be significantly faster than a person attempting to do the same thing.

Lessens the Number of Errors

While AI certainly isn’t perfect, it’s hard to deny the fact that it’s much more consistent than people. Human error is a fact of life. While some employees will be less prone to mistakes than others, everyone will mess up once and a while.

AI systems routinely have fewer faults than their human counterparts. Plus, what makes them so great is machine learning algorithms. Even when they mess up, it turns out to be a good thing because the system will learn from the mistake and not make it again. Obviously, people are capable of this too, but they’re much less consistent when it comes to fixing a past mistake.

Increases ROI

In the end, the biggest benefit is the return on investment your company will see. Even though some AI programs might be on the pricier side, the amount of time and money you’ll save due to the increased working speed, better employee productivity, and fewer errors will be worthwhile.

That’s not to mention the boost in sales you’ll likely experience. From AI finding a better target market to learning purchasing patterns for individuals and selling to them accordingly, your company will likely make more money than it has ever seen before. This will help push your small company into an ever-expanding empire in no time. Of course, you’ll still need to play your cards right and make informative decisions, but AI will help make this easier and more consistent.

How Do You Get Started?

Now that you’ve gone through our guide on how small businesses can utilize AI marketing, you just have to find the AI programs that’ll help your company in the areas it needs the most assistance. While allowing AI to take over all aspects of your marketing strategy sounds great, it’ll be quite costly. It’s best to start in one area and see how it goes. Once you see positive results and increase your ROI, you can begin investing in other areas of AI to expand your abilities.

Of course, you could always try developing your own AI program, but this is much more difficult. However, if you have a team capable of doing this, you’ll want to make sure you predefine your goals and objectives before you begin. Creating an AI with no given purpose will almost always be a waste of your time and resources.