Despite the uncertainties surrounding AI, more than 65% of consumers admit that users prefer ChatGPT over search engines when searching online. They also use AI to easily write emails, plan itineraries, understand complex information, and more.

Think about the possibilities AI has for small businesses. It doesn’t need to completely reinvent your existing processes or replace the workforce (contrary to its most feared misconceptions). AI can improve the way you already work.

Whether you're a startup or a small-scale business just starting out, there are many advantages of using AI solutions to optimise your workflows and boost your productivity. Here are reasons why you should consider adapting AI tools for your small business.

6 Ways AI Can Help Small Businesses

Reduced Marketing Costs

Among the best advantages of AI is that it reinforces your firm's entire marketing team. You can set up a full-fledged website within minutes. You can create personalized email campaigns. You can build marketing creatives with contextual content. And all this at a lower cost and at a faster speed!

READ: B2B Online Marketing: How to Do It Right

Administrative Tasks

Focus on driving sales and strategising for growth instead of being bogged down by monotonous admin tasks. AI-based virtual assistants allow you to save valuable time and work on things that truly matter. They can handle repetitive tasks such as scheduling appointments, managing emails, organising files, and more.

Content-Building

While AI tools are not quite 'there' for churning out valuable blog posts, you can use AI to:

• Summarize long-form articles
• Create presentations and company deck
• Generate creative titles and ideas for your blog posts

Basically, think of AI as a sounding board for your ideas. It can help you think creatively and lend your originality to content of any kind, be it blogs, emails and newsletters, videos, whitepapers, eBooks, and more.

Visual Assets

The graphics space is another area where AI shines. Want to create social media graphics without ever touching the Adobe suite? Done. Looking to create personalized backgrounds for your Zoom call? Check. Wish to have instant access to high-quality images for a last-minute marketing campaign? You've got it.

There are specialized AI tools that can help you create visually appealing imagery within minutes and without much effort.

Customer Service

Thanks to online chatbots, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistant connects you to your customers all the time. Automation is the superpower every startup need, which AI made even more seamless and efficient.

Leverage AI to provide instant responses to routine customer inquiries, provide personalised recommendations, and handle basic customer support. This helps you improve your response times and overall customer experience.

READ: 5 Customer Service Recovery Tips Every Biz Should Know

Language Transcription

Language barriers are a major hindrance to small businesses who want to cater to a more “glocal” audience. While it’s great to outsource the work to pro translators, the cost isn’t cheap. Good thing AI tools can help you transcribe your web content into local language.

There are also AI-based transcription services that can help you document meetings, interviews and customer interaction.

Best 3 AI Tools for Your Small Business

1. ChatGPT: For All Your Content Needs

ChatGPT can explain simplify topics, accelerate your research, create contextual content quickly, generate code samples, offer recommendations, and more. With over 100 million users, ChatGPT has taken the AI world by storm.

Top Features:

• A minimalist AI that is easy to use
• Natural language processing for a two-way, meaningful conversation
• Extensive knowledge base across subject areas and expertise

2. DALL·E 2: For All Your Image Creation Tasks

If generating realistic images from a simple description sounds impossible, then you haven’t tries DALL·E 2. No matter how crazy or unreal your description is, this AI-powered tool can provide amazing, original, realistic photos, and artwork within seconds.

Top Features:

• Generating images from a description in natural language

• Making realistic and targeted edits to images
• Creating different variations of an image inspired by the original

3. Lumen5: For All Your Video Creation Ideas

It takes a specialised skill and a lot of time to create and edit videos. Lumen5 is an online video creator that empowers you to create engaging videos on the fly. If you wish to amp up your video content with lesser investment, this AI tool is a must-try.

Top Features:

• Automatically convert blog posts into videos or transform Zoom recordings into clips
• Easy to use with drag-and-drop functionality
• Access to readymade templates with the provision for customizing them
• Repository of million+ premium licensed photos and videos
• Automatically generated captions for videos available

AI Is Every Small Business’ Friend

You can love or hate AI, but you can't ignore the speed, convenience, and productivity it brings to everyday operations. In fact, AI tools are not being used by tech giants alone; small and medium-sized enterprises are turning to AI to gain a competitive edge.

And why not? When integrated within everyday workflows, AI tools can speed up the output turnaround without compromising on innovation. However, AI, like any technology, is not one without any downsides.

When selecting the right tool for your startup, think about how the tool can adapt to help you work smarter (and not the other way around).