Over half of small business owners have experienced poor mental health, confessing that running their own business has jeopardised their wellbeing.
However, harnessing AI effectively can significantly alleviate stress, and yield substantial time and cost savings for business owners, with a recent AIPRM survey revealing that one in eight US businesses have saved between $1,000 and $5,000 by replacing simple tasks with AI.
Christoph C. Cemper, an AI expert on behalf of AIPRM, provided his insight on how artificial intelligence can easily act as a crucial tool for entrepreneurs.
Five ways AI can assist your small business
Marketing
Using AI in your marketing strategy doesn’t have to be overly complex, and it’s usually very accessible – with free-to-use tools such as Chat GPT. With over three in five (61%) of marketers now using AI to save time and resources, it’s clear to see how AI can work as a trusty sidekick to assist your natural workflow of content creation, analysing performance and predicting improvements for better engagement.
In fact, a global study by Statista reported that 47% of marketers trust the use of AI for generating target ads, 42% use the tool for personalising content, 33% for optimising subject email lines and 32% for conducting live chat sessions with customers.
Understand consumer behaviour
If you’re just starting out your business, you’ll want to understand your consumer pretty quickly. You can even use AI to develop a personalised customer avatar to target potential customers through AI-based ad tools, such as social media or Google Ads.
Although AI can assist with data-driven approaches, there still needs to be oversight from human beings, and the people maintaining these datasets have to be diverse so that the data sets are also diverse enough to reach a wider audience whilst still targeting your ideal customer.
Competitor analysis
AI can assist in analysing not only your own customer behaviour, but competitor trends, which can be used to adapt your own strategies accordingly.
To do this is actually relatively easy. You can use quick analytic tools such as Hootsuite or Brandwatch to generate reports on your competitor’s social media, engagement and growth, as well as their websites and any industry news sites to identify emerging patterns and trends. This can help you identify any gaps in the market, and leverage any customer feedback and satisfaction.
Product development
Using AI for improving product design, development processes, prototyping and testing lands you with a good chance of a product that’s likely to perform.
You can leverage AI from day one by using market intelligence tools to analyse how similar products are performing on the market and use this to one-up your competitors. Easy to use, free tools such as Figma can also assist in prototyping, which instantly converts concepts into visual product prototypes.
Security
Reports show that small businesses are 3x more likely to be targeted by cybercrime than larger companies, with threats including phishing, malware attacks, social engineering, data theft, and insider threats. 60% of SMEs that suffer cyber attacks also go out of business within six months.
So how can AI help? AI can analyse vast amounts of data in real-time to identify any suspicious patterns or anomalies associated with cyber security threats and block any attempts to cause harm. AI can also scan your systems for any vulnerabilities and manage this accordingly. You can even utilise AI platforms for training up employees on best practices and reducing human error that can lead to vulnerabilities in security.
Joanne is the editor for Workplace Wellbeing Professional and has a keen interest in promoting the safety and wellbeing of the global workforce. After earning a bachelor's degree in English literature and media studies, she taught English in China and Vietnam for two years. Before joining Work Well Pro, Joanne worked as a marketing coordinator for luxury property, where her responsibilities included blog writing, photography, and video creation.
