Five ways generative AI can grow your business

By now, you’ve probably seen all the headlines about artificial intelligence (aka AI). But did you know AI can actually make your life as a small business owner wayyy easier? 👀  

Read on to learn all about generative AI, how it’s changing the game for small businesses, and how you can use this technology to grow your business. Let’s go! 

Defining generative AI

Generative AI can automatically create content like text, images, and even video. These pieces of software train themselves by analyzing data and recognizing patterns, which is how they’re able to generate content. You give them a prompt, they create something brand new. Ta-da!

AI has existed for quite some time. It’s helped power virtual assistants, chatbots, and video game NPCs for decades. 

As we all know, it’s recently made some huge leaps, though. It’s becoming more and more difficult to tell the difference between AI-generated content and content created by humans (...quick, grab the CAPTCHA). Here are some examples of the most well-known generative AI software:

• ChatGPT
• Google Bard
• Microsoft Bing AI
• DALL-E
• Wombo Dream
• ZMO.AI

Five ways AI is changing small business

Generative AI is impacting many aspects of life, including small business. From AI customer service to AI marketing, generative artificial intelligence is set to change the game for small businesses. 

According to Authority Hacker, AI can boost your efficiency by acting as your very own personal assistant, automating tasks like email responses and document summarization. In other words, it can take a lot of things off your plate.

Additionally, generative AI can help you take care of your marketing efforts by assisting in content creation and keyword research for search engine optimization (SEO) that’ll help you get the word out about your business. 

AI also applies to product creation, aiding in coding tasks and facilitating design experimentation. Plus, generative AI can improve customer service by connecting customers with the right agents through contact centre AI and streamlining processes like product returns. 

As generative AI continues to evolve, small businesses can leverage its potential to optimize their operations and enhance the customer experience. Let us explain. 

1. Personal assistant

One of the most valuable use cases of generative AI for small business owners is as a personal assistant. Generative AI can help you craft the perfect response to an email, summarize documents or presentations, plan your week, schedule meetings, and set reminders. By automating these tasks, generative AI can significantly improve operational efficiency for small businesses.

Most generative AI tools are designed to learn from your questions, responses, and needs to personalize their assistance. This can include adapting to your tone of voice or recalling previous interactions. These solutions are often integrated with the software you already use in the workplace. For example, ChatGPT for Google Sheets integrations can help you automate workflows and auto-populate spreadsheets. 

At the moment, generative AI isn’t reliable enough to be used in every aspect of your business. For example, you could ask one for advice on how to register a small business (or just check out our article on it *wink wink*), but there’s no guarantee the advice would be accurate.

Unfortunately, AI can make false statements. In order to sound more natural (and, uh, not robotic), AI might make stuff up. An example of this would be citing an article as evidence… when the article actually doesn’t exist. That said, AI still has great potential to assist small businesses when used appropriately.

2. New ways of marketing

If you want to grow your business, you’ll need to spread the word about it! And for that,  you’ll need well-executed marketing, which is where generative AI can help! You may even be able to achieve results that once would have required a huge marketing budget (...don’t tell that to our boss.)

Online marketing content performs well when written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Your customers are more likely to find you on Google if your copy contains certain keywords and phrases. 

Generative AI can assist you in your keyword research. Simply ask Google Bard, for instance, what the most searched terms in your industry are. Or you could ask ChatGPT to outline a content marketing strategy for your company. AI can help guide you along the right path and save time spent on research and planning. 

The same can be said for copywriting. You can use generative AI to write social media content (more on that later!) or blog posts. You’ll still need a professional writer to check for accuracy and make it usable, though.

3. AI product creation

If your business builds digital products, then generative AI is a useful tool. You can prompt generative AI to write code, or translate one programming language to another. The results that current AI generates can vary. It’s not going to be able to write a whole software suite for you, but it can assist with coding tasks.

Generative AI is also useful for small businesses that create physical products. Image generation can help you try out designs at little to no cost. It may even be a source of inspiration if you’re in the fashion industry. You can ask the AI image generator to make changes to existing images or help you envision what that blue dress looks like in yellow, for example.

4. Improved customer service

Customers are already used to AI chatbots, both online and off. 

These kinds of AI systems have helped businesses improve efficiency and save money. However, they're not very good at helping customers with anything other than the simplest of queries—they’re basically supposed to act like an interactive FAQ. They've been programmed with responses that trigger when they detect certain keywords or phrases.

The good news is: generative AI can do more! With those older systems we mentioned, customers can tell they’re dealing with a machine. Generative AI chatbots can fool us into thinking we’re talking with a human—although that should never be the intention. You should be upfront if you’re going to use this technology. The benefit of using generative AI is that customers will feel more at ease interacting with it, because conversations will evolve more organically.

Small businesses can implement a chatbot on their website to field common customer queries and save valuable human employee time for crafting personalized responses to more complex questions.

5. Social media matters

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to get the word out about your business to a wide audience. The difficulty comes in creating content that appeals to your target customer….that’s where AI can be of assistance.

Generative AI isn’t quite there yet when it comes to creating usable video content. The results can be engaging but are often… bizarre. 

However, image generation is constantly improving. For a platform like Instagram, generative AI can be useful—you can create eye-catching photo realistic images. This one was made with ZMO.AI’s image generator. They allow you to create images that are free for commercial use.

You can use these images for social media content, or edit them for other marketing purposes. You can, for example, add text or use elements of the image in product advertising on social media. You can also ask generative AI to give you different options for social media posts to help you brainstorm. 

Keep in mind, you’ll need to practice using prompts to get usable images for marketing purposes.

What part should generative AI play in your business?

For small businesses, generative AI works best as a personal assistant, helping you with content marketing, research, copywriting, coding, and more. Say you’re struggling to write your business plan’s executive summary. You can ask an AI to take a stab at it for you, or use it to help you get started. Make sure to proofread it and edit it as necessary, though!

You can also utilize generative AI for creating a website policy template for yourl business that outlines your privacy policy or terms and conditions. That way, you can easily generate a draft and then review and customize it to ensure it aligns with your specific needs and legal requirements.

Find out what AI can do for your business 

And there you have it! Five awesome ways generative AI can help your business grow.

Keep in mind, generative AI is still an evolving technology. Because of this, it comes with many uncertainties, including the regulatory response from governments. They see the economic potential of AI, but are concerned about its effect on (human) employment, the spread of disinformation, and the amount of legislation it needs.

Still, you shouldn’t put generative AI on the back burner. Who knows, your competition could already be making the most of this technology. 👀  Why not get out there and see what AI can do for your business?