When many of us hear how artificial intelligence will change the world, especially digital marketing, our thoughts (and sometimes fears) shift to how large organizations will use machines to do the work of legions of copywriters, designers and other content creators.
Large corporations with equally large customer bases and competitively driven content needs are looking to sophisticated AI systems to generate content and process and analyze data to stay ahead.
But the opportunities offered by AI aren’t just for grown-ups.
In fact, small local businesses with fewer resources and often less time can benefit from some of the innovative AI solutions to save time and costs.
A particularly difficult aspect of running a small business these days is keeping up with the often overwhelming demands of digital marketing, which can be a full-time job in itself.
Maintaining a rich, current and relevant digital presence and enabling increasingly savvy customers to engage with your business across multiple channels is necessary for businesses hoping to grow.
Again, how does a small business owner keep up with the growing demands in an area they may not be comfortable with?
Enter AI as your virtual digital marketing assistant.
How Can AI Support Small Business Marketing?
AI can take many forms, but when it comes to marketing applications, the popular application today is generative AI.
AI engines, such as ChatGPT, are called large language models, which are effectively AI algorithms that have been trained on massive sets of data or content to understand, summarize, and generate new content when prompted.
As such, AI can quickly and effectively produce content on virtually any topic covered in the dataset it has been trained on.
Website, blog and social content
The first natural application of AI writing tools for small businesses is creating educational, informative, or otherwise useful content that can be consumed by your website visitors, social followers, and search engines .
Content is still king when it comes to establishing online authority, and one way to differentiate yourself from your competition is to create more and better content that your audience wants to read, like and share.
We’ve established that AI can generate content on any topic you want, and for most local small businesses, the needs of their customers are relatively consistent.
The key to quality and compelling AI-generated content is the quality of the notice provided.
A well-structured request can produce a blog post, how-to article, FAQ section, web page, or social media post, all of which may require only minor changes and customization to be ready for the your audience
If not, you can ask the AI again for a better version and over time it will continue to learn and produce better and more relevant content.
However, to be clear, you shouldn’t skip the step of reviewing and editing your content to make sure it’s unique.
AI is notorious for “hallucinating”, which is a fancy way of saying that AI has a habit of being inaccurate at times, so all work should be checked for accuracy .
It is also vitally important to ensure that the final product is humanized, as sometimes the text can appear awkward or formal. You should also make sure the content reflects your brand and is yours by adding your unique signature, whether that’s inserting your anecdotal point of view, tone, or links to other relevant content you’ve produced or curated.
Direct communication with the client
In addition to content that companies create for mass sharing via sites or social networks, there are direct-to-consumer campaigns designed to promote, educate or inform.
Although they can be short, in the form of emails or SMS messages, it still takes time to develop campaign ideas and deliver the resulting content to your target audience. AI can help with both stages of the process.
First, the AI can be asked to provide a list of topics or ideas that a campaign can be based on.
For example, I asked ChatGPT to “Give me a list of promotions that a small local plumbing business could do to increase revenue…”
To which the AI Virtual Marketing Assistant quickly responded with this short list of suggestions:
“Certainly! Here are some promotions that a small local plumbing business can do to increase revenue:
Seasonal Maintenance Package: Offers a discounted package for seasonal plumbing maintenance services such as drain cleaning, water heater inspection or leak detection. Promote this package during specific times of the year when homeowners tend to focus on home maintenance. New Customer Discount Loyalty Rewards Programs Bundle Packages Refer-a-Friend Program Limited Time Offers Exclusive Social Offers Senior/Military Discounts Maintenance Plan Subscriptions Member Discounts
Remember to advertise your promotions through multiple channels, including your website, social media, local advertising and direct mail, to ensure maximum visibility and reach. Monitor the effectiveness of each promotion and adjust your strategies based on customer response and revenue growth.”
AI can then be asked again to suggest the message itself. A well-structured lead for a marketing message may consider one or all of the following:
Message Type: Promotion, announcement, invitation, greeting, thank you, educational, informative, etc.
Services or Products to be mentioned: For the appropriate message types.
Specific words to include: Featured offers, discounts, specials, etc.
Specific words to exclude: Competitors’ names, unwanted alternative product references.
Demographic targeting information: gender, age, marital status, etc.
Writing tone: Conversational, friendly, informative, professional, welcoming, witty, etc.
Perspective of writing: first or third person.
As noted, the more detailed the message provided to the AI, the more accurate and effective the response generated.
SEO and paid search
AI is at the heart of SEO, as AI algorithms have been driving Google and other search engines for years.
So why not leverage the same technology to save a few steps in creating the structured content that search engines are looking for?
For those small business owners or employees with the time and know-how to take website matters into their own hands, Generative AI for SEO can be used to do keyword and content research, create page titles , meta descriptions or more advanced aspects of the site. optimization
Not surprisingly, AI is already built into many paid advertising platforms and is central to services like Google Adswith content that is automatically recommended or created based on existing content and/or past performance.
Advertisers large and small benefit from the combined knowledge of each other’s campaigns.
Website support
Website chatbots have been around for a while now. However, AI is opening the door to a new level of chatbot, which will be able to interact more seamlessly with your website visitors and more precisely extract the information they are looking for.
Just as AI LLMs are trained to search and interpret large volumes of content on the web, they can also be trained to catalog your little corner, which is your website that contains all the important details about your products , services and business practices.
If site visitors encounter roadblocks or ask questions the bot hasn’t been trained on or doesn’t have the content to answer, intelligent systems will allow customers to forward their questions through other channels, such as SMS or e-mail.
Future thinking
AI-generated text-based content is only the tip of the iceberg, as we are already seeing photorealistic images produced by systems such as DALL-E2 i half way based on plain language prompts, while large-scale video is not far behind.
Here, too, the potential for creating engaging business content is real.
Beyond content, AI holds the promise of automating content personalization and optimization so the right content is delivered to the right people at the right time, which has long been the modus operandi of Google.
Except now, it won’t just be Google and the search engines that can provide this level of personalized content. Open source AI solutions are opening that door for everyone.
Solutions like predictive analytics will allow small business marketers to stay ahead of the game by building on and automating tactics that have worked before and ignoring those that haven’t.
But… AI is just a tool
Now, as much potential as AI has to offer in terms of saving time in content creation, it should by no means be seen as a complete replacement for human writers or editors.
Since AI-generated content is based on content that has already been created, there is definitely a risk of a lot of sameness occurring as some creators publish this content verbatim.
A recent article in the Washington Post rightly points out:
“Experts say that even advanced artificial intelligence can’t match a human’s writing skills: it has no personal voice or style, and often produces incorrect, nonsensical or biased answers. But for many companies , cost reduction is worth a drop in quality.”
That’s not what your audience or Google want to hear. It will become increasingly important to take what AI has to offer and build upon it, adding your own unique voice, perspective and anecdotal spin.
Google remains committed to its EEAT (Experience, Experience, Authority, Trust) principles as primary content ranking factors. EEAT is what small business owners need to add to what AI can provide as a starting point.
In conclusion
AI-powered digital marketing offers great opportunities for local small businesses to improve their online presence by producing rich and relevant content, improving customer experience and generating more leads.
However, to reap the benefits of this revolutionary technology, companies must understand their challenges, set measurable goals, develop strategies, and continuously monitor and optimize their performance.
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Featured Image: Gearstd/Shutterstock
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