Running a small business is challenging. You have to juggle financial responsibility, employee management, inventory orders and product and service development. This requires great concentration and excellent time management skills.
Some small business owners are using artificial intelligence (AI) to offload some of these tasks. An estimated 48% of small businesses are already using AI to support their business.
Here are some practical applications where AI could help you manage your daily tasks.
1. Writing blogs and social media posts
Many small businesses need a strong online presence to stand out. However, not every business owner has the time to write search engine optimized blog posts or wants to regularly post on social media.
AI can do both of these tasks pretty well if you feed it the right information. Recent data shows that companies can save 25 to 74% time when they use AI in content creation. Using ChatGPT, Claude, or Microsoft Copilot, you can quickly create posts for your blog or social media accounts, then edit them to fit your company’s tone and voice.
2. AI Accounting Analysis
Even if you don’t know much about AI, you’ve probably already used some artificial intelligence features in your favorite accounting software. For example, QuickBooks Online can look at all your business transactions and recommend categories for your expenses.
And many accounting software products extend their AI capabilities even further by offering financial forecasting. The software uses AI to analyze your expenses and income and can forecast your cash flow up to 30 to 90 days in advance. This can be helpful for business owners who have a hard time visualizing how their business expenses and product sales will balance out in the coming months.
3. Use a chatbot on your website
While chatbots are nothing new, recent advances in AI have made them significantly more effective. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says small businesses are using AI chatbots to provide online customers with 24/7 customer service, facilitate sales leads, and answer frequently asked customer questions.
Depending on your needs and your company’s technical capabilities, you can build your own bot based on an existing platform like ChatGPT or Copilot, or integrate an existing bot through a customer service platform like Zendesk.
Research from Dashly shows that bots have a sales conversion rate three times higher than online forms, and 50% of customers say they enjoy using a chatbot.
4. Customer relationship management
Many popular customer relationship management software programs have implemented AI to help small businesses. New AI features range from creating personalized email marketing campaigns to using customer metrics to predict sales revenue.
The great thing about integrating AI tools into your CRM is that you don’t need to know much about artificial intelligence to use it. Many popular CRMs like HubSpot, Freshworks, and Salesforce have already integrated AI features into their platforms.
Your competitors are probably using AI
Not all AI tools will be useful to you and your team, but it’s a good idea to test out some artificial intelligence services, as your competition is probably doing the same thing.
And with only 42% of companies reporting having sufficient financial resources for their business, implementing AI could help your company do more with less.
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4 Ways to Use AI to Advance Your Small Business was originally published by The Motley Fool
