3 Ways Small Businesses Need AI to Drive Business Growth

According to this year’s GoDaddy Global Entrepreneurship Survey, 94% of respondents reported that digitisation has already noticeably improved the work processes in their small business.  GoDaddy shares some ways that AI technology tools can help to drive increased efficiencies for small businesses.
AI can be a powerful tool for small businesses, whether looking to: streamline your workflow through process automation; improve decision-making; gain a competitive advantage in your industry; provide a better customer experience; or create a beautiful professional business site easily and quickly.
With its ability to automate tasks, analyse data and provide insights, AI has the potential to level the playing field. Now even smaller ventures can compete with larger companies.
The applications of artificial intelligence will continue to evolve in the coming days, months and years as technology advances. But it’s important to approach it strategically and with careful thought beforehand.
Here are three ways that AI could benefit your business.

Automate Time-consuming Tasks

By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, small businesses can save time, reduce costs and increase productivity.  This can lead to improved customer engagement, increased growth and better overall business performance.

For example, you could use AI to automate business processes such as: data analytics, invoicing, and other administrative tasks you use in your business.  It can also help reduce errors and improve the accuracy of data, leading to better decision-making.
This, in turn, could help free you up to focus on your business development and driving increased customer relationships.  AI can help businesses improve their customer service by automating interactions through chatbots and virtual assistants.

These tools can help customers with common queries, such as product information and troubleshooting. In turn, this frees up customer service staff to deal with more complex issues. All of which can lead to shorter response times, higher customer satisfaction and increased loyalty.

AI driven marketing tools, like GoDaddy Airo Digital Marketing, can help improve marketing efficiencies by automating recurring tasks like sending out email campaigns and sharing social media posts.

Provide Better Insights

By analysing customer data, AI can offer insights into customer preferences and behavior, allowing businesses to tailor their emails and advertising.  AI’s ability to analyse vast amounts of data is another key benefit for small businesses.

It is easier to collect and analyse data from multiple sources, including social media, customer interactions and sales data, to help understand what your customers like and don’t like.
For example, using AI in business can help improve operational efficiency by automating data analysis that once took hours of time. This can free you or your employees to focus on customer service or product development.

Additionally, AI can help you identify potential areas for cost savings by analysing data related to supply chain management, inventory control and production processes.

Data-driven Lead Generation to Reduce Costs

Imagine training an AI tool with the traffic and behavior from your website, along with the lead data from your CRM (customer relationship management) tool and social media feeds.
Such an AI tool can analyse all that data to get a better understanding of your target audience and their preferences and the messaging that can help take the actions you would like them to take.

It will be able to learn and adapt with each website visitor, producing ever more effective messages to more efficiently turn a website visitor into a lead and potential customer.

With the ability to learn from new inputs, such as adding in leads in your CRM, it can analyse historical data and put each lead into context, helping save costs on marketing plans.

Introducing AI into your small business doesn’t have to be difficult. The key now is to educate yourself and your employees on the opportunities and the available applications of AI.

Ensure that data is collected and used in a responsible and ethical manner, with appropriate security measures in place to protect sensitive data.  Start small, then go from there.