By Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact
Technology is developing at an extremely fast pace. just look at how quickly ChatGPT has become a household name. It has dominated news cycles and in just 4-5 months, it has also increased our awareness and understanding of where and how artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting our lives. From digital assistants like Siri to predicting customer behavior and preferences, AI is now everywhere.
Whether you know it or not, AI has also been a key marketing technology for years. Most product recommendation engines are powered by some form of AI, and we at Constant Contact have used AI for subject line recommendations in our email marketing platform for years. The difference between how AI was used in the past and how it is used today is that it is much more capable, especially when it comes to creating content.
AI is now sophisticated enough and has a large enough database to decipher text, respond to engagement patterns, predict responses and recognize images. As you can imagine, this lends itself perfectly to digital marketing, where the goal is to deliver the perfect marketing message to every customer every time.
With such a deep understanding of consumer behavior, AI can help businesses make purchase recommendations, analyze product relevance, and create more accurate content with more precise targeting. If you’re a small business marketer, there’s no reason not to use this technology to your advantage.
Here are some easy ways small businesses can start using AI in their marketing strategy.
Personalize messages and offers for your customers
Use AI’s deep learning capabilities to improve your customers’ experience when they interact with your business. One of the best ways to do this is to tailor your marketing to share content that fits their needs.
AI can recognize if a person has abandoned their online shopping cart and what types of products they have purchased in the past. It can also determine whether they prefer text messaging or email is the best channel to read messages from their favorite brands. This type of analysis is invaluable as a marketer because instead of guessing what your customers will be doing, you can make decisions based on real-world data. Use that information to send more actionable messages and deals to your customers, making them more likely to convert into sales.
Remove writer’s block once and for all
Writing is hard, and as a small business marketer, it can feel daunting to think about having to sit down and write an entire email or text campaign to your customers. And that should be good. Fortunately, AI is here to help.
Instead of spending hours fighting writer’s block for your next campaign, let the AI do the heavy lifting for you. There are several AI-powered writing tools that can help businesses jumpstart content creation and save valuable time in the process. Our AI content generator at Constant Contact is designed for small businesses. It allows our clients to automate the writing process for their marketing campaigns, which saves time and resources while creating high-quality content.
Write posts on social networks
Sometimes, you just don’t have the energy to create an engaging and informative social media post, let alone multiple posts for all the different platforms you manage. It’s okay, you’re human. So why not ask AI to do it for you?
Using AI to write social media posts can help small businesses maintain a consistent social media presence, engage with their audience, and even attract new followers. The best AI content generators will even give you multiple options to choose from. However, it’s still important to ensure that the content is authentic to your voice and doesn’t sound like it was written by a chatbot. Double check before you post, then move on to other areas of your business management.
One final note on AI content creation
AI-generated content can be informative, informative, and even entertaining. However, it’s important to note that AI is often just a starting point to begin with. The real value still comes from sharing your story and connecting with your audience.
You need to make sure that any content you create using AI is not only original and useful, but also accurate, honest and in line with your brand values. Most importantly, you want to make sure the content resonates with you and speaks to your customers in a way that makes them feel valued.
Dave Charest is the Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact. In his role, Dave acts as an educator and advocate for small business leaders, marketing professionals and nonprofit organizations, providing them with practical marketing advice that can help them achieve their goals.