Revolutionizing Small Business Marketing with Generative AI

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last six months, you know that artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the marketing world by storm. 

Thanks to the introduction of revolutionary tools, small businesses can put this technology to use like never before, making marketing more efficient and cost-effective than ever. In just the last year… 

• Open AI’s tool ChatGPT gained over 1 million users within five days of its launch. 
• At least 80% of marketers globally integrated some form of AI into their online strategies.
• Low-cost (or even free) AI tools started benefiting small businesses with limited budgets.  

In many ways, generative AI tools are leveling the playing field between businesses of all sizes. The small business marketing landscape is changing dramatically – and AI is a big part of the shift.

In today’s blog post, we want to dive into generative AI, how SMBs are using it, and how to use it well. Let’s dive in. 

What Is Generative AI?

Generative AI refers to systems that are capable of creating new and original content. This is accomplished through the use of advanced algorithms and models that produce novel data, such as images, text, music, and even videos.

ChatGPT and Jasper AI are prime examples of generative AI. When given a prompt, it learns from vast amounts of training data and, analyzes the underlying patterns, then spits out cohesive, original responses to users. 

Unlike traditional AI systems, generative AI tools do not rely on pre-programmed rules. This allows them to generate new content that exhibits similar characteristics or follows the same patterns as the training data.

Due to its versatility and continual growth, generative AI will eventually have a significant impact across all industry sectors. From banking to tech, life sciences to retail, every industry will feel the effects of this latest innovation. 

The question is, will your small business capitalize on this wave – or will you wait until it crashes on your shores? 

How Small Businesses Can Use Generative AI 

Generative AI offers an array of benefits to any type of SMB. The key is learning how to use these tools to your advantage. 

We’re still in the early days of AI marketing trends, but already, we’ve seen dozens of ways in which small businesses can employ generative AI tools. Let’s take a look at the top six. 

1. Tailored Content Creation

It’s not just that AI tools can help generate content at lightning speed – it’s that they can use customer data, preferences, and behaviors to truly customize content. 

It might take a human marketer hours (or even days) to sift through mountains of info to create a highly tailored blog post – but a generative AI model can ingest and learn from that information in mere seconds. This dramatically speeds up production time while also increasing the level of customization in each piece of content. 

This is not to say that content marketing teams are replaceable – not at all. Marketers will still need experienced copywriters to conduct AI content audits and edit as necessary for accuracy, uniqueness, and branding elements like tone. 

We shouldn’t be thinking of AI as a replacement for content marketers. Rather, generative AI can streamline content teams’ workflows, enabling them to create highly impactful and personalized content more efficiently. 

2. Eye-Catching Visual Content 

Many SMB marketers have already dabbled with text-based AI tools, but that’s just scratching the surface. Generative AI is dramatically transforming how videos, graphics, images, and other visual content are produced. 

Visual elements play a crucial role in every kind of business, regardless of your industry. If your small business hasn’t previously had the budget or time to dedicate to professional video marketing and other services, you’re in luck: Generative AI is making high-quality, custom visuals more accessible than ever. 

Generative AI visual tools use deep learning algorithms to recognize patterns and then generate visually pleasing graphics or photographs based on defined parameters. This technology can also assist with tedious tasks such as:

• Photo Editing 
• Colorization 
• Background removal 
• Object detection 
• Face recognition

Whether you’re using AI to create a unique website banner or a marketing video, this new technology is making the process faster, easier, and more affordable. 

3. Streamlined Advertising Campaigns

Advertising is a painful necessity for most small businesses. You need ad campaigns to raise brand awareness and attract customers – but creating these campaigns is often time-consuming and resource-intensive. 

As we mentioned, AI tools can help generate written and visual content, which helps with advertising strategies – but that’s not all. Recently, Meta announced AI-powered tools designed to simplify ad processes. These tools can quickly analyze customer data and provide valuable insights into the target audience. It also identifies patterns in customer behavior, which in turn helps you tap into their preferences and increase your chances of engagement. 

Furthermore, generative AI can be employed to conduct A/B testing on campaigns, generating different variations of content and designs to learn what works best. It’s not just about generating one ad campaign – it’s about finding the best one for your SMB.

4. Data-Driven Marketing Plans

Data is the backbone of any successful marketing campaign. After all, you can’t improve what you don’t understand. 

Back in the day, understanding your target audience and their behaviors meant spending a great deal of time sifting through analytics. Now, that’s not the case for most SMBs. 

Thanks to recent innovations, generative AI tools can assist in optimizing marketing campaigns through continuous monitoring and analysis. This allows you to spend less time on the nitty-gritty details and more time making data-driven decisions to refine your strategies. 

Not only do AI tools help you understand your audience today, but it help you predict their behaviors tomorrow. Generative AI models utilize historical data to forecast future outcomes, such as potential customer churn, campaign performances, seasonal demands, etc. 

The bottom line: the more information you have at your fingertips, thanks to AI, the more effectively you can tailor your marketing plans to meet customer needs. 

5. Social Media Management 

Social media marketing is another dilemma for many small businesses with limited resources. Like many SMBs, you might not have a dedicated social team or the capacity to consistently create, publish, and monitor social media content. In a recent survey conducted in the United States (March 2023), an impressive 42% of marketers utilized generative AI to enhance their social media copy.

Generative AI can also help with trend and analysis forecasting. It’s much easier to stay on top of and capitalize on social media trends when you have technology that continuously points you in the right direction. 

In addition, many brands are even using generative AI to automate their social media moderation. AI algorithms can be trained to analyze and filter social media automatically, flagging inappropriate content, spam, offensive language, and harmful content (so that you don’t have to).  

By using generative AI for social media moderation, your small business can expend less manual effort and create a more user-friendly, engaging online experience for customers. In turn, this encourages more customers to follow and learn about your brand on social media – and, eventually, to become loyal customers.

6. Email Automation 

Lastly, we’d be remiss if we failed to discuss email marketing through the lens of generative AI. 

Statista’s recent study underscores the growing importance of AI in email marketing. They shared, “About four in ten marketers in a recent Return Path and TRG survey said that artificial intelligence helped improve their company’s revenue in their email marketing”. This statistic is a testament of how AI has revolutionized email campaigns, elevating their effectiveness to new heights.

The success of email marketing campaigns largely comes down to precision. You need to figure out the right subject line, the right design, and the right timing to increase your chances of high open rates and conversions. That’s where AI comes in. 

Generative AI can not only write and design emails, but it can also analyze recipient behavior to determine the optimal send time – not just generally, but for each individual recipient. Its data-based recommendations grant your marketing team the highest chance of success with each and every campaign. Additionally, AI tools can segment email lists into targeted groups and generate automated workflows to deliver relevant content to each segment. This ensures that recipients receive emails that are tailored to their specific needs and interests right when they want them. 

The Key to Using Generative AI Well 

Marketing must always start and end with the customer. AI’s purpose is to assist with this fundamental truth, not to overshadow it. 

As your SMB begins to play with generative AI and learn how it can assist with your marketing, remember to keep your customer’s needs and preferences at the forefront of all your initiatives. Trust us: it’ll pay off. 

Learn How the Experts Are Using AI for SMBs 

We covered a lot of ground quickly in this post, so let’s recap real fast: Generative AI is changing the SMB marketing game by assisting with everything from content creation to email and social media automation. 

If you haven’t already, now is the time to learn how AI can revolutionize the way your team handles marketing tasks. Chances are, you’ll find that it can dramatically improve your efficiency and streamline many of your most arduous tasks. 

Want to Learn More? Reach out to Foxxr Digital Marketing Today 

As one of the top digital marketing companies in 2022, we pride ourselves on keeping our ears to the ground, listening for the latest trends and evolutions in marketing. The buzz surrounding generative AI is especially loud – and we’re ready to help you understand its potential impact on your business.

To learn more about our digital marketing services or how AI fits into your strategies, schedule a free consultation with the Foxxr crew today. We’d love to chat with your team.