by Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact
Technology is advancing at an extremely fast pace – just look at how quickly ChatGPT has become a household name. It has dominated news cycles and in only 4-5 months, it’s also heightened 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 everywhere now.
Whether you know it or not, AI has also been a core technology in marketing for years. Most product recommendation engines run on some form of AI, and we have used AI for years at Constant Contact to power things like subject line recommendations in our email marketing platform. The difference between where AI has been used in the past and its applications today is that it is much more capable – particularly when it comes to creating content.
AI is sophisticated enough now, and has a big enough dataset, that it can decipher text, react to engagement patterns, anticipate responses and recognize images. As you can imagine, this lends itself perfectly to digital marketing, where the objective is to deliver the perfect marketing message to every customer every time.
With such an in-depth understanding of how a consumer behaves, AI can help businesses make purchase recommendations, analyze product fit, and create better content with more precise targeting. If you’re a small business marketer, there’s no reason to not 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
Leverage AI’s deep learning capabilities to amp up the experience your customers have when they interact with your business. One of the best ways to do that is by tailoring your marketing to share content that meets their needs.
AI can recognize if a person abandoned their online cart, and what types of products they have purchased in the past. It can also determine whether they prefer to be texted, or if email is their go-to channel for reading messages from their favorite brands. That type of analysis is invaluable as a marketer because instead of guessing what your customers will engage with, you can make decisions based on real-world data. Leverage that information to send more applicable messages and deals to your customers, and in doing so, they will be more likely to convert to a sale.
Banish writer’s block once and for all
Writing is difficult, 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, it has to be good! Luckily, AI is here to help.
Instead of spending hours fighting writer’s block for your next campaign, let AI do the heavy lifting for you. There are several AI-powered writing tools available that can help businesses get a jump start on content creation and save valuable time in the process. Our AI Content Generator at Constant Contact is purpose-built for small businesses. It allows our customers to automate the writing process for their marketing campaigns, which saves time and resources while still creating high-quality content.
Write social media posts
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 are managing. That’s ok, 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 presence on social media, 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 the content feels authentic to your voice and doesn’t sound like it was written by a chatbot. Double-check before posting, and then move on to other areas of running your business.
One last note on AI content generation
AI-generated content can be informational, informative, and even fun. However, it’s important to note that AI is often just a baseline to get you started. The real value still comes from sharing your story and connecting with your audience.
It’s up to you to ensure that any content you generate using artificial intelligence is not only original and helpful, but that it’s also accurate, honest, and aligns with your brand values. Most importantly, you want to make sure that the content sounds like 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 an advocate for small business leaders, marketing professionals, and nonprofits by providing them with practical marketing advice that can help them achieve their goals.
