I am “life mature” enough to remember the first personal computers, I can remember feeling curious and dismissive.
The tech was interesting but for most, it was a glorified typewriter. It didn’t make my life easier, fun, or more interesting.
But, I’m sure it put a dent in the sales of “white out” and carbon paper.
Then came the earliest consumer internet; AOL, Netscape, music sharing, and email… now we’re talking.
Even with a dial-up 56K connection, who didn’t love to hear “you’ve got mail”?
Fast forward 25 years, can you imagine your world without texting, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, DoorDash, or TikTok?
How primitive would it be to run a business without a website, email, inventory controls, or digital records?
Now it’s 2023; the year of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).
Since its “release” (the perfect word) in March, it has already had many updates and there is no shortage of tech companies wanting to capitalize on their releases.
Depending on your disposition, it is either a terrific tool that will solve all of your problems – or it is Armageddon.
Well – while were are still here – how can it help to make your life (your business) utopian?
Customer Service
The most widely used AI tool for interacting with both current and potential clients is the chatbot.
You’ve probably visited a website where a tiny chat bubble appears to answer your questions.
Older chatbots were programmed with Q and A flow. “What are your business hours” gets a response without human help.
In 2023, people are very comfortable using their voices to accomplish certain tasks. A.I. chatbots interact more humanly.
Ask “What happened to my order?” and an A.I. chatbot will pull the info and give real-time info – complete with a tracking link or speech.
This is a huge help for any business and is affordable for smaller businesses.
Today, consumers prefer not to interact with humans at all during the ordering or scheduling phase. AI helps you mitigate staff shortages or bursts of interest from a marketing release.
Yesterday, I made a phone call to CVS Pharmacy.
The call was answered by a traditional auto-attendant who asked “press one for pharmacy, press two for store hours, etc). It named 9 choices. I had to listen twice.
If this were an AI-bot, I could say “Are there pharmacists in the store today? I’d like to get a flu shot.”.
Make customer service faster and contactless.
People hate waiting – don’t make them.
Marketing Strategy
Enable AI tools to review the data from your website analytics, and make meaningful suggestions and updates to your website layout and content.
AI can also extract useful information that can bend your marketing decisions.
Let’s say you are marketing an HVAC company in the ultra-competitive market of Columbus, OH. AI may find users in that market accessing the web using Bing search between 10 pm and 11:10 pm, and have urgency (emergency, 24 hr, same-day, etc.)
In response, you reallocate your paid ad budget from Google to Microsoft Ads and increase the budget for mobile ads by 10% to ensure top-of-screen presence for searches that include those adjectives – make sense?
This one insight could increase your phone calls and contacts without increasing your budget.
For smaller businesses, that’s huge.
In addition, AI can guide customers to the closest store or present personalized product recommendations that may speed up decision-making.
Tools to utilize:
SEMrush
Ubersuggest
Seventh Sense
Content Writing
Content writing can be monotonous and time-consuming. Thanks again to wonderful AI technology, there are a plethora of tools that make it much easier.
Just set your tone of voice, audience, and a brief (or detailed) description of the topic and AI can create content to meet your specific needs.
Using the example HVAC company, ask AI to “Examine the websites of the first three companies who appear on the first page of Google’s search results for the search term “AC repair in Columbus, Ohio”. Look for commonalities in their content and summarize it.”.
Tools to utilize:
YouWrite
Jasper
WriteSonic
Image Generation
When you need an interesting image for your brochure or post, scrolling through royalty-free images is unoriginal and a huge time-suck.
AI can generate images quickly using your verbal or text description.
No more sifting through hundreds of boring stock images. We used AI to generate the image at the top of this article. According to U.S. law, every AI-generated image is royalty and copyright-free.
These examples show how far AI has come over the past few years and why investing now might be worth considering if you’re looking to maximize efficiency and revenues down the road ahead.
Like these ideas? We’ve got tons of ’em? Talk to the marketing specialists at VentraLocal today to discuss options to implement AI technology into your business. When you win, we win.
