In this blog post, we will show you 20 practical applications of artificial intelligence to enhance every stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Beginning with business planning, AI provides invaluable insights into market dynamics, competitor analysis, and financial projections, aiding in the formulation of a robust start-up strategy. As you prepare for launch, AI-driven tools streamline website development, content creation, and marketing automation, allowing you time to focus on brand building and customer engagement. Post-launch, AI can help to optimise operations, from personalised customer interactions through CRM systems to predictive inventory management.
Why should you use AI to start a business?
AI is being used more and more every day with some people adopting it as a new way of life. Businesses have embraced it for automating tasks, getting things done swiftly, and much more. It can benefit your business in many ways which we’ll cover for you.
How AI can help you during ideation
Thinking up ideas isn’t always easy, it can be a right headache. Once you discover how AI can assist you with this, things can appear a lot easier.
1. Content creation
This can be used in many ways like using AI to think up ideas for you, but AI can physically make content for you too. If you’re asking AI to generate content, something you may need to be careful of is spelling. Some AI generators don’t always get spelling right and this should be avoided at all costs to maintain professionalism. ChatGPT is being used more to generate written content and is good with spelling. Although it can be useful, AI content can be obvious as it tends to repeat words, so you may want to edit the work produced afterward.
2. Video creation
Some video editing software offers AI tools that can make editing easier and quicker. For example, Descript offers a range of AI tools to edit your videos like an AI-powered green screen and AI voice tools. Some pieces of software out there can be used in interesting ways like Elai which creates your own presenter with a number of templates available.
3. Artwork
AI can generate whatever artwork you want it to. You can then use and across social media. Creating human artwork can take a lot of resources and work so AI may be useful if you’re looking to get things done speedily. It can also be helpful if you feel your skillset lacks creativity. Dall-e-2 is a great tool for this! If you do have an innovative mind, creative platforms like Canva include AI tools to ensure you get the job done quicker.
Streamlined website development
When making a website for your business, it can be difficult to think up a design and decide what’s going to go where. Website builders like Wix offer the use of AI to put your website together. This can narrow everything down and stop you becoming overwhelmed with choice. It’s also quicker as you can make changes after, rather than having to do it from scratch.
How AI can assist you in preparation for launch
Starting a business can take time – there’s so much to it! When you come to the initial launch, you want to make sure you’re as prepared as possible. All that hard work wasn’t for nothing. If you’re worried about doing it alone, AI may be able to aid you with the skills you need.
Marketing automation
The use of AI among marketing professionals is on the rise, which is why you should consider using it too. It’s being used more frequently to automatically repeat tasks, and this is particularly useful in marketing. AI can be used in this way to manage email marketing campaigns and schedule social media posts.
Market dynamics
Before you even start your initial marketing, AI can help you with market research. Doing this manually can take a huge amount of time, so giving the job to a robot to do may benefit you. You can ask AI questions and it will scan for this information super quick. Once AI gives you the relevant data, you can then ask it to organise everything for you.
Creating customer personas
AI can also segment target audiences for you. It can predict your clients’ behaviours and track what they do. Through this, AI will understand your audience and be able to create customer profiles. This can then be reviewed by marketers to work out their next steps. AI can also collect analytics about different audiences and what they like. Google Trends can be used in this way as well as Answer the public.
Competitor analysis
Whilst searching the market for audience insights, AI will also tell you what your competitors are up to. This includes quantitive research in areas like how well their business is doing and what their customers think of them. You can then compare this to how your business is doing. Many businesses use Determ which is AI media monitoring software that saves them a lot of time.
Creating an initial business plan
AI can make decisions that you might not even have considered! Hiring someone to help you form ideas for your business can be costly, but AI is more accessible. When creating a business, you may lack some of the skills needed to form a business plan, so AI can be used as your personal partner.
How AI can help your small business post-launch
Once your business is available to the public, it can be an amazing feeling. You may quickly start to notice however that some tasks can be tiresome, and you need a helping hand. Let’s have a look at this in more detail.
Financial management
AI financial tools may help you keep your finances organised with bookkeeping which can be super helpful. Your finances can be managed by AI in different ways like stopping unwanted fraud. Manual processes can lead to mistakes which is where AI comes in. When data analytics is carried out by AI, something may come up find which doesn’t seem right. If AI finds anything that seems suspicious, it will let you know.
It can also be used for overall financial analysis. Many businesses have a tonne of financial information so it’s easy to lose track of key analytics. AI can do this, especially because it can process a very high amount of data. As AI can analyse your data in real-time, it can find trends and save them, making your life easier.
Financial planning
When it comes to planning, budgeting is a huge factor for businesses – this is where AI can come into play. AI can access historical performance data within and outside of your business to make predictions. Doing this can save you time and reduce the chance of your finances going wrong.
Personalised customer interactions
AI can analyse your client’s data to offer things that work for them including personalised customer needs like pricing and recommendations. AI can also do this through audience segmentation which we spoke about previously. It’s important to know what resonates with a person so you can offer them what they desire.
Data analysis
This is the same process as marketing dynamics where audience data is collected by AI, but this goes a lot further than just customer-based data. This might include analysing internal data to discover what your business needs to work on. A lot of businesses focus on customer feedback analysis to tell them this.
Predictive inventory management
We already know that AI can scan historic data and discover patterns within this, but doing this can also help predict factors within inventory management. AI might look at things like market trends and sales data to make these predictions. This may include AI finding out that there’s a high demand for a product so you can make sure you have more in stock. This can be very helpful for the efficiency of how your inventory is managed.
Data entry for CRM systems
Customer support software systems can help you cater certain services to individual customers. Monday.com can help automate any repetitive work and tailor your CRM by adding columns, managing pipelines, and editing deal stages.
Improve customer service
Have you ever interacted with an AI chatbot to find out more about a service? It’s a brilliant piece of marketing automation but can also be used to improve customer service by giving them a quick response 24/7. This means if you’re busy in your own time or even asleep, a customer can get the response they might need. One problem with this however is that it takes away an authentic customer experience, so you might want to make sure this is still a big part of your business. As well as customer queries, AI can sometimes embody skills that we might not have ourselves. You may want to use it to write an email, which can be useful, but you may want to check it through before sending it off.
Project management
Do you ever forget what tasks you’ve planned to do next? Some AI software can keep track of your tasks and can sometimes plan for you when’s the best time to complete them. Timehero is a really good example of this as it can do just that!
Recruitment
Teamtailor is a software for hiring candidates, supporting you with the recruitment process through a range of AI tools. Using software like this one can give you a new way of connecting with candidates and automating your tasks. Hiring people can be a long process, so asking AI to assist you may take away a bit of your stress.
Cyber security
Cyber threats can be a big issue facing many businesses and AI can make sure you’re safe from this. It will analyse data and find anything which doesn’t seem quite right. As time goes on, AI will learn how to prevent these cyber threats, minimising the risk. One specific problem that many businesses face is spam through email. AI can be used by scanning emails for anything out of the ordinary like dodgy links and attachments and will then chuck it into the spam folder for you.
Digital personal assistant
If you often ask Siri or Alexa questions, you may already have your own digital personal assistant. And this is exactly what it is. Asking Siri to schedule something on your calendar for you can be a lot quicker than typing it in. You can add a digital personal assistant to your site for your clients like an avatar or chatbot.
Considerations when using AI to help with your business
There’s a lot of information in this article, and not every single part of it will work for you. You need to pick the parts which you think will be beneficial to you and your business.
- Think audience. What are they going to like and what won’t they like? For example, if you’re a small business with a niche audience, you may not want a chatbot on your site. You may decide direct contact between you and the customer will work best.
- How much can you rely on AI? AI is a brilliant tool, but it’s not always what you should rely on. For example, if you send out an AI-written email without checking it first, it may not be exactly what you need it to be to truly engage your audience.
