Small businesses can benefit from AI tools through 80% cost-reduction and ROI enhancement within two months, according to statistics. Do you want to maximize the productivity and growth of your small business?
Learn how to select the best AI tools for small business and explore the list of 15 best AI tools for small business owners. It’s time to enhance customer experience and acquisition with effective marketing, automation and content generation.
How does small businesses use AI for growth?
We used to hear about artificial intelligence from science fiction books or other media. However, the technology is constantly evolving and helping businesses worldwide with scalability, productivity, marketing, sales and customer retention.
Following are just some of the ways in which AI is supporting the growth of small businesses:
Personalised Marketing
AI has made it easier for business owners to use personalised marketing campaigns for attracting and engaging customers. AI tools for marketing helps with customer segmentation and use customer journeys for tailored messaging.
Task Automation
The AI tools for small businesses automates routine tasks that drains the energy and time of business teams. The employees can invest the saved time in optimizing business strategies that used to be wasted on manual data entries.
Analytical Decision-making
SMBs benefit from the data analysed by AI tools to identify gaps and spot customer trends or competitor behaviour. These analytics are used for enhanced business decision-making.
Predictive Analysis
Business owners can increase the operational efficiency of businesses with the proactivity of AI tools that can predict issues before exploitation.
Customer Satisfaction
AI chatbots help SMBs in instantly replying to customer queries to enhance the customer experience. Moreover, it reduces the workload of human customer services professionals.
Strong Security
AI tools can be used to protect the security of data, systems and servers related to small businesses. They can identify threats and deals with their timely mitigation.
What to notice before selecting an AI tool for your business?
We’ve guided you on the benefits and use cases of AI for small business growth.
However, the tool selection requires strategy and research before any investment.
It’s time to explore the factors that business owners must consider before choosing the best AI tools for small businesses:
Find the Gaps
The first step in choosing the best AI tool for small business is to identify your business needs. It is important to assess the gap within business processes like within marketing, sales or customer services.
Once you figure out the gaps, list the business processes that can be improved with the help of artificial intelligence.
Conduct Market Research
After discovering the business gaps, you can conduct market research to analyse the best AI tools for small businesses. Research the product by analysing their reviews, product websites and blogs.
It is significant to analyse the features of every AI tool and compare them with your business requirements. Once you’re done with the research, create a list of tools that align with your business needs.
Analyse your Budget
Once you’ve a list of selected tools it’s time to analyse them according to your budget. Check the pricing plans of every tool in detail. Find whether they offer pricing models like pay-per-use, monthly and annual subscriptions or one-time fees.
You should also estimate the return on investment (ROI) according to budget, pricing plan and the tool’s efficiency factor.
Assess Integration and Usability
It is important to assess the integration of the tool within existing business systems like CRM or project management software. Moreover, before choosing the best AI tools for small businesses, ensure their compatibility with and availability of APIs.
Business owners should also focus on the usability of the AI tool for better integration and employee satisfaction. To reduce time invested in employee training, ensure that the selected tool offers a user-friendly interface.
Analyse Future Scalability
Investing in AI tools requires time, effort and monetary funds. Always ensure the scalability of the tool by analysing additional packages and advanced features for future business growth.
Read Customer Reviews
Before selecting the best AI tools for small businesses, read the customer reviews and efficiency gains by other SMBs. The user feedback and case studies helps with considering the right product.
Avail Trial Period
Always avail the free trial period to assess the capability of the tool and to test its functionality. Moreover, gather team feedback to assess user-friendliness and efficiency.
Purchase and review regularly
After the trial period and thorough analysis for the best business fit, purchase the AI tool. Once you’ve integrated the tool within your system, review it on a regular basis to evaluate the impact.
Moreover, stay updated regarding emerging technologies and better AI tools for business growth and productivity.
15 best AI tools for small business owners
We’ve combined a list of the best AI tools for small business owners to enhance productivity, marketing, and sales.
Jasper
Jasper is an AI tool that is used for textual content generation and copywriting. SMBs can use Jasper to write quality content ranging from social media blogs to user guides.
The tool analyses user intent to generate marketing copy and SEO optimized posts and articles for increased online visibility. With the help of Jasper, SMBs can create quality content and save time without huge investments of content creation teams.
Jasper offers a free trial along with Pro plans for $59 monthly subscription. SMBs can also benefit from their customised business plan.
Canva
Canva is a widely used visual designing tool that utilizes artificial intelligence to provide smart content creation features. It is among our list of the best AI tools for small businesses because of its user-friendly interface and vast library of visual templates.
It offers features like text-to-image generation, design recommendations by AI and tools that save time and build efficient designs. Moreover, the best part about Canva AI is that SMBs can create visually appealing marketing material without sophisticated teams.
The tool has a free version that offers a limited set of features. Moreover, it offers three pricing plans such as the following:
- Pro users: $12.99 monthly and $119.99 annual subscription.
- Business users: $14.99 monthly and $149.90 yearly subscription.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing models
HubSpot
Small business owners can select HubSpot as their ultimate AI partner for attracting and engaging customers. HubSpot is among one of the best AI tools for small businesses because of its advanced features for in-bound marketing.
SMBs can use HubSpot for customer relationship management (CRM), automation, marketing and customer acquisition. It offers various AI features including content topic recommendations based on user intent and search queries.
Businesses can utilize its email personalisation feature for enhancing their email marketing efforts by keeping an eye on audience preferences. Moreover, it helps businesses in analysing warm leads that can be converted by using AI to identify them.
They offer free product versions with limited features. Moreover, HubSpot offers various pricing plans according to different products for sales, marketing, content, CRM and more.
Copy.ai
Copy.ai is a writing-based AI tool for small businesses to save time and produce high-quality written content. It helps SMBs with marketing and ads copy and blogs.
It utilizes SEO optimization while creating content to improve website or platform visibility. Moreover, it provides recommendations for content ideas along with various writing templates.
Small businesses without extended marketing and content generation teams can produce content efficiently with Copy.ai and enhanced business productivity.
The AI writing tool offer two pricing plans, such as:
- Chat: $29 per month and $288 annual subscription
- Agents: $249 per month and $2,532 annual subscription.
Click Up
Click Up is an AI automation tool for small businesses that helps with business planning and client management in one platform. It helps small business owners with effective project management, client updates and enhancing operational efficiency.
The AI agents by Click Up helps in effective client management by identifying notifications and analytics. The platform provides a free package with 60 MB storage capacity. Other pricing packages offered by Click Up include:
- Unlimited: $7 per month subscription
- Business: $12 monthly subscription
- Enterprise: Custom pricing according to business needs.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an all-rounder AI assistant by OpenAI and among the best AI tools for small businesses. It is used by users for various tasks including content generation, writing, brainstorming ideas and more.
SMBs can use ChatGPT to create blog posts, social media and marketing content. The best way to utilize this AI tool for small business is to have an effective prompt library for instant use.
ChatGPT offers a free version for limited complexity tasks and a paid versions for $20 per month to resolve complex issues.
Notion
Notion is a productivity tool that is among the best AI tools for small businesses for planning and organizing their content and projects. The AI feature by Notion offers advanced features for business owners such as Writer core, Autofill and Q&A.
It has a user-friendly interface and helps busy individuals in keeping a track of their projects such as small business owners. It offers a free package along with a $10 per month package with a trial of Notion AI.
SMBs should select their business pricing plan for $20 per month with an AI agent.
Trello
Trello is an expert project management software and among the best AI tools for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It offers numerous templates for content organization along with other features such as:
- Productivity Planner
- Workflow Automation
- Trello Inbox
- App integration
Business owners can enhance their productivity and efficiency with free or paid plans from Trello.
Salesforce Einstein
The Salesforce Einstein extension by Salesforce is among the best AI tools for small business owners because of sales management. The AI tool offers lead analysis for an enhanced conversion rate.
Moreover, it offers data entry automation to minimize the risk of manual errors and to improve efficiency. The AI tool offers predictive analysis according to previous data for enhanced client acquisition.
It is an effective tool for small businesses since it is able to scale with them. The pricing for Salesforce Einstein AI starts at $50. They also offer custom pricing plans according to the business goals.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is among the best AI tools for small businesses because of Microsoft Copilot and easy integration with business systems. Small business owners who want a seamless integration of AI without operational disruption should use this tool.
Moreover, it offers advanced data security, automation of tasks and enhanced productivity features for small businesses. Businesses can also integrate Azure with Office 365 for smooth workflow automation.
Microsoft Azure offers a free trial along with pay-per-use models for using their products and services. SMBs can also get customised pricing plan according to products and their business needs.
Buffer
Buffer is an effective social media tool used for content planning, creation and scheduling. Small businesses owners can use it optimize their SMM strategies.
Buffer’s AI assistant helps teams throughout the content creation process by giving intelligent recommendations and guidelines for different social platforms.
Moreover, it is among the best AI tools for small businesses because of its affordable pricing packages for small teams. It offers a free plan that allows SMBs to build landing pages, use AI assistants and create and publish content.
The pricing packages offered by Buffer includes:
- Essentials: $5 monthly and $60 annual subscription charges.
- Team: $10 per month and $120 annual subscription charges.
Botpress
An AI agent platform and among the best AI tools for small businesses due to customisation features for AI agents. It can be the best choice for SMBs because it doesn’t require extensive coding knowledge for integration.
Botpress offers AI agents that are trained on language learning models (LLM). However, businesses can use their personal data to train and customize the AI agents accordingly.
Moreover, the tool offers a user-friendly interface for non-technical users who can benefit from features like Autonomous Node. The pricing packages for the Botpress tool includes the following:
- Pay-as-you-go: It offers free $5 monthly credit for AI usage. SMBs can upgrade to better pricing plans to align with their business growth.
- Plus: $89 monthly subscription with features like technical support, visual data indexing and watermark removal.
- Team: $495 monthly subscription with real-time support and customer insights features.
- Managed: $1495 monthly subscription package that offers advanced features like team training, strategy calls, maintenance and system integration.
Grammarly
SMBs can benefit from Grammarly as it is among the best AI tools for small businesses and offers enhanced editing. It is a writing assistant which utilizes AI to resolve tone, fluency, grammar and spelling issues from text-based content.
Entrepreneurs and business teams can invest in Grammarly to refine their marketing and social media content without any human editor. This AI tool is capable of offering conciseness without losing original meaning.
Grammarly offers a free plan that allows a user to utilize up to 100 prompts for fixing typographical or grammatical errors. The paid pricing packages provide features like plagiarism detection, AI content detection and writing tone and style recommendations.
The paid plans include the following:
- Pro: It is around $12 per month for teams and $30 for individual users.
- Enterprise: The enterprise plan offers customised pricing according to business requirements.
Zendesk
Zendesk is among the best AI tools for small businesses because of its enhanced customer interaction features. It provides a unified system for managing customer queries from multiple communication channels.
It offers an automated ticketing system that is used for analysing and resolving customer issues. The tool also offers advanced customer analytics that can be analysed to predict future trends and enhance customer experience.
Moreover, Zendesk offers interactive chatbots that store automated responses to instantly resolve common customer issues. It’s a user-friendly tool that is used for enhancing customer interactions and scaling small businesses.
The AI tool for customer satisfaction offer three pricing plans;
- Support Team: $19 subscription package.
- Support Professional: $55 subscription package.
- Support Enterprise: $115 subscription package.
Gemini
Gemini is an AI assistant offered by Google and is among the best AI tools for small business owners. It can be easily integrated within the user’s workflow on apps like Sheets, Docs and more.
Many SMBs are already utilizing the effectiveness of Gemini for summarizing, data management, writing and content creation. The best thing about this AI tool is that it can be used on mobile phones for idea generation or brainstorming.
It utilizes the deep research feature to offer data and insights from cited sources. Moreover, the Google Nano Banana in Gemini helps with enhanced AI image generation for marketing content. Moreover, it also offers gems that can be used for the customisation of AI agents.
The pricing plans by Gemini include:
- Free: Free of cost with around 100 monthly AI credits
- Google AI pro: Free for one month with $19.99 monthly subscription after trial.
- Google AI Ultra: $124.99 for three months. Offers $249.99 monthly subscription.
Avoid these mistakes while choosing an AI tool for small businesses
Choosing the best AI tools for small business isn’t easy when you’re affected with the shiny object syndrome. There’s a new AI tool in the market every other day, since artificial intelligence technology is evolving speedily.
However, it is significant to avoid the following mistakes when selecting an AI tool for your business:
- Don’t use unorganized data to train your AI tool. The AI algorithm needs refined data for operational efficiency and maximizing productivity.
- Don’t use excessive automation for business processes. There are many business tasks that rely on human creativity and analytical thinking for execution.
- Don’t select a tool before deciding on the results metrics for calculating the ROI.
- Don’t invest on any AI tool unless you’ve analysed your business needs and compared it with the tool’s efficiency.
Invest in AI for enhanced growth and productivity
According to Salesforce, around 83% of small businesses utilize AI tools for business growth.
If you want to scale your business, this is your sign to invest in the best AI tool! Moreover, if you want to learn how to use the best of AI tools, stay connected with aivolution.tech.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is the 10-20-70 rule for AI?
The purpose of finding the best AI tools for small business is to enhance business growth and increase ROI. However, SMBs who don’t follow proper AI integration within their business end up decreasing their ROI.
The best way to benefit from an AI tool is to implement the 10-20-70 rule in the following way:
- Invest 10% in AI tools and algorithms by conducting thorough market research and identifying gaps. SMBs should never invest in custom-made software unless their requirements don’t fit with pre-built AI tools.
- The 20% of an SMB should be invested in proper data integration with AI tools. It means that before choosing the best AI tools for small businesses, owners should focus on organizing their data to train the algorithms.
- Lastly, the 70% of small business investments should be on the business processes and employees. It should be used for employee training and optimizing processes.
Q. What is the average cost of AI integration for SMBs?
According to statistics, small business owners spend around $3K to $6K on a monthly basis for AI tools. However, many SMBs use AI tools without market research ending up with inefficient and costly software or products.
Q. Which is the best AI for business planning?
Click Up is among one of the best AI tools for small business that can be used for business planning. SMBs can avail their unlimited plan or Click Up business for enhanced storage capacity and advanced features.
