As digital marketing continues to dominate the small business industry, SMEs are tasked with finding new and effective ways to stand out from their competition. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes into play, offering a solution to the most common challenges small businesses face in maximising their digital marketing efforts.
In this blog post, we delve into the role AI plays within your business and how you can use specific tools such as ChatGPT, Canva and AI templates to enhance key areas of your digital marketing such as optimising your website’s homepage to engage and convert your customers.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, refers to the creation of intelligent machines that are designed to think and act like humans. These machines are programmed to execute tasks with the goal of making our lives easier and more efficient.
In 2023, AI for small businesses will continue to rapidly expand and increase its integration into various industries, technologies and systems to improve decision-making, problem-solving, speech recognition and learning from experience.
Small businesses are expected to continue embracing Artificial Intelligence to stay competitive and improve their operations including:
- Customer service
- Human resources
- Marketing
- Financial management
- Supply chain management
- Decision making
What is ChatGPT?
Artificial Intelligence, in particular, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has gained global recognition as one of the most advanced language models currently on the market.
Despite there being thousands of other AI tools, software, systems and template integrations, ChatGPT having recently been acquired by Microsoft has further solidified its position as a leader in the field of AI. The question remains, how long for? As there is speculation about Google releasing their own AI software, Bard.
So, what is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI. It has the ability to generate human-like text and answer questions, making it an ideal tool for businesses looking to improve their digital marketing efforts.
Our team first stumbled across ChatGPT in December of last year and has been playing around in the world of AI for months – to say we are excited to share everything we have uncovered would be an understatement!
But first and foremost, it is important to note OpenAI and other AI software creators have begun implementing cryptographic watermarks to detect AI-written content. For small businesses, it is crucial to understand the implications of using AI software and the importance of running the content through plagiarism tools as Google will begin penalising AI-written content in its search engine rankings.
Other important ChatGPT considerations:
- Paid subscriptions have started rolling out in the US
- ChatGPT is known for producing misinformation and plagiarised content
- Currently, ChatGPT has been trained with data up until 2021
Using ChatGPT to overcome the challenges faced by small businesses
With its advanced capabilities, ChatGPT can help small businesses overcome the challenges of implementing and leveraging digital marketing to grow their online presence. For example, having limited resources to devote to your digital marketing efforts can make it difficult for small businesses to create and maintain an effective online presence, and to compete with larger businesses.
Another challenge is a lack of expertise in digital marketing. While there are many online resources available to help small businesses learn about digital marketing, it can be difficult for small businesses to find the time and resources to stay up-to-date on the latest strategies and best practices.
The benefit of using ChatGPT for digital marketing
ChatGPT can help small businesses overcome these challenges and grow their online presence.
Here are just a few ways ChatGPT can help your business implement and leverage digital marketing strategies/technology:
- Generate high-quality content that is optimised for search engines
- Design user-friendly sales page content that converts your target audience
- Automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks
- Create personalised recommendations and customer service strategies
- Develop a cost-effective and tailored marketing strategy
- Stay up-to-date with the latest digital marketing trends and best practices
- Analyse data and provide valuable insights
- Create video and audio transcripts
How to get started with ChatGPT for digital marketing
Getting started with ChatGPT can seem very daunting to small businesses looking to enhance their digital marketing capabilities. However, it’s important to remember that progress can start with small, focused steps. Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, start by optimising what you already have.
For example, every small business has or should have a website.
Follow along to learn how ChatGPT can optimise your business’s homepage following industry best practices as well as how it can create content that aligns with your target audience within seconds.
Using ChatGPT to enhance your website homepage
The homepage of a small business’s website is often the first point of contact with potential customers, so it’s important to make a good impression. A well-structured homepage can help your small business stand out from the competition, communicate important information about your business, and convert visitors into customers.
When it comes to optimising your website homepage, start with the following steps:
- Identify your target audience
- Research keywords
- Create content
- Design and plan the structure of your content
- SEO optimisation + plagiarism
- Call to action
Identify your target audience
As a business owner, it’s crucial to understand your target audience in order to effectively market your products and services.
ChatGPT can help you create a customer persona profile that is representative of your ideal customer, including their demographics, motivations, pain points, and buying habits. Which you can use to ensure your content is tailored to your target audiences’ needs and wants.
In the image below, we have used Caroline Rowe as a small business example to demonstrate the output ChatGPT can provide (customer profile) based on the demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioural data you give ChatGPT about your target audience.
Research keywords
Now that you have a comprehensive understanding of who your target audience is, the next step is to conduct keyword research.
This step involves identifying the keywords your target audience uses when searching online for products/services similar to yours, and incorporating them into your content to increase your online visibility.
ChatGPT can assist in identifying relevant keywords and providing recommendations on how to incorporate them into your website homepage and sales content.
Use these examples from ChatGPT based on your customer profile to prompt keyword research in smart tools such as AnswerThePublic.
Design and plan the structure of your content
After creating your content, the next step is to plan the structure and design of the content.
This includes deciding on the arrangement of your pages, determining the content hierarchy, and ensuring that your content is easy to navigate. ChatGPT can assist in planning the structure of your content to ensure that it is user-friendly and optimised for search engines.
Structure of your homepage
- Header
- Hero section
- About us section
- Products/Services
- Testimonials
- Call to action
- Footer
Use ChatGPT to break down each of these sections even further.
Create content
The next step is to create high-quality, engaging and relevant content based on ChatGPT’s knowledge of your business and target audience.
By asking the right questions with great, clear and concise prompts, ChatGPT can then generate a variety of content, copy and image suggestions that are optimised for both search engines and your target audience.
Be specific with the questions and prompts you ask – it’ll determine the answer and output you receive!
ChatGPT and AI don’t just provide written copy suggestions – look at the image suggestions ChatGPT can generate:
Use Canvas’s latest tool ‘Text to Image’ to bring these suggestions to life.
Please note OpenAI and other AI software creators have begun implementing cryptographic watermarks to detect AI-written content. For small businesses, it is crucial to understand the implications of using AI software and the importance of running the content through tools such as Quilbot to reduce plagiarism as Google will begin penalising AI-written content in its search engine rankings.
SEO optimisation
The final step is to optimise your homepage for search engines. This includes implementing best practices for on-page SEO, such as creating keyword-rich content, meta descriptions, and header tags, as well as fixing any technical SEO issues.
ChatGPT can assist in optimising your homepage to ensure that it is easily discoverable by search engines and your target audience.
Next steps for using ChatGPT and AI for small businesses
By following these steps and using ChatGPT to enhance your website, your small business can create a best-practice homepage that effectively showcases your offerings and provides a seamless user experience. This can lead to increased visibility, conversions, and growth for the business.
If you want to learn more about how to replicate the same results for your business, well then you’re in luck. Click on the link to join our upcoming Introduction to AI – An Educational and Practical Live Training Session for Small Businesses
For those seeking additional support, our Digital Academy offers the ultimate solution for small businesses feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about marketing their business online. In our Digital Academy you’ll have:
- 24/7 access to our custom-built, state-of-the-art education and collaboration platform designed for small businesses
- Forever up-to-date Essential, Growth-focussed and Specialised courses that are practical and show you exactly what you need to do to get your digital assets working smartly for your business
- Twice-monthly live, topical group calls that will leave you feeling motivated and give you the clarity you need to tackle the next step on your digital journey
- Handouts and templates to save you from reinventing the wheel
- Us doing all the hard work to allow you to stay ahead of the curve with cutting-edge industry insights and updates (like AI and ChatGPT 😉
- The amazing feeling of knowing that a whole team has got your business’s back when it comes to small business tech
This article was first published on Tourism Tribe, on February 7th 2023.
