How To Use AI to Start, Build & Grow Your Small Business (20 AI Marketing Tools!)
Running a Small Business with AI
Running a small business can feel like a never-ending list of tasks, right? But what if I told you that there are AI tools that could give you hours of your life back? You’re in the right place because I have found the best AI tools to take your business from startup to scale faster than you thought possible. The best part is that these tools are free, so try them out and see what works for you.
This video has three sections: Tools to Start, Tools to Build, and Tools to Grow. So, jump to whichever one you need or stick around for a complete roadmap to transforming your business with AI. Now, before we dive in, let me know in the comments what part of your day-to-day tasks takes you the most time. Honestly, mine is managing my schedule, but I did find this amazing tool, and it actually blew my mind. So, stick around till later in the video to find out what it is.
Tools to Start
Let’s start with building the foundation of your business. Here are five AI tools to help turn your business from an idea to a money maker.
Google Gemini is like your free AI mentor. You can ask it for a business roadmap, and it’ll break down your next steps. Here’s how you do it: Just type, “I’m starting a [insert your business type] targeting [insert your audience] to achieve [insert your goal].” Boom! It gives you a game plan, and yes, you can refine it if the plan feels too generic. Just ask Gemini to get more specific.
Now, if you do want to learn to save time with proper prompting techniques and get the best outcome for your specific business, grab the AI marketing guide that I’ve linked in the description. It helps with finding your target market, budget optimization, and even personalized digital marketing guidance. We’ll be referencing it shortly, so it is in the description if you want to grab that now.
If you think Google Gemini is really cool, wait till you see how easy these next tools make branding your business. So now that you’ve got your roadmap, let’s make it real by giving your business a face, AKA your logo. Looka is an AI-powered logo maker that helps you whip up a professional logo in just minutes. Enter your business name, answer a few questions, and like magic, you’ve got PR-level logos.
Remember, just like judging a book by its cover, people judge a business by its branding. Having a polished logo helps you look legit, even if you’re just starting out. So, you’ve got your logo now, right? Let’s talk about your brand’s vibe. By vibe, I mean colors. These aren’t just pretty; they sell. Chroma helps you find your perfect palette. You just select a bunch of colors, and it generates endless custom palettes that perfectly match your brand style. Trust me, having a cohesive color palette makes your brand look 100 times more polished.
But colors and a logo are just the start. Wait till you see how easy it is to build your entire website in minutes. You’ve heard of ChatGPT, but here’s how to use it smarter. What you’re going to do is download that free AI marketing guide that I’ve linked in the description. Once you open that up, let’s start with the target market section.
You want to type in everything that you know about your audience. Honestly, you can literally just brain dump here. Then, you’re going to copy what you just wrote, head over to ChatGPT, and paste it in the chat box. After that, head back to the guide, copy the AI prompt, and paste it into ChatGPT as well. Press enter.
Okay, so now you have some audience personas and their primary pain points, right? For your next prompt, you’re going to say, “Write me the copy for the homepage of my website that will convert my target audience.” There you go! Now you can use that copy, tweak it to fit your style, and move on to the next task.
Now it’s time to build your digital storefront. Think building a website is hard? Well, Durable is an AI-powered website builder that gets you up and running in minutes—yes, minutes! This one is really perfect for business owners who aren’t super techy. Durable handles the design, the layout, and even some of the content suggestions. You just want to add your details, tweak what you want, and you’ve got a sleek, professional website that works on both desktop and mobile.
By the way, if you want to learn more about some website best practices, we actually just released a video on digital marketing strategies for small businesses, and I’ll go through all the best practices of what to put on your website. I will link that in the description for you.
Tools to Build
We’re off to a great start with the foundation, but hey, we’re just getting started! Next up are tools to help you run your business without losing your mind. Running a small business means wearing a lot of hats. Notion AI is like your digital brain, helping you keep track of ideas, tasks, and projects. You can do things like plan your marketing campaigns, brainstorm content ideas, and manage your to-do lists.
You can also ask Notion to summarize meeting notes, generate blog outlines, or even suggest tasks based on your goals. It is a great tool to keep everything in one place. When it comes to branding, it’s not enough to have a logo, colors, and fonts. You need brand guidelines. This helps make sure that you’re creating cohesive visuals that people will recognize, whether it’s on your website, social media, or even your business cards. And it can’t look like a kindergartener made it!
Designer is like your personal brand manager. It keeps all your brand assets—your logos, your fonts, your colors—in one spot and makes sure that everything you create looks on point. This is really great if you’re outsourcing design work because Designer makes sure that freelancers stick to your brand guidelines. Remember, consistent branding builds trust, and trust builds loyalty, and loyalty makes for recurring sales.
Now, if you are not outsourcing your design work, Canva Magic is a game changer for small business owners who don’t have a design background. With AI design suggestions, you can whip up social media posts, flyers, email headers—anything really—and you can do it really fast. The AI will suggest templates based on your brand style, making it even easier to create content that looks like you spent hours on it. So yes, you’ll look like a pro without actually being one.
Now, if you want stronger audience connections, you will have to show your face. Here’s how Riverside’s Magic Clips helps you do it. You record a long-form video—think a podcast, an interview, a tutorial, or even a client call—and AI finds the best moments in your video and turns them into shareable content for social media. This tool is a must if you’re building a content library to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Speaking of social media, social media management is a full-time job, and honestly, if you don’t do it professionally, who has time for that? With Okoa, you can streamline your entire social media strategy by using one platform to create content, schedule posts, and even generate captions with AI. Now you’ve got more time to focus on running your business or playing with your cats.
By the way, if you are liking this video so far, I would love it if you would give it a thumbs up to let me know you want to go!
Tools to Grow
Next up, we’re talking about how to scale and automate. Let’s make sure your business grows without adding extra work to your plate. These next ten tools will help you handle repetitive tasks, improve customer interactions, and free up your time to focus on what really matters: growing your business.
It is so important that your team is all on the same page. So instead of scrambling to take notes during meetings, Fireflies captures everything for you. It organizes meeting minutes, highlights key points, and makes it easy to review and share actionable insights. So instead of scribbling notes, you can actually be present in your meetings.
Once you’ve got your business moving and grooving, try running some paid ads. ADC Creative.
is a great tool to generate high-converting ad creatives in minutes, tailored to your audience and the platform. Just let it know your brand details, and you will have ad designs that look like a pro made them. Customers love instant responses, but you’re not always going to be online.
Tido: Your 24/7 Chatbot
Tido is an AI chatbot that lives on your website, answering questions, collecting leads, and even helping customers make purchases. It’s like having a virtual assistant working 24/7. Don’t you hate making business decisions and not knowing if they’re actually going to work? Harmonize analyzes your existing business data to predict future trends, manage your inventory, and even give you insights that can help you optimize everything from pricing to marketing strategies. It’s like having a crystal ball for your business.
Podium: Harness Customer Feedback
Now that you’ve got happy customers, let’s make the most of their feedback with Podium. Podium makes it super easy to request reviews, respond to feedback, and showcase positive testimonials on your website. Reviews build trust, which builds loyalty, leading to more sales. So, don’t sleep on this one!
ChatGPT: Level Up Your Productivity
Imagine having an assistant that doesn’t just respond to you but remembers and acts on your behalf. I know we already covered ChatGPT, but this feature could quite possibly change your life. ChatGPT just leveled up with its scheduled tasks feature. Need to remind a client about a meeting next week? ChatGPT can handle that. Want to schedule daily check-ins or even automate repetitive tasks? Done! Pair it with that free AI marketing guide for smarter business-specific prompts, and you’re looking at a tool that can transform how you work.
SpyFu: Competitive Insights
Running a successful business means staying ahead of your competitors. SpyFu is your secret weapon here. It shows what keywords your competitors are ranking for, what ads they’re running, and where they’re getting backlinks. It’s like spying on their strategy so you can tweak yours and stay ahead.
HubSpot: Email Management Made Easy
As a business owner, emails can and will take over your life. HubSpot’s email management platform helps you craft professional, personalized emails that engage your audience and drive results. Think automated follow-ups, AI-suggested subject lines, and optimized send times. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with your CRM to ensure that your campaigns are always tailored to your customers.
LiveFlow: Simplifying Budget Management
Managing your budget can be a nightmare when you’ve got a million things to track: expenses, sales, invoices. LiveFlow connects your financial accounts directly to Google Sheets, updating your spreadsheets in real time with AI-powered insights. It automates everything from cash flow tracking to monthly reports, making budgeting simple and accurate. This is perfect for small business owners who don’t want to spend hours in spreadsheets but need to know their numbers.
Motion: Optimize Your Time
Here’s a sneaky hack: once you’ve got a handle on those numbers, fill out the budget page in your AI marketing guide and use the prompt to help you discover how it can be better optimized. Time is your most valuable asset, and managing it is a task in and of itself. But this productivity AI that I found, called Motion, is all about managing it better. It uses AI to automatically schedule your tasks, meetings, and deadlines, adjusting as your priorities change. It keeps your day organized without you having to lift a finger. I save a huge amount of time every day using Motion; it’s honestly incredible.
Conclusion: Your Path to Success
And there you have it: 20 AI tools to help you start, build, and scale your small business. Was there a tool on this list that helped you with your biggest pain point? Let me know in the comments, or if you have any other tools to add to the list. If you liked this video, don’t forget to hit that like button, and also don’t forget to grab the free AI marketing guide that I’ve linked in the description. Remember, it is packed with prompts and strategies to get even better results from these tools. Seriously, do not miss out on it; it will save you hours.
And hey, don’t forget to subscribe to this channel for more tips on building your business. Business smarter, not harder. My name is Bridal Roar. Thanks so much for hanging out with me, and I will see you in the next video. Bye!
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Keyword: AI marketing tools