Generative AI Is the Ultimate Productivity Booster for Business Owners

By Brian Mulroy, CFO at Semrush

Generative AI and tools like ChatGPT are top of mind for just about everyone these days. According to Semrush data, US Google searches for “generative AI” were up 18,000% YoY in May, and searches for “generative AI meaning” climbed 8,000% from January to May 2023. Searches for “AI productivity tools” and “AI productivity apps” also increased by 7,100% and 1,300% respectively, while searches for “how can AI increase productivity” increased by 400% over the same span. From interest level to adoption, ChatGPT managed to gain one million users in the first 5 days, and 100 million users in the first couple of months, setting a record at the time for the fastest growing user base.

This record level of interest is not surprising as Generative AI has the striking potential to create efficiencies unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. The ability for generative AI to create new content, save time, and boost revenue holds massive potential for business owners seeking enhanced online visibility. Nearly 87% of organizations believe AI and machine learning will help them grow revenue, boost operational efficiency and improve customer experiences. Statista found AI is expected to contribute a 21% net increase to the US GDP by 2030, and PwC showed the technology is anticipated to increase revenue by over $15 trillion by the same year. 

AI presents a unique opportunity for SMBs to gain scale and efficiency, and emerge from today’s challenging macroeconomic conditions as a healthier, leaner, and more profitable business. For smaller organizations with employees wearing multiple hats, AI can help expedite workflows, boost creative output, and even create revenue generating courses, content or website functionality to change the scale of what each individual business owner is capable of accomplishing. For business owners, the time to adopt the technology and find ways to make it work for them is now.

Ideal use cases for SMBs

As a CFO always looking to improve employee productivity, grow revenue, and increase profitability, there are four use cases we are exploring or already benefiting from that all businesses, especially SMBs, can also benefit from. One of our inspirations for experimenting with and deploying the technology in our own business was born from a recent study from Stanford, which found that AI increased the productivity of customer support agents by 14%. In the SMB sector, AI could have a similar or even greater impact. Here’s how: 

Customer Engagement: Automate and streamline how you connect with your customers

Generative AI can enhance interactions between business owners and customers, especially when it comes to reviews. The technology can create review responses in seconds, saving business owners time creating their own manually. The average reply time can be reduced dramatically and the percentage of unanswered reviews can become close to zero. This drives better customer engagement, better review scores, increased brand loyalty and incremental sales. AI can also analyze thousands of customer reviews and feedback inputs across multiple channels, like surveys and social media posts, to unveil themes, strengths, challenges, and areas to improve. The insights can then be applied to engage your audience with updates you’ll know they’ll appreciate. AI can also deliver personalized targeted ads or product recommendations based on a customer’s behaviors and preferences. Nearly 60% of customers will become repeat buyers if they are offered a personalized shopping experience, so implementing AI, specifically throughout the checkout process, can deliver sustained profit from a more engaged customer base. 

Build new content without dedicated marketing teams 

Today’s business owners are busier than ever before, and many of them don’t have dedicated marketing teams, research agencies, or competitive intelligence tools to help them stay ahead of the curve. While there will always be a place for professional writers, content agencies, and publications for big businesses, none of them can produce content from a simple query as fast as the latest generative AI can. The sheer speed of AI-generated content can remove the burden from business owners who need to update their blogs or newsrooms, website copy, or social posts. If you don’t know where to start, tools like ContentShake have a new feature called ‘Ask AI’ that allows users to generate outlines, rewrite text or create posts with a single prompt. When it comes to long-form content, large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are capable of producing written responses of over 4,000 characters in mere seconds. We know that people are increasingly seeking out these writing tools, with US Google searches for “AI writing generator” up 110,900% from January 2020 to May 2023, according to Semrush. Chatbots enable scaling content libraries on owned and operated properties faster than ever before, getting blogs up and running and building out resources to bring visitors to a brand’s site or profile virtually overnight. 

Build More Sophisticated Content from Existing Content

New AI tools can also repurpose existing content for other mediums, stretching the value of marketing assets and their media library. For example, solutions can adapt a written blog into a video for social media in mere seconds using the summarizing and creative powers of generative AI. With AI-based tools, teams can quickly mock up graphics or video content with a simple prompt, or piece of copy, without creative teams and content agencies pouring hours into it.

Enhance Online Awareness

Generative AI is helping business owners not only be more productive in their workflows, but it can also help their brand be seen by larger audiences. High ranking content, even if it’s been generated by AI and fact checked by the business owner, will lead to more traffic, especially if the content generation tool has inbuilt SEO optimization, like the SEO Writing Assistant. Generative AI’s ability to reduce human error and enhance quality of content also has a meaningful impact on brand awareness - typos and spelling mistakes on business websites cause lower ranking performance on search engines and on social, and can cause significant dips in customer trust. 

Now that we’re starting to see the impact generative AI is having around the world, business owners should be encouraged to test how it can create efficiencies across all functions of their organization. As it quickly becomes a competitive necessity, AI stands to reimagine workflows, surface new time and resources, and enhance the performance of today’s businesses.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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