Artificial intelligence technology has made so much progress with AI automation tools for business that the technology has become an indispensable part of business operations. While AI may be rapidly evolving, businesses are still figuring out how to incorporate artificial intelligence into their systems and processes. However, finding the right and affordable AI automation tools for SMBs is easier said than done. Not doing so can lead them to go beyond budget or spend unnecessary investment on tools that either they don’t know how to use or just need for a few projects and now are redundant for them. So, what to do? How to ensure that even if you stick to freemium models of AI or utilize free and open-source AI Tools for SMBs, you can still benefit from them?
Successfully leveraging these AI automation tools for business is more than just effectively implementing them, especially if you own a small business. Of course, AI automation tools for business for SMBs can help you streamline processes, enhance productivity, and unlock new opportunities, but how do you know which tool to use or which to skip? What are the features that will help you utilize these tools? What benefits does it have for smaller businesses? If you’re looking for an AI tool for free to help your teams’ productivity check out our list of top 7 free AI Automation Tools for SMBs and onboard an AI assistant for your company easily!
Top AI Automation Tools for SMBs: A Driving Factor for Innovation & Growth
Whether it’s for developing the perfect marketing campaign or accelerating your software development service, no shortage of AI automation tools for business that can help you take your small business to the next level. These free AI Automation Tools for SMBs span a broad range of applications to address specific needs. Here are the top 7 AI tools for SMEs in no particular order:
Tool 1: DALL-E 3
It’s a powerful image Generative AI automation tool that can create realistic images and art from a user’s descriptions. SMBs can create eye-catching social media graphics, product mockups, or unique website visuals without having individual design expertise.
Key Features:
- Generate images based on text descriptions.
- Combine concepts and styles in your creations.
- Edit existing images with natural language prompts (limited access)
- Create variations of existing images (limited access)
Tool 2: Copy.ai
A popular GTM AI platform that can power your sales and AI for small business marketing processes from creating content, prospecting at scale, enriching CRM, and much more. Thus, making it simpler to generate engaging content like blog posts, social media captions, and product descriptions, even if you’re not a writing whiz.
Key Features:
- Generate various text formats: blogs, social media posts, and product descriptions.
- Improve existing copy by suggesting rewrites and enhancing tone.
- Translate languages for marketing content (limited translations).
- Access to a limited library of pre-written content templates.
- Basic content plagiarism checker.
Tool 3: Lumen5
An AI-powered creation platform that lets you generate, edit, and share short videos from text content and images. Thus, it’s simpler to create engaging explainer videos, product demos, or social media content without complex or expensive video editing software.
Key Features:
- Generate short videos from text and images.
- Access to a library of stock videos and images.
- Customize video style with themes and music.
- Export videos with a watermark (removed in paid plans)
- Limited video length and number of projects (increased in paid plans)
Tool 4: Freepik AI Image Generator
This is an AI text-to-image platform, Freepik, that gives endless results in real-time. With a variety of modes to choose from to generate new stock photo style images based on text descriptions for use, so utilize AI for small business marketing materials, websites, or social media.
Key Features:
- Generate images based on text descriptions (stock photo style focus).
- Choose from various image styles and compositions.
- Access to a limited number of image generations per month (increased in paid plans)
- Downloaded images come with a watermark (removed in paid plans)
- Limited control over image editing features (increased in paid plans)
Tool 5: Hootsuite
It’s a popular social media management platform that can be a valuable asset for small businesses looking to improve their online presence. By providing a centralized dashboard for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social media content, Hootsuite can help SMBs save time, increase efficiency, and enhance their brand engagement.
Key Features:
- Social network integration for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
- Content calendar to plan and schedule your social media posts in advance.
- Analytics and reporting for engagement, reach, and conversions.
- Team collaboration feature to assign tasks and manage team members.
- Customer engagement tools to let you respond to comments, messages, and mentions directly from Hootsuite.
Tool 6: SuiteCRM
It’s a customizable customer relationship management (CRM) platform that’s ideal for small businesses and provides full control over data and customer relationships. The platform offers a flexible way to manage customer interactions, sales pipelines, and marketing efforts.
Key Features:
- Organize and manage customer information, including contacts, accounts, and leads.
- Visualize your sales funnel and track the progress of deals.
- Automate marketing tasks like email campaigns or lead nurturing.
- Manage customer inquiries, issues, and support requests efficiently.
- Reporting and Analytics to track KPIs and gain insights into your business.
Tool 7: Tabnine
It’s a code completion tool that offers suggestions in various programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, and Java. The AI code assistant can analyze your code and context to provide relevant and accurate completions, thus helping you write code faster and with fewer errors.
Key Features:
- Intelligent code completions based on the context of your code.
- Multiple language support.
- Customizable settings to match your preferences and coding style.
- Integration with popular IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, and IntelliJ IDEA.
- Tabnine offers an offline mode.
Side Note: The question of whether it’s necessary to use AI for my small business has a very short answer. No, of course not. Why? Not every problem is going to require an AI tool or solution. Even though we have listed some of the major free AI Automation Tools for SMBs, they have limited features in the free model and have premium plans with advanced features. So, the cost of an AI plus the time and energy you have to devote to set up and learn how to use it has to be worth the benefit.
What should you do then? Lee Davis in his Forbes article sums up this, “if you think the given AI tools can save 5 minutes a week on a task or improve accuracy by an insignificant rate, then it might not be worth the investment. But if improving accuracy by 1% can make meaningful improvements to profitability and/or save you 10 hours a week, then it’s worth it.”
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Transforming Businesses: 5 Ways How AI Automation Tools for SMBs Can Drive Growth
After discussing a few innovative AI Automation Tools for SMBs that have been enhancing small businesses’ operational efficiencies, productivity, and workflows, and lowering overhead costs. Let’s now move on to highlight 5 transformative benefits of leveraging AI tools for small businesses in detail:
- Enhance Efficiency & Productivity: AI can have a tremendous impact on efficiency, which leaves small business owners more time to deal with value-adding activities. When it comes to integrating AI at workplaces, routine activities like data entry, customer service complaint answers, and social media engagement can bring about efficiency in organizational productivity besides lowering overhead expenses.
- Improve Customer Experience: From self-service capabilities such as chatbots responding to queries on a constant basis to recommendation systems that provide goods and services that meet the customer’s specific needs and preferences, AI can improve the way organizations engage with customers as well as customer engagement. Thus, by integrating AI Automation Tools for SMBs, customers can get the experience and support they want and need without delay.
- Minimize Operational Expenses: Leveraging AI automation tools for business can help small businesses with substantial cost savings, as they eliminate resource wastage and automate operational processes, as use of AI in a business means less human handling and therefore lowers the tendency for increased spending on correcting errors and speeds up overall efficiency.
- Optimize Strategies for Growth: Its capability to analyze and extract valuable information from vast amounts of data and make it available to small business owners in real time helps them make data-driven decisions. Insights into important metrics such as customer behavior, market trends, and operational KPIs allow them to take the necessary information and present opportunities for expansion.
- Ensure Long-Term Sustainability: AI Automation Tools for SMBs can be easily modified to suit the existing business trends and demands, ensuring that small businesses can scale up or down as required. In particular, these tools can help to respond to growing customer requests or new market trends more effectively and opportunistically. Amidst the changing business environment.
AI Automation Tools for SMBs: Addressing Risks and Rewards
Navigating the complexities of AI Automation Tools for SMBs, while it’s notable the groundbreaking difference utilizing these AI tools brings to SMBs, however, it’s essential to be aware of the potential concerns. We’ve got benefits like streamlining processes, improving efficiency, and even enhancing decision-making, but concerns such as data privacy, bias, fear of job displacement, and technical know-how cannot be overlooked.
Therefore, small businesses need not only to understand these complexities but also to keep a balance between harnessing the power of AI automation and mitigating risks. Additionally, follow these tips to find the right AI tools for your small business with ease:
- Ensure the tools are compatible with your existing software and systems.
- Compare the features offered by different tools and assess any limitations.
- Choose tools that can grow with your business and handle increased workloads.
- Ensure the tools follow ethical AI best practices such as robust security and data privacy and are diverse, transparent, and bias-free.
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Wrapping It Up
Undoubtedly, AI as a technology with its subsets, such as Generative AI automation tools or AI tools, has transformed the business landscape, making previously difficult or impossible tasks easy, fast, and cost-effective. Embracing AI technology not only positions your small growth business but also empowers you to stay ahead of the competition in an increasingly automated world. While picking the right AI tools for your business is a step in the right direction, integrating them into your workflow can be a challenge. So, remember that AI may be an extraordinary tool that will help you automate your workflows, boost productivity, and enhance customer experiences. However, that’s not possible without your forethought and know-how, or you ignoring the risks that these AI Automation Tools for SMBs come with.
Hopefully, this blog has offered a comprehensive list to choose from and understand the challenges you need to overcome. By keeping these AI tools and their key features in mind, you can identify the affordable and efficient AI tools that can aid you in completing hours of work in just minutes and strengthen your small business’s entrepreneurial endeavor!
