Can AI Marketing Tools Help? Yes -But Only If You Do This Too

Here’s How AI Marketing Tools Actually Help Small Businesses, though the lens of owners and founders.

Is it that time again? Sitting in front of your screen, writers block stopping you from scribbling the first line for your Instagram offer or your email newsletter.

Why bother? You know as well as I do that there are 40 other things that need doing. Real things. Useful things.

How do you reconcile the need to market your business with the fact that you don’t like doing it? How do you find the time when you have other things to do that you much prefer?

Using AI tools for marketing feels like it could be the answer, but it can be difficult to know where to get started.

So, whether you’re wondering if you can use AI to do your marketing, or which AI marketing tools to use, or even if AI marketing really matters, then these 5 examples will help you understand what all the fuss is about.

1. Writing Social Posts (Fast) with ChatGPT

You own a restaurant and you know that pictures of delicious food draws people in. So with a prompt on ChatGPT, every Monday, you can generate captions for the week to go with pictures of your food. A quick glance helps you tweaks the tone (AI still can’t quite make things sound delicious) and then you can schedule them using Meta’s built-in planner.

• AI Marketing Tools used: ChatGPT (free), Meta Business Suite (free)
• Outcome: 2 hours of content planning now takes 30 minutes.

ChatGPT can give you a caption, but it doesn’t always work. It won’t know which jokes land with your audience, what you posted last week, or when to be playful, direct, funny, or serious. It doesn’t know what dishes sell, what your specials are, how you prep and so on.

The good news is, most of the hard work is done because you have an idea on the page.

2. Improving Email Open Rates with AI Subject Line Assistants

We have a local shop that sells knick-knacks. Think scented candles, porcelain ducks, cute tea towels, that sort of thing.

Every month they are supposed to send us a newsletter. But often, they don’t. Any when they do, the subject line is just the name of the shop. Usually it gets lost.

“I’ll read it later” he lied.

That’s where tools like Mailchimp come in. It can generate and test email headlines for the shop’s weekly specials. It can then analyse and improve on those subject lines based on real feedback.

• AI Marketing Tools used: Mailchimp
• Outcome: Constant testing and improved open rates.

Here’s the kicker – AI can suggest dozens of subject lines, but you need to know which ones fit your brand’s tone. You still need a clear sense of your audience to avoid sounding robotic or salesy. AI will pick the subject line that’s most effective, but not necessarily aligned with your brand.

After all, we’d all read an email with a provocative title like “You will die tonight”. Probably not the tone you want to set with prospective customers.

3. Creating Flyers & Promos with Canva Magic Write

A friend of mine is a personal trainer. They use Canva’s Magic Write to draft text for promotional posters, saving hours on designing posters and posts.

It doesn’t always hit the mark, but it’s the difference between starting with a blank page and a bunch of homework, and getting something that’s good enough to put out to her audience.

• AI Marketing Tools used: Canva AI
• Outcome: Professional-looking designs done faster — without a graphic designer.

It’s not as good at the words. AI-generated copy often lacks local nuance or unique selling points. It certainly won’t understand how her balance of good humour, fact-based polite challenging, and a touch of rebellion all make her great at what she does. But it’s a great start to get something out there quickly.

4. Segmenting Your Audience Automatically

People love their coffee, and often have very strong opinions about what they like. If you’re a coffee roaster, you have huge potential for marketing your different roasts and blends, as well as an audience who loves to hear about it.

Audience segmentation tools use AI to pick out who buys what, and when. Then it gives you this information so that you can send bespoke emails to those customers, making them feel personal.

• AI Marketing Tools used: Klaviyo / Mailchimp
• Outcome: Higher click-through rates and fewer unsubscribes.

Now, it’s powerful becauseAI sees patterns that escape us, but humans see purpose. We know why these people are buying. AI just helps us with finding the who, quickly and reliably. You still need to decide what to say, when, and how to get the best results.

 5. Generating Blog Topics and Outlines

People love their pets and will spend a lot on them. We love them. They’re part of the family. Using tools like ChatGPT can help you brainstorm content ideas and blog structures, specific to seasons and points of interest. For example, tips for helping your dog who’s scared of thunder – perfect for storm season. If it’s getting towards summer, time to learn about tick prevention and treatment.

• AI Marketing Tools used: ChatGPT + WordPress
• Outcome: Consistent blog updates that boost viewership, without outsourcing everything.

AI might know what’s trending and areas to consider. But it doesn’t have your personal experience or storytelling ability. This makes a difference. It can make a good guess at finding words and phrases to help people find your blog, but it won’t actually know if these are performing. For that, once again, you need a human.

Teach Someone To Fish, They’ll  Probably Still Buy Most Of Their Fish

It’s true that these are all practical tips that will make your dedicated marketing time go further. But there are costs involved.

You need to upskill on each of these platforms.

These AI marketing tools are all Freemium services – i.e. you can use some of the basic stuff for free but to really get the most out of them, you need to pay a subscription. Then you’ll need to jump on YouTube and learn how to make them work.

AI Marketing Tools don’t yet remove the need for a specialist – but they do mean that a single specialist partner can do a lot more than ever before. Now a single person can do the job of a small agency. That means the invoice covers one person’s time, not four.

And when customers start rolling in (because this stuff works), you know you’ll have a rock solid, scalable option to keep people interested, regardless of your workload.

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