AI for small businesses: Practical ways to supercharge your marketing

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers small businesses the tantalising prospect of having an intelligent assistant that can quickly complete marketing tasks.

There are tools available to help you do everything from formatting images and generating social media templates to developing entire marketing plans.

Adobe Express, for example, is a free app you can download and put to use creating whatever marketing materials you might need.

In this blog post, we share practical ways you can use these tools to save time and improve your marketing.

Learning to write effective AI prompts

Generative AIs are often trained using large amounts of information from the internet.

This allows them to understand written queries, called "prompts", and draw from an incredible amount of information.

Writing effective prompts has a big impact on the quality of the results. ChatGPT is a popular generative AI chatbot. If you ask it to "Create a marketing strategy", for example, it'll share a detailed set of suggestions.

The trick to getting value from these tools is providing the context that allows them to refine the answer:

"You're a marketing coach with 20 years' experience advising small business owners. Please write a marketing strategy for a plant shop with a high street location in Bristol. Our customers are wealthier 20 and 30-somethings that live in the area. We're passionate about the environment and mental wellbeing."

The response included detailed advice, from suggested colour schemes and other branding tips to using window displays and plant-themed events to attract local shoppers.

Eight ways you can use AI to supercharge your marketing

1. Proofreading and editing

Generative AI isn't good enough to write articles or LinkedIn posts from scratch, but it's great at providing feedback:

"You're an expert proofreader. Please list any possible grammar and spelling mistakes in the following blog post, which is written in British English."

It won't replace a professional editor, but it will improve the quality of your writing.

2. Creating social media templates

AI has completely supercharged social media templates. Adobe Express's free Generate Template feature is a quick way to kickstart the design process. Just describe what you're looking for and it'll give you options to pick from:

"Modern flyer for autumn clothing fashion business."

Once you're done, you can download your creation and start using it. As an exclusive offer, Enterprise Nation members can get three months' free access to Adobe Express Premium right now.

3. Carrying out complicated calculations

Text-based AI chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT can explain complicated calculations. You might want to understand how different discounts will affect your margins:

"We sell pairs of socks for £14 and make a 15% gross margin. We want to offer a 10% discount. What's the new sales price and what impact will it have on our margin?"

This is a great starting point for understanding and answering these kinds of questions. Just remember to check the answers – generative AI can make mistakes.

4. Spreadsheet formulas

By this point, most queries about spreadsheets have been answered online.

What AI brings to the table is the ability to understand what you're looking for and customise the answer:

"We have lots of contact information in the format, 'Jane Bloggs <jane@enterprisenation.com>'. Please can you create an Excel formula that extracts the email address from cell A1."

Try to be as literal as possible. If the formula isn't working how you expected, you can provide feedback and make suggestions.

5. Editing marketing assets

Adobe Express offers a free tool to remove the background of images like a photo of a customer.

At the same time, the Premium version of the app has a tool called One-Click Resize. This is a great time-saving feature, as it lets you automatically resize assets for use across a number of different marketing channels.

You can resize and expand images, setting your own size or using default options that work for platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

If you want to start using Adobe Express Premium, we've secured Enterprise Nation members three months' free access, which you can redeem right now.

6. Summarising documents and meetings

AI can analyse long documents, like reports and meeting transcripts. Try these prompts in ChatGPT or Claude:

"The attached presentation explains how to create a start-up funding pitch. I'm a start-up coach. Can you list suggestions of 10 LinkedIn posts I can write to promote the report which share practical value with my audience?"

"Please look at the attached conversation transcript and list the key concerns raised by the people that attended the roundtable."

You'll need a paid subscription to upload documents, but you can paste text into the free versions.

Platforms like Otter.ai can transcribe audio files, and meeting tools like Google Hangouts now offer the ability to automatically create a transcript.

7. Developing content ideas

Try asking AI to develop content ideas for your audience:

"We have a market stand on Saturday to sell our range of organic chutneys. What content do you suggest creating for Instagram to encourage people to come to our stall?"

Approach it like you're talking to an expert and ask follow-up questions. You might want it to make the ideas more mission driven or give you more detail about a particular idea.

8. Generating images

AI can now create images from a simple text prompt. Adobe Express, for example, has a built-in AI image generator called Generate Image.

Designed responsibly so it's entirely safe for commercial use, this feature allows your business to create and publish assets with confidence.

Understanding what generative AI can't do

Knowing AI's limitations is just as important as understanding its capabilities.

The first thing to remember is that text-based generative AIs like ChatGPT sound confident even when they're wrong. This means checking the accuracy of key information is crucial.

You've likely seen AI-generated images or LinkedIn posts that seem slightly strange. This unsettling feeling is sometimes called the "uncanny valley effect". Something looks human, but is a bit off, like a model's fingers that bend at an unnatural angle.

People spot this kind of content immediately, so be transparent about your AI usage and only share images that work.

Read more about Adobe's approach to AI ethics

Experiment and learn

There are some amazing new AI-powered tools that can help your small business save time and improve the quality of your marketing. The best starting point is to identify a marketing task you do regularly and start experimenting.

Relevant resources

• Growing your social media channels for your small business

• Content strategy for small businesses: Top tips and expert insights

• Small business brand design: Cost-effective ways to get recognised

Adobe Express: The quick and easy app to bring your business goals to life

With thousands of easy-to-use templates and commercially safe generative AI tools, Adobe Express makes creating content easy.

Learn more about Adobe Express on our Brand Builder hub