Small businesses have long struggled to keep up with the high-quality marketing materials that global brands can produce. They simply don’t have the same amount of manpower, budget, time, or technical expertise that bigger brands have. As a result, competing in the same market can feel like a lost cause.
However, the rise of AI is changing the game. Small businesses can now use tools like Midijourney, DALL-E 2, and Google Auto-Draw to make professional designs as fast as a snap of a finger. Tools like AI logo generators and AI background removers are also available to make even the branding side easier.
AI has indeed proven itself to be a game-changer. In this article, we’ll explore how AI-driven designs are revolutionizing small business marketing and why it’s essential to embrace AI to stay competitive in this digital age.
How AI Levels the Playing Field
High-quality marketing materials were historically reserved for businesses with massive budgets. After all, these businesses have the money to hire marketing agencies, a dedicated marketing team, or buy the latest design software.
Small businesses, on the other hand, have to rely on DIY efforts or find the most affordable freelancer. This, unfortunately, can sometimes lead to lesser-quality designs.
With AI, this process is democratized. AI design tools allow entrepreneurs to have a professional-grade design even without any knowledge of editing or illustration. This way, business owners can do the marketing themselves, lessening the need to hire more people or take on specialized design lessons.
AI tools, even the free ones, already offer tons of options and customization. This is unlike some design tools in the past, where you needed to buy the software or pay for a subscription just to access some editing options.
AI can also analyze data about design trends, consumer behavior, or current market state to generate the most effective design. This allows entrepreneurs to get materials that will surely be a hit with their audience.
AI helps small businesses keep up. Now, even a local bakery or a home-based knitter can have the same level of marketing as big brands.
Benefits of Using AI-Driven Designs for Marketing
AI can help make small businesses by:
Efficient content creation
Creating marketing materials takes a lot of time and effort. Ideation, illustration, production, editing–all of these can take hours, days, or even weeks to finish.
Luckily, AI can streamline this time-consuming process.
AI tools can be used to generate social media posts, posters, flyers, or logo designs within seconds. This reduces the need for manual design work. This also lessens the mental load of having to come up with new ideas each time.
What if you still want to have a say in the final design? Most AI tools also offer design templates that you can edit and customize. This way, you have more power over the final look, but you still save time since you won’t need to start from scratch.
Some AI tools also offer smart resizing features so you can adapt one content to different platforms in a snap.
Video editing, which used to take hours, can also be done faster with AI. You can now automate menial tasks like clipping, trimming, reviewing, or subtitling your content. Adding visual effects is also easier, as you can use AI to automatically sharpen, filter, or color-correct your videos.
Enhanced brand consistency
Consistent branding is important to build trust and recognition from your customers.
Think of household name brands like Coca-Cola, Google, or Spotify. Their strong and consistent branding allows you to identify their brand by just seeing their color scheme or imagery style.
However, achieving brand consistency like theirs can be challenging for small businesses without a dedicated marketing team.
AI can help with this by using machine learning algorithms to recognize your brand color, font, or aesthetic. This ensures that every marketing material they generate is aligned with your brand identity.
Some AI tools also offer suggestions whenever you generate content. For example, you may have asked for a Facebook cover, but they can also give you samples of how an Instagram ad, postcard, or website header will look in the same style. This helps create consistently designed materials.
Generate personalized content
A study from McKinsey shows that 72% of customers said that they expect brands to know their interests and offer them products that are relevant to their needs. Seventy-eight percent also say that they are more likely to repurchase from brands that create personalized content.
This high-level of personalization used to only be available to big brands with a dedicated data analytics team. But now you can use AI to analyze your customer’s behavior and deliver more personalized marketing.
Some AI tools can also generate visuals and captions based on customer preferences, browsing history, or past interactions with your brand. This allows you to create materials with a higher chance of conversion.
With AI, even small businesses can create materials and campaigns that are tailored to their customers.
Create a more optimized marketing strategy
AI can also provide valuable insights to help you polish your marketing strategies.
For instance, you can use AI-powered analytics to study the performance of your previous content, such as views, likes, shares, or engagement. This can help determine which content works best for your audience.
Some tools can even dig deeper and give you insights on the best color scheme, ad format, or video length to use. This predictive analysis eliminates the guesswork and allows small businesses to make more effective content.
Embracing AI-Driven Designs for Small Business Marketing
AI is no longer a sci-fi concept.
It’s now a practical and accessible solution for small businesses hoping to make a name for themselves. Entrepreneurs can use AI tools to streamline content creation, enhance brand consistency, and provide data insights to thrive in a highly competitive market.
AI-driven designs are also no longer just an option but a necessity at this point. This is because marketing as a whole is starting to turn fully digital. By adapting to AI now, small businesses not only keep up with the trend but also set themselves up for success in the future.
