For any small and medium-sized business (SMB), attracting customers is similar to plants needing sunlight for growth. It isn’t just about sales — it’s about consistent nurturing. According to the latest Small and Medium Business Trends report, that’s why chasing customers is the primary goal for stagnant and declining SMBs.
As an SMB owner, you juggle multiple things and face challenges like high customer acquisition costs, limited marketing budgets, and inconsistent lead generation. All of this makes standing out in a crowded market difficult. However, artificial intelligence (AI) can help you craft cost-effective strategies to convert leads and sustain growth. Let’s explore how to use AI to attract new customers.
What you’ll learn:
What is AI and its role in attracting new customers?
AI is an advanced technology that enables computer systems to learn, analyze data, and make smart decisions similar to human cognitive functions. AI for SMBs streamlines operations through automation and data-driven strategies. In fact, 90% of SMBs using AI report more efficient operations.
When it comes to attracting new customers, AI identifies and targets the most promising prospects and engages them with personalized marketing. Plus, it can guide potential customers through the sales funnel while deriving insights about their preferences and behaviors.
Key benefits of using AI for customer attraction
Using AI is like having a team of experts at your disposal. You can anticipate your customer needs and deliver personalized, seamless experiences that capture attention and build lasting relationships. Here are some of the benefits.
- Personalized marketing: AI can analyze customer data to create targeted campaigns and recommendations that help increase conversion rates.
- Predictive customer insights: AI can analyze customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns. This helps you understand which customers will likely purchase again.
- Better customer experience: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants like Agentforce provide instant, 24/7 support. They also improve customer interactions and build stronger connections with potential clients.
AI tools that help attract new customers
SMBs are significantly increasing their spending on technology, with 76% reporting higher spending than the previous year. Here are a few AI tools that can help you attract new customers.
- Agentforce: Agentforce, AI-powered agents, acts like your digital labor team. It can handle various tasks, including customer service, sales, marketing, and lead nurturing. It also streamlines workflows, reduces response times, and improves the overall customer experience.
- Marketing AI: Give your marketing efforts a great boost with features like segmentation, end-to-end campaign management, real-time engagement tracking, and performance insights.
- AI CRM: Customer relationship management (CRM) gives you everything we’ve just listed, plus more. It unifies all your customer and business information to offer a 360-degree view of your sales pipeline, customer interactions, operations, and marketing performance. A CRM for small businesses assists you in everything you do. We’ve built Starter Suite, an AI-powered CRM for SMBs and growing businesses like yours.
- Jasper AI: Jasper can help you craft compelling blog posts, social media content, and email campaigns. It can generate marketing content that drives organic traffic that meets your brand guidelines and voice.
AI Tools for Small Business
How do you use AI for predictive analytics?
Your data could be scattered anywhere and available in multiple formats. But AI can seamlessly analyze even large volumes of data to offer insights that you can put to work. This can help improve your customer lifetime value (CLV). Let’s check out the key areas it can help with.
Behavior predictions
AI uses machine learning to analyze how customers interact with your business and learns what makes them more likely to buy. It tracks their actions across your website, social media, and other channels to understand customer needs and predict potential churn. AI offers insights to help you reduce this churn.
Sales forecasting
AI can identify high-potential leads by scoring and ranking prospects based on conversion likelihood. This helps sales teams prioritize and customize their engagement strategies for maximum impact. Plus, it can study historical sales data, market trends, and customer interactions to generate accurate revenue projections.
PRO TIP: You can configure customizable dashboards for reporting using Starter Suite. Track your sales projections, conversions, monitor business performance, and spot growth opportunities — all from one view. In fact, Sandy Alexander uses Starter Suite to monitor its sales pipeline and customer churn. Because of visibility into leads and sales cycles, they’re closing deals faster and taking big bets on growth.
Just get started.
No matter where you are on your journey as a small business owner, you can get started with Starter Suite — the all-in-one AI CRM your SMB needs.
How can AI help with competitive intelligence?
While tracking your competition is essential, don’t let it consume your time. Let AI uncover such insights and help you differentiate your offerings. Here’s how.
Market research
As an SMB, you’ll compete with enterprises and businesses of your size. AI helping with market research will give you an edge. It can discover emerging market trends, consumer behavior shifts, and untapped customer needs. Insights like this are crucial for creating strategies and achieving product-market fit (PMF).
Competitor monitoring
AI can track competitor activities, customer reviews, and market positioning in real-time. It helps you turn gaps in their operations into opportunities for you. This can help you develop unique approaches to attract and retain customers more successfully.
Salesforce provides a centralized hub for tracking and monitoring competitor products, marketing strategies, and financial performance. You can create a custom watch list of your competitors and track metrics that make sense to you.
How can you personalize marketing with AI?
51% of marketers already use AI, while 51% believe automation will help them focus on more strategic tasks. From generating marketing ideas to handling campaigns, AI can help save time and boost return on investment (ROI). Here’s how.
Segmentation and targeting
AI analyzes customer data to create accurate audience segments based on demographics, behavior, and preferences. It can help craft targeted marketing messages that resonate with your target audience, improving engagement and conversion rates.
Content personalization
AI can analyze how audiences engage with your content across social media to conduct sentiment analysis and suggest content recommendations. From email subject lines and social media ads to influencer marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), AI comes in handy while creating multiple content formats. Plus, it’ll help you cater to each customer’s unique interests.
Marketing for small business comes with AI and helps you segment your customers based on their interests and how they interact with your products. This enables you to deliver effective messages to your target audience and increase conversions.
How can you deliver omnichannel experiences using AI?
Did you know businesses using omni-channel marketing see their store visits surge by 80%? Omni-channel experiences deliver uniform, personalized services across the customer journey. Customer preferences are always evolving, and so should your strategy.
AI learns from every customer interaction, whether on your website, app, social media, or store, helping you understand and meet their changing needs. This drives engagement through targeted, contextually relevant interactions. Here’s how you can implement omni-channel experiences using AI.
Integration across channels
AI seamlessly connects every customer touchpoint — from website clicks to store visits — creating a comprehensive view of their journey with your business. This integrated marketing enables you to offer more personalized experiences that maintain context regardless of the platform.
Consistent messaging
AI can analyze your brand voice and communication style to ensure brand consistency across channels. This helps maintain a consistent tone and communication style to create a seamless and recognizable customer experience.
Whether your customer starts their journey online or offline, Salesforce helps you cater to their needs. In fact, Currys’ offers an easy omni-channel shopping experience using Salesforce, increasing their conversion rates and average order value (AOV).
Advanced AI, like natural language processing (NLP), can analyze user interactions, sentiments, and preferences better. You can set up social media monitoring and personalize content and ads that resonate with your audience to drive engagement. Let’s look at some specific examples.
Targeted ads
AI can help SMBs be frugal but wise with their ad spend. It helps with audience segmentation and enables you to create content that resonates with your audience. This helps reduce costs and improve ROI, thanks to AI’s real-time performance tracking.
Content creation
AI can spot trending topics and popular content that your target audience might enjoy. It can save you a lot of time by acting as your content team and helping you create short-form videos, newsletters, infographics, podcasts, and more. Plus, AI can increase the chances of your content going viral.
Content Marketing for Small Business Guide
Learn practical content marketing strategies to boost your small business’s online presence and engage your audience.
How do you optimize your website or store using AI?
Your landing page truly matters while delivering a user experience (UX) that attracts customers. With AI, you can set up online storefronts and customize product placements and page elements to improve conversion rates. AI A/B tests your landing page to recommend suggestions and content based on customer interactions. It can continuously update product descriptions to meet your customers’ evolving needs.
Set up your digital storefront
AI can act as your web designer and help you set up your digital storefront. It can offer guidance on how to get started quickly — even with a few resources. Commerce for Small Business offers simple drag-and-drop design tools to set up a digital storefront. It also provides a streamlined payment and checkout process to give your customers the freedom to pay their way.
Start selling online with Starter Suite
Set up your storefront, engage customers, and drive growth using an all-in-one platform with integrated tools for every step of the journey.
Automated workflows
You can streamline customer communication by automating follow-up communications and timely reminders. AI can help you reduce cart abandonment by offering discounts or special prices through email or chat.
How can you improve SMB customer service with AI?
About 88% of customers say good customer service makes them shop with a brand again. AI can handle routine customer questions, offer helpful and contextual solutions based on past interactions, and free up your team to focus on complex issues. This ensures customers get quick, accurate responses 24/7 — whether they need product information, order updates, or basic troubleshooting. Here’s how it can further help.
Automating customer engagement with AI
You can deploy chatbots and AI-powered assistants to offer instant, contextual, personalized customer service. It understands customer needs and creates seamless, responsive interactions across multiple communication channels. Here’s how AI can enhance your customer engagement.
Chatbots and AI assistants
Unlike humans, AI agents like Agentforce don’t sleep. Autonomous, intelligent AI agents like Agentforce offer round-the-clock customer service through your customers’ preferred mode of communication. They can effectively multitask and handle conversations on various platforms. Plus, they learn from interactions, continuously improving their ability to understand your customers’ pain points and meet their needs.
Agentforce is efficiently analyzing data from millions of food orders to streamline ezCater’s customer service. Automating large-sized group orders isn’t easy, but Agentforce has been handling their orders, customer queries, changing dietary needs, and deliveries.
Attract more customers effortlessly with Salesforce AI
Just like you can’t rush a plant’s growth, getting new customers also requires plenty of effort, dedication, and planning. But AI has got you covered. It works with you to optimize your marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, and customer service. Starter Suite is AI-powered and helps you continuously learn and evolve to meet your current customers’ needs and attract new customers. SMBs all over the world count on it — and so can you.
Start your journey with a Starter today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite. Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations for free.
AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.
