How To Use AI to Boost Your Local Service Business

Here’s how to boost your local service business’s online presence: use AI for rich, relevant content production, enhanced customer experience, and increased lead generation.

When we think about how AI will revolutionize the world, especially in digital marketing, we often imagine big corporations using machines to replace armies of copywriters, designers, and other content creators.

Large companies with vast customer bases and competitive content must use advanced AI systems to generate content, process data, and analyze information to stay ahead.

But the potential of AI is not limited to big players. you can also use AI to boost your local service businesses with limited resources and time and benefit from AI’s time and cost-saving solutions.

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is keeping up with the overwhelming demands of digital marketing, which can be a full-time job.

Maintaining a relevant digital presence and enabling customers to engage through multiple channels is crucial for business growth.

So how can small business owners keep up with these demands, especially in areas they may not be familiar with?

This is where AI comes in to boost your local service business.

How Can AI Support Small Business Marketing?

Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is the current popular application of AI in marketing. These AI engines are large language models trained on massive amounts of data to understand, summarize, and generate new content. AI can provide quick and effective content on any topic covered in its training data with this technology.

Website, Blog, And Social Content

The first natural application of AI writing tools for small businesses is to create educational, informative, or helpful content for your website visitors, social followers, and search engines. Content is still important for establishing online authority, and creating more and better content can help you stand out from your competition.

AI can generate content on any topic, and most small local businesses’ customer needs are consistent. It’s important to provide a well-structured prompt to obtain quality content. The AI-generated content may only require small changes and personalization to be ready for your audience, or you can re-prompt the AI for a better version.

However, reviewing and editing the content to ensure uniqueness and accuracy is important, as AI can sometimes be inaccurate. It’s also important to humanize the content and ensure it reflects your brand by adding your unique signature, such as your anecdotal viewpoint, tone, or links to other relevant content.

Direct Customer Communications

In addition to content creation for mass sharing on websites or social media, there are direct-to-consumer campaigns aimed at promoting, educating, or informing. These campaigns may take the form of short messages like emails or SMS. However, they still require time to develop ideas and deliver the content to the target audience. AI can assist in both stages of the process.

Firstly, AI can provide a list of topics or ideas for a campaign. For example, suppose you ask an AI virtual marketing assistant for promotions that a small local plumbing company can run to increase revenue. In that case, it can quickly provide suggestions like a Seasonal Maintenance Package, New Customer Discount, Loyalty Rewards Program, Bundle Packages, Refer-a-Friend Program, Limited-Time Offers, Social Media Exclusive Deals, Senior Citizen or Military Discounts, Maintenance Plan Subscriptions, and Partner Discounts. It also advises advertising the promotions through various channels like the company’s website, social media, local advertising, and direct mail and monitoring their effectiveness.

Furthermore, AI can help with suggesting the messaging itself. By providing a well-structured prompt, the AI can take into account factors like the message type (promotion, announcement, invite, etc.), specific services or products to mention, specific words to include or exclude, demographic targeting information, writing tone (conversational, friendly, etc.), and writing perspective (first or third person). The more detailed the prompt, the more accurate and effective the generated response will be.

SEO And Paid Search

AI is already integrated into many paid advertising platforms, including Google Ads, where it recommends or generates content based on existing content and past performance. Small business owners or employees can leverage this technology with the time and knowledge to handle website matters themselves. Generative AI for SEO can assist with keyword and content research and create page titles, meta descriptions, and more advanced aspects of on-site optimization. This allows businesses to benefit from other advertisers’ collective knowledge and experience, regardless of their size.

Website Support

Website chatbots have been around for a while, but AI is taking them to the next level. These advanced chatbots can seamlessly interact with visitors and find the specific information they need. Just like AI LLMs can analyze vast amounts of web content, they can also analyze your website and gather all the important details about your offerings. If the chatbot encounters a question it can’t answer, customers can easily forward their queries through other channels like SMS or email.

Future Thinking

AI-generated text-based content is just the beginning, as photo-realistic images and full-scale videos are also being produced. This opens up opportunities for creating compelling business content. AI can also automate personalization and optimization, providing the right content to people at the right time. It is no longer limited to Google and search engines, as open-source AI solutions make this accessible to everyone. Predictive analytics will enable small business marketers to stay ahead by automating successful tactics and discarding ineffective ones.

But… AI Is Just A Tool

While AI has the potential to save time in content creation, it should not be seen as a complete replacement for human writers or editors. AI-generated content runs the risk of being repetitive as some creators publish it as-is. This is not what your audience or Google wants. Using AI as a starting point and adding your unique voice, perspective, and anecdotes is important. Google’s primary content ranking factors, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), should be added by small business owners to what AI can provide.

Boost Your Local Service Business

In conclusion, harnessing the power of AI can truly boost your local service business. By embracing technology and utilizing AI tools, you can streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and ultimately take your business to new heights. So, don’t wait any longer – it’s time to embrace the future and unlock the full potential of AI for your local service business. Get ready to thrive in the digital age and watch your business soar!