How Small Businesses Can Serve a Large Customer Base With AI?

Editorial Staff

January 19, 2024

To be a small business owner is to wear the hat of a Chief Everything Officer– you need to do just about anything to make your business succeed. One key challenge is reaching and engaging a large customer base. 

For Small or Medium Businesses (SMBs), that means –

• Organizing cold, warm, and hot leads.
• Not letting leads fall through the cracks.
• Client retention and getting repeat business.
• Maintaining personal and relevant customer engagement to build a community. 
• Keeping brand image consistent across social media, email, and the website.

Then, there’s the lack of SMB-friendly customer management platforms. Most CRMs out there fit the needs of large enterprises. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for small businesses can solve marketing and sales challenges, streamline operations, and make better decisions.

How AI Can Help Small Businesses

1. Convert Raw Data to Actionable Information

Instead of sending the same email to all your customers, what if you could send targeted emails that match customer preferences? 

An AI-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can help you keep track of customer preferences, and provide actionable and tailored predictions to improve customer loyalty and repeat buying.

So, a florist could suggest an informed selection of flowers to a previous client, just before their anniversary.

2. Create Customer Personas

AI-based CRM platforms can create customer personas based on thousands of touchpoints – something that’s not possible manually. Touchpoints include –

• Geo-specific events.
• On-site interactions at events.
• Referrals.
• Psychographic factors.
• Purchase behavior.
• Communication patterns.

This information helps you create focused marketing and sales efforts.

3. Make Your Marketing Strategy Efficient

An AI-based CRM platform is capable of recording every client’s buying pattern. Say, you’re a florist that sells flowers to your customer on anniversaries or birthdays.

Based on their buying patterns, you could offer them a loyalty discount or optional add-ons such as chocolates and fragrance candles.

Or, say a customer orders her favorite dish from your restaurant once every week. If she doesn’t order for 2 weeks, the AI-based CRM system retargets her with a discount coupon and a personalized message.

4. Use AI Insights to Coach Your Team

A standard coaching program for all team members is a past. Every customer has a different need. You don’t want sales representatives who read from a script without understanding what customers want.

Information synthesis through AI can derive successful practices and reasons for ineffectiveness. How many small and medium businesses do you think to have access to this information?

These insights can make each customer interaction intentional and effective for your crew.

5. Make Every Dollar Count

With an AI-based CRM system, you maximize ROI. 

1. Design different strategies for cold, warm, and hot leads.
2. Free up time by automating answers to common questions.
3. Don’t hire more. Make your existing marketing and sales teams more efficient.
4. Generate more leads and raise the conversion ratio.
5. Optimize the entire customer acquisition and retention process.

Can an AI-Based CRM Help Manage Your Brand’s Image on Social Media?

You can integrate your social media accounts with CRM platforms to maintain a consistent brand image. Stop sharing random posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

AI-based CRMs use rich social media tools to automate posts and get valuable insights that can further enhance your brand image.

Automating Business Operations with Prospur:

Increasing your customer base is the first step, and now you can do that with Prospur – the end-to-end CRM platform for small and medium businesses.

With features like social media integration, mobile integration, listings, and reputation management, this secure, scalable, all-in-one platform for small businesses packs a punch, with SMB-friendly pricing plans.

Reach out to us for a free, no-obligation Demo.