How AI Tools Can Help a Small Business Thrive: Top AI Tools for Small Business Owners
by Kurt Forster | January 2, 2025
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, AI tools are being incorporated into everything from business plan software like Live Plan and accounting software like QuickBooks. Still many AI platforms stand on their own to offer small business owners’ access to a wide range of powerful tools that can enhance productivity, improve customer service, and streamline operations. Whether you’re looking for automation, customer support, or marketing solutions, there’s likely an AI tool to fit your needs. Here, we explore the top five AI tools readily available to small business owners, comparing their key features, strengths, and best use cases.
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
Chat GPT is especially well suited to content creation for websites, social media posts, email newsletters, brainstorming ideas, and customer support. Because it is capable of understanding and generating human like text it can be used for everything from drafting executive emails to generating customer service chatbot content. Much of your success with Chat GPT will depend on your ability to provide good, detailed queries and to prompt the system for more information as needed. As a content creation tool, ChatGPT can generate SEO-friendly content for blogs, newsletters, and social media, saving you hours of writing. Similarly, Chat GPT can be used for Creative Brainstorming: Small business owners can leverage ChatGPT to generate new business ideas, product descriptions, and marketing slogans. Additional, prompts can keep the brainstorming going. Finally, Chat GPT is a tool for providing automated responses in customer service situations such as offering frequently asked questions on your website or via email.
- HubSpot
HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates AI-driven marketing and sales tools to help businesses manage customer relationships and automate repetitive tasks. It includes everything from email marketing automation with lead scoring and nurturing to content management for social media posting and monitoring. For example, HubSpot can automatically segment your contacts and send personalized email campaigns to target customers. Similarly, HubSpotcan be used for lead qualification and scoring to help prioritize prospects and ensure sales teams focus on the most valuable leads. It can even predict customer behavior and optimize your communication to address that behavior.
- Zapier
Zapier enables small business owners to automate workflows by connecting various apps and services without needing coding skills. It acts as a bridge between apps like Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets, and over 3,000 other applications, automating routine and repetitive tasks. It can connect to over 5,000 applications and be customized without programming skills. Zapier can reduce administrative work and automate tasks like posting on social media, sending confirmation emails, or updating spreadsheets. It can set up workflows to automatically move data between apps (e.g., adding new leads from a form to your CRM or triggering an email follow-up). And, because it works with multiple tools, small businesses can save time by automating interactions between platforms like payment systems, social media, and project management tools.
- Grammarly
Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, tone, and style, making it an essential tool for businesses that rely on written communication. It helps users improve their writing quickly and with precision. It was originally developed to aid students writing papers and reports but is excellent for correcting all types of content creation. Small business owners who write blogs, emails, or reports and want to ensure clarity and professionalism should run their work by Grammarly even if it was generated by another AI tool such as Chat GPT. When it comes to social media posting, Grammarly can help you maintain consistent, error-free messaging across all platforms, which is essential for building a trustworthy online presence. Even more so, Grammarly is ideal for internal and customer communications to ensure that your business communications—whether internal emails or official documents—are polished and error-free.
- Canva with AI Features
Canva is a user-friendly design tool enhanced by AI that helps businesses create stunning graphics, presentations, and social media content, even without a background in design. The platform includes templates, stock photos, and AI-driven suggestions to streamline the creative process. Using Canva you will find a drag-and-drop design interface with AI-generated design and suggestions including sizing tools all customizable templates for social media, marketing materials, and more. Just imagine building custom social media posts that are eye-catching and different than the norm for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Similarly, small business can create their own logos, brochures, flyers, pitches and presentations that align with their brand identity.
- Business Plan Pro with AI Features
Business Plan Pro is the leading online business plan platform. For decades you could create a business plan much faster in their template that prompts you with the right questions in the right places and allows you to match your textual content with your finical content. For some time, Business Plan Pro has provided links to research tools so that you have the right sources to answer any business question at hand. More recently Business Plan Pro has added AI prompts that are fully customizable to find you the answers you seek and drop them in the plan for you. AI has provided fantastic improvements to the speed, accuracy, and quality of your business plan created in Business Plan Pro. They recommend updating your plan once a year. Incorporating your updated information into their AI prompts is an easy way to do that.
AI tools are no longer just for large enterprises only—they are indispensable for small businesses looking to improve efficiency and scale. From automating workflows with Zapier to enhancing customer interactions with ChatGPT, these tools can handle a range of tasks, freeing up business owners to focus on growth.
Whether you’re looking to improve marketing with HubSpot, create stunning visuals with Canva, or refine your writing with Grammarly, and your business plan with Business Plan Pro, the power of AI is now at your fingertips. By leveraging the right AI tools for your business’s needs, you can save time, reduce errors, and enhance both your productivity and your customer experience.
Kurt Forster
Consultants, Forster, PinellasFlorida SBDC at Pinellas County Economic Development
Specialty: Marketing and Strategic Planning, Business Planning, Financial Management, Capital Access
Kurt Forster has 30 years of experience in business and holds a master’s degree in communication from the University of South Florida. His strengths include assisting small and medium businesses with marketing tips and plans, business plans, strategic plans, financial plans, and borrowing money. His background not only includes experience as a marketing director, college educator, and economic development professional but also as the owner of several successful market research companies.