8 Ways to Actually Use AI to Grow Your Business for Non Techy Skeptics!

Last week I shared with you the summary created by Google’s Notebook AI of the 75,000 words I’ve written in this newsletter to date.

Without even asking, it grouped them into themes and then laid out a few dozen bullet points that really summarized all the key things a business owner can do to actively grow their business. It took the program about 12 seconds. It would have taken me all day! And it did a really good job.

But I get it- there isn’t enough time in the day as it is and the last thing most business owners want to do is learn yet another thing that takes time and may or may not help at all.

So my suggestions on how to use AI today are 100% geared toward things you can do very quickly and that are worth doing because real action and results can be had even for non-techy main street or service type businesses- AI isn’t just for digital and online businesses or full-time content creators!

Check out what else we’ve been up to!

• Matt Reviews: Do You Need to Simplify and Do Identity Work to Grow Your Business? (Short Video)
• Matt Reviews: Is Money Preventing You From Growing Your Amazon Business? (Short Video)
• Matt Reviews: How Many Businesses Are Too Many to Run? (Short Video)
• Business for Sale, Would I Buy It? | Laser Hair Removal Spa (Short Video)
• Referrals – The Art of Reciprocity in Business with Matt Remuzzi (Podcast)

When it comes to what AI tools to use, I have two I like. ChatGPT is the most widely known and is about as easy as using a search engine like Google. The main trick to using it well and getting good results is to give it more specific instructions- the more detailed and specific you can be about what kind of output you’re looking for the better job it will do. It’s free to use but by upgrading to a paid account you can get more out of it.

The other one I really like is Google’s Notebook. This is 100% free with a Google account, which is also free. The thing I like about this is you can give it the data you want it to work from and the kinds of data it will accept is pretty wide ranging. You can put in website URLs, podcast links, YouTube video links or text content, to name a few. It will then draw conclusions and summarize data from the sources you feed it.

So take a few minutes, play around with these and put some to use now to work actual action items to grow your business!

8 Things AI Can Do To Help You Grow Your Business

Create an email follow-up sequence:

You get an email expressing interest in your service or business and you respond, but then you don’t hear back. You may try one more time, but then you get busy and don’t follow up. But what if you had a 7-10 email sequence already written to continue to follow up automatically and continue to check in with that lead? Sure, many of them will never respond. But if you got 10-20% of them to come back around, isn’t that worth the minimal effort? Yes. And now the effort is that much less because you have AI write the sequence for you! Then you just tweak it as needed and connect your leads to an autoresponder and fill in that sequence. All told it’s maybe an hour’s work, but I know the part most people don’t like is the writing and now that’s the part that is basically done for you. Block an hour sometime soon and try it. Not sure how to even do the other parts? No problem- just ask ChatGPT- how do I build an email autoresponder marketing program!

Review your reviews:

If you only have a few reviews, then this won’t help. In that case, work on getting more reviews! But if you have even a few dozen or more, you can send them collectively to be summarized by AI and it can look for common themes. What do customers like most about you? Be sure to focus on that when talking to new leads. More importantly, are there any consistent comments about things that aren’t as good as they should be? Those are things to take seriously and figure out how to fix- not for the one customer who wrote about it, but for the ten more that didn’t like it but didn’t say anything!

Reactivate old customers:

Go into your database, QuickBooks, whatever you use and grab your entire history of customers with their invoices or however you track what they bought. Then drop it into the AI and ask for it to find customers who bought something more than once and haven’t bought anything for at least a year. Then ask it to write an email to those customers inviting them to come back and do business with you again! It could even be customized to what they bought (specifically or in groups or categories) and offer an incentive for a return visit. The easiest customers to get are the ones who’ve already bought from you! Now AI can help you make the process even easier to recover those past customers.

Summarize podcasts or videos for you:

Are there podcasts or YouTube channels in your business space you know you could probably learn from but you don’t have the time? Or things you’ve wanted to learn (sales, marketing, autoresponder use, etc?) but don’t have hours to invest in listening to or watching? No problem! You can find those channels or episodes, load them in, and then ask for a summary. You can also ask for an action plan to implement those things in your business, a sales script to use for your team, or a marketing plan based on the summary you find. I can consume usable facts about ten times faster than I could before with this process. No time to read a 200-page Kindle book- how about getting a five-page summary with all the important points created in about 20 seconds? No problem!

Help rewrite emails to sound more friendly/personal:

Google just released Gemini and aside from that there is Grammarly. Aside from fixing typos and grammar, these tools can help you sound more friendly, more polished, or more complete. It doesn’t take longer but the difference between a personal, friendly email and one that sounds clipped or harsh can make a real difference in results and customer perception. And now there is no reason to blame “not being a good writer” or just “not having time” for poor business communication.

Create content for your website:

Unless your business is content, most business websites are pretty light on information. But this hurts because you are less likely to get found by new customers and of course that hurts your growth. But AI can quickly help you create useful content. First by creating a list of topics that would be of the most interest to your customers and then by helping you create the content itself. I know one law firm that tripled their business by posting a single new page of content to their website called “27 Questions to Ask Your Immigration Attorney”. They got flooded with calls from people who wanted to ask that 28^th question! You can, in just a few hours, create enough content to 5x your website content and quickly start bringing in more leads from people who simply would never have found you before.

Review your competition for pricing and service offers:

Don’t have time to sort through them all and create a grid of services, offers, and pricing, but still want to know how you compare? AI can help with that. And it might reveal you are undercharging, missing opportunities, or otherwise give you direction on how to outcompete your competition. This is something I find very, very few business owners even look at but it can immediately help answer the questions about what should we focus on, do next and are we charging the best price for our position in the market? Growth isn’t just from new customers but also from increasing pricing by offering more value or compelling reasons for customers to choose you while at the same time benefiting your bottom line.

Write helpful instruction manuals and guides for FAQs you get from clients:

Do clients frequently ask the same questions when deciding to buy, after the sale, or about the general space you are in? If so, be helpful and at the same time save yourself a ton of time not having to answer the same question over and over. First, ask for help creating a list of the most frequent questions and then get help writing the responses even including links to help videos or creating useful images to explain the process better. Your customers will appreciate the clear help and you’ll appreciate not having to recreate the wheel each time.

Let me know if you have other ways you’ve used AI to help make short work of real business issues and I’ll let you know as I come up with other quick hacks that are useful to actual business owners and not just the power users!