Why ChatGPT is becoming popular among small business owners

The AI technology could revolutionise the way entrepreneurs market their businesses

ChatGPT could help business owners generate content for their marketing materials. Reuters

When I ventured into entrepreneurship more than a decade ago, I promoted my business in a very different manner to how entrepreneurs do these days.

I depended heavily on coverage in print publications and television interviews. Then came Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok and the marketing game took a different turn.

Media brands are competing with individual influencers, who have the power to sway their customers’ opinions.

As I provide consulting services in communications and marketing, and as a business owner myself, I know how marketing could help a business reach new heights.

No matter how great a product is, if it isn’t promoted using the right channels, it may not grow the way its founder hoped.

I also know that embracing technological changes would help us market our products and services in a smarter way.

While social media helped marketers reach specific audiences through targeted promotional posts, ChatGPT is slowly becoming a favoured tool for small business owners.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It has been developed to follow instructions by users and provide a thorough response.

While many fear that ChatGPT could replace jobs, I believe that it will revolutionise the way small business owners market their businesses, aid marketers by taking over some tasks and could help both in reaching their targets faster.

Launched in November last year, it took the technology only five days to reach 1 million users.

Its key feature is efficiency and how it helps users save hours and days’ worth of work.

As an entrepreneur who started my journey by managing a small business, I know that time is a precious commodity — so if there is a technology that would help us market our businesses while saving us time, then we should embrace it by all means.

For starters, ChatGPT could help business owners generate content for their marketing materials: websites, newsletters and social media accounts.

Users could ask it to produce content in a certain tone or to fit a certain persona.

Content is king when it comes to marketing, yet I know how challenging and time-consuming it can be to generate content for different social media channels, blogs and email newsletters.

This is where ChatGPT could help save entrepreneurs precious hours by asking it to generate ideas for different types of content.

A business is not a business without its customers, and one way to ensure they keep coming back is to give them what they want. This is where customer service is key.

I constantly advise entrepreneurs to invest their time in customer service and to always be one step ahead to serve them.

But customer service is time-consuming and hiring customer agents at the beginning of an entrepreneur’s journey is not always feasible.

ChatGPT could help make this task effective by generating customer surveys. It could also help with generating ideas for chatbots for a business website and tailor it to fit a brand’s tone of voice.

While ChatGPT could help to save time, money and energy when it comes to marketing a small business, entrepreneurs and marketers should also tread carefully and not depend on it for complex tasks such as devising a marketing strategy, conducting in-depth marketing research or developing entire business marketing websites.

It is still at an early stage, could generate the wrong advice and is not a replacement for business consultants or advertising experts.

But it is constantly evolving and will help entrepreneurs promote their businesses in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Manar Al Hinai is an award-winning Emirati writer and communications consultant based in Abu Dhabi