11 Tech Experts On How Small Businesses Can Effectively Leverage Machine Learning

We hear a lot these days about how technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing the ways businesses operate. Even casual followers of the technology industry have read stories about how household-name companies including Amazon, Google and IBM are using AI and ML for everything from tailored product recommendations to piloting autonomous vehicles to developing computers that can defeat chess champions and win TV game shows.

Entrepreneurs and small-business owners may think ML is a tool only “the big guys” can afford or use effectively; but there are plenty of ways even startups can use the technology to boost their odds of success, from predicting future purchases (just like the big guys do) to taking labor-intensive tasks off their team members’ plates. Below, 11 members of Forbes Technology Council share ways machine learning can help entrepreneurs and small-business owners and why they’re so effective.

1. Scoring And Prioritizing Leads

Machine learning can help small businesses better identify leads and provide valuable insights into them. ML can not only be used to “score leads” but also to provide insights on the probable time to close. This allows entrepreneurs to create better portfolios from their leads and prioritize them effectively, as you want to balance high-value leads in terms of those that will close “now” versus those that will need some nurturing. – Neerav Vyas, Capgemi

2. Eliminating Time-Intensive, Repetitive Tasks

Technology for the sake of technology is never a good idea. The pandemic has left workers burned out, and the labor shortage is real. Entrepreneurs and small businesses should look for AI/ML technology that helps eliminate the time-intensive, mundane tasks employees do so they can focus on higher-order work. This will keep productivity moving and keep employees motivated. – Prasad Ramakrishnan, Freshworks

3. Analyzing Data

Many entrepreneurs and small businesses do not have the budget for one data analyst, let alone a team of analysts. Machine learning is a way to cover your analytical base without the positional cost. And while most entrepreneurial initiatives start out with a great vision, expecting yourself to peer with otherworldly wisdom into analytics at every turn is simply not tenable. – Denver Hunter, PenServ Plan Services, Inc.

4. Identifying Purchasing Patterns

One of the simplest ways to utilize machine learning in smaller businesses is to use its capabilities to identify patterns, such as purchasing patterns, and to predict near-future purchasing. This can drastically cut supply chain and storage costs—smaller businesses often neither have significant resources in these areas, nor can they afford them. Predictions are excitingly accurate, even with sudden trend changes. – Markus Bernhardt, OBRIZUM

5. Handling Personal Scheduling

Time is money, and entrepreneurs have little of either. Smart scheduling solutions have been a game-changer for me. They analyze my calendar, automate coordination, and streamline how meetings get booked, rescheduled and canceled. – Sean Steele, Infolock

6. Turning Insights Into Ideas

Machine learning can drive home the importance of data and the commodity of technology. Entrepreneurs and small-business owners will find machine learning closing the loop to shorten the distance between doing and dreaming. Operationally, this means turning insights into ideas that are executed for real business impact, with those learnings creating even more insights. – Cleve Gibbon, Wunderman Thompson

7. Understanding Consumer Behavior

In light of recent technological advances, machine learning is becoming more accessible, which can help small businesses and entrepreneurs understand consumer behavior. This alone can provide you with better insight into customer needs and the updates or changes that should be made in order for your company’s products/services to best serve your customers. – Matt Pierce, Immediate

8. Analyzing Customer Feedback

Machine learning should definitely be used to analyze the feedback from your customers. Ideally, you will want to know how to evolve your products and understand what would make a customer become interested in or evolve with your product. Therefore, the feedback loop is highly important; but understanding what is noise and what is truly critical feedback is even more so. Then you can react accordingly. – WaiJe Coler, InfoTracer

9. Identifying Product ‘Winners’ And ‘Losers’

ML can help automate the process of product development. By using artificial intelligence to predict which products are likely to be successful, business owners can save time and money by passing on projects that would have failed anyway, freeing up their resources for more promising endeavors. – Leon Gordon, Pomerol Partners

10. Business Planning

There’s a lot more potential for machine learning to help in business planning processes than is realized at the moment. While machine learning is generally popular in aspects such as marketing and customer service, it is rather underutilized in planning, despite its high potential. Business planning is an important and complicated process where human efforts are not always enough to stay competitive. – Peter Abualzolof, Mashvisor

11. Cleansing Data, Processing Documents And Combating Fraud

ML can be overwhelming for small-business owners because of the learning curve. To start with, small businesses can certainly leverage ML for customer data cleansing, fraud detection, automation of document processing and guarding against phishing attacks. These areas are common pain points, and ML can certainly help small businesses solve these issues as well as realize some long-term cost savings. Later on, small businesses can invest more money in automation. – Kiran Palla, Kiran Palla

Successful CIOs, CTOs & executives from Forbes Technology Council offer firsthand insights on tech & business.

Source: Council Post: 11 Tech Experts On How Small Businesses Can Effectively Leverage Machine Learning

Critics by Gero Keil

Machines have become smart but we are still years away from human-like intelligence. However, until then it is possible for us to understand how machines can learn from data. Depending on the use case, data may be classified, segment, interpreted, extracted and you can run regressions on it. Looking at your business processes (and data) in this manner is the entry ticket to the promised land of AI.

Artificial intelligence has been helping big companies for years. Only recently has AI become available to small businesses through AIaaS (AI as a service). The benefits for small businesses are similar to those of big companies—let’s take a look:

Reduce time spent on mundane tasks: using AI to automate repetitive tasks and analyze large amounts of data helps small businesses free up time to focus on other tasks.

Lower costs: implementing an AI solution reduces costs in the long run by improving efficiency and freeing up time and resources to develop the business.

Improve service: using AI to understand your consumers and how they feel about your product can help you proactively improve your offerings.

Improve security: AI solutions can be implemented to help small businesses detect any suspicious cyber activity before it becomes an issue. AI solutions can help businesses improve customer service in a number of ways, from analyzing customer sentiment to categorizing support requests.

Having insights into customer behavior and sentiment is key for improving your support and product—often before customers themselves request it. AI can help businesses by improving efficiency and productivity when it comes to business operations. Whether that’s by categorizing incoming emails based on their contents, or identifying promising leads and unpromising leads.

AI can help with both simple and complex issues, and can help you and your team free up a lot of time for other important tasks. AI enables businesses to continuously improve their product and offerings with insights into how users interact with them. Simply use AI to monitor what users are talking about and the sentiment behind their words, and make changes accordingly.

AI can help highlight product issues before they’re vocalized by users—meaning you can solve problems before they even arise. Gone are the days where only the biggest organizations leveraged AI—small businesses can now use AI to optimize their processes, too. AI solutions make harnessing the power of machine learning easier than ever before—let’s see how to implement AI in your small business.

Machines have become smart but we are still years away from human-like intelligence. However, until then it is possible for us to understand how machines can learn from data. Depending on the use case, data may be classified, segment, interpreted, extracted and you can run regressions on it. Looking at your business processes (and data) in this manner is the entry ticket to the promised land of AI….

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Prioritizing Your Inbound Marketing Strategies for 2021

Marketing is a continually evolving landscape. You know this. We know this. But 2020 presented a different challenge than previous years, leaving marketers to dig deep into what they need to do to attract and nurture leads and customers.

2021 will be no different – which shouldn’t make you panic! Part of marketing is doing your due diligence, and we’ve combined resources to come up with some powerful strategies to consider prioritizing in 2021.

SMS Marketing

The popularity of SMS was already accelerating pre-COVID, but the pandemic made the importance of quick, timely, relevant messages more necessary than ever. People needed fast updates on everything, from closures to switches to remote learning. And SMS marketing provided that, plus an average 98% read rate.

SMS marketing is also useful for both leads and customers in non-COVID-related campaigns, as you can implement various campaigns that are engaging to both audiences. For example, for current customers, you can send them text reminders of appointments or meetings. For leads, you may consider sending them branding awareness campaigns or coupons that may encourage them to buy from you.

The best part? With a platform like SMSZap, getting started with SMS marketing is a breeze. You can set up your account in a few minutes, link up with your contacts in HubSpot, and send personalized and engaging messages.

Content Marketing

COVID restrictions sent most people home at one point – to shop or work, or both. This made the demand for digital consumption skyrocket. What does that mean for your efforts in 2021? Your content needs to be high-caliber and plentiful, as well as:

  • Interactive
  • Emphatic
  • Engaging
  • Relevant to current events (2020 saw everything from social change, major elections, and COVID)
  • Made for the diverse crowds

That translates to creating and sharing educational, quality content about your products, services, and your company to your prospects and customers. You can use various resources like blogs, ebooks, infographics, social media, and videos to deliver your messages. No matter what type of content it is, it should address your target audiences’ specific pain points at every stage of their buyer’s journey, including the awareness, consideration, decision, and delight stages.

Video

Video can technically be considered a part of your content marketing – but its importance in our “new normal” isn’t something to shrug your shoulders. People longed for some human connection that they couldn’t get in person. Think about how you can use video in your previously “typical” marketing efforts. Are you switching to more online conferences, events, or webinars? These remote types of content are not going anywhere soon.

Similarly, video is just proven to be a useful tactic. In fact, 79% of consumers reported that a brand’s video convinced them to buy a piece of software or an app. A whopping 92% of those viewers also said they shared videos with others. That alone should help you realize the value of investing in video creation and distribution.

Chatbots and Customer Support Automation

When COVID initially hit, people scrambled to cancel flights, hotels, concerts, trips, appointments; you name it. The importance of a quick and solid customer support experience was integral. But customers weren’t the only ones dealing with the consequences of such an uncertain year. Support agents were hit with an influx of tickets to their helpdesk. Fortunately, chatbots and other customer support automation helped and will continue to in 2021.

Chatbots automate specific tasks and conversations by speaking with a customer or prospect through an easy-to-use interface. They lighten your teams’ workloads by tackling more straightforward conversational functions that are necessary but can eat up time. Advanced customer service automation can offload a large portion of support tickets with a high degree of accuracy. These resources also delight users because more and more people want information as quickly as possible and don’t mind speaking over a chat application.

Social Media

2020 certainly had a prevailing theme, and it was that a lot of people were at home for a good portion of it. Because of this, more people were also on their phones searching for news and updates from their favorite brands. One of the most common places to find this is generally a company’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Brands recognized this too. In fact, social media budgets accounted for 24% of all marketing budgets during the second quarter of 2020. And the momentum kept. There’s tremendous opportunity to ride these coattails and continue engaging and re-engaging with new and existing customers through fun, engaging social media campaigns or advertising.

SEO

When the pandemic subsides, businesses with brick and mortar locations will likely want to send as many people as possible back into their stores. Local search engine optimization (SEO) can help. Try:

  • Optimizing your “Google My Business Page”
  • Including local keywords throughout your website content
  • Strengthening your social media presence and including location-specific content

Position Zero, or Google’s featured snippet, should also take precedence in 2021. As humans become more reliant on technology, they expect the best answer as fast as possible. Position Zero has the most relevant information that answers that user’s question without clicking on any link. Some advice on getting a featured snippet includes:

  • Figure out what your company can get a snippet for
  • Writing out the exact question you’re trying to answer in your website or blog content
  • Use lists or tables
  • Research related questions and answers – any question can lead to another!
  • Create high-quality content that isn’t stuffed with keywords .

Another vital thing to consider when tackling SEO is to remember that people are searching for things differently now. People are asking more questions or phrases rather than just words. They’re also using devices like Alexa or Google Home. Search engines recognize this more nuanced context, meaning, and intent to deliver results, so keep it in mind for 2021. 

By: Kelly Groover

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.

Clwyd Probert

https://www.whitehat-seo.co.uk/ This presentation was made my Karen Rafferty from HubSpot as part of a seminar at the London HubSpot User Group in London. This video will show you the best tips for implementing a great inbound marketing strategy. You can download the free eBook here: https://info.whitehat-seo.co.uk/tips-… The full transcript of the video can be found here: https://blog.whitehat-seo.co.uk/inbou… Slides can be downloaded here: https://info.whitehat-seo.co.uk/londo… A summary article covering the main points is available here: https://blog.whitehat-seo.co.uk/tips-… We propose is to start to deploy a strategy to both your sales and marketing activities in your business.

It’s important just to reiterate here that with inbound marketing what we’re essentially doing is trying to focus on attracting good fit leads or opportunities for your business. And we do that through producing meaningful content that can enable you to have meaningful interactions with potential customers. It’s about just having good social etiquette. I’m, it’s not about interrupting people, it’s about actually being helpful, being responsive. Being very human in the way that you employ your marketing and your sales strategy. Which of the strategy from the video works best for you in 2018. Let me know by leaving a quick comment below. Details of the next London HUG event #LondonHUG can be found here: https://www.whitehat-seo.co.uk/hubspo…

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