What Big Companies Are Doing and Why Small Businesses Can’t Afford to Wait (AI Adoption)

I’m starting a new series on AI tools for small businesses (particularly marketing focused), but first, let’s have an honest conversation about what’s really happening in the AI space right now.

The Corporate AI Takeover is Real

While we’ve been debating whether AI is “just hype”, finding the em-dashes annoying or even fake, major corporations have been quietly revolutionizing their operations:

Last week, Goldman Sachs just “hired” their first autonomous coder and it is not human. What happens if this is successful?

Walmart has introduced a “Voice Order service” that allows customers to connect their mobile devices and home smart speakers to their account and simply say what they want and add it to cart.

This isn’t future-tech anymore. It’s happening now and whilst it has its concerns and downsides like everything else, that isn’t what this post is about. If you aren’t using AI yet, it’s not too late.

What I’m Seeing in the Small Business Marketing World

Canada is certainly slower to adopting AI tools but small businesses that are getting ahead are not the ones with the biggest budgets but are curious and being smart about AI adoption:

• Local restaurants using AI tools create weeks of social media content in minutes

• Service provides generating email campaigns that actually convert convert

• E-commerce brands writing product descriptions at scale

• Solo entrepreneurs creating ads

The Real Question Isn’t “Should I Use AI?”

It’s “Which AI tools will actually move the needle for MY business?”

Because here’s what I have observed so far: You don’t need a million-dollar AI strategy. You simply need the right tools that solve your specific problems.

Maybe that is:

• An AI tool that creates your social media content calendar

• Software that assists with writing email campaigns that actually convert

• A system that assists with personalizing customer experiences

• A tool that analyzes marketing data quickly

I have been watching this AI transformation happen and realized there is a huge gap between what big companies are doing and what small businesses know about their marketing options. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be exploring different AI tools on your behalf and sharing solutions you can implement in under an hour, real examples from small businesses using AI for marketing and sharing enough information to help you decide which tools are worth investigating and what to skip fo now.

Big companies are using AI to get bigger, faster, and more efficient and there are lots of companies also creating free to affordable solutions for small and medium businesses. The AI revolution is not coming, it’s here already.

P.s Speaking of AI marketing tools, I have bui an AI content generator right into my Notion content calendar system. It's helped me stop starting from scratch every single day and actually plan content that gets created. If you'd like to use my own content planner, you can get it at a discount here.

What’s your biggest marketing challenge as a small business? What AI tools are you curious about? Let me know in the comments - your questions will help shape this series.