The 8 Best AI Tools for New Businesses
Finally, we have proof: AI tools boost your productivity. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that customer support agents who used AI assistants saw their productivity go up by 14%.
That means you could save 67 minutes of work every day. For inexperienced agents, the boost was even higher with an impressive 34%.
Starting a new business can be pretty overwhelming, but AI tools are here to help with tasks such as admin work, content creation, invoicing, and note-taking. Giving you more time to focus on strategic things.
On my website, www.aitoolssme.com, I test AI tools for small businesses. As a small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you're facing, and I'm here to help you find the best AI software for themission to start a new business.
Initially, you don't need the most complex and expensive tools. For example, as an online marketer, a simple Excel sheet can do the job of a CRM system. If you want to become the CEO of your own company one day, you need to be mindful of your spending and stay financially flexible in the long run. So together we’ll look at easily affordable tools for every stage of business creation.
Alright, let’s get started with supercharging your new venture with AI tools!
Stage: The first steps
Mission: Business & Brand Creation
Tools: ChatGPT/ Bard
LLMs can help to define the right questions you should ask yourself early on about creating a business. Why google if you can have a language model summarise all of the internet’s answers for you?
Of course, you should never follow advice blindly and use common logic as a healthy filter. But by my own experience, I can attest that this is one of ChatGPT's strong suits.
Prompt ChatGPT or Bard with the following questions to gain clarity on your business in an early stage:
I am planning [enter business idea]…
…What questions should I ask myself to define my target audience?
…How to conduct a competitor research?
…How to decide on the legal structure of my business?
…What should my business plan include?
Once you have defined your frame for the business better, take the next step and start thinking about the brand. Ask your new and unpaid business assistant aka ChatGPT questions like this:
‘When creating a brand, what are the 5 most important questions I should ask myself?’
Its answer will be more helpful than any marketing coach could be:
What is Your Why?
Who is Your Ideal Customer?
How Does Your Product or Service Benefit Your Audience?
What is Your Brand's Story?
What Makes Your Brand Unique?
Free Trial: always free
Stage: A new brand is born
Mission: Create a logo, brand identity, and pitch deck
Tools: Looka for logos, Gamma for presentations, ContentBot.AI for copy
Next, let’s give your company an identity by creating a logo and copy that introduces it well.
Build your logo easily with Looka. In my AI Logo Maker comparison, it scored first place because it generated the most high-class logo by far. Admittedly it wasn’t the cheapest tool, but $65 is still worth the investment. After all, it will be the visual ambassador of your brand. Not the right time to save money.
One thing ChatGPT and Gemini are surprisingly bad at is creating a good-sounding copy. They just add too many adjectives and make everything sound unnatural and weird.
My favorite writing tool is Contentbot.AI, it can make your product or service descriptions sound much lighter and less artificial. It comes with a generous free trial and you don’t have to sign up with your credit card.
Use AI for presentations to create a pitch deck and introduce yourself to potential clients, investors, or co-founders. My favorite tool at the moment is Gamma (check out my presentation AI comparison here) because it literally can create a full presentation with one prompt. Most likely you will have to tweak it a bit, but Gamma has amazing designs and its AI will help you get those dollars from investors.
Free Trial: 400 start credits and the basic plan is free
Stage: Customer Acquisition
Mission: Unlock social media as lead gen pipeline
Tools: AdCreative.AI for banner and copy creation, Chatfuel as a chatbot
Social media is a very relevant but time-consuming channel for lead gen. New AI tools can create banners and copy at the same time. They are equipped with an extensive library of royalty-free pictures so you never have to search for photos again.
AdCreative.AI generates endless versions of each banner right away so you can choose and use your favorite. A nice bonus: this AI social media assistant offers a 500€ sign-on credit for Google Ads to new customers.
Trial: 7-day free trial including 10 credits (e.g. for background remover)
Getting too many client inquiries might sound like a luxurious problem, but it’s one we all would love to have. Often the same questions come up again and again, which is the best use case for a chatbot. This is where Chatfuel comes in.
Chatfuel’s AI chatbots can communicate for you via WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram and engage with customers in a personalized and convenient way. Resolving client issues leads to reduced churn because people feel valued and attended to, even more important for a new business.
Free Version and discount: Free for up to 50 users and for business accounts the first month is free with the promo code AISME
Stage: First client meetings
Mission: Keep track of what you promised
Tool: Fireflies.AI for taking meeting notes
I remember scribbling a whole lot during meetings before I discovered a virtual assistant like Fireflies.AI. Now I just invite it to my online meetings and let it jot things down for me, make a transcription, and send me a summary.
When I first tried it, I was surprised at how well it understood the conversations. Now if I’m unsure about the outcome or next steps after a meeting, I can just go back and use the handy search function. If you have a lot of conversations with clients, this tool will be a true time saver.
Free Version: 1 transcription monthly
Trial: 7-day free trial for pro and business plan
Stage: Cash is coming in
Mission: Keep track of your finances
Tool: Bonsai as AI bookkeeping software
New AI bookkeeping software does a lot more than just helping with finances. Today it provides a range of templates for contracts, invoices, quotes, etc.. Automation does its magic in the background.
Bonsai is tailored to freelancers and SMEs and compared to its competitors Quickbooks and Freshbook, so much more modern and easy to use. You will love the automated invoice reminder, that’s not something you should have to waste time on.
Trial: 14-day free trial
These 8 AI tools for new businesses should enable you to focus more on strategic decisions, especially crucial at the beginning. The nice thing about these tools is, that none of them require a lot of time input from your side to function well, they will get to work right away.
It's in the nature of AI to learn and improve over time. The more data AI models process and the more interactions they have, the smarter and more effective they become. As time goes on, you can look forward to your software becoming even more helpful to you.
If you would like to dive deeper into the recommended tools, you can find them on my website www.aitoolssme.com/comparisons and you should sign up for my newsletter and stay up to date on new tools, discounts, and interviews about AI.
Best of luck, fellow small business owner!
Lili, a video marketing expert based in Berlin, calls ChatGPT her new best friend. On aitoolssme.com she provides non-techie, user-friendly reviews for AI tools especially helpful for small businesses.