Commentary

41% Of Small Businesses Would Use An AI Robot To Handle Marketing, Advertising Needs

The Internet of Things can impact businesses of all sizes, even those that are small.

Many small businesses are quite small, with 89% of small business owners working from home at least part of the time, based on a new study.

The majority (63%) of those who work from home say they get their work done faster and many see various tech aspects as a potential aid to their business.

The study comprised an online survey of 6,000 small business owners conducted by Endurance International Group.

Despite the emergence of artificial intelligence, many (41%) small business owners say social media tools have the most potential for growing their businesses. Here are the tech tools small businesses say have the most potential for growing their businesses:

  • 20% -- Mobile payment apps
  • 11% -- Big data and analytics reporting tools
  • 6% -- Artificial intelligence, such as chat bots, personal assistants
  • 4% -- On-demand delivery services, such as delivery drones
  • 4% -- Cybersecurity solutions
  • 3% -- Augmented or virtual reality
  • 1% -- Blockchain technology

However, if small business owners had a robot, they have plenty of ideas on how they would put it to work. If they had an AI robot, here’s what small businesses that could delegate any task to the robot, would delegate:

  • 46% -- Management of social media accounts
  • 45% -- Updating their website
  • 41% -- Handle marketing/advertising needs
  • 34% -- Screening calls and emails
  • 32% -- Data entry
  • 31% -- Generate invoices
  • 27% -- Manage customer orders
  • 25% -- Manage calendar
  • 17% -- Reorder supplies

The robots are coming, and it looks like they may have plenty to do when they get here.

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Robots will be discussed at the MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum May 18 in New York. Here’s the agenda. 

2 comments about "41% Of Small Businesses Would Use An AI Robot To Handle Marketing, Advertising Needs".
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  1. Jonathan Hutter from Northern Light Health, May 2, 2017 at 11:52 a.m.

    All valid points, but I don't know how many people in this forum think this way or can process this.

    In my agency work, I was always hearing about tech and media solutions that would scale. But for small businesses, and for many of the smaller clients I used to have, the idea of scale means to scale down. Minimum volumes, order sizes, business size, all point against small business adoption of emerging tech. 

    Whoever knows and adapts to this idea of small scale, can do very well. As long as they don't mind talking to the people whose money they will be spending. 

  2. Chuck Martin from Chuck Martin, May 2, 2017 at noon

    Good points, Jonathan. Additionally, these types of solutions can be quite expensive.

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About the Author

Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.