AI is changing the way businesses get things done — and not just for the ‘big tech’ firms. In fact, small-to-medium sized business owners might be the ones set to gain the most from this revolution. With tools more accessible and affordable than ever (many even free), solopreneurs can tap into AI power for a real competitive edge.
In this article, we’ll explore how businesses can use AI in practical ways. We’ll also bust some myths and show that the tech isn’t as tricky or expensive as it might seem.
What is AI, anyway?
In a nutshell, AI is software that uses algorithms to do things in a way that mimics human thinking.
AI isn’t the future — it’s already here, changing the way we live and work. From smart home gadgets that preheat your oven to apps that help diagnose health issues, AI is reshaping everyday life.
The rise of generative AI (like ChatGPT) over the past few years has accelerated this change. What once felt like science fiction is now the norm, helping both companies and individuals get far more done.
The UK is actually one of the big hotspots. With twice as many AI tech firms here as any other nation in Europe, the British AI industry is on course to exceed £4.5 billion in value. London is home to several of world’s biggest names, including DeepMind, Google’s own AI lab.
AI adoption among small businesses is booming. Nearly nine in ten (88%) now use AI tools, with 73% saying these tools have boosted their competitiveness, according to the SBE Council’s 2025 Small Business Check Up and Tech Use Survey.
It just goes to show how essential AI has become for staying competitive.
See also: What is the .AI Domain (and How Do I Get One)?
What’s the difference: AI, machine learning, and automation?
☐ Artificial Intelligence (AI): Machines doing human-like tasks, such as understanding language or generating ideas. The goal is to make systems that think and learn like us.
☐ Machine Learning (ML): A type of AI where machines learn from data. They spot patterns, make predictions, and improve over time — without being programmed for every scenario.
☐ Automation: Tech that handles repetitive tasks automatically (like email replies). It follows set rules, not learning — though it often pairs with AI. Lots of companies are sneakily using “AI” these days when “automated” might be more accurate (but with all the buzz around AI, who can blame them?)
Why use AI for your business?
Running your own business means wearing many hats — customer service, marketing, accounting, even making the tea. As your to-do list grows, AI helps you work smarter.
Sure, you might already know that ChatGPT can answer questions faster than Google, come up with product name ideas, or write a haiku about your cat. But you might be surprised by just how much more it can do for business:
✓ Boosted productivity
AI handles the mundane tasks — sorting emails, booking appointments, managing stock. That frees up time to focus on business. And it can do so even when you’re not around. 44% of business leaders have reported increased productivity through AI.
✓ Faster content creation
Content creation is one of the most time-consuming tasks for small business owners. AI speeds things up, helping produce product descriptions, campaign emails, blogs, and social posts in moments. That means less time staring at a blank page and more time connecting with customers.
✓ Improved customer Service
Chatbots offer 24/7 support, while AI delivers personalised recommendations (e.g., “Customers who bought X also loved Y”). Used the right way it can analyse and feedback to spot what delights (or frustrates) your customers, building loyalty fast.
✓ Lower costs
93% of small business owners agree AI can be a cost-effective way to increase profits. Be that assisting in creative work or simply automating task to free up resources, AI can help reduce overheads.
✓ Smarter decisions
AI can gather and analyse data like shopping habits or product trends in real time, giving business owners the insights they need to make smarter choices.
AI is also shaping search results. To be sure your business gets noticed, check out: How to Get Your Business Seen in Google’s New AI Mode
10 ways to use AI for your small business
AI can be a huge time-saver for small businesses, whether it’s handling everyday tasks, helping with marketing, or supporting your team.
Here are ten areas where AI can make a real difference, with our top picks and a few alternatives worth checking out.
1. Automating the daily grind
Our Pick: Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 comes packed with AI features to help with everyday tasks. Suggesting email replies, automating work in Word and Excel, and even taking notes (and summarising) Teams meetings — it’s all built into the apps you already use, making M365 a smart choice for businesses looking to achieve great things.
Copilot, Microsoft’s AI tool for Windows, is now more fully-connected with M365. Serving to replace the Cortana assistant (poor old Cortana!), Copilot works alongside Microsoft 365 to make tasks easier, a bit like your virtual PA.
See also: More Than Email – M365 Add-Ons to Power Your Small Business
More Top Picks:
☐ ClickUp AI – An in-browser productivity app that writes task descriptions, drafts emails, and helps keep projects on track. Great for keeping teams organised and keeping on top of progress.
☐ Fireflies.ai – Records meetings via browser or extension, transcribes conversations, and produces clear summaries. Useful for catching details you might have missed.
☐ Motion – A smart calendar available as both an app and in-browser tool that schedules tasks and builds itineraries.
☐ Notion AI – Enhances note-taking, summarises thoughts, and drafts documents across browser and mobile. Makes organising ideas and sharing them easier.
2. Brainstorming (anything!)
Coming up with ideas on your own can be tough, especially if you’re running things solo or working remotely. And while you could ask the postman or “hop on a quick Zoom call”, sometimes you just want a faster, more efficient answer.
This is where generative AI excels. Stuck for ideas? Need an outline that flows? Trying to come up with a catchy name for your next product or service? See what AI can do.
Our Pick: ChatGPT
The one that kickstarted it all, ChatGPT is still the pick of the bunch as your all-round AI coworker.
Think of ChatGPT as a precocious intern who’s full of ideas. The latest version passed a Mensa test with an estimated IQ of 120 — proving just how sharp it’s becoming.
With the right prompt, it can come up with natural, human-like suggestions across almost any topic. Need content ideas, draft emails or social posts, write marketing copy, answer customer questions, or plan projects? You need look no further than ChatGPT — it can handle all of that in one place.
More Top Picks:
☐ Gemini – Google’s AI, first launched as Bard. It’s good at finding information from the web and can help with research or idea generation. It sometimes needs extra guidance to follow instructions or adjust to new prompts.
☐ Perplexity AI – A free AI for answering questions and generating text. It tends to give short, clear responses, making it handy when you want quick, no-frills answers.
☐ DeepSeek – The new kid on the block. A fresh and exciting tool for content ideas, DeepSeek prefers writing in a very informal tone unless told otherwise.
3. Content Creation – Writing & Editing
Writing content takes time, especially for small business owners juggling many tasks. Here are some AI tools to help speed up the process, from drafting blog posts to come up with marketing copy.
Our Pick: 123 Reg Website Builder
Website Builder comes with an in-built copy generator that helps you fill out your web pages with just one click. Tap the little magic wand and it will create simple, ready-to-use text that fits your site. Not strictly a straight-up AI editor, but an amazing tool for small business owners who want to get their own website up and running!
Learn more about the 123 Reg Website Builder
More Top Picks:
☐ ChatGPT – Yes, it’s great for content creation, too.
☐ Wordtune – Rewrites sentences for clarity and style. Good for refining rough drafts into polished text.
☐ Grammarly – Checks grammar, spelling, tone, and clarity. Useful for making sure content reads professionally, whether it’s web copy, emails, or social posts.
☐ Jetpack AI Assistant – A WordPress plugin that offers AI-powered content suggestions for articles.
☐ Jasper – Flexible tool for creating content in different tones and styles. Can help with blogs, marketing copy, and social media captions.
3. Content Creation – Visual content
These are tools that can make your visual content creation faster and more effective. According to Synthesia.io, employees save 34% of their time, or 45 hours a month, using AI video production.
Our Pick: Craiyon
Our best pick for a free or freemium option, Craiyon is easy to use and generates AI images from text prompts in seconds. Simply enter a description, and it transforms it into unique visuals. Ideal for quick designs, it’s perfect for creating everything from simple graphics to more complex images.
More Top Picks:
☐ Adobe Firefly – An app to improve images with AI-powered tools, offering a range of creative possibilities.
☐ NightCafe – Turns text descriptions into beautiful digital artwork, giving you limitless creative options.
☐ Runway ML – A suite of AI video editing and special effects tools. Useful for creating professional-looking video content with minimal effort.
4. Customer Service
Speaking to customers isn’t always easy, especially when there’s a long queue or it’s after hours. AI chatbots and tools can step in to answer questions, solve problems, and keep things running. Chatbots can cut customer support costs by up to one-third, according to InData Labs.
Our pick: Tidio
Tidio is a great WordPress-friendly AI chatbot for real-time customer support. It plugs straight into your site and works with tools like Facebook Messenger, giving quick, helpful replies without you needing to be online.
More Top Picks:
☐ Zendesk – Offers live chat, AI chatbots, and ticket management. Integrates with multiple platforms to centralise customer support.
☐ Drift – AI-driven marketing conversations with automation. Helps engage visitors on your website and improves lead follow-up.
5. Sales and marketing
AI can make life easier for small businesses by helping with lead generation, customer engagement, and targeted marketing. 41.29% of marketers have reported higher revenue with AI-powered email marketing. With the right tools, businesses can personalise offers and boost customer loyalty.
Our Pick: Pmax (Google Ads)
Pmax is an AI tool from Google Ads that makes managing ads a lot easier. It automates campaign tasks and helps you get the most out of your ads by reaching the right people and improving results.
See also: How to Get Your Business Found with Google Ads
More top picks:
☐ Zoho’s Zia – A great AI tool for generating leads, managing sales, and even writing sales copy. It works well with your CRM to make sales smoother.
☐ MarketMuse – Analyses keywords and content trends to identify SEO opportunities and optimise marketing strategies.
6. AI for SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) helps websites rank higher on search engines like Google, making them easier to find. AI tools can make this easier by looking into the data and coming up with keywords suggestions to match what people search for.
Our Pick: Rank Math SEO (with Content AI)
A powerful AI‑enhanced WordPress SEO plugin that gives you smart suggestions for keywords, readability and content structure. Rank Math SEO handles things like sitemaps, link management and basic SEO settings. It’s a great example of what WordPress plugins can do to make managing and improving your site easier. You can learn more about Managed WordPress Hosting, here.
More Top Picks:
☐ Surfer SEO — Analyses top-ranking pages to guide content creation, suggesting keywords, structure, and readability improvements.
☐ Clearscope — Uses AI to optimise content for search engines, offering keyword recommendations and readability scores.
☐ Frase.io — Helps create SEO-friendly content by researching topics, identifying keywords, and creating content briefs.
7. Social media
Managing social media can be one of the most time-consuming things for small business owners today. Thankfully, there are plenty of automated tools out there to help with scheduling posts. AI comes into play with “social listening”, helping businesses track what’s being said about their brand online in real time.
Our Pick: Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management platform for scheduled posts, engagement tracking, and advanced social listening tools to keep an ear on what’s being said about your brand.
More Top Picks:
☐ Buffer – Automates posting across multiple platforms and provides analytics for performance tracking.
☐ Sprout social – Combines scheduling, social listening, and detailed analytics to help refine strategy.
☐ Zoho Social – Automates posts and offers listening tools to monitor audience sentiment and engagement.
8. Communications
Presentations:
Creating slides can take longer than expected, especially when juggling design, layout, and content. AI tools can handle much of the heavy lifting, turning rough notes into ready-to-share presentations in minutes.
☐ PowerPoint with Copilot – Drafts outlines, suggests slide layouts, and generates content directly inside PowerPoint. It’s a simple way to make polished presentations quickly while staying inside Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
☐ Tome – Converts documents into full presentations with a single click. Each slide can include text, images, and design elements automatically, making it perfect for fast, visually coherent decks.
☐ Beautiful.ai – Focuses on design, helping create visually appealing slides that look professional without needing design skills. Its AI suggests layouts, styling, and formatting to save time.
Translation:
AI-driven translation can cut per-word translation costs by up to 40%, allowing companies to translate more content without sacrificing quality. Available tools include:
☐ DeepL – Translates text and documents with high accuracy across multiple languages.
☐ Weglot (WordPress plugin) – Automatically translate websites into multiple languages for global communication.
9. Accounting
AI tools help simplify accounting tasks like expense tracking, invoicing, and forecasting, giving you more control over your finances.
Our Pick: Xero
Xero stands out as an all-in-one bookkeeping tool. With automated invoicing, expense tracking, and financial reporting, it makes predictive insights that help with smarter budgeting and investment decisions. This can all work to save business owners time.
More Top Picks:
• QuickBooks – An easy-to-use tool for bookkeeping, invoicing, and expense management.
• Wave – Free accounting software with AI-powered features for invoicing, payments, and financial reporting.
10. Human Resources
Writing job listings, screening CVs, and managing onboarding can be a lot for small business owners. With over 90% of leading service providers using AI to optimise the talent value chain, these AI tools help speed up HR tasks, giving you more time to focus on building your team. By some estimates, AI-driven recruitment systems can lower hiring costs by 71% (Source: Ideal via Neurond AI).
Our Pick: Manatal
Manatal’s AI-powered recruitment tool stands out, simplifying CV screening and candidate matching. It helps reduce hiring costs and time, while boosting the quality of your hires.
More Top Picks:
• Fetcher – An AI tool that helps you find the right candidates fast. It searches for applicants, ranks them by fit, and cuts down on time spent looking through resumes, making hiring easier for small teams.
• Paradox – A friendly AI chatbot that helps with recruitment and scheduling. It answers candidate questions, books interviews, and guides people through the hiring process, freeing up time for HR.
• Workable – AI-driven software for posting jobs, managing applicants, and tracking progress. It keeps all hiring tasks in one place and helps teams see who’s ready for the next step.
• Freshteam – Uses AI and automated workflows to manage applications and onboard new hires. It takes care of routine tasks so teams can focus on getting people in place.
Wrap up
AI can make a real difference for business owners, cutting down the workload and helping you grow. Start with a few, see what works, and watch your business get ahead.
Ready for the AI revolution? Grab a .ai domain to stand out and show you’re embracing innovation.
