AI-Powered Tactics for Startup Growth

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant advancements in the past decade, revolutionizing various industries and helping businesses gain a competitive edge. Previously, only large corporations had access to the best AI solutions, but now startups can leverage AI to drive their growth and success. In this article, we will explore five ways startups can take advantage of AI in 2021 and beyond to deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance marketing efforts, build innovative products or services, gain valuable market intelligence, and improve talent acquisition and retention.

AI Can Help Startups Deliver a Top-Notch Customer Experience

Startups can differentiate themselves by offering exceptional customer service, but it often requires significant resources. AI solutions, such as chatbots and customer-facing service options, provide a cost-effective way to deliver great support. Surveys show that customers are increasingly accepting of chatbots, with 50% of users open to engaging with them when interacting with a brand initially.

According to Salesforce, AI-powered chatbots enable customer service agents to spend most of their time solving complex problems rather than handling routine inquiries. Inna Tokarev-Sela, an AI research lead at Sisense, emphasizes the benefits of AI for businesses, stating that it simultaneously delivers greater accuracy and focus while reducing human capital costs. In other words, AI allows startups to achieve more with fewer resources.

AI-Powered Marketing Tools Deliver Value

Data is crucial for startups to identify and reach potential customers in a rapidly evolving communication landscape. AI tools can play a vital role in helping startups navigate this challenge. For example, IBM’s Watson Personality Insights platform can analyze a startup’s social channels and competitors to create detailed target customer personality profiles. These profiles can guide startups in communicating with potential customers in ways that resonate with them. AI tools can also help identify influencers and members of customers’ peer groups who can serve as effective partners in targeted marketing campaigns.

Companies like TradeDesk utilize AI to target specific audiences. Their technology analyzes over 11 million advertising opportunities, enabling businesses to find, bid, and advertise to their target audience effectively.

Building AI-Enabled Products or Services

AI developers have introduced tools-as-a-service that businesses can embed into their own offerings, allowing startups to provide innovative products and service experiences. For instance, Sisense’s embedded analytics tools enable product teams to incorporate natural language queries, enabling users to have conversations with their data. This empowers startups to create services that offer new forms of interactivity and utility to users.

With AI tools that derive insights from data, startups can offer experiences that were once limited to larger players. E-commerce companies, for instance, can introduce powerful recommendation engines similar to those of Netflix and Amazon by using AI plugins.

AI Can Produce Valuable Market Intelligence

In competitive markets, startups must contend with established rivals and other upstarts in the fight for market share. Therefore, tracking competitors and identifying opportunities is critical. Solutions like Crayon can ingest multiple data streams to provide real-time insights into competitors’ movements. Whether competitors lower prices, launch new marketing campaigns, or receive negative online reviews, AI-powered tools can identify and report actionable insights.

Tokarev-Sela believes that AI is not just helpful but essential in this area. Human analysis alone cannot keep up with the rapidly changing business environment. In today’s world, decision-making needs to be adjusted based on insights from data, accompanied by recommended actions. “Survival of the fastest” is the rule in today’s business landscape.

AI Can Improve Talent Acquisition and Retention

The success of a startup relies heavily on its team. Therefore, recruiting top talent and keeping them engaged is crucial. However, most startups do not have a dedicated HR department or HR leader from day one to assist in finding and attracting the best talent.

AI can increase the odds of identifying and attracting the best talent in a specific field. There are now numerous AI-enabled HR and recruiting platforms available for startups to help identify the right hires from a large pool of candidates. Additionally, AI tools can detect employee engagement, identify at-risk employees, and measure the productivity of developers, enabling startups to build highly functioning teams.

Conclusion

AI has become more accessible than ever, and its applications are vast in any business. Startups can leverage AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance marketing efforts, build innovative products or services, gain valuable market intelligence, and improve talent acquisition and retention. By incorporating AI into their strategies, startups can gain a competitive advantage and drive their growth and success.