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Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a dominant force in the modern world. In recent years, there’s been an influx of AI tools created to make life easier for every entrepreneur. From AI image generators to AI content creation, there’s an AI tool for every business need.
But with the influx of AI tools, how do you select the best ones? And is your business better off using it? Let’s find out the answers below.
The Best AI Tools For Every Business Need:
The AI tools below solve different business problems commonly encountered by startups. Some have added features that can do more, while others accomplish a singular role.
AI Tools for Content Generation
One of the transformative ways of using AI is through content creation. With the help of AI tools, marketers and writers create engaging and personalized content more efficiently and effectively. Here’s a list of the best AI tools for content generation.
Jasper AI will be your best friend if you publish a lot of long-form blog content. The AI tool features a long-form document editor that can write a cohesive blog article within seconds. In addition, it has an in-built plagiarism detector ensuring all content produced is 100% original and ready for publication. You can set the tone of voice to match your brand and translate the output into 25 languages. Thousands of satisfied customers claimed that Jasper AI helped them generate content faster and better, with some publishing books in as short as a few days or weeks. However, Jasper will sometimes write redundant data and embellish data points, so it’s still advisable to fact-check data-heavy articles. Jasper AI is useful for blog posts, social media captions, video scripts, books, and just about any written content you can think of. It has a 4.9./5 rating across Capterra, G2, and Trustpilot and is used by big brands like Airbnb, IMB, HubSpot, and HarperCollins. Running an e-commerce store involves creating multiple product descriptions, running social media ads, and crafting different marketing content to attract buyers. You can automate these processes with AdZis, an AI tool dedicated to creating content for e-commerce stores. They offer two options: a done-for-you option where their marketing experts utilize the tool to create every content you need, and a do-it-yourself option where you use their SaaS AI tool to create your content. Getting started is easy, and once you sign up for an account, you connect your online stores and let the app do its magic. With an AI tool like AdZis, you save tons of time creating content and focus your efforts on running a profitable business. Creating great content begins with having great ideas. And to make the content stand out, it has to be better than the competition. Neural Text takes AI content creation to the next level by helping you automate the content research process. The tool handles keyword discovery, competitor research, and content creation. Forget about manually figuring out the best keyword and creating an SEO-friendly blog outline. Neural Text takes care of the heavy lifting involved with research and proceeds to write an AI-generated draft. Neural Text can write blog posts, product descriptions, social media copies, video scripts, and more. It also integrates with your website built either on WordPress or Shopify, so it can automatically scan your existing content to make smarter decisions. Running a day-to-day startup involves dealing with myriad activities, most of them involving administrative tasks. Your team’s time is precious and better spent on strategic and creative work that can further grow the business. Here are three AI tools for startups that automate repetitive admin tasks. If you operate a remote or hybrid team or bill clients by the hour, you know the importance of tracking time. However, most time trackers still require manual notes of what happened and can distract the flow of your day-to-day work. Timely does everything automatically. It has powerful integrations with multiple third-party apps like Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Monday.com, Gmail, and more. Whatever tools you use, you can connect them with Timely using their open APIs. This allows for seamless tracking of how you’ve spent your hours online. Say goodbye to remembering what happened in the past hour. Timely logs each task automatically for you. You can capture every billable detail and have a transparent report ready for your clients come invoice time. It also has an intuitive interface and fierce individual privacy protection, making it a tool your team would enjoy using. Granth Thorton, an international tax and accounting firm, has been using Timely to increase their team’s efficiency and remove the pains associated with logging time for every billable task. As a service-oriented firm, time is a precious commodity that they need to track accurately to produce the correct invoices for clients. Employees have reported that Timely is user-friendly and extremely fast, and the support team is responsive to their customization needs. Meetings are common daily occurrences for every business. While important, taking notes during meetings is tedious and sometimes prone to errors. Fireflies.ai automatically takes down notes during critical meetings so you can focus on the call rather than on note-taking. Within minutes, you’d have an accurate transcript of what happened so you can review important details and immediately take action. Fireflies.ai integrates with various video conferring apps and can also transcribe audio files. But that’s not all. Fireflies.ai lets you search its database using keywords so you can review long meetings within minutes. It detects the conversational language, analyzes the meeting, and gives data on people’s sentiments, objections, and other customized trackers. You can also automate workflows, so Fireflies.ai instantly creates tasks in your productivity software or add data to your CRM. Fireflies.ai also lets you collaborate with the team to mark essential parts of the meeting, generate soundbites, and share discussion notes via Slack, Notion, and more. Clara, a legal firm dedicated to helping startups navigate legal documentation, uses Fireflies.ai to reduce client calls and improve the meeting transcribing process. Team members can quickly review the transcription to find the necessary critical information. Further, they’ve trained Fireflies.ai to understand legalese terms and transcribe them accurately. Fireflies.ai also complies with privacy laws by reminding everyone that a recording is in progress, which earns their clients’ trust. There are tons of scheduling software, but there’s nothing like Calendar. It does the usual scheduling features you’d expect, such as finding open timeslots, sharing a custom link where people can book their schedule, and integrating with various calendars like Google Calendar and iCal. But the tool’s real beauty is the integrated machine learning algorithm. The more you use Calendar, the more the tool learns about your scheduling preferences and behavior to improve the overall experience. Calendar unifies all of your existing calendars in one place, be it a professional or personal calendar. It also generates analytics to determine how you’ve spent your time. It also has collaborative features where you can link team calendars to schedule meetings and see which team members are available or busy. Marketing is fundamental to every growing business, and AI has revolutionized marketing practices. From creating stunning AI-generated designs to recording natural-sounding voiceovers, there’s an AI tool for almost every marketing task. Video is today’s trending media asset to convey your products’ benefits and features. Every business needs video content to compete, and videos with voiceovers drive higher engagement and better results. Murf.ai provides all your voiceover needs using real people’s voices. It has a powerful text-to-speech feature and voice cloning that mimics real human emotions and conveys them into spoken words. You can even record your own voice and then swap it with a more professional-sounding AI version and a studio-quality voiceover. With Murf.ai, you can quickly add professional voiceovers to marketing videos, explainer videos, video ads, and more. Video is a powerful marketing tool, with over 92% of internet users consuming videos weekly. This is why over 60% of business owners use video to engage their audience. But video production is often time-consuming, and coming up with quick videos to keep up with trends can quickly lead to burnout. Magisto makes the process easy by automating the video creation process. You can quickly create simple business videos using their powerful AI tool that features millions of HD stock footage and background music. You can also upload your business videos and photos via the desktop or mobile app. Then, you can choose an editing style and let the AI magic do its work. You can even host the videos on Vimeo, its hosting platform, for easier content distribution. All the focus on video doesn’t mean image marketing is dead. Images are still important ways to convey your products’ benefits to target consumers; with AI, you can explore more creative avenues. Next to AI tools generating text comes AI tools generating images. Leading the pack is Dall E-2, an AI image generator that creates realistic images and art following descriptions written using natural language. You type a detailed description of what you want to make and let the tool create multiple variations. Then, you can edit the image or parts of it. You can also upload an original visual, say a photo of your product, and let the system transform it into a creative work of art. Refine things further by mentioning your brand guidelines. Using tools like AI image generators, you’d be able to create inspiration or even your next marketing campaign asset. You get 50 free credits when you sign up and 15 free credits after the first month. Here’s an example of a generated illustration.1. Jasper.ai
2. AdZis
3. Neural Text
AI Tools for Administrative Tasks
4. Timely
5. Fireflies
6. Calendar
AI Tools for Marketing
7. Murf
8. Magisto
9. Dall E-2
The Role of AI Tools
AI is not a recent concept. The notion that artificial intelligence can help humanity reduce laborious tasks has been around since the 1950s. However, the wide acceptance of AI in modern society is relatively recent. From a USD 191.81 billion industry in 2021, it’s projected to reach USD 205.86 billion by the end of 2022 and USD 395.09 billion by 2029.
The vast application of AI to different industries, such as e-commerce, manufacturing, fintech, mining, and many others, has spurred business owners to adopt AI tools for various functions. AI is used for:
For startups, the primary benefit of using AI is automation and data analytics. For instance, AI can help automate mundane tasks like customer data entry and analysis, allowing startups to focus on tasks that necessitate more creativity and human interaction.
AI helps people become more efficient and revolutionizes how companies conduct their business. Using AI, you can make decisions faster and more accurately than before.
Tips to Select the Best AI Tools
Not all AI tools are created equal. Some tools are intelligent and a lifesaver for your business, while others are prone to errors requiring manual validation. Therefore, selecting the best AI tools for startups is critical in harnessing the full potential of this technology.
Here are tips to help you make the right choice:
1. Identify the problem you’re trying to solve.
Clearly define your current challenges and how AI can help resolve these.
2. Evaluate technical requirements.
Ensure that the AI tool meets technical requirements, like compatibility with your existing systems and data privacy standards.
3. Get a user-friendly tool.
No one wants to use a cumbersome tool, no matter how intelligent it is. Ensure your team adopts the AI tool by selecting the one that’s easy to use and integrates with your existing workflow.
4. Look for scalability.
Select an AI tool that can meet your business demands as your company grows.
5. Compare costs.
With many AI tools in tough competition these days, you can shop around and choose the one that provides the best value for money. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of free trials to gauge an AI tool's value.
6. Check for support.
An excellent AI tool provides ongoing customer support, including documentation, tutorials, forums, and customer hotlines.
7. Assess trust and reputation.
Many new AI tools are being launched by the minute. Choose one with a reputation and a strong track record of producing results.
With these tips, you can confidently select the best AI tools for startups. We’ve done some heavy lifting for you and identified 14 AI tools guaranteed to help your business.
Other Essential AI Tools for Startups
Content creation, image generation, video production, and automated admin tasks are just the tip of the iceberg. There are AI tools that can help you find suitable candidates, optimize customer support, and even turbocharge your retail store operations.
- Textio – Social bias is a recurrent theme when hiring the right candidate. Textio detects social bias in workplace language so you can move towards inclusive recruiting and better performance management.
- Eightfold.ai – Are you building a global team? Eightfold.ai is an AI-powered talent intelligence platform that makes recruitment simpler and faster and workplace management across multiple departments and regions seamless.
- Hivery – Enhance your brick-and-mortar retail operations with an AI-driven engine that optimizes product assortments, curates product categories, and suggests promotion strategies.
- Remesh.ai – Understand your customers using deep insights gained intuitively through chat channels. This AI tool gathers millions of responses and analyzes them in real-time to provide better insights.
- Drift – Improve customer service with conversational AI. Drift takes chatbots to the next level since its AI capabilities understand the conversation and flow naturally for the customer.
Final Thoughts
AI has considerably evolved from the science fiction robots we once imagined. Today, AI is integrated into the tools and technologies that we use in our daily lives. Startups can harness the power of AI to automate tedious tasks, analyze large amounts of data, and improve customer experiences.
The AI tools mentioned in this blog offer a preview into the future of technology and provide startups with a competitive edge. Whether you're looking for a tool to optimize your sales process, analyze customer data, or automate repetitive tasks, there’s an AI solution available for you. The future is here, and AI is changing the way we do business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can startups use AI?
AI helps startups automate and scale their business. High-growth startups need to grow their business rapidly, and to do so, they need to automate mundane but essential tasks. Various AI tools help them achieve this goal.
Are there free AI tools?
Many of the AI tools for startups have free or trial versions that you can use to evaluate their potential. Though free versions are often limited, subscribing to a full plan will help you see the tool’s full potential. You can also get in touch with their sales team for a free demo to better understand if the tool is the right fit for your business.