When AI made its debut, businesses rallied around it…but small businesses were kinda left in the dust. A quality 3rd party chatbot, for example, can cost upwards of $40,000/year, and I don’t know many small businesses with that kind of coin kicking around.

Even more “affordable” AI tools aren’t an option for many small businesses. 2024 was a hell of a year for rising costs, waning consumer confidence, and hiring challenges. Amidst cash flow issues, reduced profit margins, economic uncertainty, and the increased cost of borrowing…yeah, that $40/month super cool AI tool may not be in the budget. But, even if a small business CAN swing that extra $40/month…you get what you pay for. A budget-friendly AI chatbot is probably going to annoy website visitors more than help them…

Small businesses are starting to get pretty savvy with free generative AI tools for content creation, but the truth is that AI only gets you maybe 90% of the way there. Sometimes, that’s fine: a human can take an AI-generated social post, for example, and tweak it until it’s 100% awesome. However, with image and video creation, it can be difficult to communicate minor tweaks to a bot, and a human may not have the design tools or skills needed to finalize the design. Not only that, but a recent study published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies proves that consumers “appraise Gen-AI images based on their technical quality and fidelity in representing a subject, often experiencing them as either prototypical or strange.” So, unless “prototypical or strange” is what you’re going for, AI-generated images may not be your jam.

So, how CAN small businesses use AI to enhance their marketing efforts? Here are a few suggestions:

Leverage AI-powered tools that are built into the platforms you’re already using. Zoom has a built-in note-taker that is pretty slick. Platforms like Mailchimp and Hubspot use AI to drive audience segmentation, personalization, and campaign optimization. Popular project management tools, like Asana and Trello, use AI to assist in task prioritization, deadline prediction, and resource allocation. Canva has a whole suite of AI-powered design tools built into its platform. Explore your current tech stack—you might be surprised about the AI-driven tools that are available to you.

Use generative AI to brainstorm ideas for social media content or blog topics. In 2024, we developed nearly 6,000 social media posts and more than 200 blogs for our clients. Admittedly, we run out of ideas from time to time. AI can be a great tool to help get those creative juices flowing again (but we never, ever, ever use it to generate long-form content…ever).

Save time on manual data-entry tasks. Here’s an example: we use Google’s Keyword Planner to generate new keyword ideas for our clients’ pay-per-click campaigns, but we rarely use broad match keywords—we much prefer phrase match or exact match. To indicate phrase or exact match, Google wants you to input your keywords inside quotation marks or brackets, respectively. Rather than manually typing quotation marks or brackets around each keyword, we will ask Gemini to do that for us. Anytime you’re about to take on a menial but time-consuming data-entry task, ask yourself if AI could help.

In 2024, we talked a lot about Google’s rapid-fire SEO algorithm changes. In 2025, we’re talking about the changing nature of how people are searching. Voice search, VR/AR, and generative engine optimization (GEO)—also known as “zero click” results—are just a few of the emerging search trends.

We don’t have to tell you that SEO is important for small businesses. But just because it’s important doesn’t mean it’s affordable. The average small business spends $500-2,000/month on SEO, but when you compare that with what larger businesses are spending—$2,500-10,000/month—you have to ask: how can a small business compete?

Here are a few ways that small businesses can put their best SEO foot forward, capitalize on emerging search trends, and even beat out big businesses:

Forget about highly competitive exact-match keywords and focus more on long-tail keywords and using natural language in your content. Natural language will be better aligned with voice search queries, and long-tail keywords may not be valuable enough for big business to go after them, leaving them wide open for your small business.

Prioritize local SEO and reputation management. No matter how big your competitors, you have a good shot at dominating local search results…if you do it right. Make sure your Google Business profile is fully populated, incorporate high value keywords and phrases into your profile, and actively seek out reviews from happy customers. There are also some content marketing strategies that could improve your website’s rankings in local search results, for example, creating dedicated webpages for the various neighborhoods or towns your business services. Just be careful not to break any of Google’s keyword stuffing or duplicate content rules.

Curate killer content. Big businesses struggle with this, because the people who could create the most compelling content are usually way too busy to do so. That means they are asking less qualified people to develop content on their behalf, resulting in low-value, watered down content that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Small business owners have the ability to tell the whole story, and tell it in a way that showcases their—wait for it—expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. E-E-A-T. It’s important. And small business owners have it.

In terms of GEO or “zero click” results, I don’t think small businesses need to focus explicit efforts here just yet. First of all, if you did earn a reference in one of Google’s AI Overviews or People Also Ask snippets, it’s not likely to generate traffic back to your website. While it would be great for asserting credibility and earning consumer trust, the effort it would take to earn those placements is probably not in a small business’s budget. Just focus on creating content that addresses your target audience’s concerns and answers their questions—do that, and you may just earn a GEO placement anyway!

71% of consumers expect marketing to be personalized to their needs and interests. That means if John Doe has expressed interest in widget A, he doesn’t want to see ads or get emails about widgets D, E, and F.

Businesses with flexible budgets can use AI tools to hyper-personalize their marketing outreach, but—like I said earlier—small businesses don’t always have that luxury. However, that doesn’t mean it’s mass marketing or bust. Here are a few ways that small businesses can personalize their outreach:

Segment the ever-living you-know-what out of your email lists. Leverage the segmentation tools that are built into your email marketing platforms. For example, add tags to user profiles based on the links they click in your emails. Then, you can create emails JUST for people who expressed interest in specific products, services, or genres of information.

Collect information about birthdays or anniversaries, and send automated emails to extend a special birthday offer, or just genuine well wishes for another year of whatever happiness they’re celebrating.

Use tracking pixels to serve hyper-targeted ads to users based on their activity. John Doe visits the widget A page on your website, John Doe gets served an ad about widget A. Meta is going to advise you NOT to limit your audience like this—they REALLY want people using their Advantage+ audience—but if the goal is personalization, you’re going to have to ignore their cries.

Remember, people will be drawn to the companies that make them feel seen and heard. If you aren’t personalizing your marketing, your competitors are. Don’t lose out because you refuse to move away from mass marketing strategies that cast a too wide (and too poorly-aimed) net.

Social media has, quite frankly, become a politicized sh*tshow these days. Facebook just announced that it’s ending its third-party fact checking program and loosening up on their hate speech restrictions, X saw the biggest mass-exodus of users since Musk bought the platform (the day after the election, nonetheless), most of the people who left X migrated to Bluesky, advertising may soon be available on Threads, TikTok may be banned by the time this article gets published, and we’re just over here sipping our tea and watching the social mediasphere burn to the ground.

That all being said, now is not the time to be everywhere, always. Figure out which platforms your target audience is using, and follow suit. And no, your target audience is not “everyone.” If you really think that “everyone” is your target audience, please—PLEASE—get in touch with us.

This is a breakdown of user demographics by social media platform:

When deciding which platforms to use, take into consideration your brand’s core values and beliefs. X has become increasingly right-leaning since Musk took the platform over, while Instagram and TikTok tend to lean a little more to the left. LinkedIn is great for reaching professionals, while Pinterest is better suited for creative types.

There you have it: the top 4 marketing trends for 2025, and how to leverage them. While it’s important to stay abreast of marketing trends, small businesses may be better suited to start with the tried-and-true marketing fundamentals. Then, once your marketing program is up-and-running, you can start experimenting with trends.