Retail and e-commerce sales in the United States are predicted to increase as the holidays draw near, giving consumers more options and businesses numerous chances to connect with their clientele. Shoppers broke previous records in 2022, spending over $1 trillion at retailers for holiday purchases. In 2022, as a way to support independent retailers, more people indicated that they would probably shop on Small Business Saturday rather than Black Friday. All of this is fantastic news for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs), provided they are ready to seize the chance.

AI-powered solutions are opening up local and international markets for millions of businesses, making it even simpler for SMBs—particularly those without substantial marketing teams or advertising budgets—to compete with the most astute advertisers. These tools, which include new features and campaign types, can assist SMBs in reaching new markets, creating compelling creatives more quickly, obtaining data on the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, and confidently allocating their budgets.

With AI-powered marketing, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can still utilize this holiday season to grow and accomplish their goals. Here are five pointers to get you going:

Make your company easily found on the internet

Make sure your business’s information is up to date on search engines and review sites, including your contact details, location, website, business hours, and hours of operation, before promoting it. To help you reach potential customers online, wherever they are, having current information about your company and even your available inventory is essential. You won’t realize how crucial the information you provide about your company is to its success until you start utilizing more AI-powered marketing tools. It’s not as simple as setting it and forgetting it.

Produce more captivating artistic materials

AI can enhance the appeal of your creative materials. However, creating assets continues to be the biggest obstacle in creating and refining a marketing campaign. With new tools like Affable.ai, Omni, and Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express, you can create text, image, and video assets quickly, or you can use them to make your current ones more dynamic. This includes the ability to automatically create video from still image assets or transform text from advertisements into narration with a polished tone. You can more effectively launch and grow your campaign by experimenting with these innovative tools.

Connect with customers wherever you are with AI

Online retailers can directly market their goods to consumers through a variety of channels where they may start their shopping journeys by utilizing AI-powered campaigns. Investing in Performance Max, an AI-powered campaign that works across all Google inventory, helped drive a 169% revenue increase in just eight weeks, according to data from Casely, an online retailer of tech accessories. Give the AI your creative assets and business goals to start, then step back and let it handle the rest.

Eliminate uncertainty from the budgeting process

It is imperative for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to optimize their advertising budget by allocating resources to the most successful campaigns. Another crucial component of campaign management with AI is planning. During the busiest shopping season, you can eliminate uncertainty about how to stretch your budget by using tools like Performance Planner, which make it simple to create a month-by-month plan and view weekly forecasts of various budget scenarios.

Reach your full potential

It is vital to have the instruments necessary to gauge engagement and traffic. It’s critical to recognize what functions well and what needs to be improved. Effectively accomplishing this calls for the proper data analysis, which can be challenging for some companies. AI-driven measurement solutions, such as Twilio Flex or Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot, can automate this procedure and improve SMB decision-making. In order to assist SMBs in anticipating and reacting to future customer behavior, they can also process, analyze, and synthesize massive amounts of data.

AI is leveling the playing field and opening up new avenues for small businesses to expand and succeed now more than ever. Small businesses are the backbone of our local economies, so whatever your holiday plans may be as a customer, business owner, or both, keep that in mind. They increase the variety of goods and services available to us and generate jobs in our communities. Encouraging them all year long, but especially during the holidays, has good knock-on effects that are advantageous to us all.