12 Best AI Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Unless you’ve managed to evade all tech-related news over the past few years (and if you have, I’m impressed), you’ve probably witnessed the atmospheric growth of AI, aka artificial intelligence, in some way. AI’s been around for a few decades, but only in recent years has it really set in the general public’s consciousness.

Before I show you my picks for the best AI marketing tools for small businesses, it’s important to note that no AI tool is perfect, no matter how advanced. There will always be errors to look out for and fix. All in all, marketing AI tools should be an assistive mechanism to enhance your marketing efforts, not one that takes them over completely.

That said, here are the 12 best AI tools for marketing across disciplines. You’ll find tools to help write your emails and platforms that can help generate websites and social media posts. We’ll also go through their features, pricing, and how they can help grow your business.

• Hostinger: Best for building websites
• Bluehost: Best for building WordPress websites
• Canva: Best for graphic design
• Tailor Brands: Best for creating your brand identity
• Buffer: Best AI social media assistant
• Writesonic: Best for writing content
• Semrush ContentShake AI: Best for SEO content planning
• HubSpot AI Blog Writer: Best for blogging
• Constant Contact: Best for creating email campaigns
• Klaviyo: Best for marketing automation
• MarketersMEDIA: Best AI press release generator
• ChatGPT: Best for conducting market research

Best AI Marketing Tools for Small Businesses at a Glance

Hostinger: Best for Building Websites

If you haven’t built a website yet for your business, it should be one of the first things on your to-do list for building your brand presence. A good business website will be able to capture online visitors, bring them to your brand, and even enable you to transact online. In short, your website will be your business’s online operations hub and storefront.

A good website should also be well-designed. And when it comes to the best AI tools for building business websites, our top pick is Hostinger. The Hostinger website builder includes a built-in AI site generator where you can answer a few prompts about your site’s direction and style and automatically generates one based on your answers. I’ve used the AI site builder myself, and it was a very easy and satisfying experience.

What I also like about Hostinger is that it allows you to customize your site using a drag-and-drop editor, which gives you more design freedom. For instance, you can add your logo, brand colors, and contact information. You can also build an online store. I go into more detail about the website-building process in my how-to guide on using Hostinger.

If there’s one downside, it’s that there is no free plan, and you can only sell up to 500 products in your store. However, it’s still overall one of the best AI tools for digital marketing and is our top recommendation if you want to generate a well-designed website quickly and easily.

Visit Hostinger

Bluehost: Best for Building WordPress Websites

While Hostinger is our overall top recommendation for building business websites using AI, you may want something specifically for WordPress. WordPress is the industry leader for content management systems (CMS), and it’s the best platform for creating more advanced sites. There’s just one problem: it can be complicated to navigate if you’re not a professional website developer.

That’s where Bluehost comes in. Bluehost lets you easily create WordPress websites with all the functionality but none of the hassle, using its AI WordPress website generator. Like Hostinger, you’ll only need to answer a few prompts about your website, and it’ll automatically be generated for you.

Your website will also be fully equipped with an online store (if you need one), and you can add as many plugins as you need. You can even build up to 10 websites on the first plan, costing just $2.95 a month. While there is no free plan or trial to test the platform, Bluehost is the best AI marketing tool for any business that wants to build a fully functional WordPress website in minutes.

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Canva: Best for Graphic Design

You probably know Canva best as one of the most popular and easy-to-use online design platforms. But in late 2022, it also released its line of AI tools to enhance the design experience even further, which includes an AI design generator, image generator, content writer, and even a basic video editing tool. However, it’s the AI design generator, aka the Magic Design Tool, that I find particularly useful.

With the Magic Design tool, you’ll only need to upload a single image or describe the design you need, and it’ll automatically generate various design templates, from posters to Instagram Stories and anything in between. It’s a helpful tool for designing any graphic you need, even if you have limited design skills or time. However, you can still edit the generated designs further on the drag-and-drop platform. Best of all, it’s completely free to use.

If you’ve used Canva before, you’ll know how user-friendly and efficient it is. Even on the free plan, you can create dozens—even hundreds—of graphic designs for marketing materials, from print posters to daily social media posts. Canva’s Magic Design tool works like an in-house AI graphic design assistant that can streamline your design process and save you time while still allowing room for customization and creativity.

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Tailor Brands: Best for Creating Your Brand Identity

Building your brand identity is one of the most fundamental parts of marketing your business. Your brand represents your business to the public and is how audiences and customers will recognize you. And building a brand doesn’t just mean creating your logo (although that also plays an important part). It also involves deciding on your brand colors, imagery, and typefaces, and even applying for trademarks and LLCs if necessary.

In short, building a brand takes a lot of elements. And if you’re unfamiliar with the process, it can be a lot to handle. A platform that can help you significantly with all these areas is Tailor Brands, which is an AI-powered platform that can easily generate a logo for your business.

You can then use your logo to create business cards, social media designs, and even websites, all within the platform. It even has tools to help your business apply for trademarks and LLCs.

These make Tailor Brands a powerful marketing tool and one of the best AI tools for business branding. However, it doesn’t offer a free plan—you can’t download your logo or other materials until you upgrade to a paid plan. However, it’s super easy to use and more cost-effective if you don’t have the budget for a full branding agency.

Visit Tailor Brands

Buffer: Best AI Social Media Assistant

You probably already know that social media marketing is necessary for growing your presence online. But if you’re handling multiple social media platforms, it can quickly get overwhelming and disorganized. You’ll need to constantly create fresh content that aligns with your audience’s needs and interests. That’s where social media marketing tools like Buffer can help.

Buffer can do all the essential social media functions, and it’s one of the best AI tools for marketing particularly because its AI assistant essentially functions the same way a human social media assistant would.

It can generate social media content ideas, repurpose social content from one form to another (i.e., turn an Instagram caption into a comment thread), run A/B tests, and even respond to social media comments on your behalf.

The main drawback with Buffer is that its AI tool only works on text, not images, meaning you can’t ask it to generate image or video templates. Still, its AI assistant is available on the free plan, which includes its content organization and publishing platform. It’s very easy to use and can be substantially helpful in running your social media campaigns.

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Writesonic: Best for Writing Content

One of the biggest areas in AI development in recent years is generative AI, aka AI that creates content, particularly written content. Generative AI tools can automatically create text content, from blogs to product descriptions, and one of the best we’ve tried so far is Writesonic. It’s our top AI content writer overall, not just for its quality, but also for its variety—it can generate articles, ad copies, product descriptions, and over 50 other content types.

With Writesonic, you’ll only need to write a description of the content you need (or choose from the suggestions available), and it’ll automatically generate it for you. However, you can only generate up to a certain number of words on the free plan. For unlimited generations (and more advanced writing), you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Also, because there is no brand voice tool until the higher plans, you’ll have to be very specific about your tone and direction in your prompts; otherwise, they’ll come off sounding robotic and generic. And of course, always double-check, edit, and add emotion to all its content before using it in your marketing.

However, for its many features and very user-friendly interface, I find Writesonic worth a shot if you need help writing content drafts or even just polishing up your output. As long as you use it cautiously and edit conscientiously, it could be one of the most powerful AI marketing tools in your kit.

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Semrush ContentShake AI: Best for SEO Content Planning

Search-optimized content is the cornerstone of content marketing. Beyond just producing content on the regular, your content also needs to match search engine best practices to get it on top of search results and in front of audiences. The best way to do this is through keyword research, and one of the top AI tools for marketing in that area is Semrush.

Semrush is an industry leader for all things SEO, and its ContentShake AI tool is a particular highlight for keyword research and content marketing. It’s a powerhouse of a tool, helping generate article ideas (and even determine their search intent) and analyze your written content for keyword gaps, content readability, and more. It can even generate social media posts for educational, entertainment, or sales content.

With these tools, a lot of the guesswork, manual mind-mapping, and trial-and-error in content marketing is significantly reduced, allowing you to write more effective content from the get-go. Use its ContentShake tool to generate ideas, prepare and polish drafts for your blogs, and then use the SEO Writing Assistant afterward to check for any SEO gaps and issues.

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HubSpot AI Blog Writer: Best for Blogging

You may have heard of HubSpot before. It’s a platform with a plethora of sales and marketing tools, which have recently been supercharged with AI. One tool I particularly find useful for small businesses is its AI blog content writer and idea generator. Together, these tools can streamline your blogging process and help you build an SEO content marketing strategy more efficiently.

HubSpot’s AI blog writer can generate full blog drafts that you’ll only need to edit and publish. It can also generate a general blog outline or ideas if you need help brainstorming content. Plus, it’s also free to start, and you can immediately publish your blogs on HubSpot’s publishing platform. Of course, as with all AI-generated content, edit it and inject your voice before publishing it live.

HubSpot’s blog generator is very efficient and easy to use in general; however, to get the most out of it, you’ll need to learn how to write good prompts. Every piece of AI-written content is only as good as its prompt, so be specific about the content you want. Still, it’s one of the best free AI tools for digital marketing you can have in your toolkit.

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Constant Contact: Best for Creating Email Campaigns

For AI-enhanced email marketing, look no further than Constant Contact. It’s long been one of our best email marketing tools for small businesses because of how easy and effective it is, even for beginners. In addition, its new AI tool makes it even easier to build email marketing content and campaigns.

The AI tool can generate email copy and create fully branded email designs by inputting your website link. It’ll automatically pull your logo, brand colors, and other elements and apply them to your email content. It can even recommend content based on specific keywords.

It’s impressive how professionally written and laid out this email template is, but it still needs considerable editing—both in its images and text—which still sounds very generic and clinical. However, that’s also the case for most other AI tools, and Constant Contact is unique for focusing specifically on emails. If you’re new to email marketing but plan on using it repeatedly, it could be worth your investment.

Visit Constant Contact

Klaviyo: Best for Marketing Automation

One of the biggest benefits of AI in marketing is its ability to automate processes that would otherwise take a lot of time and effort to set up. Examples are email and SMS marketing, push notifications, and collecting and displaying reviews.

One of the best AI marketing tools that can help with all that is Klaviyo. Klaviyo is an automation builder software, but what makes it particularly powerful is its built-in AI, which makes the process a lot easier.

Klaviyo’s AI can create automated workflows for your email and SMS, and review collection campaigns—all customized to your specific needs. So, for example, if you want to send a follow-up email exactly 48 hours after a customer exits your website, you can do that with Klaviyo. You can even simply describe the workflow you want, and Klaviyo can build it automatically.

As such, it’s one of the most powerful AI tools for marketing, especially if you want to step up your SMS and email marketing game as your business grows. Klaviyo can be your best assistant to build custom customer journeys that fit your specific objectives. Plus, there’s a free plan to get started with the email marketing tool with up to 500 email sends per month.

Visit Klaviyo

MarketersMEDIA: Best AI Press Release Generator

Press releases are one of the best ways to gain media coverage for your small business and get it in front of more audiences, but they can also be time-consuming. The good news is that AI press release generators are an available option—and the best we’ve found so far is MarketersMEDIA.

On its press release generator, simply fill in a form with the essential details of your story (purpose, type, subject, contact info, and more), and you’ll automatically have a full press release in minutes.

We also particularly like MarketersMEDIA for including all the necessary press release info instead of generating just a generic one. Plus, it generates it in the proper press release format, and you can even send it out to journalists from the platform.

As with any other AI generator, you’ll still need to edit MarketersMEDIA’s press release. However, if you’re new to the process, it’s a good starting point you can build from.

Visit MarketersMEDIA

ChatGPT: Best for Conducting Market Research

It’s impossible to discuss the best AI marketing companies without mentioning ChatGPT, arguably the biggest pioneer in the new AI age. ChatGPT can do an impressive variety of tasks, but I find it most helpful for audience and market research. Audience research is important to creating effective marketing campaigns, but it can also be tricky even for seasoned marketers.

However, AI market research tools can help with that, and one of the best, as of writing, is ChatGPT. If you haven’t used ChatGPT before, it works like a chatbot assistant where you give it commands, which it then performs. So for research, you can simply ask it questions about your target audience or market, and it’ll automatically give you that information.

Here’s an example of ChatGPT giving me a general overview of a target audience for an organic cafe in Seattle.

While you can’t expect it to be perfect, ChatGPT offers a decent set of audience characteristics you can use as a starting point. Also, because it’s not a human, you’ll need to give precise prompts and instructions on the information you need. And of course, don’t rely on it 100% for your research. Make sure to back it up with other sources.

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How We Evaluated the Best AI Marketing Tools

Marketing your small business is no small feat. But the advent of AI has unlocked many possibilities for streamlining all those processes, making it easier to grow your business. For this list, we narrowed the field to the best tools for small businesses based on key considerations like usefulness, cost, and more.

• Useful Features: While the AI marketing tools on this list vary in purpose, we included tools for the most essential small business marketing tasks such as content writing, SEO, branding, website building, and more.
• Output Quality: AI tools shouldn’t just be functional, they should also have high-quality outputs that pass general standards for marketing.
• Cost: Most small businesses are on a tight marketing budget, so as much as possible, we only include AI tools with free or inexpensive pricing that won’t take up your entire budget.
• Scalability: Beyond having affordable starting plans, we also included tools with room for your small business’s future growth. All the AI tools above have plans that scale with more features.
• Ease of Use: Marketing doesn’t need to be difficult, even if you’re a beginner. We personally tested all of the tools above to ensure they’re easy enough to set up and start using in an hour or two.
• First-hand Experience: We tested each tool hands-on and based our recommendations on the tasks and features we know move the needle for small business growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Bottom Line

AI is one of the biggest technological developments in recent years, and with the right tools and management, it can pose many advantages to your small business. The AI marketing tools above are some of the best in the industry, and we curated the right ones to help grow your small business, from generating fully formed websites to automating your marketing campaigns. Using them can help you focus on the most important parts of running your business.