Self-Analysis with AI

Understanding AI Search and Recommendations

This book purposely avoids getting too technical. The goal was to develop a book that any business owner would feel comfortable picking up and using to improve their marketing efforts. However, in the modern world, it is important to at least discuss using AI because it is an exceptionally powerful tool. The ideas in this chapter are high-level approaches and give you some approaches to use AI to leverage data from your business. Additionally, no single platform is recommended. You can use the platform you are most comfortable trying.

To begin, it’s important to note that some industries have different barriers that prevent the analysis of some data. As an example, HIPPA rules in healthcare and GLBA rules in banking and financial services restrict the use of data for this type of analysis to protect consumers. You should avoid using any protected data when analyzing your business.

However, throughout this book, we have discussed numerous sources that can provide valuable data about your business and its marketing activities. Regardless of your experience or comfort level with AI platforms, these tools can be remarkably effective at analyzing this information and identifying useful insights. This chapter will introduce a few practical ways to use that data for AI data analysis.

The goal is not to turn you into a data analyst, but to help you recognize where useful information can be found and how it can improve your business decisions. In fact, there is no information about how you should prompt AI for these insights. The information in this chapter is intended to give you ideas about how to consider leveraging AI. As you begin analyzing your data with AI, you will likely discover new patterns, questions, and opportunities worth exploring further. The more you experiment, the easier it becomes to identify additional ways to analyze the information available to you. Through practice, you will become proficient analyzing your business in increasingly technical ways.

This chapter gives four different approaches to use AI for analysis to improve your business. These examples are just a starting point for how you can think about leveraging AI to help market your business. AI makes even relatively technical analytical concepts easy to understand and implement, even when you haven’t done this type of work before. The best mindset is to be a little adventurous and try different things.

Sentiment Analysis from Google and Yelp Reviews

Over time, businesses can begin identifying patterns in customer feedback that reveal opportunities for operational improvements. AI does this naturally and partially uses this feedback to make decisions about where a business ranks when it is generating answers. However, you can use customer review data as well to gain your own insights about your business and the businesses of your competitors.

While individual reviews provide valuable insights, examining them collectively can help business owners better understand what customers appreciate and where improvements may be necessary. Comments about service quality, product availability, employee interactions, pricing, cleanliness, and convenience can provide a clearer picture of the overall customer experience.

Customer feedback can also reveal opportunities for business growth. If several customers mention enjoying a particular service, a business might consider featuring that service more prominently in its advertising. Also, repeated comments about particular products could indicate an opportunity to expand or more actively promote it. This means that reviews become more than evaluations of past performance. They can help business owners identify customer preferences, recognize competitive advantages, and discover opportunities for additional revenue.

One specific approach to do this is to periodically review customer feedback with AI and categorize comments into strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Business owners can then look for trends that emerge over several months from the data rather than reacting too strongly to a single negative experience. They can also compare feedback across locations, products, or services to determine whether particular issues are isolated or widespread.

By consistently encouraging authentic reviews and thoughtfully evaluating the feedback received, a company can strengthen its reputation while gaining information that supports operational improvements. Although reviews can contribute to local search visibility, their value extends well beyond that because they provide an ongoing source of customer insights that can help businesses more effectively to customer expectations. For business owners committed to continuous improvement, Google and Yelp reviews can become one of the most practical and accessible sources of business intelligence available.

Social Media Analysis

Chapter 7 discussed the importance of social media posts. In that chapter, the Meta Business Suite was recommended as a tool for publishing content on Facebook and Instagram. One reason to seriously consider using the Meta Business Suite is the access it provides to valuable performance data about your social media posts on those platforms.

Once you export the data out of Meta Business Suite, AI can help identify which posts are performing the most effectively based on measures such as reach, engagement, reactions, comments, and shares. You can also ask AI to compare different types of posts, identify common characteristics among your most successful content, and recommend topics or approaches for future posts.

The objective is to understand what is working and why it is working on social media. Over time, this analysis can help you create more content similar to your most effective posts, improve your social media strategy, and make better decisions about where to focus your marketing efforts on various socia platforms.

Analyzing Your Own Data

You probably have many sources of business data that you can begin analyzing. For example, your point-of-sale system or credit card processing system could be an excellent source of information about customer purchases and sales trends. Exporting information about sales activity or customer transactions can provide valuable insights into market demand.

The key moving forward is to develop a habit of capturing and organizing your business data electronically, preferably in point-of-sales systems, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, or even spreadsheets. Information that you currently record on paper should be transferred into a digital format if you want to analyze it effectively. Even simple records, such as customer inquiries and sales leads can become valuable sources of information over time.

You do not need sophisticated software or complicated databases to get started. A well-organized Excel spreadsheet can provide more than enough information for AI to identify patterns, compare performance, and suggest opportunities for improvement. Just be sure to protect confidential customer information and remove unnecessary personal details before uploading data to an AI platform. The important lesson is that the more consistently you collect useful business data, the more opportunities you will have to learn from it.

Quick AI Analysis Tactics

Engaging AI can be a lot of fun. Just ask AI for insight about your business and it will happily give you new business insights. Just use a general approach to asking AI what your weaknesses are. All businesses have weaknesses, and AI can be particularly good at pointing those out. It is also particularly good giving ways to fix those weaknesses. You can also ask about the strengths your business has.

Here are a few more ideas:

• Price transparency has been noted as important several times in this book. Here is a great way to understand your market better, especially from the perspective of your business. Ask AI how much it will cost to purchase your product or service in your area. The answer it gives may be surprising. Those businesses that have pricing transparences will have an advantage over those that do not. This is an insightful test to run when using AI platforms.

• Ask AI to review your website. What does it think? What is it missing? AT will be straight with you about potential issues on your website. You can ask it technical optimization questions and it will give you very specific and pointed advice on how to resolve those issues.

• Chapter 1 discussed the topic cluster. Developing a topic cluster for a business owner can be time consuming and tedious. Not so for AI platforms. Ask AI to help develop your topic cluster and it will develop an effective model for your business.

• Tell AI to create scorecard based on your marketing and search optimization efforts. Include your website, Google Business Page, Yelp, Reddit, reviews, directories, backlinks, and social media activity. Tell it to give you a grade and to tell you what you can do to improve your ranking on its scorecard. Also have it run that scorecard every week so that you can track your progress as you make progress.

• Have AI develop a marketing editorial calendar for your business. Tell it to use the topic cluster as the primary reference for the editorial calendar.

Applying the Lessons: The Standard Pizza Business

The Standard Pizza Business (TSPB) has been working hard to improve its online presence. But how does the owner know whether all that effort is paying off? It’s time to put artificial intelligence to work, and the owner can start with a simple question to ChatGPT or another AI platform: “How visible is The Standard Pizza Business when someone searches for pizza in this community?”

AI can help review the restaurant’s website, Google Business Profile, social media accounts, and online directory listings. It might identify missing information, outdated operating hours, or services that aren’t clearly explained. Think of it as asking for a marketing report card without hiring an expensive consultant!

Next, the owner can ask AI to compare TSPB with competing pizza restaurants. Which competitors appear prominently in search results? What are they doing that TSPB isn’t? Are they providing information that customers might find helpful? Suppose AI discovers that several competing restaurants have detailed catering pages, but TSPB barely mentions catering. That’s a useful finding! The owner can develop a catering page with prices, serving recommendations, and answers to common customer questions.

The owner can also upload spreadsheets containing sales figures, social media performance, or other business data and ask AI to identify patterns. Perhaps Facebook posts featuring specialty pizzas receive more engagement than posts about daily specials. That information can help TSPB decide what to publish next.

It is important to sound that warning that AI doesn’t always get everything right. It may overlook information, misinterpret results, or provide inaccurate search rankings. The owner should verify important findings rather than accepting every recommendation as fact. The key is to make analysis a regular activity. TSPB could conduct a simple AI marketing review every month, document the findings, and track improvements over time.

You don’t need to be a data scientist to analyze your business. Start by asking questions, explore the answers, and use what you learn to make better marketing decisions. If AI can help TSPB discover why customers are ordering more pepperoni pizzas on Friday nights, then that’s information worth knowing!