Though the buzz around AI is mostly positive, there are some negative connotations. That happens on societal levels in terms of job displacement and, in more extreme cases, fear of a robot uprising. But here we’re talking about AI’s adoption by businesses – especially SMBs. Do they fancy or fear it?
We quantified this in some recent SMB survey research in collaboration with Duda. In short, we took SMBs’ temperature on AI through several probing questions about adoption, value, and aspirational behavior. The results were mostly positive with some SMB apprehension, as you can see in our recap.
But we also decided to do something sneaky. We went back and asked the identical set of questions but substituted the word AI with the word automation. The point of this exercise was to separate the benefits from the buzz. Does the term AI itself have positive or negative connotations?
The results aligned with our hypothesis: framing questions around “automation” returned glaringly more positive sentiments. After all, SMBs like things plain spoken and are often turned off by tech acronyms. That common pattern is amplified in this case by some of AI’s well-publicized shortcomings and FUD.
For example, when asking adoptive SMBs if they found the technology valuable, the answer was 62 for “AI,” while it shot up to 86 for “automation,” all else being equal. Several other side-by-side comparisons favored “automation,” and you can see more summarized findings here and the full report here.
Time Starved
A key tactical question emerges from this finding: Does this mean that you should never say “AI” when marketing or selling software to SMBs? In fact, this very question was asked by an audience member in our recent webinar with Duda to present the results. So we decided to revisit it here.
The short answer is that “it depends.” That answer is often a cop-out, so we’ll go deeper. The fact that “automation” is more effective than “AI” as a software descriptor (among SMBs at least) does not mean that the latter should never be said. It simply means that it should be used sparingly and thoughtfully.
This finding should be a red flag that the “Mad Libs” style insertion of AI into every press release and marketing campaign should be reigned in. In some but not all cases, plain spoken descriptors may be more effective, such as time savings, reducing operational headaches, and again, “automation.”
But the challenge comes down to the “not all cases” in the previous paragraph. Some SMBs want and expect their software to be AI-fueled. So what’s an SMB SaaS marketer to do? The answer is fairly simple, involving standard marketing tools like A-B testing and audience-targeted variations in creative.
The challenge here is the variance in the SMB segment. It’s so large and fragmented that there’s no one-sized answer. But we do know that they’re all time-starved… so stress time savings either way. When you sell AI-infused software to SMBs, you’re not selling AI… you’re selling more time with their kids.
Download the full report from Duda and learn more about Localogy’s Research Services.
