Globally, 2024 has seen a tipping of scales in the AI space, writes Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia and New Zealand. Small businesses continue to let go of their fears surrounding artificial intelligence and change their attitudes as AI proves its value.

This year, 72 per cent of businesses report adopting AI for at least one business function – an impressive uptick from 55% the year prior, showing the incredible shift in attitude.

Looking forward, we’re set to see the benefits of AI further accelerate small business growth.

In its infancy, business owners realised the power of generative AI, particularly for text generation in social media and email marketing copy.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the opportunities to dive deeper into audiences, tailor to channels and create revenue-generating content on autopilot are endless.

Here are four trends we can expect to see in the coming year.

1. AI will be a part of interfaces

 You may have noticed the convergence of AI tools and your everyday interfaces on social media apps.

Facebook and Instagram search bars integrated ‘Ask Meta AI’, TikTok rolled out ‘TikTok Tako’; a similar function that responds to queries not only with text but user-generated video content and Snapchat released ‘My AI’, a generative chatbot for users to interact with.

AI interfaces extend beyond social media platforms, with popular digital tools such as MailChimp, HubSpot and Thryv integrating generative content functions into their suite of offers.

What does this mean for small businesses?

We can expect to see AI seamlessly stitched further into the UX of everyday applications, accelerating the pace of content creation as using these tools becomes ingrained and intuitive.

2. Hyper-personalisation will be the status quo

Personalisation has long been an element of successful SMB marketing strategies.

Businesses are already familiar with using personalisation tokens and database segmentation in email marketing to reach audiences and using CRM information to send unique offers to add value to our customers.

In the upcoming year, we’ll see the next wave of ‘hyper-personalisation’ become the new normal, as AI and large language models (LLMs) offer a granular analysis of data, enabling brands to tailor content with unfounded precision, at pace.

What does this mean for small businesses?

Dynamic content that automatically adapts based on customer interactions will be at the forefront, reducing customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 per cent.

3. Analytics and recommendations on tap

Creating engaging content and measuring its success with analytics tools is commonplace, but emerging AI-powered analytics tools can offer actionable, real-time recommendations.

AI uses machine learning to recognise trends and patterns in large sets of changing data across multiple social media platforms.

This powerful form of analytics generates forecasts and makes recommendations based on your social media data, but it can also analyse sentiment. This allows small businesses to dive a layer deeper into their engagement metrics and understand not only how their customers are engaging, but how they’re feeling.

What does this mean for small businesses?

Business owners will be enabled to make impactful business decisions, grow their channels and optimise for their audience faster, without having to pay for tools reserved for enterprise-level organisations.

4. Search engine optimisation (SEO) will shift its focus to AI results

You may have noticed recently that Google has rolled out a new feature called ‘AI Overviews’ which effectively replaces Google featured snippets.

The goal of this is to take the legwork out of searching and summarise an answer with the most relevant references on the web, by analysing the most relevant websites and handpicking information to convey to the searcher.

The key difference between SEO and AI optimisation is context.

AI has the ability to crawl for keywords, but also to understand them and analyse them in context. This will signal a heavier focus in creating genuinely helpful and human content with user intent at the forefront.

What does means for small businesses?

I view this as an incredible opportunity for small businesses to see their website visible on the first page of Google. AI optimisation offers a more complex but rewarding landscape for businesses creating engaging, well-optimised content across web and social channels.

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