--- title: "How to get AI to promote my business" url: https://howtogetaito.com/promote/my-business/ published: 2026-09-22 updated: 2026-09-22 author: "Jack Stovell" author_profile: https://i.hilyt.it/jack publisher: "Adapt Progress Evolve" summary: "One month of marketing a one-person business can actually keep: the Google listing kept alive, posts in your own voice, one email to past customers, genuine reviews arriving, a page AI assistants can read, and fifteen minutes a week on the numbers that tell you what worked." tools: ["Google Business Profile","Buffer","Mailchimp","ChatGPT","Claude","Gemini"] ours: ["ReviewNudge","hilyt"] disclosure: "ReviewNudge, hilyt are made by the publisher." language: en-GB --- # How to get AI to promote my business > One month of marketing a one-person business can actually keep: the Google listing kept alive, posts in your own voice, one email to past customers, genuine reviews arriving, a page AI assistants can read, and fifteen minutes a week on the numbers that tell you what worked. Published 2026-09-22 · Last updated 2026-09-22 · By Jack Stovell (https://i.hilyt.it/jack) · Canonical page: https://howtogetaito.com/promote/my-business/ ## What you'll be able to do Right, let's be honest about what this actually gets you. Not a marketing department. Not a strategy. Just a month you can repeat: your Google listing stays alive, you post a few things in your own voice, one email goes out to people who've already paid you, and you spend fifteen minutes a week looking at whether any of it did anything. That's it. That's the whole thing. AI does the boring bits, you stay recognisably you, and nothing here requires a budget you don't have. ## Before you start Here's the bit nobody tells you: most small business marketing fails because it's too big to keep doing. You do one brilliant week, then life happens (a boiler bursts, a client cancels, you're knackered) and the whole thing quietly dies. Three months later you remember you were "meant to be posting more" and feel bad about it. So the approach here is small on purpose. One Google listing you already have. One social account you already use. A handful of past customers who already know you. AI doesn't replace any of that, it just does the writing and the noticing, so you don't have to sit there on a Sunday trying to think of something to say. What you actually need: access to a free AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot all work fine for this), your Google Business Profile logged in, and about an hour once to set things up. After that it's fifteen minutes a week. Not fifteen minutes a day. A week. I mean, if you've got more time than that, great, do more. But this is built for the version of you that's tired. ## Get set up There are three things worth sorting before you touch a single prompt. **Your Google Business Profile.** If you haven't claimed and verified it, do that first, everything else sits on top of it. It's free. Once it's verified you can post Updates, Offers (these get a title, start and end dates, and an automatic "View Offer" button), and Events, all with photos or video attached. You can reply to reviews. You can share a review link or QR code straight from the profile. And there's a Performance report buried in there that shows you views, the actual search terms people typed, calls, direction requests, website clicks, messages, and bookings. That report is doing a lot of the "did this work" job later on, so it's worth knowing it exists now. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance, and prominence, and prominence includes your review count and score. So reviews aren't just nice, they're doing actual ranking work. **A page AI assistants can actually read.** When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini "who does plumbing in Diss" or "is there a decent hairdresser near me," the assistant is searching the web and trying to find something that plainly says what you do, for whom, and where. If nothing exists, or your details don't match across your site and your listing and any directories you're on, it either guesses or skips you. hilyt (hilyt.it), which is one of ours, makes an open profile page built for exactly this job: proper HTML rather than something hidden behind JavaScript, schema.org markup that tells crawlers what kind of business you are, claims that are dated and sourced rather than vague, and a plain-text file at i.hilyt.it/yourname/llm.txt that assistants can read directly. There's a small one-off fee, check hilyt.it for that. Worth saying plainly: hilyt's own page admits it can't guarantee an assistant will recommend you, and that for a local business your Google Business Profile is still the identity page that matters most. So think of it as a second, consistent statement of who you are, not a replacement. There's also a free checker at hilyt.it/tools/ai-visibility if you just want to see where you currently stand. The free starting point, and the one everything else leans on, is a plain About page on your own site: what you do, who it's for, roughly where, roughly what it costs. Nothing clever. Same business name, same address, same phone number everywhere it appears. **Reviews, without breaking the rules.** Google is strict here: you cannot offer discounts, freebies, or payment in exchange for a review, and every review has to reflect a genuine experience. Not "leave me a five star review and I'll knock a tenner off next time." That's against the rules, full stop. What works instead is timing. Ask the moment the job's done, while the customer's still pleased, not three weeks later when they've half forgotten. ReviewNudge (reviewnudge.app), which is one of ours, automates that moment: it sends an SMS (falling back to email) after each job asking for a rating first. Four or five stars get routed to your public Google review page. One to three stars go to a private feedback form only you see, so a bad day doesn't become a public review, it becomes something you can actually fix. Plans start at £6.99 a month for Lite (10 SMS), up through Starter at £29 (50), Growth at £59 (200), Pro from £99, and there's a free 14-day trial on Starter. If you're sending a review request after every job by hand and keep forgetting, this is the honest fix. The free way to do the same thing: use Google's own review link or QR code from your profile. Ask in person the second the job's finished, or text it yourself that evening. Costs nothing, just takes discipline you have to supply yourself. ## Try it yourself Three prompts, three different jobs. Copy them as they are, swap in your own details. This one builds your whole month in one go: ``` Here is what my business does, for whom, where, and what actually happened this month: [paste]. Write me a marketing plan for next month that takes fifteen minutes a week and one hour once, using only my Google Business Profile, my [Instagram/Facebook] page and one email to past customers. Plain English. No hashtag lists. ``` This one turns a single real update into three separate Google posts: ``` Turn this real update into three Google Business Profile posts: an Update, an Offer with a start and end date, and an Event. Keep every fact exactly as I wrote it, no invented prices or claims: [paste]. ``` This one writes the email, in your voice, not a marketing voice: ``` Write a short email to my past customers about [the one thing], in my voice, here are three things I have written before: [paste]. Under 120 words, one link, and a plain line at the end saying how to stop getting emails from me. ``` For the social posts themselves, there's a whole separate guide on that ("How to get AI to write a social post"), because getting your own voice out of these tools rather than a generic marketing voice is a job on its own. For scheduling, Buffer has a free plan covering up to three channels, or you can just post natively, which costs nothing either way. And for the email itself: Mailchimp's free plan covers the basics, or for a handful of names, plain email works fine. Under UK rules (PECR, enforced by the ICO), marketing emails need consent, but there's a specific exception called the soft opt-in: your own recent customers, who had the chance to opt out when you took their details, and who get an unsubscribe option in every message you send them. Bought lists don't qualify for any of this. Don't use one. ## Check the result Fifteen minutes, once a week. Here's what to actually look at. Search your own business name. Does the listing show current hours? Recent photos? Your latest post, actually showing? If any of that's stale, that's your first fix. Then ask an assistant directly: "who is [your business] in [your town] and what do they do." Try it in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Compare the answer against reality. If it's wrong, that's a signal, not a disaster, go fix the About page and the listing. Then the numbers. Pull calls, direction requests, and website clicks from the Performance report. Count reviews this month against last month. Check your own diary for enquiries and bookings, and notice which post, if any, actually got a reply. Pick one number. Just one. Decide to move it next month. That's the whole exercise. ## If it doesn't work A post vanishes. Google checks posts against its content policy, so something in it tripped that policy (the help page on posts lists what isn't allowed). Strip the offending bit out and repost. Nobody replies to your email. Usually the subject line's vague, or you asked for three things instead of one. Say what's inside, ask for one thing. No new reviews coming in. You're almost certainly asking too late. Send the link the second the job finishes, not the next day. An assistant says something wrong about your business. Don't panic, fix the source: update your About page and your Google listing first, since that's what these tools are reading from. There's a full guide on this ("How to get AI to recommend my business") if it keeps happening. On privacy: never paste your customer list into a chat assistant, not even to "tidy it up." Let your email tool hold that list, it'll carry the unsubscribe link automatically, which a copy-pasted list in a chat window won't. Only use photos of customers or their homes with permission, every time, no exceptions. And never put a customer's personal details in a public review reply, however tempting it is to set the record straight. ## Questions people ask ### Can I market my small business with AI on no budget? Yes. You need access to a free AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot all work fine), your Google Business Profile logged in, and about an hour once to set things up. After that it's fifteen minutes a week, not fifteen minutes a day. ### How do I get more Google reviews without breaking the rules? Google is strict: you cannot offer discounts, freebies or payment in exchange for a review, and every review must reflect a genuine experience. What works instead is timing — use Google's own review link or QR code and ask the moment the job's done, while the customer is still pleased. ### Is it safe to paste my customer list into ChatGPT? No. Never paste your customer list into a chat assistant, not even to "tidy it up". Let your email tool hold that list, as it'll carry the unsubscribe link automatically, which a copy-pasted list in a chat window won't. ### Can I email past customers under UK marketing rules? Under UK rules (PECR, enforced by the ICO), marketing emails need consent, but there's a soft opt-in exception for your own recent customers who had the chance to opt out when you took their details and get an unsubscribe option in every message. Bought lists don't qualify — don't use one. ### How do I check whether my marketing is actually working? Spend fifteen minutes once a week: search your own business name to check hours, photos and your latest post, ask an assistant who you are and compare it to reality, then pull calls, direction requests and website clicks from the Performance report. Pick one number and decide to move it next month. ## Keep exploring If you want the AI-visibility side taken further, have a look at "How to get AI to recommend my business." For getting your actual voice into social posts rather than something that sounds like everyone else, there's "How to get AI to write a social post." And for the reviews that do land, especially the awkward ones, "How to get AI to reply to reviews" covers that properly. ## Sources and review notes https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778 https://support.google.com/business/answer/7342169 https://support.google.com/business/answer/9918094 https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474050 https://support.google.com/business/answer/16816815 https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122 https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091 https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-privacy-and-electronic-communications/guide-to-pecr/electronic-and-telephone-marketing/electronic-mail-marketing/ https://buffer.com/pricing https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/ https://reviewnudge.app/pricing https://hilyt.it/ai-readable-profile https://hilyt.it/tools/ai-visibility Review date: 2026-09-22