5 AI Tools to Lower Startup Customer Acquisition Costs

1. ChatGPT for content, copy, code, and a lot more

ChatGPT is a no-brainer for a lot of things, including customer acquisition.

I have been using it since it launched, and it has helped me in countless ways.

ChatGPT Customer Acquisition Examples

Personalizing outreach messages

Here’s an example where we’ll send messages to our leads on LinkedIn:

1. Go to your lead’s LinkedIn profile.
2. Click More and Save to PDF.
3. Upload the PDF to ChatGPT and ask to personalize your outreach message.

I used this method to send personalized messages that helped me raise nearly $20,00 for the Turkish Philanthropy Fund to help millions affected by the devastating earthquake in 2023. We’re still recovering our wounds. If you’d like to give a hand, you can donate on my fundraiser page.

Writing ad copy variants

You can quickly get tens of different variants for your ad copy, and A/B test them to find which performs best.

Getting free traffic from Custom GPTs

You can easily build a custom GPT about your product or your industry to attract new customers from the GPT Store. For example, I built a GPT named FREE Text to Video Script & Metadata Converter, adding my name and website link at the end of each answer. This is the exact text I used in the “Instructions” section of the GPT’s Configure page:

- **Ending your Message**:
  At the end of each answer, add the EXACT signature below:
  Cagri Sarigoz - Founder at https://bizstack.tech/        

ChatGPT Pricing

A free option is available, but I highly recommend using the paid version (ChatGPT Plus) for $20/mo. It’s the best $20 I’m paying every month.

Best ChatGPT Alternative

I think the best alternative to ChatGPT is Claude. It’s especially great for coding and building documents side-by-side.

Another Claude feature I love is Projects, allowing you to upload your “Project Knowledge” and work on your project with Claude by yourself or as a team. I have been building my first Chrome extension, Website to Social Post, as a project on Claude.

Similarly, you can quickly upload PDF printouts of your main website pages to the project knowledge and ask Claude to write social media posts for you, update your website copy, and more.

Claude Pricing

Like ChatGPT, Claude is free, but you can subscribe to the Pro plan, which costs $20/month.

2. Notion for building a CRM, Lead Magnets, and Many More

Everyone loves Notion, including me. Notion is a great tool for all kinds of workflows, including Marketing and Sales.

Notion constantly innovates to meet its users’ needs. Here are some recent Notion AI updates they’ve released recently:

• Ability to search through your documents on both Notion and your Google Drive to answer your questions.
• It can generate & edit docs in your own style.
• It can analyze PDFs and Images, a great feature for sales teams to read through onboarding documents and meeting recordings quickly.
• ChatGPT-like function that allows you to use it as an AI chat tool.
• When you select a text, it automatically suggests what to do with it, such as Explain the text for you Improve Writing.

What makes Notion a productivity machine is Notion Templates. There are more than 20,000 templates for all kinds of use cases.

Here are my favorite free templates for Customer Acquisition:

• Startup In a Box by Notion. This is a collection of templates that cover all functions of a startup from ideation to Scale.
• Sales CRM by Clay
• Editorial Calendar by Notion. We use this template at CitizenShipper to manage all our content plans from blog posts to landing page copy to videos.

Notion Pricing

Notion has four pricing plans:

1. Free
2. Plus at $12/month per seat
3. Business at $18/month per seat
4. Enterprise with custom pricing
5. And Notion AI as an add-on at $10/month per seat

Notion also has a Notion for Startups program, which provides up to 6 months free with unlimited AI.

Pro tip: How to get the most out of Notion on a budget

Since Notion charges based on Seat, the cost can have a snowball effect as you add more users to your Notion account.

You can avoid high costs by adding your team members as guests.

With a single user on the Pro plan, you can add up to 100 guests. With the Business plan, you can even add up to 250 guests. Here’s how to do it:

3. Canva for Creating AI-Powered Designs Quickly

Unless you’re a professional designer, Canva is the only visual design tool you need.

I use Canva almost every day, and its AI features, such as Magic Studio, help me come up with new ideas and start points for new designs.

Here’s how I’m using Canva for:

• Creating logos for my new side projects.
• Having templates for blog featured images, newsletter images, interview images, and many more.
• Creating beautiful presentations
• Creating Infographics and doing them in bulk. For example, I created 128 Infographics that summarize BizStack blog posts.
• Similarly, you can create YouTube Shorts videos using the Bulk Create feature.
• And many more.

Canva Pricing

Canva has a free option that includes many great features.

Canva Pro costs $15/month for individuals. If you have a team of 3 or more, you can subscribe to Canva Teams, which costs $10/month per member.

4. Koala AI for SEO-optimized Content

Koala AI is the best 1-click SEO content generator I’ve used so far.

With Koala, you can generate SEO-optimized content fast.

The good part is that the articles don’t need much editing effort to make them ready to be published.

Koala comes as a bundle of products, namely:

• KoalaWriter, the main product for writing content
• KoalaChat, a hidden gem where you can use the latest AI models while incorporating real-time data. I especially prefer KoalaChat for writing/rewriting a section of content.
• KoalaMagnets for creating lead magnets such as “name generators” to collect leads’ info
• KoalaImages to generate images

What Makes KoalaWriter Different?

• It checks online sources and links to these sources in the content
• Many options to tailor the content to your and your user’s needs.
• Adding internal links to content automatically
• Content Types Available:

Koala AI Pricing

Koala AI has 9 pricing tears with monthly and yearly options, whereas the yearly option comes with a 20% discount.

You can start using Koala from $9/month and upgrade/downgrade your tier based on your needs.

5. Marky for Generating One Month’s Social Posts in Half an Hour

Marky is a great tool for generating image-oriented social media posts.

I have been using Marky for a couple of months now, and I really like it.

You set up your business profile and goals, such as social media posts.

Once your profile is set up, Marky generates tens of draft posts instantly, and you can generate as many as you like.

Then, you need only go over these drafts, make some tweaks, and schedule them.

Here’s how I use Marky in detail: 👇️ 

Marky Pricing

Marky has 3 pricing tiers, starting from $27/month. You get a 20% discount on yearly plans.

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Thanks for reading,

— Cagri Sarigoz

P.S. Some links are affiliate/referral links, helping me out at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support! 🙏

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