COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – May 4-10 marks National Small Business Week, and one of multiple offerings for business owners in Colorado Springs this week is a class on artificial intelligence and how — and why! — small businesses should be utilizing it.
The class will be held at Glen Eyrie Wednesday morning from 8 a.m.-10 a.m. and will be led by Jonathan Liebert of the Better Business Bureau.
“We’re teaching a class on generative AI, and specifically, what that means to small businesses around search and SEO,” Liebert told 11 News. “So most business owners know search engine optimization is important for them — that’s where they get their views — and less and less people are turning to Google to find businesses, so we want to get the word out to business owners that you need to be aware of a new term, called AEO, or ‘Answer Engine Optimization.’”
Liebert described 2025 as a transitional year, where Google still reigns supreme but is beginning to wane, while AI is only increasing in dominance.
“What we are seeing right now is this is kind of a hybrid year,” Liebert explained, “meaning businesses still need to pay attention to SEO and still do traditional things for the search. “So Google and the bots will crawl the website and pull back different information based on search words; these LLMs, these AI bots are looking for answers. So you’ve got to put different questions in and different things on your website, so that if Google is searching for things, that pops up on search, but if [using AI] that you have kind of a full answer there that’ll they’ll find and serve up to the user. They’ve also got to prepare their site for these answer engine, these chatbots, these LLMs that are looking for different information.
“The data that came out by Gardner Research stated that by 2028, that search [Google] will decrease by 50 percent. That’s in just three years. Right now, new research is saying that about 60 percent of online purchasing is done at the recommendation of a chatbot. Most small businesses don’t know this.”
So if small businesses don’t take advantage of AI, they could be left behind?
“That’s my biggest concern,” Liebert told 11 News. “And that’s why we’re teaching these classes, because small business owners can get left behind very, very quickly. In this age of AI, you don’t need to worry about AI taking a job or your job or your business, you need to worry about that person who knows AI better than you, you need to know about the business that knows AI better than you and is deploying the tools faster than you — they’re going to pull more market share.
“Small businesses right now need to have more time spent learning these tools, they need to engage with these tools, they need train their staff.”
Watch above for a full discussion with Liebert on the future of AI and small businesses and how business owners can best embrace the technology!
Liebert said if you can’t make it out Wednesday, there will be similar offerings in the coming weeks. Click here for a list of upcoming classes!
Click here for a full list of local Small Business Week events.
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