Right About Now with Ryan Alford - How Smart Small Businesses Are Actually Using AI to Grow Faster with Dave Charest

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

In this episode of Right About Now, Ryan Alford is joined by Dave Charest to discuss how AI is reshaping the way small businesses operate. Dave shares insights from recent research showing that more than half of small business owners are already using AI—and why many are increasing their marketing efforts despite economic uncertainty. The conversation explores how AI improves efficiency, helps business owners make smarter decisions, and enables them to compete at a higher level. They also cover practical strategies around email marketing, social media, and audience building—highlighting why owning your customer relationships is more important than ever. Topics Covered AI adoption among small businesses Efficiency vs overcomplication with AI Marketing trends and budget shifts Email marketing vs social media strategy Building and owning your audience Data-driven decision making with AI Common mistakes small business owners make Connect with Dave Charest https://www.constantcontact.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecharest Connect with Ryan Alford https://ryanalford.com https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford

Ultimately, the folks that were implementing AI, no matter what the channel was that they were using and what they were doing for a marketing activity, they were seeing better results across the board. AI is really helping small business owners get stuff done and get stuff done that's enough to learn something from where AI comes in. It's about efficiency. It's not about necessarily doing more. It's about how do I do things smarter and more efficiently. This is where really AI is really helping people move in this direction and get things done. This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a radcast network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month.

Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. There's a lot of conversation around AI right now, but most of it's focused on big companies, big dollars, big things. What's more interesting is how small businesses are actually using it day to day or how they should be. New data shows more than half of small business owners are already using AI to simplify their work. Dave Sherriss, the constant contact director of small business success is right in the middle of all of it, working directly with these businesses.

That's all we got them here right now. What's up, Dave? How you doing, Ryan? Pleasure to be here with you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate your time and appreciate you for coming on. What's cooking, Dave? Where are we today?

Let's tell all the deeds. I know Constant Contact. I've known that name for a long time as a small business owner. Where are we physically nowadays, where we look at it? I'm in the Boston area. Constant Contact's headquarters is in Waltham, Massachusetts, about 20 minutes from Boston. I'm in a little town, Calumetheon, about 30 minutes north of Boston. Nice.

We've been with Constant Contact for a good skinny minute here. Is that right? Yeah, I've been at Constant Contact over 14 plus years now. Congratulations on the longevity. I mean, in today's corporate world, like bouncing around. It says something about you and them. I'll take it. We were talking about still having hair.

Same situation here. Knock on wood, I'm happy to, one, be at a place for so long, but two, also be at a place that I want to be at for so long and to be able to do that and, you know, still have a mission that I really believe in terms of just helping small business owners who are often business owners first, marketers by necessity and use the skills that I have to help them make sense of all that has been a great opportunity and something I've been happy to be a part of. I have a small business owner, but marketer first did for other people for 15 years that then became a small business owner. I've used small constant contact quite a bit. as an owner and using it myself. And then for clients that either had it when they hired us or did others, always respected the platform. And I can say this honestly. We keep it straight here, Dave, for good bad and the other. I've never as a marketing agency owner tried to talk someone off of it. That's the highest compliment I can get sometimes because half the time people come to me with like their marketing or something. I'm trying to talk them out off the ledge of something that they're either thinking of doing or a platform that they shouldn't be on. That's the highest compliment I can give you.

I know. I love that. I'll take that. That's amazing. We have a great partner program as well for agencies who use it and use constant contact with their clients as well. It's really a tool built for small businesses and the businesses that don't need to be overly complicated where you actually do have to have a marketing degree or something like that to actually make it work for you. Hey, we've been around for 30 plus years here. So something's working. Yeah, for sure. Sometimes the product is the topic. The topic is the product. And it's an interesting one with what constant contact means to the marketplace for small businesses. I want to take it through a broader lens of what are small businesses facing. I know you're talking about them

every day, but maybe through the lens of your role and what you're hearing and what you're seeing on a broad sense, and then we can talk specifically around AI and things like that. They're probably intertwined. I think they definitely are, particularly where we are in this moment in time. Constant contact, we regularly are doing these what we call small business now reports. We do these in a consistent basis to really just kind of keep a pulse on what's happening out there with small businesses. and our most recent survey has found and research has found that right now, small businesses are actually doubling down on marketing. When you think about where they are in terms of their top concerns, inflation is a big one. And this is back in February when we kind of fielded this study.

Although they're concerned with that, it's not stopping them from showing up. And the majority of the businesses that we spoke to somewhere around 70% are actually planning on spending more on marketing. I'd love your point of view on this too, because oftentimes where things feel like they're tight or there's some uncertainty. Historically, you would typically see marketing be one of the things that people want to cut because it just feels like that's an expense we don't need to worry about right now. And particularly when you start to think about the change that happened during the pandemic times, right? So if we go back to 2020, I know that was a period in time where a lot of people really started to understand the benefit of these digital tools like email marketing

and social media and all of that because it was really the only way they had to communicate with people. Since that time, they've seen that investing in those tools is even more important when things are kind of a little bit unstable or you're not sure what's going to happen. It's because staying visible matters. And that's what's important because when things do come around, particularly when consumers are being more specific about where they're going to spend their dollars, it's those businesses that are top of mind. That's where they are going to spend them. That's what we're seeing here. They're actually interested in spending more, which is a little bit surprising, but also exciting because it's not typically what you would see.