Leveraging ChatGPT for Construction Marketing
Construction marketing can be a challenging and complex process. Marketers in the construction industry are faced with competing priorities, many of which are deadline driven. New Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, are increasing in adoption by construction marketers. From content generation to proposal support, AI is a powerful tool that can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of construction marketers.
Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has become the fastest growing app in history with over 100 million users. ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence research organization. It is based on Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), a series of language models developed to understand and generate natural language. By training models with billions of parameters, ChatGPT can generate natural language responses to a wide range of prompts with high accuracy. The ability of ChatGPT to generate human-like responses has lead to its adoption by many construction marketers.
Here’s how ChatGPT is being used for marketing in the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) industry:
Content Creation
One of the biggest challenges for construction marketers is creating high-quality, engaging content on a consistent basis. Construction marketers can utilize ChatGPT to create high-quality, customized content that resonates with their target audience. ChatGPT can help with this by generating content ideas and topics, headlines, and even full articles. Topics or keywords input into ChatGPT will generate a list of relevant content across a wide range of formats, including blog posts, articles, email content, whitepapers, case studies, and social media posts. This allows construction marketers to create a diverse range of content that targets different segments of their target audience and meets their marketing goals. ChatGPT can also improve the quality of content. By analyzing existing content and providing prompts that are specific to the desired tone, style, and voice, construction marketers can create content that is more compelling, informative, and engaging. ChatGPT can save construction marketers a significant amount of time and help them produce and manage more content on a regular basis.
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) remains a critical component of any construction marketing strategy. SEO involves optimizing a website and its content to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. ChatGPT can help with SEO by providing keyword research and analysis. Inputting a keyword or phrase, ChatGPT will generate a list of related keywords, along with their search volume and competition level. This information can be useful to optimize content including: keywords, tags, titles, and headings for the best possible search engine rankings. ChatGPT can also assist with backlinking efforts, which is an important aspect of off-page SEO. By generating high-quality and engaging content, AEC professionals can increase the likelihood of other websites linking back to their content, which can improve their search engine ranking.
Customer Engagement
Building relationships with customers is essential for construction, and ChatGPT can advance customer engagement by providing personalized customer interactions. ChatGPT can answer customer questions, provide specific recommendations, and even initiate conversations. While this doesn’t replace human interaction, AI tools can engage with customers on a deeper level and provide a more personalized experience. Another way that ChatGPT can help with customer engagement is by assisting with the creation of surveys, questions and feedback forms. By generating customized language for survey questions and feedback forms, ChatGPT can help ensure that the questions are clear and easy to understand, and that the feedback provided is actionable. This can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will improve the client experience.
Lead Generation
The process of lead generation involves attracting potential customers or clients and nurturing them into becoming qualified leads. ChatGPT’s role in content creation is essential for lead generation, and can support lead generation activities by providing lead qualification and scoring. ChatGPT will analyze the data and provide a score based on the likelihood that the lead will convert. This can help construction marketers prioritize their efforts and focus on the most promising leads. Capturing information via the creation of landing pages that are optimized for lead generation is supported by ChatGPT as it creates customized language for headlines, subheadings, and calls to action. ChatGPT can help ensure that the landing page is engaging and encourages potential leads to take action, such as filling out a contact form or downloading a lead magnet.
Proposal Support
Producing compelling, engaging, and convincing proposals is often the last step in the sales and marketing process for construction firms. Developing and writing a high-quality proposal can be a time-consuming and challenging process. ChatGPT can generate proposal content ideas and even complete specific sections of a proposal. By inputting information about the project, the client, and other relevant details, ChatGPT can generate language that is tailored to the specific proposal. ChatGPT can help with the overall structure of the proposal. By providing suggestions for headings, subheadings, summeries, and bullet points, ChatGPT can help ensure that the proposal is easy to read and understand. This can be an important resource and save proposal writers a significant amount of time and effort.
As for final reviews and editing, ChatGPT can help with editing and proofreading the proposal. By identifying grammar and spelling errors, as well as inconsistencies in the language or tone, ChatGPT can help ensure that the proposal is professional and polished.
ChatGPT can summarize long content by analyzing the text and identifying key points and themes. By inputting the long content into ChatGPT, it can provide a concise summary that captures the essence of the original text, and create a bulleted list of key points or takeaways. This can save AEC professionals time and effort, while also providing a quick and easy way to understand complex or technical information by simplifying complex language, technical terms or jargon. ChatGPT can generate a summary that uses simpler language or explains technical terms in a more accessible way. This can be particularly useful for communicating with non-technical stakeholders or clients.
ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for AEC professionals looking to write high-quality proposals that are persuasive, well-organized, and tailored to the needs of the client. By generating content ideas, structuring the proposal, providing persuasive language, differentiating the proposal from competitors, and editing and proofreading the proposal, ChatGPT can help increase the chances of winning new business and growing the AEC firm.
Competitive Analysis
In an increasingly competitive market, staying ahead of the competition is critical for construction firms and ChatGPT can provide information for a competitive analysis. With basic competitor information, ChatGPT can generate a report that includes information such as competitor strengths and weaknesses, market share, capabilities, clients, news and thought leadership and even customer sentiment. This information can be useful when developing strategies and approaches to differentiate your firm from your competitors.
ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can help construction marketers improve their marketing efforts in a number of ways. From content creation to customer engagement to lead generation, ChatGPT can provide valuable insights and save construction marketers a significant amount of time and effort, while improving performance. ChatGPT is a great tool to enhance human efforts, not replace them. By incorporating ChatGPT into their marketing strategies, construction marketers can stay competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Construction marketing is ripe for disruption. AI and ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for construction marketers looking to create high-quality, customized content that resonates with their target audience and drives business results. The use of artificial intelligence and tools like ChatGPT offer endless possibilities and will push the creativity of construction marketers. Embracing and adopting new technologies will be essential.
Brian Gallagher, CPSM, is the co-author of “Leading With Marketing” and “Building Business With Social Media.” He serves as Vice President, Corporate Development for Graycor, Inc., a national general contractor founded in 1921.
