It's True - You Can Win More Customers With A Fraction Of The Time And Cost Because Of AI
The year 2022 saw a massive shakeup in marketing and business. That's because the AI chatbot ChatGPT launched and changed everything in November.
This new AI is an absolute game-changer, especially for small and midsize businesses that have faced endless struggles with marketing strategy, content creation, analyzing data, and getting results from their efforts and ad spending.
I want to share how you can leverage AI to take your construction business in Johnson City to the next level. By implementing AI tools in the right way, you'll be able to overcome limited resources and generate more customers and revenue than you thought possible before.
The Problem Small Construction Businesses Face
As a fellow business owner, I understand the vast challenges you face regarding marketing and growth. The biggest hurdle is often a lack of time, money, expertise, and human resources.
Most construction companies are small or midsize. You don't have huge teams and departments to handle all marketing, sales, and business strategy aspects.
There are so many key areas that require specialized skills - SEO, social media marketing, email campaigns, PPC ads, website optimization, data analysis, and more. One person can't master them all.
You've probably tried to invest in marketing initiatives and campaigns before. But if we're being honest, most small construction firms struggle to get a solid return from their marketing spend and efforts.
According to research, 93% of small businesses struggle with common social media marketing challenges. Owners also cite issues with marketing research, setting financial goals, and determining what will work to attract clients.
Setting realistic goals is tough when you aren't sure if your ads, social campaigns, or website will produce results.
Most construction business owners handle a significant portion of marketing themselves. But running your business operations AND being a marketing expert is nearly impossible. Trust me, I'm a Chief Marketing Officer, and even I have trouble keeping up!
How AI Is Changing The Game
The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has been a blessing and a curse. Early adopters are seeing immense benefits. But companies who don't adapt risk getting left behind.
There has been a massive surge in interest in how marketers can adopt and use ChatGPT and AI. But this change is more significant than just marketing.
Within two months of launching, ChatGPT already had over 100 million users. Google has added AI elements into search and products like Google Docs. Other companies are racing to develop AI tools and integrate them into their platforms.
For those willing to adopt early, AI has been an incredible advantage to make up for deficiencies in skill sets, bandwidth, and human resources.
But it hasn't replaced the need for human employees and effort altogether. Where AI shines is in enhancing and improving human capabilities.
Let's look at ways your small construction business can leverage AI tools to win more customers with less time and money invested.
Develop Marketing Strategy
One of the most complex parts of construction marketing is developing an effective strategy - especially if you lack formal training.
You can have actual conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Bard AI to devise comprehensive marketing plans.
These AI bots have been trained on massive amounts of data from the internet and marketing industry. You can prompt them by saying:
"Act as a marketing consultant. Help me create a marketing strategy and plan for my construction company. Here are details about my business and target customers."
The AI will ask clarifying questions and have a back-and-forth dialogue to create a custom strategy with your goals and constraints in mind.
Treat the AI like an employee or consultant during these strategic conversations. Ask follow-up questions, clarify details, and request revisions until you have a great plan.
AI Chat Support
One of AI's best uses is to improve your customer service instantly. AI chatbots can be implemented on your website, emails, ads, and more to engage visitors and leads.
An AI chat assistant perfectly recalls all your website content, products, documentation, and other knowledge. Website visitors can ask questions and get instant answers from the AI 24/7.
As a result, you'll capture more leads, answer simple questions automatically, and route complex issues to human team members seamlessly. It becomes easy to qualify leads, too.
Email Marketing
One of the pillars of construction marketing is email outreach and nurturing campaigns. But constantly creating unique, personalized emails is problematic.
You can use AI to determine the right email marketing strategies, create subject lines, generate email content and layouts, and analyze your subscriber data.
For example, brief the AI on your upcoming workshop event and target customer profiles. Then, ask it to write a relevant email draft promoting the event.
The AI can churn out thoughtful emails tailored to your goals in seconds. You just review and tweak them as needed before sending them.
SEO Content Optimization
Driving organic traffic from Google requires optimized on-page content and elements like meta descriptions. But writing SEO content is tricky.
Instead of guessing, you can have an AI SEO expert analyze your site and provide specific recommendations.
Share your URL and ask, "Please act as an SEO expert. Review my website and suggest ways I can improve it for better Google rankings."
The AI will assess keyword usage, content structure, and meta tags and provide ways to optimize each page. You can even ask it to rewrite pages with improved SEO content.
This works for auditing competitor sites, too! Use the AI to see why rival sites rank well and what you can replicate.
Sales Forecasting
Bidding for new construction projects requires sales estimates and goals. But how do you accurately predict future revenue?
You can enable AI to be your sales forecasting assistant. Feed it historical data from your sales performance, projects, and billings.
Then ask questions like "Based on this data, what are your estimates for our sales next quarter? What about 2021 overall?"
The AI will analyze trends in your data to provide forecasts while explaining the logic behind its predictions. This helps you make data-driven business decisions.
Competitive Analysis
Understanding competitor strengths and weaknesses is crucial for your marketing and sales strategy. But comprehensive competitor research takes ages.
AI can instantly uncover key intelligence on competitor companies so you can beat them.
Provide your main competitors' names and websites. Ask the AI to compare them side-by-side and highlight their differences in services, prices, and target customers.
You can also request SWOT analyses on competitors or ask how to improve your business positioning against specific firms. The AI will outline their strategies and how to counter them.
Additional Applications
The use cases for AI in construction marketing and operations are endless:
- Blog post creativity and content creation
- Marketing ad copywriting
- Inventory and supplier management
- Predictive analytics and forecasting
- Fraud monitoring and risk detection
- Customer research and personas
The key is starting to test and experiment with AI for different applications where you lack bandwidth.
Real-World Examples
To show you exactly how powerful AI can be, here are real examples:
I asked ChatGPT to analyze a client's website and recommend SEO improvement. It produced an extensive list of issues we needed to fix, like improving meta descriptions, headers, image alt text, etc.
We could overhaul the on-page SEO in a fraction of the time because the AI did the heavy lifting.
For another client expansion to North Carolina, I used Google Bard AI to determine what % of their marketing budget should be allocated to different regions/cities based on opportunity, competition, and demand data I provided.
The AI explained the rationale behind spending 30% on Charlotte, 25% on Raleigh, 15% on Asheville etc. This insight would have taken weeks for my team to research manually.
How You Can Implement AI Right Now
Hopefully, you're convinced that AI can help your construction company win more customers with less time and money required. But how do you start using it?
Here are my tips:
- Don't overthink it. Just start experimenting with ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other AI tools. Get used to asking questions and prompting it for different business applications.
- Treat the AI like an employee. Be polite, provide context and details, and ask follow-up questions. Correct it if responses are off-base. Praise it when it's helpful.
- Focus first on AI to improve/generate marketing content - emails, ads, blog posts, website copy, etc. This will have the most significant impact.
- If you have a team, introduce them to AI tools and how it can assist their workflows. Expect change management challenges at first.
- Check out training resources like the Cloudwise Academy “Crushing It With AI” program for agency owners and marketers.
The time is now for forward-thinking construction firms to capitalize on AI. It's no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have if you want to save time and money while growing your business in Johnson City.
Don't get left behind while your competitors leverage AI to leapfrog their capabilities and results. With the right strategy, you can unlock transformative benefits and take your construction marketing to the next level.
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