The world is already experiencing a paradigm shift with the launch of ChatGPT and the plethora of new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that followed. But how will AI affect the future of marketing, specifically for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms?
In this blog post, we'll delve into the exciting world of AI and explore how it revolutionizes marketing in the AEC industry.
In AEC marketing, AI can help with:
• Pipeline management
• Client engagement
• Content creation
• Automation
• Analytics and forecasting
• Immersive experiences
• Hyper-personalization
AI is ushering in a new era in the AEC industry, equipping marketers with cutting-edge tools and technologies that could reshape our traditional marketing strategies. With AI by your side, you can tap into the immense potential of data analytics, machine learning, and automation to supercharge your campaigns.
Pipeline management
Business in AEC is booming – however, as you look to the 3-, 6- and 12-month horizons ensuring you are nurturing existing clients, the right new relationships and preparing for emerging markets is critical. The good news is that AI is simplifying the process like never before. When it comes to building your pipeline in AEC marketing, AI has the power to revolutionize your approach. With AI, you can identify potential clients with precision and target them effectively. Instead of spending countless hours manually sifting through data, AI algorithms can do the heavy lifting for you.
Analyzing vast amounts of information, AI can predict and identify the best clients and projects to pursue, allowing you to focus your efforts where they matter most. You can streamline your pursuit process and ensure that you're reaching the right people at the right time.
Client engagement
Client engagement is crucial, and AI has revolutionized this aspect as well. In today's competitive AEC marketing landscape, client engagement is necessary, as relationships are the backbone of any successful project. AI is just one powerful tool that can revolutionize client engagement in the AEC industry. When they leverage AI algorithms and technology, AEC marketers can gain valuable insights into client behavior and preferences.
AI can analyze large amounts of data quickly, including client interactions, engagement metrics, and market trends, to extract meaningful insights. These insights can inform personalized marketing strategies (discussed in more detail below), allowing marketers to deliver targeted and relevant content to their audience.
Additionally, AI-powered client support tools can provide instant and accurate responses to client queries, enhancing the overall client experience. With AI, AEC marketers can create more engaging and specific experiences for their clients, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
Content creation
Get ready to bid farewell to the days of writer's block and content creation headaches. AI, with its natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, is here to transform how you create content. Blog posts, social media updates, emails, and other marketing materials can now be generated effortlessly assisted by AI-based systems.
With AI as your assistant, you can quickly generate high-quality content that captures your audience's attention and drives engagement. You'll save valuable time and resources as AI takes care of the heavy lifting, allowing you to focus on other strategic initiatives.
Automation
Automation is the name of the game in the era of AI. Repetitive tasks that used to consume your valuable time can now be automated with ease. Proposal and submittal prep, data entry, report generation and email marketing are just a few examples of areas with automation with AI excels.
Let AI crunch the numbers, generate proposal drafts, and suggest optimization strategies while you dedicate your time to more strategic activities that demand your unique expertise.
Analytics and forecasting
Forecasting is among the top challenges facing AEC firms today. As firms plan for current and upcoming work, a future-facing view is paramount. But what does the very near future hold for AI in AEC marketing? Brace yourself for even greater advancements as new tools are created to help you harness the power of analytics for more predictive, actionable insights.
As an AEC marketer, you can harness the power of AI to actively draw insightful conclusions from your analytics. AI algorithms can leverage past project data to uncover valuable patterns, trends, and correlations, empowering you to make data-driven decisions by predicting future outcomes and identifying untapped opportunities.
Immersive experiences
As if that wasn't exciting enough, advancements in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are set to transform the AEC marketing landscape. With AI at the helm, immersive experiences will become the norm. Potential and existing clients can take virtual tours of completed construction projects or visualize architectural designs in real-time.
These interactive experiences captivate audiences and aid decision-making processes, taking client engagement to unprecedented heights. Being able to offer these types of experiences to prospective clients will position your firm ahead of the competition when marketing your business and services.
Hyper-personalized content
When interacting with your online brand, AI will help you provide a seamlessly personal experience. Over time, AI learns about the actions and behaviors being taken across your website, social media, and digital channels. By tracking and learning in the digital space, you can discover ways to better serve your existing and prospective clients by providing the information they are looking for based on their job titles and demographics. This will allow you to create hyper-personalized experiences for your viewers so that they are only seeing information pertinent to them.
A human kind of AI
From pipeline management to customer engagement to content creation, there is vast potential in AI to help accentuate the efforts of AEC marketers. However, in a highly relational industry it’s important to underscore the role of intuition and relationship. It’s also important to understand that harnessing AI requires a solid foundation of education on which to build knowledge.
The role of AI – used correctly, with the right training in place – in the future of AEC marketing is that of a game-changing tool in the relational toolbox. It can augment the efforts of talented marketers, allowing them to focus less on automatable tasks and more on creative, strategic ones. As technology continues to advance, AI will play an increasingly integral role as AEC marketers aim to create personalized, immersive experiences for existing and prospective clients alike.
Leaning into the use of AI for your AEC marketing can help bolster your efforts, but it isn’t the only solution you can use to make your marketing team more effective. By tapping into a CRM built specifically for AEC like Unanet CRM by Cosential, you can find and bid on projects that best align with your firm’s objectives. This way, you’re bidding on the right work – the projects that make the most sense for your firm. This sort of personalization will only get better and smarter over time as AI technologies advance.
Sources:
- Forbes - How AI is Revolutionizing Marketing
- Medium - The Future of AI in Marketing
- Unanet – AEC Inspire Report