It’s impossible to ignore the trend. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are here to stay, and building materials manufacturers are starting to think about how to use them.
One of the biggest disruptors on the AI scene is ChatGPT, which has garnered over 100 million users in just the first 2 months of its launch. It’s essentially a powerful AI chatbot — trained on billions of words and phrases from the internet — that can meaningfully answer questions, perform tasks, and share knowledge on common topics.
Marketers have discovered that ChatGPT can provide industry-specific content ideas and frameworks, and even “write,” making it a powerful marketing tool. Use it responsibly and effectively, and you’ll boost your productivity by a hundred-fold.
Rest assured, your competitors are already trying their hand at it…so the time to act is now! Here, we’ll provide 3 ideas for using this new technology right away in your building materials marketing efforts to create a strong, growing brand.
1. Complete Email Marketing Tasks
You’ll need to be good at email marketing in 2023 and beyond to compete in the building materials scene. It’s still one of the most reliable, highest-ROI marketing and sales channels, with the oft-cited average of $42 earned from every $1 spent still holding true.
Before AI, it could take many hours out of your week to put together effective email campaigns and newsletters to get prospects to buy and keep existing customers engaged. Today, ChatGPT helps you streamline email marketing tactics in just minutes. Here are some of the ways:
Write Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are a great way to keep customers “in the know” about your product lines and relevant happenings, while building trust by sharing useful tips. It turns out that ChatGPT is a fantastic tool for building and executing your email newsletter strategy.
You can complete a lot of the heavy lifting for your newsletters in far less time. For example, if you’re a manufacturer of laminate and tile flooring, you might ask ChatGPT: What are some content ideas for an email newsletter around laminate and tile flooring products?
You’ll be given a list of helpful ideas you can instantly work with, such as:
- Introduce new laminate and tile flooring products
- Provide installation tips and guides
- Highlight design trends and inspirations
- Give your subscribers an exclusive offer or discount code to incentivize purchases
- Share maintenance and care tips
- Share inspiring customer projects
- Provide a comparison guide
These general ideas might spark some ideas, or bring to mind specific examples you can write about in your emails. You can ask ChatGPT to drill down even further, within the specific context of your products or services.
For example, the prompt “Summarize some maintenance and care tips for laminate floors that homeowners might care about” yields ideas such as:
- Avoid harsh chemicals and abrasive cleaners
- Use furniture pads and avoid dragging heavy furniture
- Keep your pets’ nails trimmed
You can also ask ChatGPT to construct a basic email outline for you, which you’ll then need to edit and customize. Simply give it a topic, a headline idea, and the call-to-action you want your visitors to follow, and ChatGPT will give you the entire framework — which makes it easy for you to customize the messaging and fill in any major gaps.
Optimize Your Subject Lines
Subject lines are an extremely important part of email marketing. Barilliance quotes a stat from CMB that suggests 64% of web users open emails simply based on the subject line.
ChatGPT can generate tons of ideas for subject lines, faster than ever. You can then use email marketing software to split-test ideas against each other (or ideas written by you or your team) to see potential breakthroughs in your email open rates.
For example, if you’re a maker of decking and railing materials, you might want to plan a promotional email around a limited-time sale.
Here’s a prompt you could use: Give me 5 ideas for a promotional email subject line. The email is promoting a sale on a range of decking and railing materials, and is promising 30% off for 3 days only.
Within seconds, ChatGPT returns the following subject line ideas:
- Deck out your backyard for 30% less – limited-time offer inside!
- Spruce up your outdoor space with our decking and railing sale
- Don’t miss out on our decking and railing sale – 30% off for 3 days only
- Upgrade your deck with our unbeatable sale – 30% off all decking and railing
- Hurry! 3-day sale on decking and railing – save 30% on all products
With some minor editing to add product or sale details, you could pick two or more of these subject lines to test against each other. It’s a simple way to determine which approach gets your email opened more…and what kinds of subject lines you should use in the future.
You can also share some subject lines you’ve already written or used in the past with ChatGPT, ask it to improve them, and then ask why those improvements make your subject lines better. This can spark even more directions for grabbing attention and getting your emails opened and read.
Correct Spelling and Grammatical Errors
ChatGPT is a very good proofreader. By pasting text you’ve already written into the dialog box and asking ChatGPT to correct your spelling and grammar, you’ll get relatively clean, error-free output. Be sure to ask for an explanation of the changes made!
It’s important to note, however, that ChatGPT isn’t perfect. You might also choose to break some grammar rules now and then, especially if your brand’s tone of voice allows for it. Be sure to review all of ChatGPT’s output word by word, and make edits accordingly.
2. Boost Your Blog Output
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2023 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, 71% of B2B marketers said content marketing became more important to their businesses over the preceding year. An active blog is still one of the fundamentals of solid content marketing.
As a building materials marketer, you’ll want to do all you can to keep your blog production running strong. ChatGPT can help you accomplish this with record speed in several key ways.
Create Outlines
ChatGPT’s power shines in creating blog outlines. Simply ask ChatGPT to suggest the outline of a blog or article, and you’ll instantly get a good framework into which you can plug your company’s messaging around product offerings and service details.
Let’s say you’re a manufacturer of premium window treatments such as blinds, drapes, and shutters, and you want to reach more homeowners in the Atlanta, GA area. You set out to write on the topic “Window Treatments for Denver’s Climate: How to Keep Your Home Comfortable Year-Round”, but could use some ideas for the article’s structure.
Simply ask ChatGPT for an outline, and you’ll get a very detailed outline for each section of the article — including the introduction and conclusion — that you can then fill out.
You’ll see, for example, suggestions to include the following under various sections of the blog post:
- Discuss different factors to consider, such as temperature, humidity, and wind
- Highlight window treatments that can help keep homes cool during hot summers in Denver, such as solar shades, roller shades, and shutters
- Explain the importance of regular maintenance to ensure the longevity and functionality of the window treatments
Power Your SEO Keyword Research
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to getting your blog posts read. ChatGPT can help by speeding up your SEO keyword research with lots of ideas.
Simply ask ChatGPT to give you ideas for keywords around a certain topic. An insulation manufacturer might generate the following list of keywords from a prompt:
- Fiberglass insulation
- Cellulose insulation
- Mineral wool insulation
- Spray foam insulation
- Radiant barrier insulation
- Home insulation
- Building insulation
- Energy efficiency
From here, you can expand your list by combining some of these terms, and adding words like “buy” or “near me” that high-intent prospects would likely use in Google. Then use an SEO keyword research and analytics tool to look up search volumes and level of competition for each term.
Once you hone in on promising keywords, you can thoughtfully weave those into your blog post where they make sense (and even ask ChatGPT for suggestions on how to do so).
Don’t Copy and Paste
There’s a warning you should be careful to heed in all this. Many marketers are tempted to have ChatGPT write entire blog posts or other pieces of content for them.
Publishing new posts would then, in theory, be a simple matter of copying and pasting. This might seem like a great way to save time, but it’s not a good idea. Here are just a few reasons why:
- Your content will be generic and bland, with no brand voice or personality. For now, the writing ChatGPT produces is grammatically sound and information-rich, but it lacks the human touch. By using it as-is, your brand’s communications will seem very robotic, and you’ll only forge weak bonds with web visitors.
- Your blogs will be the same as other brands that copy and paste. If multiple businesses ask ChatGPT the same questions and simply copy and paste the output…you’ll soon see the same content everywhere, in the same tone of voice. This will only add to the “noise” online instead of offering something new, valuable, or unique.
- You’ll introduce inaccuracies into your content. ChatGPT is not 100% accurate in the information it presents. In some cases, it has even fabricated statistics! It’s crucial to review and verify every claim it makes.
- You’ll be found out by AI plagiarism detectors. These services are starting to pop up, and you can expect them to get better as teasing out human vs. AI-written content becomes a higher priority.
- Google penalties will hurt your site’s SEO. Google has signaled that it wants to prioritize content written by humans. AI-written content will run the risk of triggering Google’s sensors and damaging your website’s overall search rankings.
Then, there are the ethical reasons to write original content. You get what you give in business, and savvy customers can detect when a brand doesn’t care enough about its messaging — or enough about them — to engage in thoughtful outreach.
Even as AI tools get increasingly better at “writing,” a low-effort mindset will hamper creativity and bleed through to other aspects of your marketing. Eventually, prospects will notice, and will be turned off.
In short: your engagement and conversion rates will suffer in the long run if you only copy and paste AI-generated text. Instead, leverage ChatGPT as part of a smart research and brainstorming workflow.
Use its output as a springboard for producing well-thought-out, personable content around your customers’ specific pain points, needs, and goals.
3. Create Social Media Content
In a GlobalWebIndex study quoted by Truelist, 54% of web users turn to social media to research products. That’s why you’ll want to produce a decent amount of social media output at a high level.
ChatGPT can help! Use it to help you put together social media posts across platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
After specifying the social media outlet for ChatGPT, you can ask it to suggest simple posts for you around timely, relevant topics — but remember to edit the output carefully for originality and tone of voice.
You can also use ChatGPT to get ideas for posts and images, and to create a sample posting schedule for you.
For instance, when asked for image and video post ideas for a plumbing fixture manufacturer, you’ll get ideas such as:
- Before-and-after transformations of a bathroom or kitchen renovation project
- Animated GIFs of fixtures that highlight finishes, and design details
- User-generated content, including videos from homeowners who are proud of their new fixtures
By tapping into ChatGPT’s power to help build your social media editorial calendar, you’ll never lack ideas for content.
Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Building Materials Marketing and Keep Your Edge
AI is here, and it’s not going away. Businesses are quickly putting it to use to make all their processes move faster — and its real potential is being discovered for marketing.
As a building materials marketer, you can get ahead of the curve now. With just a few simple prompts entered into ChatGPT, you can get all the content ideas you need, along with outlines, frameworks, and discussion points to build collateral from. Start experimenting with it today, and see how quickly it can make an impact!
Want even more digital marketing power for your building materials brand? Leverage a locator solution like Bullseye. It’s the #1 platform for building materials manufacturers who want to drive more local foot traffic, generate more leads, and drive more sales through their online presence.
If you’re ready to see how Bullseye can boost your marketing effectiveness by leaps and bounds, schedule a demo today.