Friends, colleagues, and clients have asked me about AI for the last six months. Some fear for their jobs or companies, and others believe AI tools like ChatGPT are a fad. Most everyone agrees that AI tools are confusing.
Specific to the marketing industry and my experience with marketing technology, I will tell you I am unfazed by AI. Let me tell you a secret - we’ve used AI tools at Illumine8 for years.
AI has been part of marketing for a long time, from chatbots to quizzes, ad predictive analysis to SEO, and even video editing. AI is a part of our daily life.
AI is part of the mainstream conversation because tools like ChatGPT and Bard have made AI more accessible to everyone. AI is no longer just for marketing and programming professionals.
So what does AI mean to the building industry? Historically, the built environment needs to be faster in adapting to technology.
Ironically, we’ve found that most companies we partner with are eager to embrace AI tools if it means slashing costs. But should you be so fast to adopt these tools? What are the consequences, and is AI even reliable?
Will ChatGPT, Bard, and other AI tools replace your marketing, sales, customer service employees, and service providers? The short answer - no. Will these tools change the way you do business? Yes.
Let's dive into the most popular AI tools related to marketing and sales at your built environment company. We will also explore how they can assist in transforming your business for efficiency.
Chances are, you were already using some of these tools, and you didn’t even know it.
AI or artificial intelligence is part of many common tools you use daily. Ever write an email and suggested text fills in your sentence? Does your project management software automatically adjust timelines based on shifts due to late material deliveries or contractors completing work early?
AI is already at work in the built environment - here are just a few examples:
Outside of building industry-specific applications, AI has applications in your back-office operations, including marketing, sales, administrative, and customer service departments.
Illumine8 has used AI-enabled tools for years as part of its digital marketing strategy. These tools allow our team to work more efficiently, allowing us to do our best work with your budget instead of squandering it on mundane tasks or inflation. Here are our top three AI-enabled tools and how we use them daily to accelerate our marketing effectiveness for our clients in the built environment.
What AI doesn’t do is replace our strategic efforts, and we don’t rely on AI for accuracy. It's known that these tools do not always give you facts. Just ask this New York lawyer who relied on ChatGPT to produce his legal brief. Instead, consider AI a personal collaborator that can make suggestions that speed up ad improve your work.
And what about those Instagram reels claiming AI can write an entire business or marketing plan? Yes, those tools can write a plan for anything. Wouldn’t it be a dream if you could ask AI to write a thoughtful, original article about a topic in your industry? It's not a dream that is possible.
What can AI do, then? It makes the process easier. AI is a tool that accelerates creativity; it doesn’t replace it.
If your company utilizes a CRM for sales, you are likely already interfacing with AI. If you are still managing your bids, projects, and proposals in spreadsheets, implement a CRM before considering any AI effort.
Popular CRMs include our two preferred platforms: Salesforce and HubSpot. Ultimately the right CRM for your business depends on many factors. Our guide to preparing to implement a CRM for your business is a great place to start.
Here are some of our favorite AI-enabled sales intelligence software tools that can speed up your sales processes:
HubSpot is Illumine8’s favorite platform to unite the entire customer journey into one powerful place. The sales tool allows you to automate follow-ups, use predictive analysis to forecast revenue and close rates, and bring insights about your prospect's companies directly into the CRM, saving your team valuable hours of research they can then use for prospecting. This sales AI tool works well for small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses.
The goal of any sales software is to decrease the time sales spend doing administrative tasks and increase the time spent dedicated to the sales process. AI assists salespeople closer to that goal by delivering intelligence on leads and using your company’s first-party data to surface sales opportunities likely to close for your company.
Whether your sales process involves bids or proposals, AI can focus your attention on the efforts that lead to revenue.
At its core, AI works from the basis of information that already exists. AI can already pass basic academic tests based on published knowledge. Tests demonstrate our ability to interpret and answer challenging questions based on learned knowledge.
For AI to work for your built environment company, you still need original inputs to get an output from your AI-enabled technology. All the tools reviewed in this article still require your company’s data. That data could be an article, an idea, a question, or its customer database. Without the “inputs,” there is no “output.”
To transform your marketing and sales with AI - or any other effort - your company still has to put in the human effort to generate data for the AI to analyze. You can reap the rewards of AI-generated gains if you commit yourself to best practices in your marketing and sales efforts.