The introduction of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) language model launched in late November 2022, has already changed the way that millions of people are thinking about content creation. The AI tool has already proven immensely supportive in generating ideas, content, and lists. It has the potential to serve HVACR companies in the same way, especially when it comes to online marketing efforts, and save them time.

At the same time, it’s important for HVACR contractors to know how to use it, avoid letting its use compromise their brand, and ultimately remember the importance of the human voice that they alone can bring to interactions with their customers.

“The future of online marketing with the advent of ChatGPT is likely to see an increase in the use of conversational AI to engage with customers,” said Nicholas Theoret, director of channel partnerships at KODE Labs. “ChatGPT's ability to understand natural language and provide personalized responses in real-time can make it an effective tool for businesses looking to improve customer experience and drive conversions. However, it's important for businesses to … be upfront about its use and ensure it does not replace human interaction entirely.”

ChatGPT and Online Marketing

Just two months after its launch, ChatGPT reached 100 million users. As more users experiment with the AI, its benefits and time saving capabilities have become hard to ignore, especially for business owners.

AI will inevitably change the way people search for HVAC equipment and service providers, which means HVAC contractors might need to change their thinking about their online marketing efforts. Consumers are already fragmented in how they search, and ChatGPT being thrown in the mix only shakes things up more. YouTube is currently the second-largest search engine in the world. Google isn’t used as much as it used to be by the younger crowd; they like to search videos on YouTube or even TikTok that answer their questions.

“The evolution of search to include Generative AI really cannot be overstated in its significance,” said Eddie Childs, director of corporate marketing at Mediagistic. “I think what we're going to continue to see is a fragmentation of user behavior. Some users are going to continue to use traditional search … but what I think we'll see is they'll also start to use ChatGPT and other AI solutions in their search behavior.”

While ChatGPT isn’t about to replace Google, it will certainly have some effect.

“What we're going to see probably is more options that incorporate AI directly into the search engine results page in addition to the more traditional search solutions,” Childs said.

(For example, Google has already announced it is going to begin incorporating AI-generated responses at the top of the search engine results page and allow users to ask follow-up questions to the AI there as well.)

“With the advent of new technology like BingGPT and Google AI Search, we’re on the edge of a new frontier here, and businesses that are agile enough to adapt are the ones who stand to reap the most benefit in the coming years,” Childs said.

Incorporating ChatGPT

ChatGPT can be incorporated into an HVACR company’s workflow by using it to help generate content such as topic ideas, outlines, and presentations for internal training at an HVAC company; subject lines for emails; follow-up text messages for customers; and more. Using ChatGPT for email marketing also helps HVACR contractors stay in front of their customer database.

“If they need assistance working on the content for those items, that’s somewhere ChatGPT could be leveraged to help them identify offers, value propositions, or even writing follow-up information for the customer,” said Luke Steinkopf, director of sales at Mediagistic.

ChatGPT can also be helpful for writing content that explains complex HVACR services to potential customers.

“It can work backwards,” said Rachel Edens, marketing manager at Pepco Sales & Marketing. “Say you use it for fiilling out spec information on a product full of numbers and ideas. [ChatGPT] can help you simplify it down to the basics of how it should be marketed, because the general attention span on marketing content, especially in the online world, is getting shorter and shorter.”

However, since Google has long taken the stance that original content is the most valuable, HVACR companies shouldn’t use AI to generate organic SEO-type content, Steinkopf said. In fact, using AI-generated content in the wrong places can actually pose a risk to an HVAC company’s brand.

“Anything that you're going to feed to a search engine … I would strongly recommend, at least for now, that people stay away from using AI-generated content,” said Childs.

Using ChatGPT the Right Way

If an HVACR contractor is thinking about incorporating ChatGPT into their workflow, there are a few important things to keep in mind.

1. Experiment with it.

ChatGPT is only as good as the parameters and information the users feeds it. So instead of using the first piece of content it generates, users should play around with different types of questions. It’ll be much like how the world learned, through trial and error, just what to search on Google to get the best answer, Edens said.

The experimentation process is a big part of being successful with ChatGPT, especially in online marketing.

“So if you ask it to how to write a marketing email to homeowners, it's going to give you one thing, and then if you add in that they are affluent homeowners, or homeowners in an emergency situation — that experimentation is going to really help you out,” said Charlie Parham, CEO of Pepco Sales & Marketing.

2. Don’t copy and paste.

ChatGPT is going to create a bunch of content, but that content is really nothing without the voice of the HVACR company. Plus, Google still values original content — so much so that Google has rolled out updates, time and time again, repeating that emphasis.

“To the point where it’s really devalued content written purely for SEO value,” Childs said. “It’s developed a lot of ways to decipher what content is not original. So now the new way to optimize content for Google is to focus on what content is going to provide maximum value to the person who’s reading it and performing the search query.”

In other words, if an HVACR contractor’s plan is to just copy and paste AI-generated content onto their websites, it won’t fly. Google will figure out that it’s not original content, and that poses a risk to an HVAC company’s brand.

“Google is focused on algorithmically rewarding content that offers maximum value to its end users and which matches the intent of the searcher,” Childs said.

To this end, it focuses on a concept called EEAT (experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness), and “while generative AI can produce copy that reads pretty well, I think it’s pretty clear that AI lacks any of those four attributes without some really detailed prompt engineering,” he continued. “So any original, human-written copy that’s produced from a standpoint of ‘experience’ and ‘expertise’ will likely outperform basic generative AI copy by a significant amount.”

Will AI evolve to eventually satisfy those requirements? It’s hard to say “never,” Childs said, but at least for the time being, he advises keeping those EEAT guidelines top of mind.

“Right now, we love using [ChatGPT] to give us clever caption ideas for social media or different call-to-action ideas we hadn't thought of before,” said McKena Harless, marketing strategist at Lemon Seed marketing. “But be cautious of just copying and pasting whatever it writes.”

3. Treat it as a tool.

ChatGPT is certainly a powerful tool for HVACR companies looking to expand on the content they create. But just like any tool used in the field, it should be paired with all the other forms of content creation that have already proven successful.

“It’s a very big tool in the realm of words,” Edens said. “It can help you write a whole series of campaigns from an umbrella standpoint, but you still need that human factor to connect with your audience because none of the audience are robots.”

It might help to think of ChatGPT as a sort of aid to writer’s block, or a way to reformat existing content for all the different mediums out there: website, Instagram, Twitter, email, and more.

“The internet rewards those who put more content out there,” Parham said. “So that that would be my No. 1 thing: Now that this tool is there, you can take a lot of the marketing that you already have done and [rewrite it for] more platforms, using ChatGPT as a way to do that.

“Don't be afraid of it,” he continued. “There's a lot of fear mongering out there with this tool, and at the end of the day, it's just another tool. I think that it will allow people to do more things and allow us more productivity, and that's a good thing … something that can help you rather than some existential threat.”