Marketers can contribute to top line growth generation by providing a better brand experience at critical customer touchpoints.

Reuben Steiger, Principal at Methods New York studio, wrote an article for Fast Company Design.com entitled, “Great Brands Are About Fusing Product And Service. How Do You Do It?” In the article, Reuben identifies actionable items to create a better brand experience. Below is my interpretation of his article for aviation marketers and how a better brand experience can lead to generating more top line revenue.

3 segments that affect the user experience:

1. Product – an experience that occurs in the moment
2. Service – a relationship that extends over time across platforms and mediums
3. Brand – a pattern our brains expect based on everything we have previously heard, seen, and felt

These form the base for the brand experience. Progressive aviation marketers should monitor these segments for customer insight and share their findings across all departments in order to create a profitable holistic brand experience.

Product Innovation

In the aviation industry, innovation for many manufacturers means improving upon a functional attribute, rather than designing an entirely new product. Completely business driven, this approach to innovation is concerned with putting new product in the pipeline without the benefit of customer insight.

Perhaps a better approach would be agile product development that would speed up product validation, and allow for insight that identifies the features and functions customers are interested in and will pay a premium price to acquire.

Service

Service is the most overused differentiator in today’s marketing. Every aviation component, system, airframe manufacturer, and airline has a customer service department. Only a few monitor social interfaces, in order to interact and listen to customer concerns to ascertain the customer’s emotional connection to the brand.

Organizations that practice a holistic approach to customer service by allowing their employees to act as brand ambassadors reap the benefits of converting customers to brand advocates.  Advocates stake their personal reputation on recommendations, enhancing the brand’s social media capital through word-of-mouth advertising, all the while reducing paid media costs.

Branding

Comments from the “C” suite indicate too many aviation marketers talk about branding and not enough about generating revenue. Marketers that can implement programs that achieve business goals and can be replicated over multiple product and service lines will reinforce the brand’s story in the customer’s mind and link back to results that top management cares about: revenue, sales, earnings, or market valuation.

To read Reuben Steiger’s article on Fast Company.com click on the following link:

“Great Brands Are About Fusing Product And Service. How Do You Do It?”

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