aviation industry

Aviation Marketing: 14 social marketing channels for content distribution

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment

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Know where and how to connect with your audience.

58 Social Media Tips for Content Marketers published by the Content Marketing Institute is an e-book about selecting social marketing channels and identifying best practices of how brands use these channels to connect with their customers.  Aviation marketers should pay particular attention to aligning social media platforms with audience following. Below are findings from the e-book that are relevant for marketers in the aviation industry: Continue reading →

Aviation Marketing: Getting your original content noticed

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
Jumpstart your inbound program with the Diamond in the Rough System of relationship building.

Jonathan Goodman wrote a guest post for Pro Blogger website on how to build relationships with influencers in your market segment, which he called the “Diamond in the Rough System.”  My interpretation of Jonathan’s insight provides a road map to get your content noticed and build a following in the aviation industry.

The Diamond in the Rough System of relationship building:

The Diamond in the Rough System is a way to get the influencers to want to approach you. It can be applied to any large social medium. For the purpose of this article, I’ll focus on using Twitter.

The Diamond in the Rough System will teach you how to find the diamonds behind the Twitter scenes and mine them.

First, understand that there are influential people in the aviation industry:

The influencers are the ones in control of the big brands. They have hustled and built an empire and a great network around themselves.

The trade publications are usually large organizations with multiple levels of staff. Determining which head editor to make contact with can be challenging.

The bloggers are gaining altitude in the aviation industry. Depending on who follows them, they can be very influential.

The beat reporters and supporting editors are easy to access and have a lot of influence as to what goes into the publications. They are the diamonds in the rough.

Using Twitter to build relationships with beat reporters and supporting editors

Most  beat reporters and editors have modest followings on Twitter. So while they get 100+ emails a day, they might only get two @ mentions on Twitter. Which do you think they would be more likely to respond to?

How to find the diamonds in the rough

  • Follow the head editors and scan the lists of people they follow. Look for accounts that say something like, “Avionics system columnist for Aviation Week.” Follow everybody that seems to cover your product segment.
  • Identify the top bloggers and influencers and follow the same steps as above.
  • Search trade publication websites and find the editors that cover the subjects your product or service pertains to. A Google search is usually all you need to find their Twitter account if they have one.
  • Pay attention to networks of influence. It’s not uncommon for a number of influencers to tweet back and forth with the same person that you have never heard of. That person is likely an important member behind the scenes.

How to court your diamonds

Now that you’ve found these people, respond intelligently to their tweets. If they promote a blog post or article with a link, take the time to read the article and respond with a piece of feedback or a question.

You should not respond to every tweet. Respond only if you have something intelligent to say and not more than once or twice every couple of days.

Don’t ask for anything in return. Your bio on Twitter says who you are, and includes a link to your work.

You should have a headshot as your profile picture in Twitter. People like talking to and doing business with people, not faceless organizations.

photo credit: chase_elliott via photopin cc

Aviation Marketing: Defining your brand’s personality

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Virgin America exemplifies their brand by portraying their customers as young, hip, and digitally connected.
Without a clear brand identity, you may have visibility but no personality.

“Commerce is about selling more products and services, but people are about desires and aspirations.”

Marc Gobe, Emotional Branding, Revised Edition

What do Victoria’s Secret and Virgin America share in common? Both understand the power of a brand culture and are able to translate that into a memorable brand experience. Aviation marketers that are seeking to define their brand need to consider a people-to-people marketing approach and understand that relevant brands are not based on messaging or logo design but on the experience associated with the brand.

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Aviation Marketing: RESPECT the customer

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Customers no longer measure brands based on message, but on interactions they have with them.
Social marketing is changing the way customers interact with your brand

My theory on why the aviation industry has been slow to adopt and implement social marketing is because aviation manufacturers are stuck in the mindset of business-to-business instead of people-to-people marketing.

The business-to-business (B2B) mindset is based on selling products and services to accounts. Contrast that mindset with people-to-people (P2P) where the emphasis is focused on improving the customer experience. Customers no longer measure brands based on message, but on interactions they have with them.

Aviation marketers that have successfully adopted social marketing understand that delivering on the brand promise can be done effectively on social platforms. Take a look at Jet Blue, Southwest, or Virgin America Airlines. Each one has been able to get tangible results through social marketing about how well they deliver on their brand promise.

Aviation marketers that choose to ignore the power of social marketing run the risk of becoming a second tier brand by not being able to monitor the customer experience in an unadulterated environment.

8 behaviors required to enhance the customer experience:

  1. Good customer relation management (CRM) starts with good traditional CRM. You cannot expect to improve CRM by adding a social component if the legacy CRM platform was not good to begin with.
  2. Customers expect more.  Resolution of problems is a given. Now, customers expect a brand to be proactive within the community of users.
  3. Build customer empathy at all levels of interaction. This should be the golden rule for sales, marketing and customer service – Treat customers as you would like to be treated yourself.
  4. Everyone is a representative of the brand. It only takes one bad experience to drive a customer to a competitor.
  5. Talk with the customer, not at the customer. Customers can tell when the conversation is scripted. Authentic conversation starts with empathy for the customer’s situation and offer of a resolution based on a thorough understanding of the product and service offering.
  6. Don’t leave customers waiting. We live the era of real time engagement. Responding to a customer service issue in 24 hours is not acceptable.
  7. Use social media platforms for problem solving. Enabling self-help through social platforms spreads knowledge and customer feedback across the community of users.
  8. Change the way you measure customer satisfaction. Backward looking measurements that tell you what happened are no longer as effective. Consider a forward looking measurement like a net promoter score that tells you how satisfied your customer is with your service or product offering.

People-to-people marketing is the measure of brand engagement. Creating trust through conversation and helping customers solve problems builds brand loyalty.

I’m interested in hearing from my fellow aviation marketers. What have been your greatest challenges in implementing social marketing? Please share your experiences in the comment section below.

photo credit: Graela via photopin cc

10-reasons why social marketing efforts fail.

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Successful social marketing requires dedicated resources and support from Leadership

Strike up a conversation about social marketing with senior leadership and chances are they will roll their eyes and tell you a story about someone posting something to a Facebook page. The reality is that very few understand how to implement or integrate social marketing within established marketing channels.

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How to increase your conversion rate for online advertising.

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Offer the viewer something valuable
Offering valuable content extends the engagement cycle

Historically, digital banner ads average a .05% click-through rate. So what’s happening with the other 99.95% of the viewers that see your online advertising? Mostly, the viewer already knows what is waiting on the other side of the ad — your website. That’s not to infer that your website is of poor quality or lacking content, but most aviation industry websites are electronic brochures with a “contact us” page.

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Aviation Marketing: Digital’s impact on the 4 marketing P’s

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Extending brand engagement through digital services
Technology can enhance and solidify the emotional connection to the brand.

Digital technology is affecting the 4 marketing P’s – Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion – by extending brand engagement. Adept aviation marketers are adding value to their brand by providing digital services that complement the user’s life style and the core product offering.

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Aviation Marketing: What’s your media strategy for brand engagement?

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Mobile people-to-people marketing
In the digital ecosystem, brand engagement is achieved by continuing the conversation.

I recently attended a seminar put on by the Digital Knowledge Centre in conjunction with the American Association of Advertising Agencies. The topic for the full day event was integrated digital brand strategy.  An excerpt:

First aviation marketers should fully grasp the explosion of media channels and how that is impacting the distribution of content. In the modern media landscape brand engagement happens in three categories — bought, owned, and earned media.

Continue reading →