Today, a few innovative aviation marketers are using social marketing to extend the engagement with key constituents during the sales cycle. Relationship driven, people-to-people marketing is generating brand awareness, highlighting thought leadership, and humanizing the brand.
Continue reading
Recently I received a Notice of Infringement Cease and Desist letter over the blog and newsletter name Altitude Marketing. This came as a surprise because I’d been publishing the blog and newsletter for over a year. It seems that “Altitude” when combined with “Marketing” violated a trademark registered by another marketing consulting firm.
Continue reading
Jeriah Owyang, Industry analyst with the Altimeter Group, posted an article defining strategy and tactics by their associated actions. Below is my interpretation for aviation marketers:
Aviation manufacturers need strategic thinking and tactical execution to move the business forward. If you have strategy without tactics, then the big idea is never implemented. If you implement tactics without a strategy, you end up herding cats.
Continue reading
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
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
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:
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.
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.
Continue reading
Life After Advertising 2.0 