I spent a good chunk of the weekend trying to decipher “short cuts” of marketing. I wondered about Facebook and Twitter and a lot of sites that consume a lot of time, but have questionable value in building the critical mass of awareness that marketeers seek.
Saturated with buzzwords that remind us how unhip we really are, many in aviation stumble along, grasping at new ideas looking for the short cut. You know… the one that is “hot” right now amongst the bleeding edge of the New York marketing geniuses. But then I thought, isn’t this the same culture that is responsible for Credit Default Swaps, Hedge Funds and other strange hollow promises? So why do people always look to the marketing savants of 5th Ave for answers they already know?
Just like your grandparents (and hopefully parents) taught you, shortcuts deserve closer investigation - always.
Marketing, sales and brand building is a drop by drop game where you fill the glass, steadily, over time.
It is very hard to “short cut” that effort - unless you have unlimited funds and embrace inefficiency.
Every mail, contact, or conversation that your prospect has with you is one where you are incrementally reinforcing (in their minds) that you are it (!!) and that if they want to successfully achieve the goals they’ve committed to, then they should listen to you - and ultimately, buy what your selling if it genuinely helps them.
While New York is filled with lots of folks trying to sell you shortcuts, Seth Godin is not one of them. He is particularly adept at making this message clear here and in a video snippet someone grabbed of him at a marketing function of some sort.
The significance for the aviation crowd is simple: Fire, … aim, aim, aim… or put another way, START something, and correct your course as you go…but start filling the glass. The private aviation industry is hyper focused on “well… I’ll give you a commission when you bring work to me” but “oh no… we’re not interested in a building anything that would make an on-ramp into our bank account.” This is principally why there are so few enduring brands in private aviation. In fact, as far as Joe the Plumber is concerned, there is only one because he saw it on the golf channel, CNN and a few other places.
Hitting the Vein
Last week, one of our clients, who had upgraded months ago to a rather intense, expensive and novel service, experienced their first taste of success from a prolonged campaign. It was 5 months into its first 12 month cycle. This story was worth telling since it had all the hallmarks of the fear of pioneering territory for a company that has become larger in fleet size, principally through educating their prospects through a sustained drop by drop campaign. They send out monthly email messages to a select group of King Air and Beechjet owners who have asked us industry specific communications that we provide (for free) to jet owners and fractional owners.
Building a Foundation
The hardest thing for marketing and sales people to sell to their clients is that whatever the client is doing in terms of spending is building a foundation. While some are better masons than others, the reality is that even “less than perfect touch” is “good touch” in the marketing game. The more prospects are reminded of you, the better.
The glass and drop by drop analogy is excellent since it cements in your mind exactly what happens when building a brand. When your glass is closer to being full you will have people calling you to charter your aircraft and look at your management offerings - it is that simple. But so many aviation businesses shut the drops off when the glass has yet to attain 25% of its fullness. (”Where are the results? What’s my ROI here? C’mon.. it’s been 15 minutes already!”)
Our Story
The “drop by drop” thing is personal for us since one of our sales people informed us that a prospect would like to sign up because, in their words:
“Well…. for charter operators and passengers your brand presence is strong and being new in the space it is important for us to get started on getting out there.” (Drip drip… )
Although we shouldn’t admit this, we were flabbergasted. As one of the founders here, all I could think was, “Brand Awareness??” Who is she talking about. We were brand new in 2003, got off the ground in 2004. It has only been 4 years.
But when you play the game drop by drop, 4 years is maybe where you start to see some of the bigger wins you don’t have to fight so for. But most importantly…
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