Aviation Technology
Article | July 26, 2022
What are the aviation marketing questions B2B audiences are asking in 2021?
It is always beneficial to study the market scenario and your competitors when starting a new marketing plan. It provides you with a better vision and explores opportunities to become the best in the market and which marketing approach to take. Before you start planning your marketing in aviation, there are a few things you should sort out first.
So, start your strategy by taking note of some important marketing questions!
Important Questions to Create an Aviation Marketing Plan
Are aviation businesses doing more or less marketing in 2022?
What are the best-performing aviation marketing campaigns?
What marketing strategies are unused in the aviation industry?
What are the international aviation marketing trends?
Which social media do aviation marketing professionals use for marketing?
How do aviation professionals plan the finance for marketing?
How do market leaders optimize their websites and build a brand image?
Keeping these questions beside you, follow the tips to create a prolific aviation marketing plan.
Tips at your Fingers
Tip One: Things to do—Image Vs. Words
Usage of images (visuals) has become influential to do marketing in aviation. While the industry has always focused on verbal content, both are equally important, but in different marketing ways. Let’s understand the following:
SEO: Images can’t do well when doing optimization. But words are the main component in optimization in blogs, articles, whitepapers, webinars, and more.
Social media: Images are becoming more perusable and are more understood by audiences. Whereas words are compelling to get more visitors to the website.
Website content: In this, both usages of images and content are important to connect with the audience and market well.
It’s crucial to watch the latest aviation industry trends to plan your marketing efforts. Referring to that, you can make the most of materials using images like:
• Display & explain products
• Create presentation showing numeric data
• Create videos out of content
• A sales presentation
Remember, now prospects are emotionally persuaded to purchase products and services. This will lead you to grab more and better aviation business opportunities. You have to be quick and pick up to make the deal yours. Being interactive in your image creation is the better way to show your audience your ideology.
Tip Two: Create One Idea at Once
Any marketing plan should start from one idea at a time. To proceed with it, think and consider— “what is the one thing you want your audience, visitors, or potential targets to understand and get solutions for?
It is necessary to analyze first because most marketing sales professionals remain muddled with the motive behind their marketing efforts. Therefore, it’s better to refrain from yourself and try to ideate one concept at a time. In other words, everything you create should support that ONE idea!
Tip Three: Branding is key!
Branding is visual. Visuals appeal to prospects in the aviation industry.
Is your brand instantly recognizable to your prospects? If not, you need to pay more heed to it.
Your brand is more than any other asset that communicates your story.
A creative and reflective brand image is one of the impactful aviation industry trends most aviation professionals focus on. It’s vital because visuals have an appealing factor. In addition, the professionals in the aviation industry, engage and trust information displayed than told to them. So, create a visual brand image that tells a story.
Another most important thing is to add testimonials to your brand. Yes! Video testimonials are much more potent because it comes from your prospects. Make a “wish list” of prospects you would like to get a testimonial from and add it to your website!
Tip Four: Campaign it! With RIGHT message
Before you head towards creating campaigns for marketing in aviation, remember that every campaign needs these three elements:
• A great list
• A great offer
• And a great presentation
If any of these elements lack the motive, you won’t be successful. An example of it is a general digital magazine advertisement. It has a numerous list of subscribers, beautiful design, conceptualization, but no specific offer or a call to action. The reader won’t take any interest in responding to that particular ad. Such campaigns face severe failure!
But if your campaign has the base of these elements, you can expect a good ROI for your business.
Tip Five: Social Media Secrets
There is always some information hidden in the news or something that your community or industry talks about. So, it is good to keep a watch on such matters to generate good content. Social media is the most preferred platform to do such activities today.
You probably don’t have time to get involved in every social media channel. So, it's better to involve in one channel than to be on multiple. So, watch the new, set up analytics for key topics important in the industry, and let inspiration spread in the form of information through your marketing materials like infographics, slides, images, and more.
As Hootsuit studied on social media usage by marketing leaders, let’s have a quick look at which social media do aviation professionals use for marketing mostly.
LinkedIn
Rare: 0%
Monthly: 31%
Weekly: 25%
Daily: 57%
Facebook
Monthly: 13%
Weekly: 9%
Daily: 20%
Twitter
Monthly: 17%
Weekly: 14%
Daily: 25%
Instagram
Monthly: 4%
Weekly: 11%
Daily: 3%
YouTube
Monthly: 21%
Weekly: 14%
Daily: 10%
These indicate that your competitors mostly use LinkedIn and Facebook channels for marketing because aviation professionals are most likely to be using these channels frequently. If you produce interesting information, you can build a strong online audience.
Tip Six: Bag the deal with 15 Second Sales Presentation
Sales & sale—do it the right way!
What do you say when a prospect asks you, “What do you do?” Here your 20-second sales presentation works in a roomful of sales-interested prospects!
Sale is a process. If you have the proper steps to follow intelligently, you will have much better results. But remember, it should be contented and compelling to the right people, but non-pitchy.
Follow these tips to deliver a fantastic presentation within seconds:
• Reflect your USP (unique selling proposition)
• Your company’s tagline
• Keep it amazingly short
• Avoid usage of over hyperbole— for example “We have most unbelievably wonderfully grand aviation products for you”
• Be concise, professional, and elegant
• Use non-technical language
• Tell benefits than features
• Use examples when necessary
Deliver an approachable, responsive, and simple presentation that makes your prospect say, “Tell me more about that!”
Apart from this, sales are also about passion. And if a prospect senses your passion for what you do, they become much comfortable with your offerings!
So, do your homework. Prepare for it in advance. Know everything you can about the prospect; its company, services, mode of work, and more. Then have a faithful and specific objective in mind for each sales call. This will find your prospect’s best interest to discover more, take the conversation deeper, and thus, no one can stop you from getting the deal done.
Tip Seven: Plan an Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar is crucial when it comes to marketing—branding, sales, and relationship building.
Providing highly informational content to your prospects allows interacting.
To simply put, your calendar is the best cover page. It will help to align the process of marketing items such as:
• Planned campaigns
• Webinars
• Seasonal events
• Launches
• expenses
Planned marketing will bring fascinating aviation business opportunities and will stimulate the aviation industry growth.
Tip Eight: Be Financially Strong!
This is a crucial part. Finance is what your top management wants to see. It is easy to come up with a huge, long, unproductive, and unrealistic marketing plan. However, planning a reasonable one that is capable of bringing success and probability together is truly an art. So, ensure to make an advanced one with a monthly income statement and include assumptions you make.
Marketing in aviation is growing fast and is not expected to be sluggish anytime soon. With the rising aviation industry trends, it's easy to see opportunities beyond 2021. Therefore, all you need is an all-inclusive plan by following these tips. They will help you learn online aviation marketing solutions to increase traffic, ROI, brand image, and of course, raise conversation rates.
After completing your marketing planning, read further to get familiar with using effective marketing strategies that will bring effective change to your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some of the tips for creating an aviation marketing plan?
Aviation marketing has nothing different from other marketing ways. It is just you need to pay attention to the range of audiences is in the aviation industry. However, here are some more tips:
• Optimize your every content generation
• Display your potential to the audience
• Pay attention to ads
• Leverage paid ads
• Do email
What is the importance of marketing in aviation?
Aviation not only deals with passengers; it includes businesses to make money. For that, marketing plays a vital role in making people aware of product selling or providing services. It drives awareness of products, creates a brand image, builds trust among buyers, and provides valuable information to the audience in various forms using various channels.
What is the difference between selling and marketing?
Selling makes money directly from the prospects. While marketing is all about serving solutions and satisfying prospect needs. The method includes different stages—planning, analyzing, monitoring, execution, promotion, and distribution.
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Do email"
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Business Aviation
Article | January 7, 2022
Skift research shows that 90% of airline marketers have dropped their marketing budgets due to the pandemic.The pandemic brought massive changes in marketing. Due to this, CMOs navigated through restricted availability of resources and shifted airline companies’ guidelines for months.
CMOs find increasingly difficult to rely on conventional financial and managerial aspects like typical cost setting—the way profitability was being achieved, fuel consumption, accounting decision making, investments, manufacturing and more. Due to these challenges, airline brands are bound to sternly reevaluate their current and future marketing process to maintain a steady flow of income and increase ROI.
So, it’s quite possible that your marketing tactics also may have suffered due to the pandemic. Right? And now you must think, “How much should your budget be for marketing?”
It’s an important question. It’s because most aviation businesses do not have a considerable aviation marketing budget. The answer to your concern lies here, “spend the least amount that achieves your business objectives.”
A lot has transformed since the outbreak of the pandemic. Yet, there are novel opportunities in aviation marketing activities. So, let's take a closer look at some of the opportunities that might help control your aviation marketing budget.
Opportunity No.1: Invest in Paid Advertisements; they are cheap!
Paid advertisements are becoming cheaper. These are in higher demand when it comes to aviation marketing.
It makes sense because the way digital advertisements are making money is going to benefit marketers. First, the paid ads drive the cost per click (CPC), so investing here can increase the ROI. Second, as the pandemic forced companies to focus on all-digital processes, as it prompts the audience to spend more time online. Resultantly, traffic on the web is up, and there are lots of ads. It means ads are cheaper.
Even conversion rates are increasing now. It’s because the ads online are evolving at the same rate as it was before the pandemic. Therefore, you must take advantage of paid ads to start with controlling your aviation marketing costs.
Opportunity No. 2: Determine your Annual Customer Value
The key to having controlled aviation marketing costs is to have an average customer revenue. If you haven’t calculated yet, then you should begin with it. Begin tracking the effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts. Once you begin with it, you will calculate how much money is spent on every customer or a new customer.
The other important aspect to consider is how wisely you spend the dollars in a limited budget. And that’s where a marketing plan comes into action.
A well-improvised marketing plan may include proper tactics, tools, and platforms. But to implement all these things effectively requires an adequate budget. However, how to use them requires a thorough analysis and experts’ experience. Usually, marketers make a mistake by spending too much on a single marketing tactic. And this results in a considerable loss.
So, to control your budget, be intelligent to concentrate on a selected marketing tool and platform. And then spend dollars on it. Tapping on this approach, you will create a cost-effective marketing plan, which will give better marketing results.
Besides, your customers might equally feel satisfied by getting worthwhile results. Well, in reality, it will be easy for you to determine the annual value of money spent on each customer.
Opportunity No. 3: Review Investment Plans
When looking at the aviation marketing budget, it’s advisable to review investment plans carefully. The investment plan is crucial when you need to control your aviation marketing. Having an in-depth knowledge of it can lead you to save big. Also, it might bring opportunities further for your airline business.
For example, in December 2019, JetBlue announced a marketing structural cost program. It aimed at producing $250-$300 million by 2020 through cost savings. According to the company’s 2020 annual report, the program emphasizes these points:
Technical marketing operations
Planning, automation, and executing efficient activities online .(Like on a website, social media platforms, online campaigns, and more)
• Decreasing distribution costs
• Tax reformation
All these aspects demonstrate opportunities to propel business growth.
We are extremely excited about the potential for increased business demand with the costs and tax cut.
- Glen Hauenstein, President of Delta Airlines.
So, consider if you can reduce, delay and/or eliminate non-essential marketing tasks or not. Then, find opportunities to help you do a transition from costly, inefficient technological aspects to more cost-efficient technology, thus, driving more valuable results.
The bottom line is that you must understand where it makes sense to cut costs and where to make the proper investments because it's about bolstering your airline business. With the help of this, you can create value for customers, partners, and investors in no time.
Opportunity No. 4: Encourage Innovative Digital Engagement
Some of the top airlines like Delta Airlines and its marketing teams use innovative engagement methods through digitalization. Yes! After being hit by the deadly pandemic, Delta lost $60 million in cash each day. Delta CEO Ed Bastian revealed that Delta airlines reduced 80% of its operation.
“Delta will weather the storm by sticking to our shared values of honesty, persistence, and service to our customers and our communities. We encourage digitalization to the core. And that has helped our customers easy to connect us.”
- Delta CEO Ed Bastian
With this approach, Delta further forecasts its revenue to rise by 90% by the end of 2021.
So, you can see how investing in digital methods can help revenue rise without going out of budget or crossing the budget line.
When you introduce automation, AR, VR in your aviation marketing efforts, it will drive value from existing customers and engage potential customers. For example, you can create innovative videos for social media, visual online campaigns, presentations, and more.
Finally, remember to “Have Patience and Carry On”
It is critical to managing finance, especially in global disasters like coronavirus. However, today's marketing budget may seem exhausting when aviation businesses compete each day. But it is helpful at the end of the day!
Controlling your aviation marketing costs will lead you to increase your ROI. And this way, you will get valuable prospects, which is even more critical in the current scenario. Moving ahead with not-so-hard marketing budget control, you will require powerful leadership, top competency with courage and empathy, and the correct data, of course. So, having all these aspects and proactive measures in place, you will be able to outshine again.
So, which one of the opportunities are you going to implement first?
Frequently Asked Questions
How do airline businesses do marketing?
Marketing is the best practice to build trust among airline customers. The marketers offer rewards to customers so that they become loyal to an airline brand. They also run campaign activities, provide rich informational content, produce videos to educate and motivate customers. This is how engagement increases along with loyal numbers of customers.
What are the leading airline expenses?
The leading airline expenses are as follows:
The employment process expenses. These expenses are the most critical operational cost of an airline (33.5%).
Fuel expenses (19.6%).
Sales and marketing expenses. They are approximately 15.7% on the rise.
How do airlines control the marketing budget?
There are several ways the airline controls its marketing budget. A few of them are:
By conducting fuel-saving strategies
Operation procedure simplification
Introducing automation
Technology implementation
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Air Transport
Article | July 26, 2022
This week, the GE Gas Power team launched season five of Cutting Carbon, their award-winning podcast that focuses on climate change, the basics of what decarbonization is and the technologies behind it. In season five, the team is focused on decarbonization closer to home and invited Arjan Hegeman, GE Aviation’s general manger for advanced technologies, to talk about the future of flight.
Learn more about the role of GE Aviation’s technologies available today and in development for tomorrow to make aircraft engines more fuel efficient and reduce carbon emissions. Open fan, hybrid electric and hydrogen combustion are all discussed by Hegeman and the hosts. Over two episodes, Hegeman also explains the importance of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), along with the new engine technologies, to help the aviation industry reach its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Future of Flight is a two-part episode, and can be found as Episode 27 and Episode 28 under Cutting Carbon. You can listen to the podcast here or on your favorite streaming platform!
The aviation industry is at an inflection point for new technology introduction and acceleration of technology development, Hegeman says. GE Aviation is currently developing its next-generation suite of engine technologies, including open fan engine architecture, hybrid-electric propulsion, and advanced thermal management concepts. GE Aviation is also supporting industry initiatives to approve and adopt 100% SAF and is partnering on a new flight demonstration program to test zero-carbon hydrogen fuel combustion.
GE’s ambition is to be a net zero company by 2050, including the Scope 3 emissions from the use of sold products. GE is also committed to being carbon neutral by 2030 in its own facilities and operations, including Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
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Business Aviation
Article | December 28, 2021
The aviation industry is going through a lot of technological and operational transitions. Every day, new technologies in manufacturing, airports, passengers, security measures and more are being introduced or being implemented in the entire aviation ecosystem.
5G technology is one of the most critical technologies that is currently raising concerns. 5G technology is becoming a hot topic of discussion for governments worldwide in inferior ways. Many discussions are going on the shelf of safety of consumers. Similarly, there has been rising concern about the new 5G technology in the aviation industry.
Yes. 5G technology promises to bring some of the best opportunities for airlines. But what will be its impact on airline safety? Before we discuss the 5G rollout, let's highlight its ability to benefit the busiest industry globally.
The Ecosystem of 5G
Multiple technologies play a vital role in 5G technology in terms of coverage, such as EDGE, IoT, SD-WAN, and more. The ecosystem is rapidly expanding, even the industry of suppliers to aviation. It includes device manufacturing, network supply and maintenance, system integration, testing, and more suppliers.
IATA says with regard to the aviation industry, a projected $3.9 billion will be invested in 5G by 2026. Moreover, the projections are taking the entire industry to new altitudes. GSA also forecasts that the growth of 5G will be faster than 4G.
The Impact of 5G on the Different Aviation Sectors
The deployments and implementations of 5G can be profitable for every aviation sector if used appropriately. Speaking of the aviation sectors, the new 5G technology will transform the industry in four crucial areas. They are:
Manufacturing
Airports & Airlines
Travel
Security
Manufacturing
The manufacturing sector has massively developed partnerships with telecom players. The partnerships have led to the launch of 5G initiatives.
Nokia and Lufthansa came forward for inspection of engine parts remotely. With AR visualization and 3D technology, customers can have a visual impact on cabin interiors. 5G technology is also being implemented to trace and track systems in aircraft parts and maintain of operations using transmissions, real-time signal processing, and more.
Airports & Airlines
With 5G technology, Gogo Business Aviation is developing new designs for antennas and modems. The designs will enable the world's first in-flight connectivity (IFC) and 5G air-to-ground (ATG) networks by 2022.
“Towards the end of 2022, we will have sites built, and we will start flight testing,”
-Mike Syverson, senior vice president of engineering at Gogo
Gogo's 5G network will be limited to North America. It will be leveraging the existing 250 towers with its current 3G and 4G IFC networks. The 5G network will use spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band with the help of other booming technologies to provide the airplane-to-ground station link with higher bandwidth.
Travel
Viasat Inc. is known globally for offering broadband digital satellite communications, wireless networking services, and satellite communications products.
Delta Airlines has partnered with Viasat for its next-generation Ka-band satellite in-flight connectivity (IFC) solution. Delta intends to integrate Viasat technology into 757-200 aircraft, A321ceo, and the 737-900ER (new aircraft) to provide customers with safe and secure air travel.
Network Security
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) discloses that an average of 1,000 attacks per month occur on aviation systems. Thus, it is becoming a real threat to airport security, safety, and reputation.
SmartSky Networks LLC is a leading satellite solution. It's also a wireless data and networking services provider globally. It caters to the commercial aviation industry. It offers its innovative air-to-ground inflight Wi-Fi network with 5G technology.
In June 2021, Honeywell and SmartSky introduced their high-speed connectivity. They announced it for their business aviation operators in North America. The partnership agreement boosts seamless connectivity in the commercial aviation market.
Looking at these developments made possible by the new 5G technology in the aviation industry, how has it become one of the industry's obstacles in terms of safety?
Let's highlight the picture here.
Aviation Has Expressed a Serious Concern
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has warned about significant safety concerns in the 5G wireless network setup roadmap. The plan for theusage of C-Band spectrum is the prime reason. 5G network operations can interfere with the radar altimeter performance of aircraft.
"It is engaging with other agencies. So that aviation and 5G cellular technology can safely coexist."
-A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman
But with the modifications in the manufacturing processes of aircraft, the industry is encouraging manufacturers. Therefore, the manufacturers could conduct tests for 5G interference and modify aircraft designs.
5G Still Provides Hope for a More Friendly Flying Future
Aviation has a 5G rollout despite having no proof. The rollout is about interfering with safety concerns. Instead, 5G in aviation is burgeoning the importance of safety and security more efficiently. The emphasis on safety and security is now even more powerful. Pilots have been equipped with high communication tools with air control towers, especially in weather or technical challenges.
The new 5G technology is way near to providing superior in-flight bandwidth connectivity while improving operational efficiency. It is going to improve overall operational efficiency. Passengers will be able to take advantage of high-speed internet on planes. Also, business passengers can conduct their business activities while flying and saving precious time and effort.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the new 5G technology harmful to airplanes?
According to the FAA, aviation operators should be prepared for the possibility that 5G technology could interfere with transmitters. The effects of 5G could cause certain safety malfunctions for airplanes. This could affect flight operations as well.
What are the disadvantages of 5G in aviation?
Aviation is getting benefits from 5G technology. But there is always the other side of the coin. So, the disadvantages could be as follows:
Obstructions in connectivity
High costs of technology
Operational hindrance
Unmatched frequencies
What is the market size of 5G in the aviation industry?
The overall market size of 5G in the aviation market was valued at $698.45 million in 2020. Now, it’s projected to extent $4,682.12 million by 2030.
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