Air Transport
Article | July 26, 2022
Hit by the impact of the COVID-19 slump, airline businesses are enduring a major crisis no matter how recognized they were before. The crisis has pushed airline businesses to re-look at how to manage and operate their operations. It even includes re-positioning in the airline industry’s competitive market landscape.
In a time like this, you need to delve deep when you update your airline brand positioning strategy. Your marketing team will have to be versatile and adapt to a new set of planning strategies. They should be mindful of aspects to reduce risks and overcome challenges that the pandemic caused. It’s time to rise again through hindrances that affected your airline brand image to go down. Let’s throw some light on why brand positioning in marketing has become necessary now.
Importance of Re-positioning of an Airline Brand
Brand positioning in marketing is receiving snowballing attention in airline marketing today. Adopting versatile branding concepts creates optimism to provide value to products and services. And such concepts help products and services to perform well on various distribution channels.
The values play an active role in brand positioning and so in re-positioning. Since customers’ activities have transformed in the new era of digitalization, deciding afresh on values will help you position your brand for the future. The branding must include a proper blend of physical and emotional values to make the brand both powerful and meaningful.
When faced with challenges, it’s natural for even large airline businesses to become unrecognizable by customers. Thus, showcasing your brand as unique as possible becomes hard-hitting to differentiate from the competition. In that case, the idea of re-positioning requires consistent branding strategies. The strategies can help in many ways. A few of them are maintaining customer loyalty, encourage awareness, and showing customers your presence in the market.
Therefore, to build deeper relationships with customers by re-positioning your airline brand, there are some important steps to follow. The stepwise guide will help in creating a competent brand positioning framework development. But remember, the framework should be defendable for growth.
6 Steps to Follow: Re-position your Airline Brand
Determine your Values
Start by considering the values that will represent your airline business brand. By finding the values, it will make you different from the rest of the competitors. Especially in a case where you are going for product marketing or service as an ordinary in the market or marketing it extraordinarily.
Your aim gives you essential insight into what and how to go with the brand again in the new normal. Thus, try to analyze and research aspects of your competitors as well.
We fight every day to stand out. We know our customers like to sound and feel authentic about brands. So, we believe that instead of building a complex picture of our airline brand (where no one will be able to understand), we prefer humanization.
- Kevin Krone, the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Southwest Airlines.
In realizing this aspect, your marketing team can innovate by creating campaigns to improve brand image.
Identify the Competitors Surrounding and Research
After recognizing the brand values, it’s requisite to analyze competitors serving in the market as you. You can do it by performing competitor analysis. The analysis will help to decide how better you can do in creating your brand positioning strategy.
To start with it, there are different methods for determining your competition. They are:
Do a thorough competitor research
You can take guidance from your sales team to study what and how competitors develop their distinctive ideas with sales. Then, identify them through in-depth market research on their tactics of positioning their brand. To conduct it, include the following points into your research:
What are the services or products competitors do offer?
What are the brand positioning strategies they are using to ensure success?
What is the current position of their brand in the market?
It will be easy for you to set your aim to re-position your airline brand by putting these considerations forefront.
Take Feedbacks from customers
Connect with your existing and potential customers. Try to know what services or products they are considering according to the present scenario.
Use the power of social media
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook, and other online forums offer interaction with consumers. You can ask questions about products and services. Use these forums to discover competitors in your role.
Find your Brand’s Uniqueness
Building a unique brand image (by keeping a similar aim as before) will make you different from the competitors in the airline industry.
We are the same exact airline that we were before. We are not walking away from our DNA.
- Kevin Krone
Your well-researched step on competitors will help to learn about branding patterns in the new normal. In addition, by looking at their weaknesses and strengths, you might get a chance to know your strength. This aspect will make your brand unique.
Develop a Re-positioning Statement
Once you know your customers' thoughts, you need to develop a statement that portrays your message. If you aim to convey that your business offers the best services or products in the market during the current economic slump, then it’s imperative to keep a razor-sharp focus on a brand positioning strategy.
For example, you can include your ROI data. Use it as a statement in online paid ads, social media platforms, campaigns, emails, and other marketing methods. By doing this, you will be able to grab your existing and potential customers’ attention. And see how potential ones become loyal towards your business in no time.
There’s no definite way to re-position your existing airline brand in times of the pandemic. But there are some crucial ways to do it. The ways are customizing efforts enable significant chances to offer quality services and products to reach customers.
Test your Re-positioning Statement—if it works!
Once your re-positioning statement is formed, it’s time to test it. Try to do experiments with the help of feedback collection from customers. The feedbacks should cover if they are conveyed with the right message. Therefore, in this way, you can know whether your brand achieved its goal or not.
As you invest effort and time into re-positioning your airline brand, it’s helpful to keep in mind the type of consumers, demographic segmentation, and verticals. These verticals provide a deep insight that content and its aim remain advantageous to your brand.
Develop your Brand’s Reference Frame
Your brand’s reference will be an accurate way for customers to perceive it in the right way. Having a genuine brand positioning framework today is vital for re-positioning. And with the help of an on-point brand development strategy, you can plan it extraordinarily. Once you have created the frame of your brand, it is advisable to keep a focus on reaching achievable goals.
Successful Re-positioning Efforts Drives Growth
As you are aware that a strong branding of an airline business makes all the difference when you enter the market, similarly, re-positioning also makes a difference when you have to outshine again amid challenges. So, having a definite approach will ensure success for your brand and drive growth amid the ongoing pandemic challenges.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can airline businesses improve their brand image?
An airline business runs with a multitude of functionalities. Every function plays a responsible role in improving the brand image. Thus, some crucial ways are discussed below:
Create the right message which should be synonymous with brand value or perspective
Stay in contact with customers through various marketing ways
Keep track of strategies and implementation
Turn data into intelligence
Keep an eagle eye on competitors and their activities
Keep employees in the loop
What are the best branding strategies for airline businesses?
The best branding strategies for airline businesses are as follows:
Cost control strategies
Social media campaigns
Creative advertisement
Loyalty programs
Use power of influencers
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Stay in contact with customers through various marketing ways
Keep track of strategies and implementation
Turn data into intelligence
Keep an eagle eye on competitors and their activities
Keep employees in the loop "
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Business Aviation
Article | January 7, 2022
The COVID-19 effect has been tendered on business aviation than commercial aviation. However, it is the operations that reported a surge in demand for business aviation. The demand has been witnessed from new businesses and and those who revamped their operations amid travel restrictions.
In 2020, the airline industry experienced a heavy loss of worth USD252 billion, reports IATA. The industry players were at risk, which included accounting with direct economic destruction. Prompted by other risks factors such as restrictions on movements, especially travel limitations due to COVID-19, there is a serious need for the industry to access its operations competently.
So here are two crucial questions that took the heat. First, how is the industry going to manage economic uncertainties, travel restrictions, and market instability? And second, how may these affect aviation business conclusions in the coming years?
Such considerations may include some crucial aspects. They are changes in valuation methods, revision of future investments with existing liabilities, re-assessment of forecasted fuel consumption, revision of manufacturing, marketing, and others.
This blog is aimed at capturing the impact of COVID-19. And how business aviation can proceed to bridge gaps across multiple travel restrictions, both during and after the COVID-19 crisis. To delve into detail, let's go further.
The Level of Airline Business Drop and Recovery
Globally, the aviation businesses were severely harmed by 80% in 2020. The industry players found it extremely complex to navigate the commitments. Also, their work with collaborations is slated for the same year.
Customers seemed uninterested in discussing new business acquisitions due to COVID travel restrictions on business. However, some operators preyed on lower prices and increased demand for aviation services and products. These were mainly in the manufacturing and marketing fields. The reason is some corporate clients easily adapted to the emergence of digital platforms. They switched to zoom calls to replace personal contacts and connections.
Michael Walsh, CEO of Aer Mobi, says,
“OEMs have now announced a major drop in production capacity. Potential buyers could be from booming sectors financial services and online sales as they may seek to purchase high-profit products. These will be only a few brilliant spots for new aircraft purchases for OEMs.”
On the same note, Shaun Quigley, Managing Director, Volantair Air Charter, says
“In the time of crisis, the ability is to “pull one’s head in." This is what will happen at least until the final quarter of 2021.”
Business aviation in 2021 will hover around 25% to 30% globally, says Jose Rego, Senior Director – Market Intelligence and Strategy, Embraer Executive Jets. The rebound will be sluggish until 2025.
While the travel businesses' situation in the pandemic is not up to mark, its believed that digital transformation is viable to conduct airline operations. Such transformation will drive sales eventually following the rise of trending technologies simultaneously.
Aviation Business by 2030
A major transformation is promised by an array of powerful new technologies and corporate clients’ pressure. The industry plays that turn this trend to their advantage have the opportunity to redefine, restructure, reform, and reshape their business amid air travel restrictions.
So how will the key players of the aviation sector take their businesses forward by 2025 and beyond? Here is the outline of vital forces that the sector will see transforming.
Robotics Maintenance
Currently, airline operations maintenance accounts for approximately 20% of the operating costs. However, as the pandemic happened, market players and novel inventions are placing big hopes on the intelligent automation of maintenance.
For example, Airbus uses two seven-axis robots on the new fourth A320 line in Hamburg to conduct 80% of their business operations, thus improving functional aspects for employees.
Intelligent automation is fueled by terabytes of data. The data could be stored and used by businesses to manage operations easily. The addition of robotics and AI in aviation has increased the digitalization shift landscape for established players. From automatic scanning, data mining to improved diagnostics, robotics has a significant role in the future of aviation operations and maintenance.
Use of Alternative Sources of Energy
The shifting of environmental sentiments has made the aviation industry include greenhouse gases, electrofuels, hydrogen, and even batteries. The industry has set a target of cutting down high energy emitter fuels by half by 2030.
Companies like Airbus have impressive plans to develop hydrogen planes in the next 15 years. Even for eleven years, SkyNRG has been known for supplying "advanced waste" biofuels to airlines. These fuels are recycled from industrial waste, cooking oil, agricultural and forestry residues.
New technologies from engineering and manufacturing of aerodynamic are going to play a significant role in upcoming airline trends like specialized and improved designs and the use of carbon-efficient biofuels and electric
In this case, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) research found out that around 5.5% of aviation fuel could come from sustainable origins by 2030. Basically, it would be primarily from advanced waste biofuels.
Aviation Business: Witnessing Some Hope
There is an anticipation that the established aviation businesses will pick up their pace by 2022 amid COVID 19 restrictions.
Interestingly, there has been a pick up in air travel (essential air travel) in a specific part of the world. However, in some Asian countries, travel activity is estimated to be less than 40%. But the travel demand is expected to be higher in the years ahead.
Aviation business operators expect expanded business with new criteria of sales—digital. They might witness growth due to new prospect acquisitions that have adopted the digital workforce. The businesses expect green shoots of growth in the travel industry. Especially from business travel classes as these are seeking to experience fly again.
Business aviation traffic in 2021 highlighted the growing interest from buyers. On this, Jose Rego, Senior Director – Market Intelligence and Strategy, Embraer Executive Jets elaborates,
“There may be a peripheral surge in demand from first-time buyers; I expect this to affect fractional sales initially.”
Therefore, now IATA estimates that governments globally will provide $160 billion in support, loans, and tax breaks so that airline businesses can cover current costs.
Safety is Priority, so is Business
The aviation industry acclaims that business aviation might be on track sooner. In this context, the presence of a qualified team and fast-track applications, software, and platforms could help operators to function in a safe and well-maintained way.
As the aviation industry continues to plan new air travel rules (essential), aviation business is at an optimum point. Its crucial role in supplies, sales, business development, and essential air travel services has redefined the face of business. Thus, in this way aviation business has paved the way to make a strong comeback in the coming years.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can future measures due to the pandemic suggest for the aviation industry?
Airline businesses must have a robust plan which establishes the core of business aviation. The future is for market leaders. How they will manage roles and responsibilities responding to the crisis. Finally, national authorities will have a crucial role in stimulating demand and fostering the rapid recovery of the airport business. Restoring consumer confidence will be an essential part of this effort.
What is the COVID-19 advice for the aviation industry?
The global market leaders are actively managing the impact of COVID-19 to ensure aviation safety and to support the industry’s return to normal safety assurance activities. They have put efforts on surveillance approach on every business operation to increase accuracy by introducing technologies.
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Design and Engineering
Article | January 7, 2022
Failure is beneficial for many reasons. But important is to manage and survive the onslaught of errors. With respect to bold attempts like adopting a new strategy, making judgments about the market, bad publicity, launching new products or services, and more like these often make airline marketers discourage due to a little or huge foul.
The list also includes branding. Airline branding mistakes are often seen when businesses try either to aim to re-position in the market or create awareness among customers. If you are making branding mistakes, then remember that a combination of poor communication and ineffective brand planning causes one of the worst branding disasters!
Aviation Branding Mistakes of All-Time
Branding any airline company is challenging. When bad decisions about branding strategies happen, it costs huge to businesses. And most of the aviation businesses do it habitually. On this note, mistakes could happen in various ways. But some aviation branding mistakes shouldn’t be ignored at all. Mistakes can hurt your business hard. So, let’s highlight the common mistakes that can happen while branding for aviation and how you should avoid them.
Implementation of Rigid Strategies
Implementation of rigid branding strategies for aviation results in economic slumps
Airlines need flexible marketing strategies to control the cost of labor and acquisition in order to balance the brand image.
-Lauda, Marketing-In-Chief, Southwest Airlines
While any significant shift in airline business strategy, like the pandemic forced, usually takes two to three years to implement. Therefore, you should design branding strategies that could afford the room for adjustments. In addition, those strategies will revive your older market position. Failing to do so could lead your airline company’s image to suffer a massive loss.
So, what can you do ahead?
Implement unique branding strategies for aviation to strengthen the value of your company. For this, you need to work and pay attention constantly to existing and potential customers you deal with. By understanding their perspective, marketers will be able to bring uniqueness to strategies. Following this process will ease you to adjust and cope up with the current economic condition.
Overlooking SEO
The entire aviation industry is going digitalized, especially after the pandemic fall. SEO is one of the most significant areas of digital marketing. So, if you do not master SEO, you are lagging behind competitors in branding for aviation. Your target audience/existing audience should never find difficulty in discovering your brand. This is the only rule of conducting tested SEO practices. It is because overlooking SEO means your customers are gone.
So, here’s what to do instead.
Try to find out what keywords are becoming relevant every day. Keep a watch at what keywords your competitors include to rank their brand name. Check relevant keywords for your brand message. Also, make sure about the trending keywords and how they are being searched. After you have mastered this metric, create branding strategies that are fit for your company.
A Disconnect with Audience
Failing to connect with an audience is the most significant mistake. Conducting inappropriate research on target audiences makes it hard to know how to connect with them. To understand it, you will have to think creatively and strategically simultaneously. For that, your team should create the best marketing design materials to attract a wide net of customers.
What can you do more?
While you connect with customers, an innovative perspective on your upcoming plans should be out of the box. Thinking in this way will help to reveal the gaps, problems, and undiscovered opportunities to make your brand better. Also, you will get deep insights about customers by directly reaching out through social media. You can use forums, email campaigns, loyalty programs, and other ways to connect.
If you overcome this mistake, you will be able to connect with your potential customers. To have your criteria is essential. And then, you would be surprised to know how enthused some customers will be about a glimpse into the potential future of a product or service they will gain from your company.
Becoming too Generic
Coming across too generic ideas of branding for aviation will give a bad impression on your airline company. So, what constitutes this aviation branding mistake? Let’s know here
• Depending on stock imagery
• Forgetting on your core branding elements—for example, using a generic logo
• Having a similar brand name as competitors’
• Offering a similar product/service similar as competitors’
• Usage of non-specific/non-industrial terms in marketing materials
These points mean that the more generic your brand will showcase, the less unique you appear to the audience. A generic brand reflects being unprofessional, slapdash, or uninteresting. It’s clear—who would want to buy products or services from.
What should you do instead?
If you can offer a better or different picture of your airline brand, do it, even if you have to raise your budget. Connect a great designer and take full advantage of their experience.
Your designer can help with much more than the standards of the branding work. Do some market research for brand promotion/positioning strategies to understand deeper. By doing so, you can leverage the complete value expertise and implement it in your branding techniques.
Branding is One-time Action
The action of branding in one time only is an old-school industry policy of aviation. Today is the era of digitalization, where still many existing aviation companies are practicing this approach. If your company falls in this category, then hold on and restrict it now. This is the time when your airline company needs a tangible branding suite, humanization approach. It should also include the defined message, value, logo, and other elements. However, the work doesn’t stop with these elements. The fact is, branding is an endless process.
So, what do you need to do?
You need to work diligently by keeping a very sharp razor focus on every effort associated with the branding process. So that you can continue to carve your company’s position in the market and stand out. Also, this will help your company stand out in customers’ minds. And hence, this will automatically strengthen your brand.
Putting Branding Responsibilities on One Department
Branding efforts are not only reserved for the marketing department. Instead, it should involve efforts along across departmental actions as well.
There could be multi-departmental knowledge that could save you from poor branding. Might your marketing team’s efforts like the design or PR do not necessarily work perfectly. It's also possible that they ideate a similar design repeatedly. And you may be unknowingly making significant aviation branding mistakes. Those mistakes must have damaged the credibility of the strategies and the motive. A lot of companies work for branding only with the marketing team. That is why they lack in many other parts of branding. If you have a similar working process in your company, you need to think again!
So, how to go ahead?
To create an effective aviation branding, involve the sales, customer service, IT, networking, data analyst department on board. By collaborating with them, you can initiate many efforts to create purposeful solutions for audiences. Even the representatives of each department can involve and create target-proof branding strategies for aviation.
Devaluing the importance of social media
Devaluing the power of social media has been one of the most common and costly aviation branding mistakes businesses are making. From being active on it to acting on the audience’s activities has a lot of differences in-between. Many companies listen, but they don’t hear. The problem is they don’t show to their audiences. And thus, results in disconnection among audiences.
So, what can you do instead?
In the current time, the travel market is now more fragmented with the continuous shifting behavior of travelers. In this case, social media’s role is becoming significant. It’s one platform where you can obtain feedback by creating polls, communicating, and engaging with marketing tricks. It's a free and paid platform. You have every reason to take advantage of it to showcase your company and brand message to a wide net of audiences. Doing it regularly—keeping your content relevant and updated- will make your brand image evergreen.
Save your Airline Company with Branding Bloopers
Now you must have gained some insights on how to avoid branding mistakes. So, it's time to bid farewell to branding mistakes. Remember that consumers, context, and quality design should be at the forefront of your mind when you begin with branding planning. It’s crucial to hone on the right branding strategy because it’s an important way to position your aviation company in the market.
The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you are all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day.
– By Gordon Bethune Former CEO of Continental Airlines
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the other airline branding mistakes businesses usually make?
Mistakes happen every day in airline businesses. But some common mistakes can cost a huge to a business. Here are some more airline mistakes:
• Aviation businesses tend to implement competitors’ tactics that become entirely different from their original business structure or current and future plans of action.
• Businesses do not think of investing in an aviation advertising agency.
• Usually forgets the purpose behind the brand creation.
• Create fake brand values
What should airline businesses avoid in brand planning?
While creating a brand, the airline businesses should avoid the following things:
• Underestimating your customers
• Untracking your marketing efforts
• Unwilling to invest
• Broad targeting
• Lack of USP
• Lack of research
What do airline customers want from airline businesses?
Airline customers are broad. They look for a wide array of services and products. So, your customer will always want some basic yet valuable things like committed customer service and satisfaction, easy approachability, content to understand solutions, and easy ways to invest.
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Businesses do not think of investing in an aviation advertising agency.
Usually forgets the purpose behind the brand creation.
Create fake brand values"
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Untracking your marketing efforts
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Lack of research"
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Business Aviation
Article | January 28, 2022
The UK government has announced that from 11th February, fully vaccinated passengers arriving into the country will no longer have to take COVID-19 tests on arrival. The news follows the removal of pre-departure testing for fully vaccinated UK-bound passengers this month.
The relaxation of testing measures is something the aviation industry has been actively campaigning for, as it removes barriers to travel. Just today, IATA distributed a press release advocating for similar moves to be made by further governments. It cited a study focused on the UK carried out by Oxera and Edge Health which found that because Omicron is now highly prevalent in the UK, “if all travel testing requirements were removed there would be no impact on Omicron case numbers or hospitalizations.”
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