ABCI  usually gets involved in a marketing campaign AFTER a product has been developed and pricing has been set, so we work with the variables we have.   But it’s great when a marketing firm actually has the opportunity to be involved in pricing strategy.

For the sake of this discussion, the product could be anything you’re selling, even a service.

When you’re setting a price for a product, there are several factors to be considered.  What other products are on the market competing with this one? Where does this product fall in terms of quality and features?

You’ve probably seen some version of this diagram in marketing textbooks.

To quickly explain the model – we have at the upper left the economy model – low quality, no frills, lowest price.

Then we have the market penetration pricing strategy, where a product may be high quality but the price is kept low to drive out competition, with the strategy of raising the price later to make up for losses after competitors have been driven out.  This happens in some cable TV or cell phone markets.

The skimming strategy is where a high price is charged for a low quality product. The best example of this is the typical “infomercial product” (pet nail trimmers come to mind) where the product itself is not all that great but a huge, short-term  marketing push is made to sell lots of them before competitors reach the market.

The premium product is my favorite as a consumer and as a marketing professional, because high quality products are the best value for the consumer in the long run.  It’s my job as a marketing rep to prove to the customer that the price is justified.

With the current recession, it seems many companies are tempted to make a bare-bones, no frills product and charge as little as they can for it.   This is shortsighted for three reasons -

Reason #3 – There is something to be said for “perceived value.” One Harvard Business Review case study showed that  press-on nails sold much better when the price was raised from $1.69 to $6.99. (The product, packaging, and everything else remained the same.) Women who were interviewed later said that they didn’t feel comfortable buying and wearing the cheapest product on the shelf.

Reason #2 -  There are always unforeseen costs. Developing, testing, producing and providing customer service for a product takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money.  The revenues from sales of the product have to sustain your company, your employees, customer service, research on new products, and, of course, the marketing you need to do to attract customers.  Don’t short-change your company by underpricing your product or service.

Reason #1 – (Most important)  Quality is worth working for and worth paying for. Building a better product costs more.  It involves more research, more testing, and better materials.  People understand that, and especially in aviation, consumers are willing pay more for a quality product.   And they’re willing to recommend a high-quality product to others, and buy from you again when the need arises.

One small aviation company I know could get a really great deal on a used turboprop twin or a new twin recip, but has determined to wait until they can buy their ideal aircraft – a new KingAir 350 IER configured just they way they want it.  Aviation people are very resourceful about making do until they get what they want; but they are also very particular and determined to ultimately get the very best.

Unless there is some compelling reason to use some other strategy, my advice is to always build, price, service and market a premium product.

It’s the most ethical, sustainable, and fulfilling way to do business.  Everybody wants to buy (or work for) the best in any particular business.  Do you agree? Leave a comment. Disagree?  Don’t leave a comment.   Actually I’d love to hear from you, either way.

Most of the services we provide are involved with marketing a completed product or service , but we also do consulting in the product development stages.  If you have questions, give me a call! 702-987-1679.

I don’t believe in love at first sight.

In fact, I had known my husband for 10 years before we got married.  We were engaged for more than a year.  And he’s a really phenomenal guy!

Most people that would buy your products or services, especially in this economy, also don’t believe in love at first sight.  Aside from candy at the checkout counter (although I understand candy sales are down as well!) the “impulse buy” seems to be pretty much extinct.

This doesn’t mean that customers are cynical, it just means that they consider purchases very carefully before they spend money. They want to do their homework and consider every purchase very carefully. Unfortunately, they’re also very busy and don’t have time to spend doing the extensive research that would make them comfortable with a purchase. This is true of most industries, and even more so in aviation. Given the demographics and psychographics of people in this industry, they didn’t get where they are (and stay successful in a very competitive, passionate business) without being very smart and discriminating.

Even if you have a product that’s neater than sliced bread, or a service that you think your potential customer can’t live without, please think again.  They’ve lived without it until now, and they’re probably not going to make a different decision overnight.

So, how do you get these smart, discriminating customers to “fall in love” with your product or service?  You take your time. You make information available and convenient, and you put together a long-term, sustained marketing plan that brings you to the front of their mind on a regular basis without making a pest of yourself.

Most people that contract with me for marketing services take a minimum of three weeks from the time I meet them to the time we get started on a project.  And more often, it takes a couple of months.  Some customers have known me for years before they hire me.  (Which is not to say that I don’t make a pest of myself, you’d have to ask them about that.)

A person finds out about your company through your website, a social media connection, a trade show, or some other means. Then there’s some amount of time during which the customer is not yet ready to buy, for any number of reasons – he could be waiting for a decision from superiors, or looking for more information, or wanting to shop around before making a decision.  Or they’re just too busy with other things.

In any case, during this timeframe (whether it lasts days, weeks or months) there is a danger that your prospective customer will forget about your brilliant website or the scintillating conversation they had with you at a trade show. Other priorities will encroach on their time, their attention, and their budget. And they’ll forget all about you and your product or service.

If I’ve done a consultation for you, or if you’ve taken a marketing class, you’ve seen some variation of the following diagram.

In this model, there is a Pre-Sales Cycle.  You could also call this “Post-Contact Follow Up.”  You can call it anything you like, but whatever you call it, you should be performing some tasks to continue your contact and build a relationship.

Secrets of Great Follow Up

Use Different Media.

Since I specialize in online marketing, I would love to say that you can run a complete marketing campaign online and never have to do anything else.  Sometimes, for some projects, that may be true. But ANY marketing plan will benefit from some off-line contact. Mix it up.

• Email – This can include a well-written sales letter, a newsletter, or video explaining more about your product.  Using an effective programmed series of emails can deliver information in digestible chunks and ensure that you’re at the front of the list when your prospective customer is in the market for your product or service. The key to successful email marketing (and what separates your emails from run-of the mill SPAM) is that your messages need to be thoughtfully targeted and full of valuable information that your potential customers will find useful whether or not they buy your product or service.
• Web Site Content – If your customer subscribes to your news feed or RSS, adding more content to your blog might serve this function and keep him apprised of new developments with your product; provide case studies of how another company is using it, or valuable industry information.
• Postcards – There are still a lot of people who subconsciously (or consciously!) think that a company isn’t real unless they have had some contact with that company that occurred somewhere other than cyberspace.   It makes your company seem much more “real” if you send a tangible piece of mail. I like postcards because a well-designed postcard can be a very efficient and effective reminder without being expensive.

Make it Regular but Not Intrusive

We’ve all had the pleasure of dodging phone calls from an overzealous salesperson who calls three times a week. That’s irritating, and it doesn’t work. I suppose there are things to be said for phone calls, but  since they interrupt your prospective client’s day and demand his immediate attention, I think they should be used very, very sparingly, especially in the pre-sales follow up stage.

Here’s a sample timeline that includes quarterly postcards, a product-related informational email (perhaps a tutorial or new feature announcement) and a monthly emailed newsletter.

Your plan will be different, depending on the product or service that you’re selling and the schedule that matches your style.

Make It Easy

You don’t have time to write a newsletter, or supervise a print run of postcards once a month, or even fetch stamps and keep track of all these lists.

If it’s not easy, it doesn’t get done.

We recommend automating everything that can be automated.

• Email systems like Constant Contact or MailChimp allow you to set up an autoresponder, which is a system that sends scheduled emails by a predefined schedule.  After you’ve added a contact to your list, (or your contact has signed up on your website) the system takes care of sending your emails on a predefined schedule.
• Postcard systems like SendOutCards will allow you to design postcards from any computer. You can import your contacts and schedule postcards to be sent out on a schedule you determine.  I generally send a postcard right after meeting a prospective client for the first time, (it might be waiting in their mailbox when they get home from a trade show or conference) and then on a predefined schedule. A postcard also doesn’t have to be opened to be effective, and many people don’t open mail unless they’re expecting it. (Or unless the envelope is remarkable in some way, which is usually much harder and more expensive to do.)

If you’re interested in seeing an example of how this works, enter your email address in the box below.  My Constant Contact email system will immediately send you an email, (with more valuable marketing tips for aviation professionals, of course!)  and in a few days you’ll receive a postcard from SendOutCards.  You also have the option of requesting a phone call from me. (One phone call, not one per week!)

So, now you have some great tools and know how to improve your sales by mastering the art of follow-up, rather than expecting your customers to fall in love with your products or services at first sight!

Please drop by if you’ll be at the Aviation Industry Expo in Las Vegas!

Marketing Session:

Thursday, March 18 from 9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. during Aviation Industry Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Presentations -

Gerry Whitty, projects director of Cygnus Custom Marketing Group

Everyone talks about the importance of marketing to your customers but for many, the biggest hurdle is getting started. In this session, Gerry Whitty, projects director of Cygnus Custom Marketing Group, reveals some fundamental steps to help get you started the right way including when and how to start, what tools are available and how a structured approach can boost your company’s brand image and bottom line.

Paula Williams, marketing consultant at Aviation Business Consultants International Inc. (ABCI)

Social Media Marketing has been touted as everything from “free advertising” to “a public relations nightmare.”   What’s the reality?  Paula Williams, marketing consultant with Aviation Business Consultants International, will  outline three strategies for managing social media – from the conservative strategy of simply monitoring social media to protect the reputation of your company and your brand, to a moderate strategy of providing customer service and responding to customer questions and complaints, to the most progressive strategy of reaching out to find new markets and new customers.  You will leave this session with an understanding of what will work best for your company.

Press Release

Specializing in seamless Inventory and Business Management using Web 2.0 Technology

January 11, 2009 – Aviation Business Consultants International  (ABCI)  today announced that they have been engaged as a marketing partner for RHOBI – Reinventing How Online Businesses Integrate.

“The economy is encouraging aviation businesses to find ways to be more efficient with their inventory and supply chain management.” Said Paula Williams, marketing consultant with ABCI. “RHOBI has great solutions that save steps so that companies don’t have to enter their data in one system to manage their inventory and another system to communicate what they have and make sales.  It’s a great idea that’s come along at the perfect time.  We’re excited to help Steve Edwards get the message out and explain the benefits of his product to potential customers.”

Steve Edwards added “We are very excited about this new venture with ABCI, and believe we have put our future in the right hands with Paula.”

As a full-service ABCI client, RHOBI will be launching a blog and participating in social media networks on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About ABCI

Aviation Business Consultants International (ABCI) was founded in 2005 to provide business consulting and online marketing services to the Aviation Industry. ABCI specializes in online marketing and leveraging social media in credible and cost-effective ways for aviation related product manufacturers and professionals providing services in the aviation sector. .

About RHOBI.

RHOBI, or Reinventing How Online Businesses Integrate, is a 100% web based social supply chain network. Services offered includes RHOBI Advantage, Blast, Click, and Mail. RHOBI Advantage was founded originally in 2007 under the product name PartMotion and was publically debuted at the 2009 Aviation MRO show in Grapevine, Texas. Blast, Click, and Mail are RHOBI’s social networking services which tightly integrate with Advantage. Together, RHOBI services provide a complete integrated solution for business professionals to build their contacts, maintain their supply chain, operate their company, and market their saleable goods.

All other company and product names and logos are  trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Please direct all press inquiries to:

Paula Williams
Marketing
ABCI
2248 Meridian Blvd Suite H
Minden NV
89423
702-987-1679
Paula.williams@AviationBusinessConsultants.com
www.AviationBusinessConsultants.com

A visual image can be incredibly powerful. Photo by Taylor Greenwood.

Anyone who has ever been stopped in his tracks by a gorgeous photograph of an aircraft in a magazine or a banner at a convention understands the power of visual images in aviation marketing.

To understand this better, we had a conversation with Taylor Greenwood,  whose business is making stunning photographs that sell airplanes.

Paula – Why are photographs so powerful in marketing?

Taylor – People are so busy these days that it’s hard to get their attention. People process information very quickly and make a lot of decisions based on first impressions, because we just don’t have time to look into every bit of material that comes our way very deeply.

We all know that people react differently to someone applying for a job in a T-shirt and jeans as opposed to a person in a great suit.   A great photograph is like a great suit. It shows the subject in the best possible light.

Paula – Do you have any suggestions for making product images “grab” potential customers?

Taylor – Hire a professional. Make sure the person that is capturing these images for you understands proper lighting and pays attention to every detail of the product and its setting.

If your product doesn’t look compelling,  it will be overlooked by busy customers with many other demands on their attention. Being detail-oriented is absolutely essential.

Paula  – Are there any tips you can share for working with images?

Taylor – Try not to over do it. As far as web presence is concerned, keep you site clean.  Don’t clutter the site with images. Backgrounds are better left plain. Neutral colors to help your images pop.  Let the photograph be the first and last thing people notice.

Paula – How would you represent a product or service that isn’t really visual?  If you’re an aviation lawyer or tax attorney, how could you use images to market your services?

Taylor – If you’re  a professional, you may not have a physical product to sell, but you are selling something. You’re selling yourself. A professional portrait is going to show potential clients that you take yourself seriously. And will assure them that you are of their high standards.

Taylor Greenwood is an ABCI client, and a photographer that specializes in visual images of aviation concepts, and great photographs that sell airplanes.  He can be reached at his website, http://www.TGJetPhotography.com.

Paula Williams is an online marketing consultant with ABCI that specializes in selling aviation products and services.  She can be reached at 702-987-1679 or Paula.Williams@AviationBusinessConsultants.com

Paula and Taylor both provide free consultations.

Specializing in Aviation Fine Art Photography on High-Quality Products

December 22, 2009 – Aviation Business Consultants International  (ABCI)  today announced that they have been engaged as a marketing partner for Aerographs.

“John Slemp has transformed his photographs into very high-quality products, including coasters, greeting cards, mugs, calendars and fine art prints that aviation fans will love. ” said Paula Williams of ABCI.

“I”m very excited to be working with Paula in marketing our Aviation artwork.  We are off to a solid start, but it’s time to ramp up the overall marketing effort and in conjunction with Paula’s expertise, the coming year is full of promise,” says John Slemp of Aerographs.

As a full-service ABCI client, Aerographs will be launching a redesigned website, and participating in social media networks on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About ABCI

Aviation Business Consultants International (ABCI) was founded in 2005 to provide business consulting and online marketing services to the Aviation Industry. ABCI specializes in online marketing and leveraging social media in credible and cost-effective ways for aviation related product manufacturers and professionals providing services in the aviation sector.

About Aerographs

John Slemp developed a passion for photography while serving in the U.S. Army in West Germany.  He specializes in photographing unique and historical aircraft in artistic ways. His work has been sold at the Smithsonian Institution and other aviation museums and gift shops.  The Aerographs company features his work on fine art prints, coasters, greeting cards, and other high quality products.

All other company and product names and logos are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Please direct all press inquiries to:

Paula Williams, Marketing

ABCI

2248 Meridian Blvd Suite H

Minden NV 89423

Photo from www.vintage-air.net

I do free consultations and competitive analyses for aviation-industry websites.  I was asked to evaluate a site last week and my first impression was – “Wow!  This is great!  I can’t improve on this.”  They had jaw-dropping graphics, slick animated effects, and breathtaking photography of airplanes.

After doing some analysis of the site, I could see what the owners were unhappy with – this site drew little traffic, made no sales, wasn’t linked from anywhere, and seldom came up in internet searches on Google, Yahoo or the other search engines.

It was like an airplane with a hundred-thousand dollar paint job and no engine.

And people wonder why it won’t fly!

I’ve run across versions of this story all the time, but none quite so dramatic.  People put a lot of time and money into their website design and then the find that it doesn’t get traffic, or maybe gets traffic but doesn’t convert that traffic into paying customers or even interested leads.  Many sites don’t even have the means to capture contact information from someone who is interested.  We all have been to interesting sites that we don’t remember a day later (or for me, even 15 minutes later!)

A great company web site has to do what it’s designed to do, otherwise it doesn’t matter how pretty it is.   An airplane is designed to fly.   A company website is designed to either sell products, collect leads for your sales team, or at least provide customer service for your customers.  A website that’s not getting traffic and not making sales is not living up to its purpose.

My advice- don’t buy another paint job.   Beautiful design and effects won’t get you off the ground.

You need a well-designed, powerful marketing campaign under the hood. Your web site should be powered by a well-thought out campaign to sell your products and services, and your web site should have the horsepower and the features to attract traffic, make connections with potential customers, provide the information customers need, collect their information, make sales.

As you know, your airplane needs an engine, wings, a tail, and flight controls.  Your website has some bare-minimum requirements as well. Your website needs the following:

• A way of attracting visitors. (This could include earch engine optimization, social media, a direct-mail campaign, email, etc.)
• Your unique selling proposition. This is a good explanation of who you are, what you do, and how you’re different from your competitors.
• Information that answers the top 10 questions that a potential customer might have about each of your products or services.
• Information that shows that you are credible and an authority in your field.
• A way of collecting information from visitors that are interested in your product or service (this works best if you ask them to subscribe to a newsletter, offer a free report, or some other incentive to provide their information.

Without this, you have the website equivalent of an airplane that won’t get off the ground.

As with airplanes, you can have optional equipment that is very helpful  – a navigation system can help you go more places more safely.  Wet wings can help you fly in weather.  Your website can also include optional features that can help you get the most out of the experience.

Optional features for websites:

• A way of purchasing products or services. This would be a shopping cart and transaction handling system.
• Customer service for existing customers- so that they can find instructions, answers to questions, a forum, etc.
• Some reason for customers to keep coming back to your site – additional information of interest to your customers, a blog with comments, a referral or incentive program, or some other way of staying connected after the sale.

Once you have the basics, you can work on the options.  Once you have the options, you can work on cosmetics.

Save the airbrushing and gorgeousness for a site that works.

The most common question I’ve been asked by my aviation marketing clients and potential clients is this:

“What should I be doing with Twitter?”

Tweets about "Bell 206B"

The answer, of course, depends on objectives.

Twitter as Market Intelligence – Find Out What People Are Saying About Your Company and Products

At a minimum, you should monitor the social networks, including Twitter, to see what’s being said about your company and your product.  Whether or not you choose to actively participate,  most companies pay for the kind of market research that Twitter can provide for free.

The example on the right shows tweets produced on a search for a product, “Bell 206B.”  Many companies do surveys, focus groups and expensive customer outreach programs and don’t get the kind of honest, off-the-cuff feedback from real clients and potential clients about what they like about a product, what they dislike about a product, who is buying and selling it, and how much used versions are selling for.

I search for company names and product names for each of my clients and provide reports and alerts.

Monitoring needs differ for each client – some  want to know if their company name or products are being mentioned, others would like to know if competitors (or competitors’ products) are being mentioned.  Some want to know about a product class  like “helicopters”  or “ramp safety equipment” while others are more specific and want to be notified of mentions of specific brand names and models.

Twitter as a news feed

Twitter as a News Feed – Publish information about your company and products

Publishing information about your company and products can be very effective with Twitter.

Including a reference and a link to an article will reach a large audience, and potentially be passed along as other people “re-tweet,” or copy your tweet to their own Twitter feed.

If you’re going to the effort of publishing articles, news releases, blog entries or other materials, you can maximize your investment in those materials by including Twitter in your publishing and distribution campaign.

Twitter attracts attracted nearly 14 million visitors in the US alone (Nielsen Online, March ’08).  That number is undoubtedly growing.  Some of these visitors are “passive,” in the sense that they do a lot of reading but don’t publish any messages themselves.

This “passive audience” is still very powerful.  Twitter users  subscribe to the “feeds” or lists of tweets of people with similar interests.  People search for tweets about topics of interest to them and subscribe to the future posts of people that talk about these subjects.

This makes Twitter unique.  On Facebook, people connect with people they know, while on Twitter, people may subscribe to my feed without knowing anything about me other than the topics I publish information about (or “tweet” about, to use the Twitter vernacular!)

A conversation on Twitter

Twitter as a Conversation

We’ve been able to engage in conversations with each other via instant messaging, so what’s the value of Twitter?  On Twitter, the conversation becomes public,  and may engage the interest of other people beyond the original participants in the conversation.  (This could also be a bad thing, so it’s important to remember that you’re interacting in a public space!)

Even more powerful than publishing is engaging directly with people on Twitter.  The conversation at right has three active participants, but could be viewed by the “followers” of any of those three participants.  People always want to know what other people are talking about, so this expands the conversation beyond the people doing the talking to a potentially large number of  “eavesdroppers” or passive participants  who may become interested enough to find out more about the product or event, ultimately leading to a purchase.

More participants are a marketers’ dream, but could be a legal department’s nightmare.  So it’s important to be sure that the members of your staff that participate in Twitter have a good grasp on the company’s public objectives and a good set of guidelines to determine the right course of action.  They also need to be comfortable  escalating conversations to the right level of management when necessary.

Frankly, I spent a long time “on the fence” about Twitter.   I saw its potential as limited and its topics as mundane.  (And frankly, it’s used for the mundane by a lot of people!)  But to extend that argument, I haven’t decided that the telephone is not a legitimate business tool because of the vast number of mundane conversations every day on the phone.   So, I apply the same logic to Twitter as a medium and a marketing tool.  It’s an excellent medium if you recognize its limitations.

Whatever you do or don’t do with Twitter, you should know that an enormous conversation is going on right now.  It is very likely that your company or your products are being talked about. It’s also very likely that your competitors are using Twitter, or developing plans to use it.   It is very important to approach it thoughtfully.

From Advertising Age – Brands on Twitter: 76% of Accounts Are Infrequent Users

The take-away: Most companies fail to realize Twitter’s full potential as a market engagement platform. While 73% of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts, effectiveness based on level of activity, interaction and engagement were off the mark. Brand-squatted accounts, as reported last week in Ad Age, remains an issue for many companies. For those that are on board, many more are largely tepid accounts with limited activity and interactivity (76% of accounts tweet infrequently). Even more telling is how companies apply currently traditional marketing practices to this new media channel, including:

• Twitter as a newsfeed: 26%
• Twitter as brand-builder: 24%
• Twitter as direct marketer/sales channel: 16%
• Twitter as thought-leadership channel: 11%
• Twitter as customer-service channel: 9%

Source: http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=140566

Next Steps

It’s important for every company to determine their strategy with social media, which does not necessarily mean to wholeheartedly embrace Twitter and start tweeting tomorrow.   This public space is not a good venue for trial and error!  You’ve invested much in your company’s brand and your products’ reputations.

A free consultation is a good place to start.   Let me know your objectives and I’ll give you some actionable ideas of how you can set up your guidelines,  add value to your current marketing efforts,  or begin a new campaign using Twitter and other social media.

ABCI designs custom social media campaigns for our clients, and we offer free consultations! Let us show you what we’ve done for other clients who sell aviation products and services, and give you some great suggestions with no obligation. Call 702-987-1679 or email Paula.Williams@AviationBusinessConsultants.com today.

Just talked with Susan Friedenberg this morning. THis is why I love working in Aviation!  She told me this amazing story and sent me the letter below:

Subj: [NBAA-gulfstream] VETERANS DAY

The timing of this is amazing. Many of you will recall that on Memorial Day, I wrote about my Dad, Bernie who left WW-2 with 2 purple hearts, 2 silver stars, and a bronze cluster medal. He fought all day on Omaha Beach, was in the North Africa campaign and in Sicily. He was away fighting for 4 years for his country. He just turned 88 by the way! When I posted that back in May on Memorial Day, many e-mailed me from our community and reached out to my Dad to buy his recently published book. The $ goes to Stockton Community College for Holocaust studies and scholarships. It was a catharsis for him because after seeing Saving Private Ryan, he started having night mares again and he was told by an army DR in Delaware to write it all down. My Mom asked him to do it for us his children and his grandchildren. It turned into a book.

Ron Freswick whom we all know by his nick name Fuzzy, called me. He is the Chief Pilot for Williams & Sonoma out of SFO. We have an E-mail friendship and speak on the telephone. I have yet to meet this amazing man. He contributes to our community with his wisdom and humor. I told him that my Dad and his Vet buddies from all of the wars from the south New Jersey Jewish War Veterans Post raise $ selling their poppies in the heat on the streets all over our area to support the Vineland, NJ Veterans Home. There are men and women there from all of the wars with no where to go and are in dire need of comfort and support. The government and state funding is poor and they are lacking so many things. Dad’s men built a TV recreation room. A great thing but not anywhere close to what they need for a good quality of life. They scraped up the $ for a flat screen TV for the men and women as well and got them electric shavers’s since many of them can’t shave due to illness’s that make their hands tremor.

Fuzzy contacted people way up in Williams & Sonoma’s corporate structure and told them about this. One of the men is an ex-Marine. This all started in May. Yesterday, several trucks pulled up to the Vineland Veterans Home after they visited it a few months ago and replaced ALL of the interior furniture, outside porch furniture, and replaced the home with all of the things that they would NEVER have. In a few weeks they will TOTALLY replace all of the glasses, flatware, plates and pots and pans. It is like an interior EXTREME MAKEOVER, INJURED AND HOMELESS/SICK VETS ADDITION.  I was teaching at FlightSafety today and kept crying on and off all day. I am so totally overwhelmed by Fuzzy’s commitment to see this through and the generosity of Williams & Sonoma. What an amazing compassionate company. This my friends is who we are and the greatness of this community!

So many of the company’s that we fly for have products that can make life easier for out vets who fight for our freedom. I am humbly asking those of you that have the ear of your CEO’s to reach out and do what you can in your

Ask about our Social Media Package!

According to a recent survey by virtual events provider Unisfair, marketers are most focused on attracting and keeping customers in 2010 and they plan to use social media to make this happen. A few interesting factoids from the Unisfair findings:

The 3 leading marketing priorities in 2010 according to U.S. marketers:

• New customer acquisition (60%)
• Customer retention and engagement (48%)
• Thought leadership (45%)

The top 5 marketing tactics U.S. marketers planned to increase in their 2010 marketing mix:

• Social media (75%)
• Web search/SEO (51%)
• Email campaigns (49%)
• Virtual events (48%)
• Online advertising (28%)

The study also asked marketers to rank the value of social media platforms. LinkedIn came in on top at 26%, Facebook at 23% and Twitter at 17%.

ABCI designs custom social media campaigns for our clients, and we offer free consultations!  Let us show you what we’ve done for other clients who sell aviation products and services, and give you some great suggestions with no obligation.  Call 702-987-1679 or email paula.williams@aviationbusinessconsultants.com today.