Business to business (B to B) or business to consumer (B to C) sales of aviation-related products and services involve a high degree of trust between the seller and the buyer. The culture of aviation is such that lives may depend on the quality of a product or service.
A degree of trust is established over time, using some version of the marketing cycle below. The most cost-effective (and most trusted) method of marketing for people in the aviation industry is through word of mouth. People hear from other people about products or services that work well. This “social trust” is key in these relationships. Social media is the closest variant to word of mouth that can be impacted by a marketing campaign. The least effective method of marketing to this group is usually a telephone directory listing. Aviation tends to be geographically independent, and generally speaking, the higher risk the industry involves, the less a decision maker wants to just pick a company out of the phone book to do business with.
Generally speaking, the first contact is the start of a relationship, in which the customer requests information and the seller provides it. A customer could take hours, days, weeks, months or even years, to come to a decision, but an established pipeline of these potential customers or “leads” is one of the most important assets for a business to manage.
Keeping in touch with people that have contacted your company by some combination of email, direct mail, postcards, catalogs, a newsletter, regular updates to your website, or periodic phone calls is key to establishing a relationship that will result in a sale when the customer is ready to buy. Of course, the customer can “opt out” of the pipeline at any time and those wishes must be respected as well.
This ongoing campaign is the heart of successful marketing to the aviation community.
Aviation Marketing Cycle
Once the sale is completed, another cycle begins where customer service and continued communication continues the relationship. Referrals (word of mouth, again!) and subsequent purchases are an important element of the marketing cycle. Continuing to communicate with customers after the sale is key to keeping relationships strong.
