Digital Marketing

Rank these digital marketing channels in order of most efficient for our marketing goals requested by AOPA.

  1. Social Media Marketing
  2. Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing
  3. Mobile Marketing
  4. Display Marketing
  5. Pay-per-click (PCC) marketing

AOPA feel there is a market for the App helping with flight planning, and in turn increasing the desire for more pilots to take up the hobby, thereby increasing their membership.  With a limited budget we need to consider what are the best channels to achieve the best result.  Listed above is the ranking I would put them in and will explain why I feel that way now.

Not knowing exactly how this product can be promoted and where, we need to decide on a specific target audience, putting ourselves in their shoes, to understand why we (they) want this App.  AOPA feels strongly in its ability to truly save time, but how do we convince the people of this?  We need personal testimonies, the cheapest way is through social media.  We have members that have established accounts with followers, friends, and family.  They understand AOPA’s goals and have agreed to help; we get their testimonies posted on their social media accounts, off to a great start.  We set aside time to make sure communication is maintained when possible questions or comments arise.  This will give us some basics about initial response, something to apply to the next step.

Optimizing search engine results will prove tough but once we can narrow on the important target market searchers, will can further our exposure.  Getting the brand out there will help, we need them to realize how using the app will provide them with the extra time to pursue recreational flying.  Changing old habits (teaching them new tricks) is not impossible.  Besides the older pilots that have been around for awhile, new members will tend to be younger, middle-aged, able to afford small planes and time to travel.  This target will have cell phones and more accustomed to using technology in their everyday life.

Mobile marketing should be first overall, because it is the most commonly used device for searching and daily app tool use. All the forms of digital marketing will apply to mobile marketing and need to be recognized when making plans. The question is and would need to determine if pilots (or co-pilots) can even use cell phones during flights (some of the features in the App could be beneficial if allowed to be used during the flight); maybe the “no cell signal devices used” apply to them too. For that reason this channel is lower, if the pilots can not use the App during flights or at airports, we should focus more toward the PC users.

Display marketing will not be as useful until brand is more established, and knowing where our target would see these images of the product.  Same thing about the PCC marketing, until we get a better understanding where the (when correctly used) channel would be most effective.  That’s why these two channels are lower on the list; for this App, starting off with the mentioned channels listed one and two would get best results.