Category: BDN
Growing Opportunities in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing opportunities are expanding beyond just SEO, paid advertising, and social media.
For example, by 2017, 74% of all Internet traffic will be video-centric. The good news is that most aerospace marketers are already using video in their marketing efforts. But the bad news is that we are using one-dimensionally, primarily at trade shows and events. We’re really just scratching the surface of its potential marketing power.
There are so many new and creative ways to take our digital marketing in exciting new directions. Not just because they are exciting and new — but because they work.
Here’s an overview of what’s possible, and specific ideas about how to make these new approaches work for you.
Interactive content is a creative and effective way to engage and interact with your audience. Interactivity helps audiences find and engage with content that is specifically of interest and relevant to them, at the same time providing marketers with valuable insight and information about customers.
Examples of interactive content include design tools (ex. design your own aircraft livery and interior) calculators (ex. how much time or money can I save by installing your product?), quizzes and questions (ex. what aircraft upgrade will most benefit my specific operation?), interactive whitepapers or infographics (ex. show maintenance intervals and costs for every component in your product), or contests and sweepstakes. It may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. There are numerous tools and services to help. Ion, Marketo, and Snapapp are several to consider.
Video marketing has exploded in popularity and effectiveness, with consistently high levels of engagement, and video is an ideal way to communicate the value of benefits of aerospace and defense products. From high-quality branding productions that showcase the sex appeal of an aircraft in flight, to technical pieces that explain the inner workings of a product – having the ability to show and tell your story is a marketer’s dream. Videotaping and sharing customer testimonials is also worthwhile, because trusted recommendations are highly influential with B2B buyers.
Once you have the video assets, put them to use strategically and creatively to reach a range of audiences as part of your overall marketing program.
Looking for inspiration? Check out BDN’s own newly released video program.
You may also be interested in You Need Great SEO, And Here’s What You Need To Know To Get Started or 8 Best Practices for Email Marketing Success.
Social Media Image Sizing Cheat Sheet
You wouldn’t put a blurry photo on the cover of a printed brochure, so don’t even think about putting one on the cover of your social pages. Represent your business well by using and sharing imagery sized appropriately for each channel. Use this infographic for easy reference — it has everything you need to know.
You can also download the full cheat sheet here.
8 Best Practices for Email Marketing Success
It isn’t sexy. It’s often annoying. And everyone gets too much.
Even with three strikes against it, email can be a powerful and effective tool for aerospace marketing.
E-mail marketing is a permission-based communication tool and a good way to appropriately interact and engage with customers, partners, and prospects.
It can be personalized, targeted and tracked, is extremely cost-effective, and, unlike old school printed pieces, is quick and easy to produce.
The inbound marketing experts at Marketo advise that in order to be truly effective, your email marketing must be trusted, relevant, conversational, coordinated with other channels, and strategic. We agree.
For example, BDN used our own marketing automation system to send aerospace marketing professionals an eye-catching offer to help improve their marketing with a complimentary consultation. We were offering something of real value, and by presenting it in an authentic and credible way while cross-promoting through social media, we gained audience attention and interest. We were able to track those who opened the email, those who clicked through to our website, and, of course, those who requested a consultation. The result? Three qualified leads, two sizeable new clients, and a growing list of prospects for future communication and nurturing.
If you use email marketing in a thoughtful and responsible way, the customers will come. But an unfocused, shoot-from-the hip approach will do more harm than good, alienating or angering your potential buyers. Here are 8 best practices to guide your first or next campaign.
Determine the goals of email communication. Setting goals for each email will guide your selection of content and metrics.
Build an acquisition strategy. How will you build a list? Develop a plan for how the email list will grow organically over time. For example, visitors to the BDN website are invited to subscribe to our blogs and other content of interest. As this happens, our list grows.
Determine a content plan. What will you say, when, and why? Make sure everything is connected to your goals, strategy and audience needs. This blog, for example, is part of an overall content plan and calendar that was mapped our earlier this year.
Email should be portable, personal, and prescriptive. Make sure that the emails display well on mobile devices and tablets; and eliminate the term “click here,” because clicking is a desktop action. Personalize your emails to increase engagement. Keep messages short and to the point, and always provide valuable information and clear call to actions.
Email layout should be simple and consistent. Emails with a single column focus and large calls to action tend to perform best. Always include relevant pre-header text to spotlight your key message or call to action.
Get creative with email strategy. Be creative about when you send emails and interact with customers. Aerospace marketers can make trade shows more productive, for example, by using timely email to generate interest in advance of events, drive attendance, and even schedule meetings with prospects.
Ask customers what they want. Don’t be afraid to ask the customers how many emails they would like. Stop sending emails to people who just don’t care.
Be ethical. Research CAN-SPAM laws and make sure that your emails are compliant. Honor opt-outs promptly.
Access these resources for additional information about email marketing: Really Good Emails, HubSpot, Marketo
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Digital Advertising: How and Why it Can Work for You
You Need Great SEO, And Here’s What You Need To Know To Get Started
YOU NEED GREAT SEO, AND HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET STARTED
If prospective customers don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you.
If prospective customers know about you but can’t find you online, they won’t buy from you — because most B2B buying decisions happen online.
MarketingProfs.com shares that 71% of buyers prefer to conduct research and purchase on their own, with an access to a sales representative only if needed.
Today, your website is arguably the most important part of your sales and marketing effort. But if your website has not been optimized to achieve top search rankings, it’s wasting time and money. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to all industries and all marketers, including aerospace.
We notice that SEO is a term that gets tossed around a lot. But what does it really mean?
Let’s say you are a mid-size MRO provider working to increase sales. Your brand is fairly well known, but you aren’t one of the really big guys, and you have a lot of competition. If you Google a relevant phrase, like “helicopter engine overhaul” and your business name does not appear on the first page (preferably in the top three positions) your prospective customers won’t find you, but they will find your competition.
You need great SEO, and here’s what you need to know to get started.
- Google rankings are based on more than 200 different factors, but essentially they all come down to content and credibility.
- The more frequently you add relevant, quality content (blogs, white papers, videos, photos, links, news) to your website, the more your rankings will improve.
- Building links to your site from other trusted sources, and updating search directories, social media and other website promotion tools to establish credibility will also improve your ranking.
- Finally, address basic optimization activities, such as updating meta titles and meta descriptions, creating a proper URL structure, and optimizing internal links.
Achieving better rankings does not have to be complicated, and you don’t necessarily need an SEO consultant to be successful, you just need the dedication to producing a quality website that your customers care about. As with all good things, there are no short cuts, and the cheaters get caught — and punished — by Google.
Don’t be afraid of SEO. You just need to get started, stay focused, and update your site. It won’t happen overnight. When it comes to SEO, slow and steady wins the race, the rankings, and, ultimately, the customers.
For more information, take a look at this graphic. It’s a BDN favorite for explaining SEO.
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Digital Advertising: How and Why it Can Work for You
Aerospace marketers unanimously cite budget constraints as one of their most significant professional challenges. As many have been forced to re-evaluate how and where to invest their limited marketing dollars, paid digital advertising has become a viable alternative to traditional methods — and with good reason.
Digital advertising is often considerably more affordable, targeted, immediate and measurable than traditional advertising.
But is it right for our industry and your business? Let’s define three options and how to use them most effectively.
Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is widely used in aerospace marketing. In fact, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are all using it extensively.
In PPC, advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC, but it is not the only option available. PPC ads may be placed through website publishers, directly through social media (Facebook and LinkedIn) or through an ad network like Google Ad Words.
Benefits of PPC advertising include the ability to track conversations and the fact that you only pay for the actual website visits that occur. Additionally, most PPC platforms allow you to set a strict spending limit, so costs can be monitored closely.
In aerospace marketing, PPC is well suited for a specific campaign, like a new product launch. As opposed to SEO efforts, which may take more time, you’ll get instant recognition with targeted audiences through the use of specific, carefully selected keywords.
Bonus Tip: Purchase the names of your competition as keywords. If a prospect searches for that competitor, they’ll see your ad at the same time.
Here is more information to get you started.
Display advertising is the online placement of visual ads on targeted websites. Display ads may be purchased directly from a publisher or through an ad network like Google.
Before you purchase from an aerospace industry-specific publisher, explore ad network options. Many websites in our industry are overrun with competing ads in limited space, potentially diminishing the chance that visitors will notice and engage with you, and you’ll probably be surprised by the precise targeting that is possible with other options.
And while it has always been challenging to quantify the effectiveness of print advertising, digital methods offer instantaneous information about click-through and conversion rates of web traffic that comes to you as a result of a digital ad. Monitor and measure everything you do, and adjust your spending to support what works best.
Learn more about display advertising here.
Retargeting, sometimes called remarketing, is a type of display advertising and is an excellent tool for businesses with long sales cycles, where lead nurturing is essential. Retargeting works to bring visitors back to your website site over time by regularly showing them relevant subject matter ads when they visit other websites. For example, if a potential customer is doing buying research and visits both your website and that of a competitor, retargeting provides you an opportunity (that your competition may not be using) to lure them back with a clickable special offer or a promotion for interesting content.
Retargeting works as users visit your website, their machine gets cookied. This cookie passes important data to retargeting platforms like Google and AdRoll, signaling that the user has visited your website before. The list of cookied machines gets added to the retargeting list and will begin displaying ads for your website.
Learn more about retargeting here.
Measurement is an essential part of any digital marketing effort. The goals of each online campaign will determine which metrics you should track and analyze. Impressions can indicate the success of a branding campaign, clicks can show increased web traffic, and form fills or conversions represent increased leads or even sales.
It’s important to remember that digital advertising is a tool that should be employed strategically as part of an overall marketing plan. BDN’s digital media coordinator Savannah Ivanitski works with our team and our clients to develop and deploy effective digital marketing strategies. Contact us to learn more.
You may also be interested in: Aerospace Marketers: 5 steps to establish or improve your use of social media…and the FTC regulation you need to know now
Aerospace Marketers: 5 steps to establish or improve your use of social media…and the FTC regulation you need to know now
The use of social media for aerospace marketing is no longer a question. It’s now an essential part of the aerospace marketer’s toolkit.
If you work in defense, know that some of your most important customers — the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — were early adopters that now fully leverage the power of social media. They use it for its convenience, reach, affordability and effectiveness, the very same reasons it has become the medium of choice for terrorist organizations worldwide. Like it or not, it works.
In a recent study that looked at the use of social media in the defense industry, Defence IQ found that 62% of respondents (prime contractors, subcontractors, and the media) believe that it is very important or essential to improve their online and social media presence by 2017.
Here’s how to make social media work for your business.
- Have a plan and a purpose
To be effective, it’s essential to understand why you are using social media, how it will connect to your overall marketing and communications strategy, and what you want to accomplish. Your plan should also include a budget, process and dedicated staff fully qualified for the work. Maintain an editorial plan, but be flexible enough to react to timely events. And always support your brand and maintain a consistent voice across platforms.
- Pick your platforms
From Facebook and Twitter to online forums, LinkedIn and YouTube, you’ll have more options than time, so be strategic in selecting the correct channels. The Defence IQ report found, for example, that government-related audiences favor corporate websites by a wide margin, followed by YouTube, LinkedIn, targeted content, Facebook, Slideshare, and Twitter. It’s interesting to note that government contractors vastly misjudged what channels their customers view as most effective. As with any form of marketing, it’s critically important to fully understand the people you are trying to reach.
- Know your audience
Find and follow your audience to learn what interests them. Search hash tags or use a tool like “we follow” to listen and learn, then use the knowledge to tailor content. Bear in mind that social media requires some trial and error. You’ll need to experiment with each channel’s unique audience to determine what resonates best with your fan base. But if you give them what they want, your audience will find you.
- Make it worthwhile
Whatever you do, don’t sell. Don’t make it all about you. And don’t bore your audience by recycling press releases or rehashing old news. Help, engage and inform, all in a relevant, audience-centric way. If you give them a reason to return, they will.
- Analyze and improve
By establishing a plan and purpose, you have set goals for your social media program. Now it’s time to monitor and measure success. It’s important to keep track of posts, frequency, and engagement to determine the best social media plan moving forward. For example, you’ll want to determine when users are active online on each platform and post during those times. Also, Google Analytics is an important tool that can tell you if social media is driving traffic to your website, because that’s where the majority of B2B buying decisions start and end.
- Did you know?
The Federal Trade Commission requires that you disclose any relationships with anyone you may be promoting. A helpful article explaining this regulation can be found here.
B2B expert MarketingSherpa recently published new information detailing engagement and reach of the top social networks. Learn more here.
Don’t Work Your Website, Make it Work for You
If your website isn’t working for you as a lead generation tool, then you’re leaving money on the table. Ignoring opportunities is inexcusable. Your sales expert wouldn’t do it, so your website shouldn’t either.
One of the best ways to invest in your website is to start creating and publishing unique and helpful resources. They need to be different enough that prospects have to come to your site in order to get this information, and helpful enough that they need to seek out the information in the first place.
BDN achieved this with a comprehensive trade show directory. A database of all of the industry trade shows was hard to find. We developed our own and it is now the most downloaded resource on our site.
You can do the same. It’s very simple, really. Invest in your website by generating some great content, and watch as the leads begin to pour in.
Curious to learn more about aerospace marketing?
How to Use Content Marketing to Your Advantage
Have you been considering hiring an outside agency? Is it out of your budget or not the right time? Don’t worry, but do start leveraging the vast amount of content marketing now available. Just because you may be unable to tap into the expertise of an outside agency does not mean that you have to miss out on all of their helpful resources. Use them to your advantage.
According to Gartner Research by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human. This is where content marketing comes in. By creating and then sharing helpful resources to both clients and prospective clients, content marketing engages customers before they have ever even picked up the phone.
Some BDN favorites include Hubspot, Marketing Sherpa and the Content Marketing Institute.
BDN also has some very helpful resources available at no cost, including the PR Tool Kit, a truly excellent resource.
Curious to learn more about aerospace marketing? Check out these popular BDN resources. They are free and easily available for immediate download.
7 Keys to Breakthrough Messaging for Aerospace and Defense Marketers
Memorable, iconic messaging looks effortless, but it’s anything but. Drafting the right three words (like “Here Comes Hope”) may take three minutes – or three hours – but is essential to effective marketing.
But how do you do it? Well, the truth is, most people aren’t wired to write goose bump-inducing copy. It can’t be done by committee, and it is less likely to come from someone within the company. I’m not sure it can be taught – but do know that understanding how to recognize it is important for all aerospace marketers.
7 Keys to Effective Messaging
- Tells a story, succinctly
- Makes you feel something
- Is audience-centric
- Feels authentic
- Does not require an explanation
- Transcends the expected and the ordinary
- Has something extra – a spark of creative genius – that elevates everything and makes the message sing. We call it the X factor. And you can’t have effective marketing without it.
The United States Armed Forces consistently delivers exceptionally strong marketing campaigns anchored by some of the best messaging in our space.
We’ve featured a few examples here, but you can easily find more with a couple of quick searches. They more than meet our criteria for inspired messaging. Do you agree?
You’ll find even more information about messaging in our Value Proposition Guide. It’s an in-depth resource that includes actionable insights, a checklist to evaluate your own value proposition, industry examples, and more. Or, take a look at our Portfolio, to see work examples and inspiration, all specific to aerospace and defense.
Great Design Is Worth More Than A Million Words
Have you been on Instagram lately? It’s like the invention of the camera phone made everyone a professional photographer. Now, we all know this is not the case. It takes more than a decent quality camera in your pocket to make you a professional photographer. The pros go through years of education and training in their craft before they’re considered by others to be a professional.
The same is true for graphic design. Just because programs like Photoshop and/or InDesign have become more accessible to the masses, does not mean that everyone using these programs is now an artist. Take BDN’s Brian Higgins. Brian lives and breathes great design. After creating beautiful designs for BDN and its clients, Brian goes home and he continues to hone his skills day in and day out. He’s even finishing up his master’s degree in graphic design.
So why is this an important distinction to make? Well, it’s because design, or visual content, is probably the most effective way to grab someone’s attention and get them engaged.
These 5 statistics provided by Wishpond.com underscore the importance of great design.
- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. The brain processes visuals 60,000X faster than text.
- Businesses that market with infographics generate 12% more traffic than those who don’t.
- Posts with visuals receive 94% more page visits and engagement than those without.
- 60% of consumers are more likely to click on a business when images appear in search results.
- 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to carry more weight than product information or customer ratings.
BDN has had experience with great design delivering results. After BDN sent out a couple of e-blasts with a huge visual impact, several prospects called in saying that while they never respond to e-blast marketing, the visual impact of our graphic design compelled them to pick up the phone.
BDN also designed a client mailer that resulted in that client receiving multiple calls from prospects that, up until then, would not return their calls.
Curious to learn more about aerospace marketing or our artist Brian Higgins?