Re: Good solid web advertising

From: D Yancey <dyancey_at_proactics.com>
Date: Mon 05 Dec 2005 10:02:35 -0600

Passionate airplane owners! Many marketers would *love* to have such a
well-defined, well-bounded, well-funded, highly reachable target audience!

Others on this weighty list have suggested some strategies, such as SEM
for your very-specialized keywords, and careful placement of ads in both
magazines and websites where these wealthy and adventurous men are apt
to see them. You can also find special interest newsletters, which I
suspect would welcome a steady sponsor.

I agree with these channels, but would suggest that your company could
benefit too from sponsorship of the various highly-focused "communities"
of flyers and plane enthusiasts.

You can get an idea of the potential scope and breadth of such groups here:

http://www.landings.com/_landings/pages/news_groups.html

In your case, I think the highest ROI over time could well come from
establishment of a sponsored special interest community by the company
directly. People who are passionate about their hobbies and expensive
toys tend to want to share tips, parts info, possible suppliers,
destinations, and insider info. In your arena, the specter of
regulatory change is also always present, as is the constant question of
fuel costs. I imagine it would be pretty straightforward to:

1 Set up a basic MODERATED forums site, where entries are automatically
blogged
2 Quickly add sections of links, personal aviation news, and reference info
3 Add a classified sales section
4 Stage regular special online events, such as 4-hour weekend workshops
5 Go easy on the "advertising" -- a good compromise is to have a senior
exec write a regular blog-cum-column as part of the scheme.
6 The company should also provide an ASSIGNED staffer to handle Q&A --
Sure we all have "Contact Us" pages, but an often over-looked deficiency
of these is that *other* customers or prospects do not see the Qs and
As, nor do they see how politely, quickly, and professionally they were
dealt with. Turn your complaints and queries into a tool for building
customer satisfaction and prospect trust.

One major caveat:

Don't assume that a no- or low-budget "vanilla" so-called community
package and a part-time junior "designer" can throw together an adequate
site, even for the first stage. This community site can quickly become
the very first place that new prospects get to know the company, so
design and build and support accordingly.

As a reference point, AOPA operates a website (which is also a front for
various for-profit businesses, btw) at http://www.aopa.org which has
several of the elements listed above. Your goal is to offer your
enthusiasts a more "immediate", more sharply-focused, more interactive
"experience" -- one that they will look forward to participating in and
returning to often.

If the suggested community is FREE, you should have an immediate
recruiting edge over AOPA, which is definitely not. And, so long as the
community site is run professionally, with serious editorial
independence, and is not simply an advertising channel for its principal
sponsors, then it should provide an ever-expanding base of
well-screened, self-qualified prospects.

You can also look at seeking sponsorship partners who will welcome the
chance to reach the same folks in a non-selling, shared-knowledge
setting. This can probably defray most if not all the expense of
operating the community as it grows, in addition to helping ensure
editorial quality and "arm's length".

David Yancey
Managing Director -- Adjunction LLC
"See the newest member of our web family -- and bring along your sense
of humor..."
*http://www.tootoographic.com* -- And if you ever worked in or for a big
corporation, be sure and meet the "nameless man"
(*http://www.22gshop.com/shop/nameless-man-less-is-more/page1.html*)







Received on Mon Dec 05 2005 - 10:02:35 CST