17 Aug Private Aviation Press Strategies: Private Jet Marketing Week
One of the more difficult marketing duties will always be getting your company in the press. There are a few ways to go about this, some are costly but quick and effective and others are more formidable to pull off. Getting free press isn’t easy and that’s probably why a lot of companies in the charter industry don’t venture down this path.
In this day and age there are many forms of media you can target. Not only print media and their online news sources, but countless blogs and user forums are all going to be within your scope. These days sending out a press release, even from the “top sources”, can result in very little press coverage at all.
It’s so important not only to have real news to tell, but something unique that will catch the eye of journalists. There’s so much noise out there in the aviation industry that you’ll really have to be packing good ammo in order to be heard. This is double for smaller brands who don’t have the budget to match Jetsetter or Victor.
The Pitch
This part is up to you and your team. In order to get their attention you’re going to need a good hook; Being in the private aviation industry, there’s a lot to play with. What we recommend is that you partner up with another luxury brand that compliments yours. This allows you to offer something quite special, as well as share the press marketing tasks. Two heads are better than one.
A recent example of this is Uber and Absolute joining forces to promote a unique giveaway to its London clients. Two strong companies with a lot of social followers, press contacts and a marketing budget to make some noise and be heard.
You can also look to partner with events as certain ones of course would love to send charter client’s your way. So long as they’re getting commission, you’re getting press from their resources on top of yours making the whole process all the easier.
Aviation Journalist Outreach
Guess what? Submitting press releases from even some of the most reputable sources often yields nothing more than a few dozen mentions from news outlets and the odd related industry publication. Sure, having a few new links might help with your SEO a bit but it’s not the result you’re looking for.
Building contact lists and relationships with journalists may be something you already do, but if not it’s time to break out Google Spreadsheets. While I won’t do all the work for you, you can quickly gather a lot of intel with this search query.
This will lead to a lot of people you can reach out to when you’ve got something amazing to pitch. The list we have built here at Luxury Branded for the aviation industry are now over 150 people. From that list we’ll usually choose about two-thirds of the people to make sure the news is properly targetted and we’re not spamming them with our news. From that point, anywhere from 5-30 of them might mention the news we have, depending on the news, which might not sound like a lot, but reach can be huge. Just one of these people is all you need to make your news spread like wildfire through their followers and their followers’ followers.
You can, of course, scour major online publications like Forbes, The Huffington Post and so forth and find journalists who’ve written about the industry before. Before you know it you’ve got quite the list and have just increased your chances of getting covered. Quickly going back to before and reminding you to have a great pitch our you’re going to ruin your future chances with that journalist.
If one big publication picks it up, chances are good that other blogs and websites will follow along with a wave of social media activity. This, along with utilizing press release services that hit the major industry websites, should bring a lot more success.
Aviation Wire Services
The aviation industry is quite large which means there are several news sources, magazines, blogs and forums. That’s a lot of potential and hitting these outlets doesn’t come cheap. While a little Google sleuthing will lead you to many of the resources, it’s only right to give you a few we trust and use ourselves.
- http://aviationtribune.com/submit-press-release/
- http://www.avweb.com/press-releases/
- http://www.flightstory.net/submit-stories-and-photos
- https://www.asi-mag.com/submit-press-release/
- http://corporatejetinvestor.com/contact/
We have been lucky before with services like MarketWired, PRWeb and PR Newswire in not only getting great links and coverage, but having journalists pick up the story. If that pitch angle is exciting and you have the budget to use many wire services at launch, then you’ll more than likely have a good ROI.
If you’d like some help with your jet charter marketing all you need to do is give us a shout.
