I don’t know about you, but I’ve just about had it with politics.

Which is not good, because it’s only September. We have another two months before the Presidential elections in the U.S.

Egad. Politicians are almost as bad as sales and marketing people.

Now wait just a minute, Paula, aren’t you in sales and marketing?” you say.

Sales and marketing have a bad reputation for a good reason.

There is no shortage of charlatans and slippery characters hiding under every rock.

So, why would people get involved in such an unsavory line of business?

Because it’s where the power is. 

Companies live and die by their sales numbers. The best companies – those that have the most excellent customer service and the highest quality products – are not always the ones that are rewarded by the marketplace with the privilege of staying in business.   An adequate company with an adequate product will outperform an excellent one – if they have outstanding sales and marketing.

Unless the right people hear about your product and are convinced of its value, quality simply doesn’t matter.

Is this the way it should be? Probably not.

Is this the way it is? Absolutely.

The consequence of this unfair reality is that unless you intend to cede the most powerful lever you have in the marketplace, you have no choice but to participate and invest in better sales and marketing than your competitors do. 

That does not mean that we (or you!) have to participate in the unsavory practices that have earned the profession its desultory reputation in order to make sales.

We’ve proven that the most effective sales and marketing, especially in the aviation industry, is that which is sane, logical, educational, and sacrifices sales to honesty or reality when it makes sense to do so.

Here’s what ABCI won’t do for you:

  • We won’t use marketing tactics that scream for everyone’s attention, but that are compelling to the specific subset of people in the marketplace that have a need your product will serve.
  • We won’t depend on hype and hyperbole to sell your product. If we say your product walks on water, we compromise not only your integrity, but ours and and that of the industry. We will create marketing materials that clearly and compellingly define the strong points about your product or service, but we won’t exaggerate or fabricate.
  • We won’t take your money for search engine optimization without first doing the research to determine which keywords your potential customers are the most likely to use. (Sometimes the difference between “aircraft” and “airplane” in your keywords can be the difference between lucrative success and expensive failure!)
  • We won’t ask you to make a huge investment in a fabulous graphic design for a website or brochure without ensuring that it will be seen by the right people.
  • We won’t take your money for anything that we consider to be a “random act of marketing.” That is, we won’t create any marketing materials outside of a results-oriented, measurable marketing system, which includes researching potential customers and creating the mechanisms and methods to measure response so we can  make corrections if and as needed.

Had a bad experience with marketing? We’d love to hear it. Add your comments below or post it on one of our social media listed to the right. We’re students of the industry as well as teachers.

We believe the more aviation people know about sales and marketing, the better for the industry and the economy, as well as the better for ABCI!

 

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