What were our most-read articles, most viewed videos, and most-listened to podcasts of 2019? Which aviation marketing topics got the most attention?

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present top three in each category!

 

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Transcript – Best Aviation Marketing Topics of 2019

Aviation Marketing TopicsPaula Williams:             Welcome to this week’s episode. It is the end of 2019, or the beginning of 2020, depending on when you’re listening to this.

John Williams:                            I prefer to think of things at the beginning.

Paula Williams:             Okay, exactly. The beginning of 2020, or it might be some other time, due to the magic of media, right? But if you are, this is a time capsule about what our most popular aviation marketing topics were in 2019. And some of them are going to be… John hasn’t seen this before, so he doesn’t know.

John Williams:                            Great.

Paula Williams:             Some of these you may find surprising, some of them you may not, but we’ll see what happens. So this episode, of course, is being brought to you by our Aviation Marketing Calendar, which seems fitting, right?

John Williams:                            Right.

This Episode Brought to You By our Aviation Marketing Calendar

Aviation Marketing Topics - CalendarPaula Williams:             You can get our Aviation Marketing Calendar. If you are a sales or marketing professional in the aviation industry, then you definitely want this calendar. It includes our book club selections, all of the key events for aviation professionals, like all of the NBAA events, and all the HAI events, and all of the MRO events.

John Williams:                            Well, okay, but I mean, there are… Last time we went through this, we counted 230-plus different great shows.

Paula Williams:             That is true, and they are not-

John Williams:                            And they are not all here.

Paula Williams:             On this calendar. Okay, good point. But it is a nice reference. And it also is a nice way to plan your year, especially your media, as you’re going through the year, and thinking about what topics do you want to cover, in whatever format that you use for your marketing. Right?

John Williams:                            Exactly.

Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle Content

Aviation Marketing Topics - Why Reuse Content?Paula Williams:             Okay. So, if there is one message that has stood out to me, from all of the crazy diverse things we’re going to talk about, it is that reusing, repurposing and recycling material, every piece of content that we create for ABCI ends up having a really long life because we reuse it in different ways. Right?

John Williams:                            Yeah, it’s a whole lot easier to take something that you’ve already created and modify it, than to create it from scratch again.

Paula Williams:             Exactly, and whenever we produced a story or a piece of content, like the one that you’re seeing today, we produce it in three different ways.

One for our website, as a blog post, one as a podcast that goes on iTunes or Stitcher or Google play, those kinds of things. And the third way is as a video on YouTube. We’re actually going to talk about those three media, and what our top three articles were, in each of those media, or videos or podcasts or whatever episodes.

John Williams:                            Okay.

Paula Williams:             What is interesting is, different people use different media.

John Williams:                            Of course.

Paula Williams:             Should be obvious, right? But you would think, that the top three, there would be some commonality between those media. If one topic is popular as a blog post, you would think that topic would also be popular as a video.

John Williams:                            Not necessarily.

Paula Williams:             Okay. Well, it was a surprise.

John Williams:                            Well, because the people who watch podcasts may not be the same people who are watching…

Paula Williams:             YouTube videos.

John Williams:                            Yes. I mean, I rarely go to YouTube.

Paula Williams:             Okay.

John Williams:                            But podcasts, it’s different.

Paula Williams:             You listen to podcasts?

John Williams:                            Sometimes.

Paula Williams:             Okay.

John Williams:                            More than YouTube.

Paula Williams:             Okay, I didn’t know that. That’s true. It’s a different audience, and when you think about your audience, you want to have as many opportunities as possible to get your materials in front of them.

So that’s two things you can find out from this episode is number one, what does everybody else interested in, as far as aviation marketing? And number two, which is interesting to find out. And number two, how does this work in terms of what type of people use what type of media?

Top Three Aviation Marketing Articles of 2019

Aviation Marketing Topics- Top three Articles                                Okay. So first of all, we’ll talk about our website, the top three articles on our website. And this is valuable to us. This is that valuable information. You may want to do this on your own website, just go to Google analytics, put in the whole year.

So, January 1st through December 31st. Have it list all of the articles. You go under Behavior, and I don’t know why it’s under Behavior, but it is under Behavior, and then you look at all of the landing pages. So you just sort those by number of views or number of downloads or however you want to do that.

You can also sort by the amount of time people spend on those. And there’s a lot of different ways to look at that data, that will tell you how valuable each piece of content is that you own.

And what’s interesting is some of the ones that came up, in fact, all of the ones that came up, using this method, were at least three years old. Every piece of content that was in our top three was more than three years old.

John Williams:                            Wow.

Paula Williams:             Yeah.

John Williams:                            So, does that mean we’re getting worse at what we’re doing, or-

Paula Williams:             Well, and this is just views in 2019. So obviously some of these things are evergreen, they’re still valuable, even years after we do them.

John Williams:                            That’s interesting.

Paula Williams:             Some of them we’ve updated a little bit since then, because we know they’re popular, so we’ve touched them up. So we’re cheating a little bit. And some of them are just really popular timeless topics, and things that people search for on the Web.

They search differently on the Web than they do for a podcast, or are more likely to listen to those in order, so they’re more likely to listen to the current ones, those kinds of things.

John Williams:                            True.

The Digital Citizen – Why You Should Be One (or Hire One!)

Aviation Marketing Topics - Digital CitizenPaula Williams:             Okay. So first one is, Digital Citizens: Why and How You Want to Hire One or Be One. This is a 2011 article.

John Williams:                            Seriously?

Paula Williams:             I kid you not. So this is something that didn’t get a lot of attention when we first put it out there. And this year, it is one of our most popular, it’s actually our third place. So we’re doing these in reverse order, so that we can build the suspense, as we build up to number one.

John Williams:                            Okay.

Paula Williams:             Okay. But still, it was our number three article. And we wrote it, what is that, eight years ago?

John Williams:                            Yeah, depending on what’s nine.

Paula Williams:             Yeah. That’s crazy. But it’s not really about technology, it’s about culture, right?

John Williams:                            And content.

Paula Williams:             Yeah. It’s about how you need different people in your organization, and how they fit together. And it’s about some of the skills that you want to hire for, and how to find people who can provide those skills, and how you can work with those people. So that’s a timeless, no matter what the technology is, that’s always been a topic.

John:                            Yes.

Paula Williams:             Okay, and… Yeah?

John:                            That’s crazy. That’s a really old one.

Paula Williams:             I know. I said the reason that I didn’t show you this before is because I wanted everybody to see your shock and surprise that some of these items.

John Williams:                            Great.

Paula Williams:             Okay, so that’s, that was number three.

John Williams:                            We’ll talk about shocking and surprising video later.

Client Appreciation Events for Maximum Marketing Impact

Aviation Marketing Topics - Digital CitizenPaula Williams:             Right, exactly. Client Appreciation Events: How to Host a Client Appreciation Event for Maximum Marketing Impact. This is a perennially popular article, and this was our number two this year.

John Williams:                            Yeah, well… Yeah, but that wasn’t made in 2002.

Paula Williams:             2014.

John Williams:                            Really?

Paula Williams:             Yeah. Amazing, but events are events. People are people.

John Williams:                            Yup.

Paula Williams:             And nothing new has, is happening about that. And people still want to know. In fact, I looked this up myself, because I want to throw an event, and I want to remember all of that research, so we did, to put that article together. How do we make sure that this is a success? So yeah, I’m looking at my own articles.

I don’t know if, how that means I have a short memory, or whatever? But anyway, that’s an interesting one. And events are incredibly important to marketing, I think, especially in aviation.

John:                            Correct.

Paula Williams:             Because in retail or whatever, you can just do commercials and TV and radio and everything else. But in aviation we all want to meet each other. We all want to meet our clients. And there’s so much money and so much complexity changing hands, that people really want to shake hands and share a meal, or whatever, and get loaded.

John Williams:                            We’ve found that to be true.

What Is Aviation Marketing?

Aviation Marketing Topics - BasicsPaula Williams:             Yeah, absolutely. And the first most important was actually a current one from this year. What Is Aviation Marketing?

We decided to go back to the basics, and define some of the terms, and talk about what is different about aviation marketing, between our industry and the rest of the world.

John Williams:                            Yeah, we did. But that’s the top one?

Paula Williams:             Mm-hm (affirmative). That was number one on the website.

John Williams:                            Wow!

Paula Williams:             Yeah.

John Williams:                            That’s crazy.

Top Three Podcast Downloads of 2019

Aviation Marketing PodcastPaula Williams:             Cool. So those are articles on the website. What’s interesting about the podcast? Again, people like to listen chronologically or reverse chronologically, depending on how their player’s set up to podcasts. So a lot of these are more current. All of these are from this year. So I think that’s kind of interesting.

And so it just gives you a different window into all of that. Also, a lot of things that are really conducive to podcasts, are things that are spoken and things like that, that don’t have a lot of visual elements to them. So those are the ones that are popular. So a couple of these are surprising to me.

Our first, or our third most popular podcast, and remember, people are not even seeing this, they’re listening to it, is Three Flight Plans for Aviation Promo Videos. So if people are listening to a podcast about how to do a video. Is that ironic?

John Williams:                            But not watching it.

Top Three Podcast Downloads

Paula Williams:             No, they’re not watching it, they’re listening.

John:                            That’s crazy.

Paula Williams:             Yeah.

John Williams:                            But it works. Whatever works.

Paula Williams:             Exactly, exactly. So, no judgment.

John Williams:                            And then, so they watch it. Do they go back, and then, I mean, they listen to it. Do they go back and watch it later?

Paula Williams:             It did have a lot of views this video, but it was actually the third most popular of our audio downloads, so-

John Williams:                            Whatever works.

People Consume The Same Material in Multiple Formats

Paula Williams:             Yeah. Maybe they’re listening to it in their car, and then they go back later, and watch the video on how to do this. But that’s interesting. Second is Marketing for Consultants, Brokers and Service Providers.

John Williams:                            Oh, that’s relatively new.

Paula Williams:             Right, that is definitely this year.

John Williams:                            Yeah.

Paula Williams:             And very specific to a group of people. So we were wondering how that was going to play out, if our audience would feel excluded if they are not a consultant, if they happen to be a manufacturer of components or whatever.

But it was a very popular episode, so I guess that was cool. And it did have some information that’s good for everybody. And the first most popular, our Five Sentence Voicemail outline, which is a very audio friendly topic, right?

John Williams:                            Yes, exactly.

Paula Williams:             Okay, it’s also very how to, which tells me that we probably should be doing more how tos.

John Williams:                            Okay.

Paula Williams:             Okay. Since you’re doing the work, you go right ahead!

John Williams:                            That’s right.

Paula Williams:             Okay. And also, we really appreciate our audio listeners as well as our video watchers, as well as our readers on the website. We started out writing articles on the website.

So that’s kind of our bias. That’s kind of my bias, because I happen to be a reader. But obviously, there’s a lot of listeners and a lot of viewers that we really are very happy that you’re following us, and really happy that you’re getting value out of our materials as well.

So that’s audio, and then video onto promo video. And video has gotten a lot more popular, and our YouTube channel has gotten a lot more popular over the last year. So there’s a lot of things that we’re doing to make that happen.

Top Three Most-Watched Videos of 2019

But there’s also a lot of things culturally, I think, that are happening to make that happen. Google is favoring videos a lot, and if you put videos in your articles, it will often lead people to other videos. We put end screens in our videos, to lead people to our other videos, and so on. So this is some little tricks that you can use for video marketing that we’re doing, and that we can help you with, when you do that.

John Williams:                            And yes, we know there are other search engines. However, Google is got about 70% of the search traffic in this country, at least-

Paula Williams:             Ah, in the world, actually.

John Williams:                            In the world?

Paula Williams:             Yeah.

John Williams:                            Wow. Okay, so there’s a… That’s why I’m used to talking about Google, and not others.

Why is Video So Popular Now?

Paula Williams:             Bing and Yahoo and DuckDuckGo and all the other crazy things. The other thing is that, since Google owns YouTube, and since YouTube is a part of the alphabet family, it integrates really well with the Google My Business, all of the other Google properties. So that’s another good reason for that.

Our top three videos, weirdly, number three was our book club discussion on Nuts, the Southwest Airlines Herb Kelleher story. So a lot of people are looking that up, a lot of people are watching that and that one is old. Okay?

Another one was our Book Club discussion about Guerrilla Marketing. That one was from this year, and that was the one that we did with Mickey Gamonal.

John:                            Yeah.

Paula Williams:             So I’m sure a lot of his friends were contributing to that. A lot of young folks hopefully were appealing to them as well, in these new media and things, because that’s one of our ways of reaching out to new generations, and so on.

And How to Prepare for a Sales Call, which is a very old, probably needs to be updated, kind of embarrassing video, because we were using different technology at the time. So it’s a little bit grainy and Bitmap-y, if you’re used to the more HD-

John Williams:                            Right.

Paula Williams:             Videos on YouTube. Hopefully that’s not reflecting badly on us, if that’s our people’s first and last introduction.

John Williams:                            No, but not if it’s number one.

Paula Williams:             That’s true. Apparently a lot of people are finding it. So we’re going to have to update it and replace it.

John Williams:                            Oh. There you go.

Paula Williams:             There we go. Okay. So the interesting thing about all of this is that those were the topics. If you miss them, you can go back and watch them yourself.

But what’s interesting to us is, what should we do more of? So it was almost like you’re voting with your eyeballs, by either going to a Webpage, or downloading an audio, or watching a video.

You’re voting for the topics that you think are the most interesting. And that informs our editorial calendar for 2020. Right?

John Williams:                            Right.

Planning Your Own Content Calendar

Paula Williams:             Okay. Speaking of editorial calendars, this is how we’re planning it. We practice what we preach.

When we met on Monday, we did, went through our calendar worksheet, and, “Here are the things that we have planned, here are the things that we have planned as promotions, and here some of the editorial contests that we need to support that, and make that work for us.”

John Williams:                            And that was Part One of the meeting. Part Two was finances.

Paula Williams:             Part Two was finances, exactly. Actually, that was just a small part of our meeting, because we also did a lot of other stuff. But we do practice what we preach. And it becomes a regular part of our company. And what works for us is we promote to your clients, and so on. The other thing is to reuse, repurpose and recycle. You want to be ecologically friendly.

Reusing and Recycling contnet

                                   Actually, you don’t want to be ecologically friendly. This is not ecologically friendly, because this is not plastic reusables. But it is saving a lot of time when you can take one piece of content, and produce it in four different ways, and create materials from one recording session.

We go get a transcript out of it. We put it on our website, we take the video, we put it on YouTube, we create the audio, we host it on our podcast, and all of those things come from one sitting, right?

John:                            Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Paula Williams:             And so, it is a little bit of extra work, but incrementally, it is very little compared to the amount of mileage that we get from each of these things-

John:                            Exactly.

Paula Williams:             And the new sets of eyeballs at work, or earballs, or whatever, that we encounter, every time we produce a new piece of content, right?

John Williams:                            Sure.

Paula Williams:             Okay, cool. So if you’d like our printed calendar, there is a place to go get that.

If you search for Aviation Marketing calendar on Google, you’ll find it pretty easily, or you can find it on our website under the Tip Sheets. And we’d be happy to send that to you, if you left out a little form for us. So Goldstone, when it’s done.

John Williams:                            America needs the business semesters. Ziglar has still as good a quote today go today as it was back then.

Paula Williams:             Absolutely. Actually, the aviation industry needs your business, so if you’re not in the US, they need your business as well, right?

John Williams:                            Exactly.

Paula Williams:             Thank you for joining us, and we really appreciate you watching, listening, reading in 2019, and we hope you’ll stay with us in the New Year. Happy New Year!

John Williams:                            It’s Happy New Year, and have a great day!