Removing The Middle Man

Prior to the airline industry moving into digital media marketing, they relied on the third-party agent to help drive customers to airline booking sites. Third-party bookers ranged from large websites to stay at home moms working as independent travel agents.

The number of third-party bookers has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Commercials promising the lowest rate and the option to add a hotel and car rental to their itinerary inundate travelers. Third-party booking agents offer the opportunity to bundle travel needs into one transaction. Often this bundle effect reduces the consumer's ability to choose a brand with whom they are familiar and loyal. Instead, the third-party will steer the customer to the lowest initial price, opting for the upsell at a later time. To do this, the third-party booking agent will present a low-cost ticket to entice an immediate booking. The customer has the option to pay for the additional cost for seat selection and baggage shortly before the date of departure. While third-party booking agents fill seats, they neglect the value of brand loyalty and brand building.

These sites thrive on the upsell. As such, advertising moved from the experience of flying with a specific airline to a Frankenstein mash-up of multiple airline carriers to get the best price for a trip all the while, pushing customers toward credit cards linked to their sites, hotel, and rental car add-ons.
Third-party booking agents fill a need for consumers solely focused on monetary cost. However, a majority of consumers are willing to delay the gratification of saving a dollar up front for long term rewards if they can forecast a payoff.Third-party booking agents fill a need for consumers solely focused on monetary cost. However, a majority of consumers are willing to delay the gratification of saving a dollar up front for long term rewards if they can forecast a payoff.

Consumer Trends

Today's travelers are looking for a personalized and unique experience they can share via social media.

Savvy marketers understand the aspect of fear of missing out that drives consumers to spend more to gain that experience. Airlines are catching on to these consumer trends and are offering rewards programs that yield those unique experiences or financial savings in exchange for loyalty. Customers and loyalty members, in turn, share these unique experiences on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook. Capturing and translating likes and shares into data allows airlines to determine what perks are working well for them regarding the customer experience and customer satisfaction that would be lost otherwise. When a customer genuinely shares a positive experience via social media, the reach is vast and often unmeasurable.

Communicating In The Digital Age

The airline industry has foraged into the digital age with new marketing techniques that include direct to consumer advertising, social media buying, and search engine optimization.

These methods allow airlines to advertise without a sales tone. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google collect data based on the consumer's likes, clicks, searches, online purchases, and social media connections.

Why Does It Work?

The average person with an internet connection will spend more than 2 hours on social and messaging platforms daily, according to Digital Information World.

Hours spent consuming digital media are spread throughout the day. The segmentation of time spent using social media allows for multiple opportunities to market to consumers directly. Full funnel digital marketing incorporates ads, clicks, likes, and emails to optimize marketing for individuals. Full funnel marketing provides the opportunity to create campaigns that nurture customers from the initial contact with the airline to the point of purchase and further reinforce their purchase with follow up communications. These points of contact beyond purchase build brand loyalty for airline carriers. The balance of a successful full funnel strategy is difficult to maintain without expertise. Forward Media has the media buying, analytics, and content management expertise to craft the perfectly balanced full funnel marketing strategy for your airline.

Connecting Trust And Travel

As the popularity of digital marketing grows, consumers utilize social media for more than cute cat videos.

A recent Pew Research study found, more than forty percent of Social media users, rely on social media as their primary source of news. These social media users find social media content to be trustworthy and reliable. An unshakeable level of trust and the more than 80 times a day people touch their phones, translates to dollars and cents.

Each time a consumer connects with social media, there is an opportunity to share what makes an airline carrier different and more valuable than the next. Social media consumers look to craft an image. They carefully curate photographs and content to project the idea of a lifestyle. A professional digital marketing firm such as Foward Media will customize a targeted plan to attract the correct audience and customer to fit the airline's brand. Potential customers will determine if they are the right customer for the airline and book directly with the airline avoiding the middle man.

Messaging Is Key

Critical components of marketing remain.

The adage of knowing your audience is more critical than ever. The average attention span of an adult is eight seconds. Adults spend, on average, eight seconds to determine if something is worth investing their time. Once they have their attention, information must be targeted to the consumer's specific needs, whether it is the lowest rate, comfort during the travel or reliability of the airline. Sending the right message to the wrong people is just as ineffective as not sending a message at all. The advantage of digital marketing is the ability to harvest details about potential consumers without interrupting their natural usage of digital platforms.

Well placed banners, surveys, and ads embed brand recognition subconsciously. Determining how to spend digital media buying dollars can be difficult. Experienced digital marketing teams like Forward Media, use data analytics to determine where and when to spend marketing dollars for the best return on investment. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow for direct to consumer advertising and have the ability to encourage a direct response from the consumer. Airlines can post flash sales or the opportunity to experience upgrades and improvements to airline carriers. These posts and banners lead to direct booking on airline websites.

Reaching Further Than A Phone

Digital marketing is not limited to, social media.

Rating trends show more consumers are cutting the cord and opting to piece their television entertainment together across streaming services, like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. Consumers that prefer streaming services feel they can tailor content to their likes and dislikes. The tailoring of content means streaming services are suited to use targeted performance marketing directed toward specific viewers based on viewing habits that are indicative of various socioeconomic and educational status. The use of keywords in advertising on these platforms lead to higher conversion rates from initial contact to direct booking.

Trust The Professionals

Professional digital marketers understand the value of search engine optimization and can unlock the hidden potential to drive traffic to your direct booking site by linking words and phrases consumers search for via the internet.

For example, if a consumer initiates a search for the words cabin space or legroom, the proper use of SEO will push the airline's site to that consumer and highlight phrases regarding legroom and cabin space. Search responses give the consumer the feeling that they are doing their due diligence and comparison shopping in the most effective way. Forward Media has the experience and expertise to craft a specific social media and digital media marketing plan to drive a significant increase in direct bookings for airlines.

A Strong Focus on Using Multiple Digital Media Channels

One thing that's apparent with firms that are having success with digital marketing is the fact that they're focusing on multiple digital media channels.

It's very common for firms to focus on one aspect of digital marketing such as social media or SEO. But very few are utilizing all of the channels that are available to them. This is what is causing them to fall behind their competitors.

A full digital marketing strategy may include ads on third party review sites, marketing on video sites like YouTube, using pay per click advertising platforms like Google and Bing, propagating relevant content to multiple channels, managing regular email marketing campaigns, and more. Committing to a full scale digital marketing strategy results in a strong online presence, increase in brand equity, and multiple sources of leads.

It Often Starts with Search Engine Marketing via SEO

Targeting the right audiences in the search engines is often the first step in building a digital marketing campaign.

There are two main reasons why this is the case. First, professional services firms can target the exact search terms that their target audiences are looking for in Google. As a result, a successful SEO campaign can result in a channel that continuously generates high quality leads for the firm.

Second, most people often start with the search engines to find information relevant to their interests or problems. As a result, they tend to trust the top results in the search engines without giving it much though. Getting the company website to the top rankings means that firms will be able to leverage the trust and credibility the users place on the search results. Getting multiple top positions also translates into increased visibility and branding.

Adding Pay Per Click to the Bigger Search Engine Marketing Strategy

It's important to mention that SEO does come with its own list of challenges.

It can take several months for a campaign to start generating results and changing algorithms can affect rankings. This means that firms need to treat SEO as an ongoing strategy they need to manage and grow. So in order to supplement their search engine marketing strategy, many professional services firms also opt to use pay per click (PPC) advertising as well.

Both Google and Bing have their own PPC ad platforms. As the name suggests, pay per click advertising is an ad format that charges advertisers on a click basis when users click on their ads. These ads are placed on the top results of the search engines as well as on the pages of many partner sites. It may seem redundant to run both a SEO and PPC campaign but many firms choose to do both because it increases the chances of their prospects clicking onto their site.

Using Social Media to Engage Large Audiences, Build Relationships, and Retain Customers

Social media has also become an important channel for many firms as well.

While social media is often seen as a channel that doesn't work for B2B companies, it can still be an effective channel if you target the right audience and your marketing campaigns are executed properly. It's also important to make sure that the right social media platforms are being used.

For example, Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter works better for B2B companies than Instagram and Pinterst. Legal firms can use Facebook to appeal to personal injury clients while using LinkedIN to try to reach their professional clientele. Consulting firms can share valuable content on Twitter and LinkedIN in order to attract businesses that can use their services.

The whole point of social media is to reach audiences with your content. And by continuing to deliver great content, you will to build engaged followers and strong relationships. It also serves as an additional channel you can use (other than email) to engage existing clients so that they come back for repeat business.

Another important thing you shouldn't overlook with social media is the opportunity to network with other businesses. LinkedIN is a great platform to start a conversation with related firms, companies, and working professionals that can help further your business goals.

Expanding Reach with Social Ads and Display Advertising

Professional services firms are also investing into social ad campaigns to increase their reach and target their best prospects.

Every major social media company has an advertising platform from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIN, to Pinterest. The best part about advertising on these platforms is the fact that they offer very advanced targeting options to target the most qualified prospects.

This allows firms to create ad campaigns that generate high quality leads for a relatively low ad spend. These ad campaigns are far more cost effective than traditional media channels like direct mail, radio, newspapers, and TV. In addition, you also get in-depth analytics on the performance of your ads. This allows you to easily optimize them and get an even better return on your ad spend.

Some firms expand their campaigns to programmatic advertising platforms and various display advertising channels. One example is the native ad platform called Yahoo Gemini. It allows advertisers to run small ads on publishing sites that land on the advertiser's advertorials. Another good platform is Media.net, which allows you to run display ads, mobile ads, and targeted local ads.

These ad platforms serve ads similarly to the classic direct response newspaper classified ads format. However, you get improved audience targeting options, better control over your budget, and the ability to reach a mass audience.

A New Level of Connection with YouTube

YouTube is the second most trafficked site in the world.

It makes perfect sense to start publishing content on the platform, especially when so many people go on the video site to look for videos related to their interests and problems. YouTube gives firms the ability to connect with their audience on a whole new level. They can communicate as they would in a normal face to face interaction.

And because YouTube is also a social media platform, users can leave comments, share your videos, and talk to you in real time via the live streaming feature. This means that firms can conduct webinars, run Q&A sessions, or do a one on one consultation. Having a real person behind the firm also helps increase trust and credibility. It leaves a lasting personal impression to prospects that are searching for services.

YouTube also has an advertising platform as well. Many B2B companies are doing quite well with YouTube video advertising. They're using it to grow their YouTube channels as well as acquire high quality leads.

Digital Marketing is Effective Because It Can Be Data Driven

The big advantage that digital marketing offers professional services firms is the fact that everything can be measured.

This includes clickthrough rates for ads, lead conversion rates, click to call rates, bounce rates, navigation path, and more. Firms use this data to build and scale their campaigns on a performance marketing basis.

There is no guess work involved in their campaigns. Firms are using advanced data analytics to dig deep into the behavior of their prospects and clients. This results in campaigns that are optimized from the inception of the leads all the way down to the point where the leads become clients. The level of precision allows firms to scale into larger digital media buying strategies.

A big part of what enables firms to get this level of data is the usage of advanced marketing automation/CRM platforms. Firms look for certain KPIs to assess digital marketing campaigns and make the necessary adjustments very quickly. The advanced marketing automation/CRM platforms also allow them to create follow up campaigns that use behavioral metrics, hyper personalization, and even machine learning to maximize conversion rates.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that professional services firms that are committing to comprehensive digital marketing strategy are growing at a rapid rate and outpacing their competitors.

Forward Media has helped many professional service firms strategize and implement full funnel digital media campaigns. We've served many industries including accounting, legal, consulting, and investing.

Let us help you grow your business with digital marketing. Our focus is on building multi-channel digital marketing campaigns with an emphasis on ROI. We have experience with all the major channels from search, pay per click, social media, display, programmatic, mobile, video, and more.

Call us today at (number) to schedule a free consultation.

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