BE A PILOT — huge success and big opportunity
December 14th, 2005
Aero-news.net recently published a story about the success of the BE A PILOT program. The story included some very interesting statistics. Specifically, the program’s television campaign resulted in 21,300 new prospects, which exceeded the annual goal of the program. Congratulations to BE A PILOT!
This success was achieved at an acquisition cost of $30.05 each. Now that the Internet is a well-established marketing medium, could the acquisition cost be lowered leveraging online tactics?
Let’s say a Google AdWords campaign drives traffic to the www.beapilot.com website at a cost of $0.10 per click. A $500,000 buy would result in 5 million visitors to the site. If the site were compelling enough to generate just a 2% conversion rate, it would result in 100,000 new prospects. Nearly 5 times more than the television campaign for a lower spend!
Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. The scenario above is using conservative numbers. The Google AdWords keyword phrase “learn to fly” is currently selling for just $0.04 per click - not $0.10. By investing in an optimized website the conversion rate could easily rise above the industry standard to 4% or higher. At these rates, the media cost per acquisition cost would lower to just $1.00. Assuming keyword prices will rise dramatically over the coming months, and factoring in the creation and management of the program, the cost would still be nearly 70% cheaper than a traditional offline campaign. That’s big money!
The last 12 months has witnessed a dramatic shift away from television advertising in favor online marketing programs because of scenarios exactly like this. Television is a mass medium and, as a result, is inherently inefficient. Online advertising programs allow specific niche audiences to be reached much more effectively. The BE A PILOT program, and the sport aviation industry in general, would benefit greatly by adopting some of these new online strategies.
[tags]BE A PILOT, Cost per Acquisition, Online Marketing, Online Lead Generation, Google Adwords, Aviation Marketing, Aero-News[/tags]
Entry Filed under: aviation marketing, online marketing
2 Comments Add your own
1. Aaron Cooper | December 21st, 2005 at 1:33 pm
On a related note, the opening presentation at the 2005 Minnesota Interactive Marketing Associate annual summit, offered by Forrester, eluded to upside-down ad spending. The presenter offered information which suggested that companies still wrongly consider television ads to be paramount, therefore spending much more via that channel than on e-marketing. This post expands on the topic and offers an insightful, real-world scenario. Hopefully companies will increase their consideration of RSS, e-mail and other online channels within their marketing mix.
Thank you – from a fellow interactive marketing enthusiast and realist.
2. JFS | December 23rd, 2005 at 11:18 am
Nice post.
In all reality, and depending on the industry, in order to survive companies will have to rely less on traditonal media and more on sound interactive marketing strategies. It is as simple and cliche as this… a television commercial provides a superficial window into who you are and what you do, and it talks AT a non-specific audience. An intelligent and well planned interactive marketing strategy provides meaningful information, creates the opportunity for dialogue with your customers, and allows you to be very strategic about the audiences you approach with your messaging. Oh yeah, and it is much more efficient and cost effective too…
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