Last fall a Florida State University undergrad named Milota K. Srkal published a thesis titled The Marketability of New Rules and Technologies in General Aviation.
The author himself points out that the paper is lacking for several reasons, including a limited sample size. However, he also notes that no one has ever done a similar analysis. With that in mind, it is certainly worth a quick read if you are marketing an airplane.
Here are a couple of highlights:
1. As the respondents got older, they would not be willing to pay a premium for the Whole Airplane Recovery System and the availability of this technology in a new aircraft would not make a difference with their decision making process for a purchase. (page 51)
2. The more knowledge that pilots generally have about [Glass Cockpit] technologies, the more they feel that Glass Cockpits greatly increase the safety of an aircraft, and they would be willing to pay a premium to purchase this technology. (page 52)
So what to do with this information? Whether your plane has a parachute or not, you can leverage it as a benefit with specific age demographics. Also, don’t rely on avionics manufacturers to promote the features of their products. If you’re using them in your plane, educate your potential customers accordingly.
Thanks to Milota for doing the research. If you ever update it, please let us know!
[tags]General Aviation, Aviation Marketing, Online Marketing, Light Sport Aircraft, SLSA, Sport Pilot[/tags]
February 16th, 2006
One of last year’s hottest business books was Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Leaders in the general aviation industry would be wise to order a copy. According to the authors, “red oceans” are crowded with competitors while “blue oceans” represent untapped market space with the opportunity for highly profitable growth. Among the strategies for leveraging “blue oceans” are the following:
- DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space.
- DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant.
- DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand.
I’ve written about this previously but it is worthwhile enough, in my opinion, to repeat: Women represent a blue ocean for the aviation industry. Only 5.8% of today’s private pilots are female. What’s more shocking is that the percentage hasn’t changed in 15 years. What’s going on here? Does it have to be this way? Are only 5.8% of women really interested in flying? I think not.
Consider the field of medicine. in 1970 only 7.6% of physicians in the United States were female. By 2003 that had steadily climbed to 25.8%. This is still seems low but, unlike the aviation industry, there has been consistent progress. The aviation industry needs to adjust it’s methods for going to market to reach women more effectively.
If the aviation industry could achieve what the medical field has done it could result in over 100,000 new pilots. At first glance that seems to good to be true. However, I think we’ve all become too complacent with the with the glut that the industry has been in since it peaked at 827,000 pilots in 1980.
Broadening the base of female pilots could be the shot in the arm that the industry needs. There have been several instances in the history of aviation where the number of pilots has doubled or even tripled in under 10 years. We need to think big here - let’s make it happen again!
So which company will capture this blue ocean? Cirrus currently leads the industry in sales - can they capture the female demographic? The majority of today’s male pilots learned how to fly in a Cessna - are they capable of training a new segment of women pilots? The sport pilot rule lowers the price for entry - can Flight Design CT, CubCrafters, or one of the other LSA designs gain the market? It just takes a commitment from an industry leader willing to think outside the box.
Sources used for this post:
Women in Aviation, International
AOPA
American Medical Association
[tags]General Aviation, Women in Aviation, Aviation Marketing, Marketing to Women, Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, AOPA, Cirrus, Cessna, Flight Design[/tags]
January 14th, 2006
Job well done to CubCrafters! Since investing in a top-notch designer, Pierre Kotze, the company has launched a new, beautiful, and feature rich website. View it at: http://www.cubcrafters.com.
A few things that really set it apart:
- Excellent use of typography - it really gives the feeling of a professional company and well-designed product.
- First class photography - hard not to get excited about flying one of their planes.
- The ability to watch your plane be built - nice use of Internet technology, webcams, etc…
- Online ordering and configuration - hard to imagine buying a $100,000 product online but the CubCrafter site design and copy instills confidence by portraying a rock-solid and open company.
A couple of minor things I’d consider changing:
- The navigation and design of the site is extremely consistent with one exception. When in either the Top Cub or Sport Cub sections of the site, the secondary navigation disappears forcing one to use the “Back” button to click on to the next page.
- Reversed out type (white type on a black background) can be difficult to read on-screen and can pose issues with printing in certain circumstances.
Overall this is one of the top sites in the industry today. Take note everyone!
[tags]CubCrafters, Light Sport Aircraft, Online Marketing, Aviation Marketing[/tags]
January 14th, 2006
Over the last few days I’ve heard several people say that 2006 is the make or break year for sport pilot. I was surfing around recently and ended up on the AOPA site dedicated to sport pilot. It hasn’t been updated in nearly seven months. This is significant considering the thoroughness of the AOPA web communications. Does this mean AOPA believes sport pilot will break?
[tags]AOPA, Sport Pilot, Light Sport Aircraft[/tags]
January 14th, 2006
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]
December 14th, 2005
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