Marketing and Media Strategy

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Understanding the different media available to a marketing professional is critical to ensuring the success of one's company. This is part two of a sample marketing analysis created by Ultius. It stresses the importance of effective utilization of all available platforms for marketing success, such as the Internet, social media, and print media.

Understanding marketing and media strategy

The Internet has become one of the most important and influential ways in which people gather their news on a daily basis. Since the advent and exponential gain in popularity of social media, Facebook and Twitter have had a profound impact n society. The people that utilize these forms of media have become accustomed to a world with instant updates and a constant flow of news information. This lifestyle change has been fully embraced by the airline companies. Since 2008, the transition from all paper to mostly e-tickets alone have accounted for at least 18 billion dollars of savings to the major airline companies alone (Negroni). Clearly, airlines have seen the advantage, in terms of money to be made and saved, of reaching out and embracing this form of technology when it comes to meeting customer needs and expectations.

Social media has made it so the individual customer also has the ability to interact with the company on a very unique and personalized basis. Individuals can subscribe to posts from companies on websites such as Facebook and Twitter and are able to get up to date information regarding aspects such as time delays, weather information, and even potential deals that exist through the airline company. This connection to the individual passenger also allows for the company to reach back out and make the client feel both wanted and appreciated.

Using social media to improve business relations

This idea is best summarized by the interactions between a particular customer, Peter J Cohen, and the airline company Turkish Airlines.

Mr. Cohen posted to the company’s Facebook profile that he wanted the plane he was flying on to be cooler as he was too warm. The company responded back almost immediately that they had heard his request and would do what they could to get him what he wanted. Several minutes later, Mr. Cohen wrote back that a flight attendant had conversed with him and that the two had reached an agreement to lower the temperature of the plane by 2 degrees Celsius (Nodes).

Social media has the potential to help businesses grow. What is basically shown through this form of media is that a company has the ability to immediately reach out to its clients and interact with them on a personal level. An important aspect of any company within the airline industry should, hence, be solidly built around the use of social media. This has been observed and acted upon by many companies within the field already, as 75% of airlines have plans to increase their budget on social media for the year of 2013 (Nodes). This aspect of marketing is especially important as the world gets more and more connected through Wi-Fi because more and more people will have constant access to the Internet and will be able to continually be connected to one another and, subsequently, connected to companies that provide social media services.

Email replaced snail mail

Another form of media that is addressed in a successful marketing campaign is through the use of emails. This form of marketing is quite similar to that of advertising within the printed world of magazines and newspapers, however it differs in one important aspect: customers are able to immediately act upon the viewed advertisement received via email. When someone receives an email offering new deals through a particular company, the customer can immediately visit the company’s website and see the deals and choose to act upon them, whereas in print media the client does not get that instance access. Whereby social media has the tendency of targeting the younger side of the potential client-base, emails are generally utilized by the slightly older side of the company’s customers and are more catered to them.

The advertisements might trade out the trending, hip look for something a bit more professional and easy to identify. For a company that is utilizing an email form of media as a marketing tool, it is important to remember one crucial fact about this form of media; the majority of users of email spend less than 1 minute viewing and reading an email from a specified non-important sender, so the message must be both concise and enticing to the potential client.

TV advertisement still thriving

One of the still dominant forms of media that every age group of potential clients is still constantly exposed to comes in the form of television. For every person that watches television, there are many different advertisements that each individual is exposed to. The importance of advertising in this form of media is to give a message that will resonate within the client’s mind so that he or she will remember the company through their advertisement. This can be done by providing a catchy phrase or having an entertaining commercial without being over the top so that the company only annoys the customer and turns their opinion of the company to childish and unprofessional. Budweiser excels at creating advertisements for television using this technique. For a company to implement a successful marketing campaign in this field, it is important to remember to get the message aired in an appropriate time and place.

Having the commercial air on a children’s network in the early part of the morning will not likely expose the company to an audience that will have any use for the services provided by the company, however airing the commercial on a major network during primetime is quite costly and hard to come by without the necessary connections and capital. A balance must be struck as to when and where to air the commercial to reach the optimal level of potential customers.

Print ads still in use

Finally, there is the classic form of media for advertising: the printed world. Marketing campaigns still are utilized in forms of printed media, as there are some that get the majority of their news through this media form. The audience of the printed media tends to be on the older end of the potential client base, and forms of advertising in this media form usually reflect that. Instead of being advertised as the most trending or even business accommodating, forms of marketing in this media form tend to be focused more upon customer service and a generally friendly atmosphere that the company creates for the client.

It is not uncommon to see the individuals depicted in these advertisements to appear to be the most happy and welcoming to their potential clients. The messages of these forms of advertisements also tend to be the most simplistic and straightforward based on comfort and leisure instead of pricing and speed of service. The successful marketing campaign uses this form of media to attracted the higher aged customers based upon the notion that the company will take care of their client and provide a comfortable service to them.

With any marketing campaign with the business world, it is important to analyze the use of resources that will be needed to enact a marketing campaign.

As Sabre Air Vision notes, “you need the right information at the right time to make smart business decisions,” (Sabre Air Solutions).

Learning to engage audiences

One of the most important uses of resources for a successful airline marketing campaign is getting the necessary feedback on the effectiveness of that marketing campaign. A company must be able to know if what they are attempting to do to entice new customers to utilize their services is working. If the company does not know how effective, or ineffective, their marketing campaign is, then they will have no way of measuring the success of that campaign and will not be able to allocate the necessary resources into or away from it.

It is important to be able to “track incremental revenue opportunity identification, problem market management and major event planning,” (Sabre Air Solutions).

The difference in amount of resources needed to run a successful marketing campaign is seen the in difference of cost between utilizing different forms of media. The cost of the television marketing is by far the most expensive. However, it definitely gets the most direct exposure of any form of advertising. The average setup cost for national TV ads is usually at least $50,000 and can be as expensive as three-quarters of a million dollars (Becket). In addition to this high setup cost, the cost to broadcast the ad can cost anywhere between $35,000 and 2 million dollars for the advertisement. Obviously this form of advertisement is the most expensive; however, it does give the best exposure, as clients cannot choose to not broadcast the ad once it is set to be aired. For a national magazine advertisement, the cost decreases when compared to the national TV ad but is still relatively high.

Costs of digital marketing

The setup cost is somewhere between only $1,500 - $20,000 and the cost to publish will vary from $3,000- $25,000 per full-page advertisement (Becket). Though much lower than the cost of a national TV ad, this form of marketing is still very costly and has limited exposure because it is seen only by those that are reading the particular magazine. The email campaign becomes a much cheaper form of marketing when compared to the first two.

The setup cost of a national email campaign is going to cost somewhere between $4,000- $10,000. However, there is no cost of media to be paid as sending out emails is free (Becket). The major drawback, as noted earlier, comes from the fact that those that receive the emails will note likely view the advertisement for very long as the average inbox is usually cluttered by many different advertisements on a daily basis. Pizza Hut's marketing strategy utilized a mixture of the two techniques, but specialist oon discovered email marketing was more effective.

A social media campaign will cost money as well, but like the email campaign is less than the national TV or magazine campaign, as it does not have a continuing fee added on after the extreme setup cost. The average cost for using social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook monthly for marketing is roughly $2,500 monthly (Content Factory). These costs can be further downgraded by hiring competent staffs that can run the social media campaign effectively and efficiently for the company.

The importance of a successful marketing campaign

The marketing campaigns and strategies for companies are some of the most important business decisions that are made for their continued growth and posterity. For an airline company, the most important aspects to address are who the marketing campaign will be targeting and how much of the company’s resources are willing to be spent on the marketing campaign. The answers to these questions will determine which type of media to choose to market within and how to shape the type of advertisements of the campaign. Of the four mentioned forms of media, each presents its own benefits for a certain age group of the potential customer base as well as the weaknesses of utilizing that form of media.

Regardless of which form of media a company should choose to advertise within, it is crucial that they address and adhere to all of the basic cornerstones of the Trust Triangle. It is through a built up trusting relationship that a company will be able to attract new business and hold customer loyalty through the marketing endeavors. There are many aspects of marketing that are important to address when designing a successful campaign, but it is always the most important to remember that a potential customer will be much more inclined to do business with the company that they feel cares the most about their own life and well being.

Works Cited

Becket, Xander. "The Cost of Advertising Nationally Broken Down by Medium." Webpage FX. Creative Commons Attribution, 08 May 2009. Web. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. http://www.webpagefx.com/blog/business-advice/the-cost-of-advertising-nationally-broken-down-by-medium/.

Content Factory, . "How Much Does Social Media Marketing Cost?." Content Factory. 06 Mar 2011: n. page. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. http://www.contentfac.com/how-much-does-social-media-marketing-cost/.

Negroni, Christine. "Airline's New Online Marketing Strategies." Executive Travel. Dec 2011: n. page. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. http://www.executivetravelmagazine.com/articles/airlines-new-online-marketing-strategies.

Nodes , Special. "Social media is dead- airline marketing in 2013 all about connected travelers and the real world." Tnooz: Talking Travel Tech. 28 Dec 2012: n. page. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. http://www.tnooz.com/2012/12/28/news/social-media-is-dead-airline-marketing-in-2013-all-about-connected-travellers-and-the-real-world/.

Sabre Air Solutions, . "Airline Marketing Planning Solution." 2011: n. page. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. http://www.sabreairlinesolutions.com/images/uploads/Sabre_AirVision_Marketing_And_Planning_Overview_FINAL.pdf.