Plan for AOPA brand education through digital marketing, and the ability to gauge consumer interest so we can determine product viability in an affordable and accurate way.
Social media marketing – Since this product is not well developed, still in its infancy, our main objective is exploratory at this point. We want to talk to people, in particular our target market, and we want to get them interested and excited in our product which is solving a need that they have.
Therefore this is my first strategy, give my helpers a few pages of approved content, and have them spend time online hanging out where hobby pilots hang out, and on AOPA’s social platforms, having discussions, asking questions, and postulation that AOPA has this great mobile app idea and would they like it, use it, pay for it, and refer it.
Display marketing – this would be my second line since it would build much-needed brand awareness through specific target marketing to our EXACT demographics and psychographics. We can get seen where our pilots are looking at other flying related things and they will be interested and click on our display adds that will take them to our launch page campaign, basically asking them to fill in a survey, and rewarding them with a free month of the AOPA membership for doing the survey, and an additional month free for any referrals up to 6 months maximum. This could be an extremely cost-effective way to start building brand loyalty, awareness, and asking people that we want, questions about our mobile app.
Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing – I would use this primarily on our launch page related to our campaign, but would give the web designer some paid hours up to a limit to do basic SEO on the AOPA website. It is very important for a flying agency to have a trustworthy site, so adding backlinks to respected aviation industries, and perhaps even tourism in the areas their airfields are in would also allow them to create a larger more trustworthy and relevant, and usable site for their pilots (particularly the right-seat pilot with the hotels, car rentals, top things to do and see in the town, and restaurants/clubs/bars)
Mobile marketing – Since we are launching a mobile app, this should be top of mind moving forward. I would not really be advertising on here yet, but I would start developing a strategy for my marketing plan with mobile users. I would spend the money on a nice responsive launch page/site and a survey that they could do on their phone, and also an easy link to refer up to 6 people to take it.. just in case our AOPA members were already out of town traveling and on their phones and had a few min to interact with our brand education campaign
Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing – I would save this for last, as we are not focused on turning a profit, or making sales at this point, and probably to be honest not do it at all yet. I would use the money on display marketing instead.