Airlines all around the world understand the importance of internet marketing and they use their social media sites such as: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, to communicate with their customers and prospects.
With internet the marketing formula is getting more and more complex- Nataša Pantović
With internet, the marketing formula is getting more and more complex and exciting, involving the whole spectrum of the online community: the customers are encouraged to engage with one another, the influential prospects are stimulated to talk about the airlines, airlines’ marketing teams listen to online murmurs and re-act, sharing photos, videos, reviews, and helping the audience solve their service related problems instantly.
Airlines worldwide use the full range of internet marketing tools to expand their marketing spiral: a web-based advertising campaign attracts new customers; happy customers recommend the service and this leads to the new customers generation; and happy customers become repeat customers. Internet is full of web links that improve search engine rankings, and content that attracts new visitors and hopefully help them become new customers.
The travel audience is a marketer’s dream audience – it is very attentive, because travelling takes a lot of planning and people generally ask for recommendations when they book a flight or accommodation.
When spending hours travelling, they want to make sure that they are as comfortable as possible. And they love to search the internet.
Most of the major airlines provide search for flights, online check in and flight status, now also available within their Facebook pages, and make it easier for their customers to find the necessary information online.
If a video is done professionally, even a very boring subject like an in-flight safety video could cause a buzz. Delta Airlines’ safety video had 2,500,000 viewers and the US based news agency FoxNews posted: “The safety video generated such a buzz after being posted on the Atlanta-based airline’s corporate blog that admirers dubbed the 33-year-old Atlanta woman ‘Deltalina’, a combination of the airline’s name and Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, who they say she resembles.”
According to Twitter statistics, there are over 180 airlines using Twitter – Delta Airline leads the way with almost 64 tweets a day. When people are at the airport they spend time on Twitter commenting on what they are doing. If they are happy, they will tweet that and if they are unhappy, they will tweet that.
Twitter can be effectively used as a customer service tool. Airlines nowadays use their customer relationship skills to help their audience if they know that they need help. If the flight is delayed – they can message recommendations of where to eat or what to do at the airport.
In an attempt to engage the audience and offer an interesting online content, KLM has recently launched an online community that connects business people doing business in China and Africa. They have also launched an online community for India and Russia, connecting people travelling to the same destination; as well as an online community that connects people with the same lifestyles – they have launched a golf social networking community.
In 2010, Alert, a Maltese web design and development company, was entrusted to design and launch www.airmalta.com, the official website of the Maltese national airline.
Alert has designed its online strategy taking into consideration all the international web trends, starting from its brand conceptualisation, creation of the online identity, and web design and development that takes care of the full search engine optimisation of the website.
When this exercise was concluded, it did yield very interesting business results. Charles Cilia, general manager for sales and e-commerce, Air Malta revealed that: “The main objective of the Air Malta e-commerce web development was to make it easy for clients to finalise their travel arrangements online. This aim was very successfully achieved. In fact, the online revenue for the first six months of 2010 was 46 percent higher than the revenue before the new website launch.”
The development of the internet as a distribution channel has presented the legacy airlines with an interesting opportunity to take out intermediaries and sell their products and services directly online. Executing all the marketing activities within the internet online jungle is challenging and constantly evolving, but it presents the airlines with an amazing potential to directly communicate with most of its audience, segmenting them, targeting them, moving them to action.
www.alert.com.mt
Ms Pantović is a marketing consultant at Alert Communications, a local web development company.