Looking good isn't good enough. All flash and no function is a bad combo! Make sure your website looks good, but functions even better.

I just got a call from an aviation parts distributor unhappy with their website.

They spent quite a bit of money redesigning the site, but had not noticed an appreciable increase in traffic or inquiries. Even worse, when the company president went to show a customer the website on his iPad, the only thing that came up was a blank rectangle.

“On the laptop, the website certainly looked great!” commented the president. I agreed the site was well-done – nice graphics, animation, and photography, but unfortunately, it was created in Flash, which as you may know, is not supported by Apple’s iPhone or iPad. (More about Flash later.)

This particular company’s website was a delight to look at. The whole focus was to make a dazzling impression at first glance, but just like a Lamborghini may look great in your garage, it’s not the ideal car for stop-and-go commuting.

Function Over Beauty:  Websites Need to do More than Just Look Good

Your website should be built only after a comprehensive audit and analysis has been done. There should be clear objectives of what you want your website to accomplish and how it should do it.

Some basic considerations are:

• Attracting visitors. This may include search engine optimization, advertising, social media, email marketing, etc.
• Deliver a compelling sales message. How are you different or better than your competitors and why they should buy from you?
• Answer frequently asked questions. Information that provides clear answers to likely questions about your products or services.
• Establish credibility. Information, sources, media, and testimonials that establish your credentials, authority and reliability of your business, products, or services.
• Ability to collect information. A means to collect basic contact information from potential customers – a free newsletter, report, or some other incentive to provide contact information.

Additional features for your website:

• E-commerce capability. Provide an easy and intuitive way for customers to purchase products or services.
• Customer service. Provide ways for existing customers, for instructions, answers to questions, a forum, support, etc.
• Reasons for customers to keep coming back. Provide additional information of interest to your customers, a blog with comments, a referral or incentive program, or another means of staying connected after the sale.

Once you have the basics done, you can work on the design. Trade the dazzling and stunning for a website that works.

See Paula Williams’ post about websites that don’t sell

Steve Jobs vs Adobe’s Flash

Steve Jobs took a big gamble by when he chose to not support Adobe’s Flash technology.

“Flash is a spaghetti-ball piece of technology that has lousy performance and really bad security problems,” Jobs said, according to biographer Walter Isaacson.

Steve Jobs was right.

Under Jobs, the iPhone became the industry’s leading smartphone and the iPad emerged to virtually dominate the tablet market. While more phones run Google’s Android software (many of them promoting their Flash compatibility), no products captured the public’s imagination and attention, quite like the iPhone.

So when Jobs blasted Adobe’s Flash technology, people listened. He called it “buggy,” a battery hog, and a product created by lazy developers.

“Allowing Flash to be ported across platforms means things get dumbed down to the lowest common denominator,” Jobs said, according to Isaacson. “We spend lots of effort to make our platform better and the developer doesn’t get any benefit if Adobe only works with functions that every platform has.”

Although Jobs did not live to see it, he was vindicated in his assessment as Adobe announced in November following his death, that Adobe will abandoned its Flash initiative for mobile devices.

Apple put its support behind HTML5 as the preferred web platform to provide multimedia experience on smartphones and tablets, insisting it provides the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. Apple’s support is a big reason why HTML5 now universally supported on most major mobile devices.

Steve Jobs was confident in his decision then, and vindicated in his decision not to support the ubiquitous Adobe Flash. Now the rest of us mere technological mortals know full well, Jobs was right. And as always, his goal was function and design, and not forfeit one for the other.

A key ingredient in growing your aviation business is developing a strategic marketing plan.

Step 3, Do you have a plan, Stan?

Developing a strategic marketing plan for your aviation business is one of the most important steps a company takes to reach business goals and attain long-term growth and success, yet it is many times ignored.

An effective marketing plan supports a company’s overall business goals and objectives, with detailed marketing strategies and tactics answering the essential questions of Who? Why? What? Where? When? How? and How Much?

Who? Who is the “situation analysis” of your specific marketplace, including company background, products and/or services and the company’s mission. This also identifies key prospects by distinct market segments (Who are they? How many? Where are they located? What are their needs and values? What are their buying motives? etc.) Who also addresses marketplace issues such as: Who are your competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your company? What trends, issues and opportunities exist in the marketplace, and what strategic options are available in which to benefit from them.

Why? Why focuses on your company’s specific goals and objectives, and what role marketing will play in achieving them. The best goals are S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, with a Timeline for achieving them.)

What? What is the “game plan” through which marketing objectives are achieved. This determines the best marketing strategies to be used. The key aspect here is company positioning: the key benefit or promise your firm delivers; how your company is currently perceived by customers, and how it should be perceived; and how your company differentiates itself from competitors. It also forms the basis of the creative sales message that will be the foundation of your marketing.

When? When is the marketing timeline: the chronology and deadlines for meeting each task, by what date, and by whom.

How? How is the actual implementation or action plan. It specifies which marketing tools, tactics and media to use, along with timing and weight. This is where most creative work is done: advertising created, news releases distributed, brochures developed, trade shows attended, digital media created, etc.

How Much? How much refers to the budget that is necessary to fully implement your market program, and how to best allocate funds for each tactic.

10 Benefits of a strategic marketing plan:

1. Encourages a thorough review of all factors that impact success for your business, and brings to light

2. opportunities and pitfalls often overlooked by “winging it.”

3. Provides a powerful direction and long-range view to minimize impulsive and costly decisions.

4. Stimulates optimum use of marketing budget and re­sources.

5. Provides an accurate market-driven foundation on which to build operating plans.

6. Builds consensus and support with internal staff and departments.

7. Fosters coordination and consolidation of efforts; maximizes efficiency and effectiveness.

8. Empowers team members to take action appropriate and consistent with overall company goals.

9. Facilitates an objective evaluation of past actions and results; fosters increased utilization of strengths, avoids repetition of mistakes, and indicates where improvement is necessary.

10. Clearly delineates goals, facilitates measurement, course corrections when necessary, and recognition of superior performance.

SEO lets your business get found!

Building or revamping a website can be an arduous task, as there are many aspects to address: finding a designer, choosing designs, colors, functionality, hosting options, creating content, hiring someone to write content, program, etc. Often search engine optimization is last on the list, if on that must-do list at all.

Make Search Engine Optimization a Priority

While you’re focused on getting your website up and running, don’t let SEO become a rainy-day task to be put off until later. Later may never come, and you will soon wonder why people are not visiting your new and improved site.

If an objective of your website is to drive traffic from search engines, meaning a search on Google, Yahoo, Ask or Bing culminates with your website high on the list of results, then SEO must be a mandatory part of your initial planning.

It is easy to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing a decent website, but what will it matter if no one can find you? Regardless of how fabulous and functional your new site is, the effort will be futile if search engines cannot index your website.

What is Indexing?

Search engines develop automated programs, called robots or spiders that crawl the web searching for content. These automated programs follow links from one web page or website to another, continuously seeking new content. When new material is discovered, the programs index, or save, all information found. Then, when a prospective customer types words or phrases into a search engine, the matching information saved is reported in the results page.

Your overriding goal should be to have your website appear first and foremost in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) the person sees on their browser.

How high your website appears in the search results depends on how relevant your website’s information is to algorithms and programming factors used to rank the comparable importance of your website within the web universe. That rank is impacted by as many as a hundred factors that search engines keep top-secret. It’d be easier obtaining the Coke recipe than cracking the search engine algorithms and programming.

7 Pitfalls to Avoid When Optimizing Your Website:

1. Hiring a writer who doesn’t understand SEO. Content is king. If your content doesn’t support the search terms that drive traffic to your site, you’ll end up having to rewrite the text later, costing more time and money.
2. Hiring a web designer who only works in Flash. Search engines cannot index content of Flash sites, regardless of how fancy, flashy and innovative they appear. This is a major disadvantage, and will probably result in your complete site being recoded in search engine friendly HTML.
3. Hiring a programmer who uses Ajax or other code language that search engines can’t read and don’t recognize.
4. Not including basic page titles, descriptions and keywords in your websites meta-tags. This is SEO 101, but you’d be amazed how many websites don’t incorporate this key information.
5. Going the do-it-yourself route and using free templates offered by your hosting service to build your website. Many times these use frame architecture, which again search engines can’t read.
6. If you’re hiring a SEO firm, check them out.  Get someone reputable with proven results.
7. As mentioned in a previous SEO blog tip, stay away from SEO firms that promise results that seem too good to be true. They may be using use “Black Hat” SEO methods that may deliver short-term results, but cost you more in the long-run.

Beware of SEO firms making big promises

I am amazed at the vast number of emails I get from SEO companies promising to get my aviation marketing website on page 1 of Google. These firms must not be doing their homework because my website is already on page 1.

Many times , these so called SEO experts who spam your inbox are snake-oil salesmen reincarnated, using unethical techniques to drive up search rankings. If you’re a novice to search engine optimization, you may be tempted to contact one of these firms – especially those who offer an enticing ploy of not charging until they achieve a target search objective. The problem is that in search engine optimization there is the right way (“White Hat” methods) to achieve good search rankings, and the wrong way (“Black Hat” methods).

Black Hat Methods Can Get You Blacklisted

SEO firms that employ “black hat” methods such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaked and doorway pages, link farming, and blog spamming, can indeed improve your search rankings short-term, but these techniques violate search engine terms of service, putting your website at risk of being banned. Search algorithms identify these SEO tricks and will eventually blacklist your site from future searches, keeping potential customers from being able to find you. It happens every day, and quite often business don’t even realize it until much later.

More money to reinstate your site’s SEO status and integrity

One day your aviation business website appears on page 1 of Google and you happily pay the charlatan’s SEO fee; the next day, your website has been “blacklisted” and doesn’t appear on any search engine. Now that great deal is going to cost you more money, time and resources to correct the damage done.

The first clue a SEO firm may be unscrupulous is the fact they promote themselves via unsolicited emails; if they market their own company by using unethical spam techniques, how ethical will they be in their SEO practices to promote your aviation company? Not very.

In choosing a search engine optimization firm, you want a firm who has a proven track record of results and satisfied customers. It’s always a good idea to check a firm’s background and ask for references.

Avinash Kaushik

Social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) is in vogue among connected consumers and many companies are hoping to capitalize on this marketing avenue to promote their business. I was curious to know how effective (or not) social media has been for other marketing aviation professionals — are they truly walking the walk, rather than talking (tweeting) the talk — I recently posted the above quote on LinkedIn to learn what experiences my colleagues have had using Social Media.

Troy B. reported, “Frankly, we’re loving it. . . When I reach someone who buys an airline ticket, parks in on-airport parking, purchases food, beverages and a magazine, brags about our WiFi and speedy screening lines, and plans to do it again soon — all based on info I’ve tweeted — I start to like the results.”

However, some are not 100% confident in this colleague’s social media experience.

“… there are a great many people who have learned the hard way that the medium is far less benign that was first assumed,” said Ronald K. “A lesson of both teenage sex and social media is that both are best done with adequate protection in place.”

I agree social media can often be impulsive, not to be taken lightly with its implications, and often times regrettable, not unlike teen sex.

And also concede that as a customer service tool, social media may well be worth the time and effort, especially for brand/image sensitive businesses. However, many of my own clients are in B2B space, and I hesitate to recommend Facebook or Twitter as a marketing tool because it is hard to quantify its effectiveness. I know from experience placing an ad for these clients will make the phones ring, and public relations will build awareness.

Steve E. said, “If you compare dollar-to-dollar spending, I’ll take social media over standard media any day as the immediate discussion that ensues is direct and instant and something that far exceeds anything standard advertising has to offer.”

But how well will social media generate new businesses as compared to traditional media is the question I need answered before recommending social media to my clients.

Allow me this hypothetical:

Using traditional marketing tools, say I run a 6-month, $10,000 advertising campaign for a client in a trade publication reaching their target audience. Assume this campaign generates 100 leads and the client closes 10. The cost per new customer acquisition is $1,000.

Alternatively, the client contracts to develop and monitor a social media program. We spend on average one hour a day building their network, making posts, responding to queries and, at the end of six months, the program has also yielded 10 sales. Assuming $100 per hour is charged (social media needs to be monitored by qualified staff, thus a higher per hour fee), then the cost to the client is $13,000! (5 hrs/week over 26 weeks = 130 hours x $100/hour). This is significantly higher than traditional advertising.

Granted, one can argue with my numbers in my hypothetical example, but to do social media effectively, you have to commit to high level of time management, and you also need to highly capable people managing your social media programs (otherwise more harm than good may be generated). With these facts in mind, social media may not be the holy grail of marketing as many proponents suggest.

Social media has a definite role in marketing, such as customer service and company announcements. But as an effective sales generating tool, I remain skeptical. I continue to encourage my clients to wait before they act impulsively and regret it.

Much like I advise the teenagers in my life.