Aerospace Marketing Plans

The Marketing Plan

A solid aerospace marketing plan is vital to the sales success of an organization. Without a plan, you won’t have a coordinated and consistent presence in the marketplace, resulting in a confused and ill-defined customer base. This, in turn, will result in weak sales.

On the other hand, a good marketing plan provides a solid foundation for sales growth. With our years of experience in aerospace marketing, TriLink can produce a complete and effective marketing plan. A marketing plan should cover at least the following:

Market Overview, Segments, Size and Drivers

You need to know where your customers are and what they want. Our longstanding involvement in the aerospace industry ensures that we can create a complete market overview based on comprehensive and thorough market research.

Competition and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)

You need to know all your competitors and how their products and services compare with yours. A thorough SWOT analysis is vital (we can help with that too with a SWOT coaching and/or training session).

Product Positioning

Once the SWOT is complete, we will be able to help you position your offering to maximize your market share. Positioning is heavily influenced by features/benefits, performance and price.

During the “cola wars” of the 1980’s, Pepsi claimed that their drink tasted better than Coke’s. Coke counter-claimed that theirs was more refreshing. If they had both claimed better taste, consumers would have concluded that one claim was untrue. Not knowing which was accurate, the consumer would have then believed neither company.

Channels to Market

Deciding on the best channels to market depends on a number of factors including your existing infrastructure and the buying habits of your customers. You can decide to sell direct or you can decide to sell through distribution. You can do both if you are very careful with your pricing model. It’s better to segment the market, say between commercial and government, civil and military or forward fit and retro-fit.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is a combination of traditional marketing (now called Outbound Marketing) and Inbound Marketing. Outbound Marketing involves going out with your message to reach customers where they live through advertising, direct mail/email, cold calls, trade shows, etc. Inbound Marketing includes optimized websites and social media to draw your customers to you as willing participants in a collaborative sales process.

Action Items

The action items listed need to be concise and measureable. In other words, it should be easy to determine the degree to which they have been completed at any given time.

Schedule

The schedule should also be clear so that it is easy to know what the deadline is for a given action item.

Budget

The budget should allow for some contingency so that you can take advantage of any unique opportunities that may arise during the budget cycle.

Sales Forecast

Last, but by no means least, the marketing plan should forecast the sales that are expected to result.

Other Marketing Support

TriLink can help by leading or supporting the execution of the following tasks:

• Brochure and Data Sheet Development
• Proposal Template Creation
• Specific RFP Response Generation
• Trade Show Presence Design and Implementation
• Presentation Template Design
• Press Release Writing and Distribution
• Advertising Plans
• Feature Article Writing
• Product Launch Planning