AMHF 0056 – Inside the Insider Circle for Aviation Professionals

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John and I give a “guided tour” of the Insider Circle!

 

Transcript  – Inside the Insider Circle

 

Paula Williams: Welcome to aviation marketing Hangar Flying Episode 56. Today, we’re going to talk about what is inside the insider’s circle?

John Williams: [LAUGH] All right.

Paula Williams: So I’m Paula Williams.

John Williams: And I’m John Williams.

Paula Williams: And we are ABCI. And ABCI’s mission is?

John Williams: To help all you folks out there in aviation world help you sell more stuff and products and services. It’s early in the morning.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] You going to try that again?

John Williams: No, that’s okay.

Paula Williams: Okay, cool. All right, so, we have a hashtag, #AvGeekMarketing, AvGeekMarketing.

And we do reply to every tweet or every comment or every whatever [LAUGH]. We do like it to, we do like to hear what you guys have to say and what questions you have and so on. So, let us know. And that can be Twitter, Facebook, tool of your choice, right?

John Williams: So, you talking to the insiders, or you talking to everybody in the whole world?

Paula Williams: Everybody in the whole world. We actually respond to that hashtag from anybody.

John Williams: Okay.

Paula Williams: Okay? All right, so what does this pin mean? You may have seen this running around NBAA and other places.

There are very few people in the world that wear this pin.

John Williams: I would say less than 1%. [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Less than 1% [LAUGH] of the people in the world. Actually, less than 1% of the population of NBAA, and very possibly, I really don’t know what percentage it would be.

But anyway, a very small number of very special people get to witness him. So, what does it mean? And what is the insider’s circle?

John Williams: I think, maybe, you’re going to tell us.

Paula Williams: Maybe, okay, well, the insider’s circle is our tribe of current clients. And we’re lucky enough to work with people who care about the aviation industry and about each other.

So, we’ve provided a set of resources to help our insiders help themselves and help each other. And also, to be able to recognize each other when they see them, right?

John Williams: Uh-huh.

Paula Williams: Okay, so, that’s the purpose of the pin. So, the insiders circle mission is to help aviation inside industry professionals achieve success by selling more of their products and services, and to become the leader of their respective niche or specialties.

So, whether that’s charter, or flight schools, or software, or whatever that is. We want them to, we want to do everything we can to help them be the best one in that corner of the aviation industry, right?

John Williams: Absolutely.

Paula Williams: All right. So, the Insiders Circle is not for everybody.

In fact ,we anticipate that only 1% of the sales and marketing professionals in the industry will ever be part of this group. We’re very particular about who we get to work with. We are lucky enough to be in a situation where we get to choose our clients, and our clients choose us.

We tend to attract people who like the collaboration, and who like the camaraderie, and who like each other.

John Williams: And don’t like Madison Avenue techniques.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Right, exactly. So, it works really well for everyone, I think. So, part of what we do is we try to manage the fire hose of information, there’s way too much information about sales and marketing on the web.

A lot of it is good, some of it is garbage. Some of it will do you more harm than good. So, what we try to do filter that through each other, talk about the different books that are on the market. We talk about the different things that we see on the web.

Different techniques that we’ve tried and failed. Different techniques that we’ve tried and succeeded. So, it really helps so that we don’t all have to reinvent the wheel or reinvent hot water every time.

John Williams: And just because a technique fails, doesn’t mean we don’t very carefully try it again in the future.

[LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Exactly. [LAUGH] It could have failed for any number of reasons, so we usually try more than once before we give up on something. Okay, so, we do have a new here section in the insider’s circle that really goes through the basics of what this involves and what this means and really helps people get up to speed.

But one of the first things that people see is the Marketing Insiders’ Manifesto, and I’m not going to go through all of the items on this, but basically, it’s really the difference between aviation marketing and retail marketing. Getting Madison Avenue, the Coke’s and Pepsi’s of the world. There’s a lot of things that are different about aviation marketing that we have found since we’ve worked in other places in the world, Fortune 50s and the finance industry, technology industry, education industry and so on.

There’s things are different about aviation, right, John?

John Williams: Completely different.

Paula Williams: Exactly, so, the manifesto is really the things that we have just found that make the biggest difference .So if you remember ten things. If we were to distill everything that we learn and teach into ten things, this is as close as we can come.

John Williams: Let’s hope that it’s spelled correctly on our website. [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Of course it’s spelled correctly on the website.

John Williams: Not there. [LAUGH] See? It’s early in the morning, I tell you.

Paula Williams: Exactly.

John Williams: [COUGH]

Paula Williams: So, we’re just going to talk about the first one today, and that is Don’t Succumb to Random Acts of Marketing.

This is something that we’ve seen a lot in the aviation industry, right John?

John Williams: Yes [COUGH] yes, excuse me.

Paula Williams: So, what we mean by that is people tend to-

Paula Williams: Default to the easiest way to market their product or service in the aviation industry.

John Williams: They’re this phantom thing out there that call the easy button, and they think they’ve got it and they push it and then that doesn’t work.

Paula Williams: Exactly.

John Williams: That’s because it’s not really there.

Paula Williams: All right. So, some advertising sales person calls them and says, let’s run a full page ad in our magazine, and we’ll give you a really great rate, and they think that’s fantastic. Let’s just do that. But they don’t think through who exactly are they trying to reach?

They don’t go through the process of thinking through their campaign, the list, the offer, the presentation. They don’t go through the, what happens when people see this ad, what do they do next? And am I ready for that, and do I have an outline for the person who answers the phone so they know exactly what to make that person do next to maximize that investment?

John Williams: And some don’t even do that analysis of the demographics that the particular magazine or other product is aimed toward.

Paula Williams: Right, so, there’s so many people that will do either a postcard blast, or email blast, or a big ad, or an appearance in a trade show without really thinking it through, and then they get nothing out of the deal.

And they get really frustrated, and they say, this marketing is complete crap. This doesn’t work.

John Williams: Well, and it is if you execute it in correctly.

Paula Williams: Right, exactly. So, we really want to save our folks from random acts of marketing, and make sure everything that they do is thought out well and has the best possible chance of working, right?

John Williams: Absolutely.

Paula Williams: Okay, so, the very best value I think that comes from the insider’s circle is really the office hours. This is the cheapest way to get custom consulting on your products, or on your projects, excuse me. So, if you decide you want to run an ad or something like that, you can schedule an office hour with us and we’ll work through the list, the offer, the presentation, the demographics of who you’re trying to reach.

All of those things, the next steps from the ad. What should the call to action be? Can you set an outline for the people answering the phone so that they make the most out of that opportunity? All of those things are things that we can help you with.

Or, if you want to look at your website and say, why am I not getting enough traffic? Or whatever situation you have, those office hours are for you. So, you get to set the agenda, and we will help you with anything [LAUGH] In the marketing realm for an hour.

Right?

John Williams: Even if you want to figure out how to determine what you get out of a particular campaign or ad.

Paula Williams: Exactly, so, some ideas and examples of how you can use your office hours are to help us, ask us to help you set up smart marketing goals, use us as your accountability partners, you can let us interview you and record it for your blog or about us page.

A lot of times, those audio or video work better than text. Ask us for assistance with your marketing campaigns. Ask us to troubleshoot problems with the campaign or sales process. Have us review an ad or document or a webpage. Have us evaluate a competitor that’s doing something sneaky or nasty or otherwise [LAUGH] causing you problems and help you come up with a strategy.

We also do roleplaying for an upcoming sales call or presentation with us. John makes a really, really good skeptical customer, so if you can do a practice call with him, and you’re set for just about anybody in the industry probably.

John Williams: I’m that bad?

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] That good actually.

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: But yeah, it’s really one of our favorite features that the, of the Insider’s Circle, because we get to know our members really well, and get to know their scenarios, their issues, their priorities and everything else. Okay, so the VIP lounge is actually a private Facebook page that is exclusive to insider members.

And insiders can get and give advice about their current projects, they can network, they can find resources, find buyers and sellers for things that they need. Things that you can do on the Facebook group are just share news and successes. We always like to celebrate those kinds of things.

Use the insiders as your accountability partners for your goals and objectives. Say I’m going to get this done by Friday, and I will post it when I get it done. Then everybody will cheer for you or give you crap if you [LAUGH] don’t do what you say you’re going to do.

Ask the insiders for simple feedback, do you prefer version a or version b? Or how would you improve this ad or this piece? You can also share interesting techniques that you’ve come across or used or ask a question. Has anybody tried this? What results did you get? And the Law of Reciprocity definitely applies here.

The more good ideas and advice you share, the more good ideas and advice you get. We’ve been really proud of the caliber people that are in this group and the help that they give each other is really, really something else. Okay, so, we also have a briefing room.

And this is online. This is for if you can’t make it to one of our live webinars or live events, we put recordings in the briefing room. So, if you need a briefing on how to figure out your Google Analytics, we just put a new webinar out there yesterday.

John Williams: [LAUGH] And then guess what? The next day, Google changed their algorithm.

Paula Williams: No kidding? Exactly, but if you want to know how to use LinkedIn for prospecting.

, if you want to know how to set up for a trade show, all of those things are different modules that we have in the briefing room where you can find a recording on exactly what you need right now.

Or maybe you came to the webinar six months ago, and you just want to remember what we said, right?

John Williams: Uh-huh.

Paula Williams: Mm-hm, okay. Another thing we have are destinations, and this is like charter flights where you want to not fly yourself. You just want to sit in the back and have somebody else do the work for you.

[LAUGH] These are things that we do for you, maybe setting up your digital marketing, or doing your search up engine optimization, or working with you for virtual marketing and other kinds of things. So, our insiders get priority scheduling, and often get special pricing products and services. And we do that because we like working with people we already know.

We already know your business, we already know something about your customers and your products and other kinds of things. So, it saves us a lot of time, which is why we give you guys priority [LAUGH] if you’re an insider. So, that’s our destination section. It’s a special page on our products page where you get to see some special pricing and priority scheduling for you guys.

Projects, once we have something started, or if you want to see a recording of your office hours and the notes from your office hours, you could go to projects and we use a collaboration software called base camp three, which is actually kinda cool. If you click on this in the insiders page, it’ll take you right to base camp three where you can log in and see the files, see the recordings, see the schedule for what’s coming up next, see the to-dos for any projects that we’re working on together, what do we need to do next, what you need to do next, any notes that we’ve shared, why are we putting those things together and so on.

John Williams: Fairly comprehensive approach to getting your stuff done.

Paula Williams: Exactly, yeah, we really like, well, I really like base count three, I don’t know how you feel about it.

John Williams: Well, let’s just say we have an agreement.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] What’s that?

John Williams: I [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] actually, the input’s easy.

Paula Williams: Uh-huh.

John Williams: It’s, I have issues with some of the other parts of it.

Paula Williams: Right, exactly.

John Williams: That’s just me.

Paula Williams: Technology, gotta love it, right? Okay, so, the Hall of Fame. We interview each of our members and create a highlight page so that members can get to know each other better.

Give and get referrals, link to their pages for search engine optimization, it’s always good to have a page with a good Alexa rank like the ABCI page linked to your website, so that you get the Google juice [LAUGH] is what they call it.

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Out of the deal.

And then we also put in your contact information to your LinkedIn page, your phone number, whatever it is that your preference is for having people contact you. So obviously, we’ve got the coolest people in sales and marketing in the aviation industry. And we like to have them associate with each other as much as possible, because that’s good for you, and that’s good for us, quite frankly.

The more we all know about marketing, the better we all do, the more money you guys have to spend on marketing. [LAUGH] And really, we do enjoy seeing the successes of our clients as well, so that’s a wonderful thing. The book club, this is kinda my favorite thing, being a nerd like I am.

Usually the first Wednesday of each month, we talk about the book that we read during the last month. And there are a lot of great books out there, that most of them assume that they are retail business to consumer environment, in a large company with a large sales and marketing department.

And frankly, aviation is not like that, we’re usually smaller companies, we have fewer sales, but we have larger ticket sales, we have more complex sales. [LAUGH] There’s a lot of things that are different. So, we can adapt the great ideas from the marketplace and learn from each other about what really works in the aviation industry.

And we invite our members to join us for these book club discussions. Some people like to just read the books and not participate in the discussions. Some people just like to scan through the books using the bookmarks that we use. We actually put bookmarks in the books so that you can quickly identify the bits and pieces that we think are the most helpful for you.

We know you’re busy, but we also think that reading one book a month doesn’t hurt. It certainly can help.

John Williams: One book a month, with respect to marketing.

Paula Williams: One book a month, yeah, with respect to marketing is important as that is. So, book club participants get to introduce themselves and their product or service at the beginning and the end of the program.

And the discussion is broadcast in our podcast and on our blog. So, it’s a nice opportunity to get an introduction, you can do a really brief 30 second pitch for your product or services in these book club discussions, and it’s a great way to let people know who you are and get them familiar with your opinions, your philosophy and your voice, right?

John Williams: Yes.

Paula Williams: All right, so, if you’re not currently a member, you are probably wondering how much does this cost? [LAUGH] And we’ve got a few options here. In our advanced, membership is $79 a month. That does not include the office hours. That’s probably the biggest difference between our levels, but you do get the NetworkingFacebook group, you get the Members-Only Webinars, and the Recordings & Handouts, but you get those online only.

So, this is a great option if you’re overseas, maybe. And you don’t necessarily want to hassle with having things mailed to you, and you want a really low cost option for getting involved with our group and having access to those conversations. Silver is much better, because you do get those office hours, it’s only $200 more, but there is no other way that you can get custom marketing consulting for $200 a month that I know of.

John Williams: Nope.

Paula Williams: At least not from someone that specializes in aviation, so that’s one of the best deals that we have. You also get the book of the month mailed to you with those bookmarks that we talked about, and you also get copies of our webinars, you get the slides, and the handouts and the recordings on CD mailed to you every month.

So, this is kind of our executive program that really makes things easier for you. We really do everything we can to make things easy for our silver members. And then gold members have, also, custom training. So, if you want us to deliver a specific version of our Google Analytics training that we did last week, we would use your website and your Google Analytics to create that webinar and deliver that to your team if you’re in the gold program.

So, it really customizes, it really uses the tools that you use, uses the examples that you use, let’s you ask a lot more questions and so on, and really customizes that to your organization. So, if you’re in an organization with three or five or ten people in your sales and marketing department, and you want custom training and other kinds of things, then the gold program is perfect for you, right?

John Williams: Absolutely.

Paula Williams: Okay, great. So, that’s the Insider’s Circle, we really look forward to talking with you more about that if it’s something that you’re interested in. And in the meantime-

John Williams: [LAUGH] Go sell more stuff. Zig Ziglar once said that, and of course, America needs the business.

Paula Williams: Absolutely, and do subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Stitcher or Google Play [LAUGH] Google Play, and subscribe to whatever service is your favorite. And please do leave us a rating. That really helps us know what we’re doing right, what we should be doing differently, what you’d like to hear more or less of and so on.

So, have a great week.

John Williams: See you all later. Ciao.

 

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