Email Marketing Archives - The Niche Marketer

A Marketer’s Guide on How to Hack Your Habits

I was recently listening to an episode of “The Hidden Brain” podcast called “Creatures of Habit” and it reminded me of just how powerful of a role that habits play in our lives. Depending on the habit, their impact can be either positive or negative. Regardless of their intent, we engage in habits to achieve some type of realized (or unrealized) goal. Some studies show that 40 percent of the activities we perform each day are habits.[1] One study shows that habits can range from 18 to 254 days to form, with a median of 66 days.[2] Habits take repetition. They take time. They take patience. Since they take so long to form, they can take even longer to break.

As consumers, many of our purchases are habitual. In low-effort consumer behavior, these decisions are straightforward, involve little risk, are purchased often which is why many low-effort purchases become habitual. Think about some low-effort products you buy from the grocery store. What determines the brand of toothpaste you buy? What about bread, or milk? For many of these purchases, you are likely to buy whatever is cheapest. That’s a consumer behavior habit based on a price heuristic and you’ve likely been developing that habit for longer than you realize. You probably inherited many of your purchasing habits from shopping with your parents.

Habits can occur in both high-effort and low-effort behaviors. Although breaking a habit can be incredibly difficult, good marketers understand how to break your heuristics and introduce new products.

The Habit Loop

All habits happen in a loop which consists of three main components: the routine, the cue, and the reward.[3] The routine is self-explanatory. It’s the ritual that you are engaged in, which you likely see as the habit itself. This could be something like grabbing a drink with friends after work or eating something unhealthy at the same time every day. The routine, however, starts with a cue.

The cue of the habit is essentially the piece that triggers the routine. For instance, if you have a habit of eating a sugary snack every day is the cue your stomach rumbling? Is it going into a long meeting? Is it just because you engage in this behavior at the same time every day? When the cue is triggered, the habit begins.

The reward of a habit is the satisfaction that you get from engaging in the habitual behavior. For a sugary snack, it could be that you get more energy, or it is more likely that you are getting a dopamine hit from the sugar intake. For a healthy habit, like running, it could be the “runner’s high”, or the reduction in stress.

How a Marketer Hacks the Habit Loop

Purchasing and consumption habits can be decades-old rituals. Most companies want you to purchase their products out of habit. The key is to get you into the habit loop. Forget the typical products you might think of as habitual, like alcohol and cigarettes, how about something that doesn’t seem as harmful, at least on the surface. Let’s pretend that you need to get a few household items, you don’t want to go to the store, and you need them soon. Where do you go. I bet you go straight to Amazon and you probably didn’t even consider a different retailer. Why? They’ve figured out the habit loop. Whenever you need something (cue), you go to your ritual (go to Amazon and find your product), and get your reward (your stuff quickly). That two-day or next day shipping is tough to beat and they’ve got just about everything. Your reward, in this scenario, is probably the time that you save by not comparison shopping a bunch of different websites.

Okay, great, companies spend a lot of time trying to get someone hooked, how does a marketer intervene? Well, you’ve got to hack the habit loop. What consumers are you targeting? What are their habits? If you know this information, the easiest way to hack the habit is to focus on the reward section of the habit loop. The most obvious example is like-kind products since this is by far the easiest to replace. Although habits are incredibly hard to break, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the reward is always the same product, it is likely the same type of product. For instance, the habit loop could involve you eating ice cream every night after dinner. What we know about low-effort consumer behavior is that regardless of the habit, humans are typically variety seeking. That’s why there’s an entire aisle full of different ice cream flavors. You can easily swap out the flavors and receive the same reward for your daily ice cream habit. The way a marketer tries to hack the loop in this scenario is by trying to get the addicted consumer to switch brands to their brand of ice cream. Good marketers know this and will try to prevent switching by offering many flavors under their brand to keep loyal customers from trying other brands.

More sophisticated marketers have a better understanding of the reward cycle. Take for instance a really old campaign. In 1990, Wrigley’s partnered with ad agency BBDO to try and boost gum sales. They understood the power of habits and zeroed in on one habit that was starting to have many restrictions across the country, smoking. As legislation banned cigarettes from offices, restaurants, and airplanes (yep, you used to be able to smoke on airplanes), Wrigley’s saw an opening in the market. They realized that part of the routine of smoking was a habitual oral fixation, so they took a gamble that if consumers replaced smoking with chewing gum in places where they couldn’t smoke, the consumer would get a similar reward. Their campaign was so successful for their spearmint line that they extended it to all of their flavors.[4] Wrigley’s wasn’t successful in competing with other gum brands, they were successful by completely reimagining the habit loop and taking on a completely, seemingly unrelated product.

I’m Stuck in a Loop, What Can I Do to Break it?

Okay, that’s great. Marketers are manipulating my purchasing behaviors. How does that help me from stopping a habit I want to break? In “The Power of Habit”, Charles Duhigg explains that the biggest difficulty in changing habits is that every person is different, so there are infinite ways to actually change habits. An added challenge is that all habits are different. Quitting drinking is different than exercising, which is different than grabbing a mid-morning snack. He goes on to describe that each person will need to experiment with all of the components that make up a habit. All habits happen in a loop that includes a cue, a routine, and a reward. The framework to change a habit is to “identify the routine, experiment with rewards, isolate the cue, have a plan”.[5]

The easiest part of recognizing a habit is likely identifying the routine. It’s the compulsive behavior that you want to break. In the earlier example, its eating ice cream every day. The routine is really tough to break, and depending on your situation, the actual routine may be impossible for you to break. Never fear though, as stated earlier, a habit involves three parts, and you can experiment with the other two.

Although the routine is tough to break, you could try to determine the cue that drives the routine. If you are able to eliminate the cue, you could eliminate the routine. To figure out the cue portion of the habit loop, Charles Duhigg recommends that the moment the urge hits, write down the time, location, emotions, other people around, and the immediately preceding action.

The rewards portion of the habit loop could be really difficult to determine, and Duhigg recommends experimenting for several days, or possibly weeks to help identify the reward. In my ice cream example, is it the ice cream that is the reward? Is it the dopamine hit from the sugar? Is it the cold feeling after a hot meal? Duhigg recommends experimenting with other types of rewards. In this case, maybe you could try a cold seltzer water, or a bowl of popcorn. He recommends writing down what you are feeling as you experiment and waiting several minutes after the experiment is over to see if you still have your craving.

Final Thoughts

As humans, we run our lives on habits. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Our lives would actually be pretty terrible if we had to make conscious decisions about each item we put in our cart every time we went to the grocery store. These shortcuts can save us time, and make our lives easier. However, they can also make our lives miserable. Marketers are always looking for ways to hack into a habit loop. While this can be done pretty easily by focusing on replacement products, truly remarkable marketers have a profound understanding of how the brain works. Marketing is not just an art, it’s also psychology. If you take the time to understand consumer behavior, you can gain a clearer understanding of how to stay in front of the competition.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140808111931.htm

[2] https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.674

[3] Duhigg, Charles, “The Power of Habit”

[4] https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/19941126/ISSUE01/100010696/staid-wrigley-sets-out-to-freshen-ad-image

[5] Duhigg, Charles, 2012. The Power of Habit.

These Seven Creepy Ways Advertisers Know Everything About You Will Make You Cringe

Digital advertising has changed the ad landscape. As an advertiser, I can not only target you based on past behavior, but I can know when you are going to make a purchase using AI. Advertisers know some pretty creepy things about you and technology makes it all possible. To do this, they need the currency of the future: your personal data. This data is a goldmine and ad tech companies will do just about anything to get it.

Your Browser

Noting to see here, right? I mean, it’s just your browser. A browser can’t reveal much about you, right? Oh boy. I’m sorry to tell you, but a browser knows your software, hardware, your battery level if you’re on a power supply, your download speed, social media sites where you’re logged in, and more. Don’t believe me? Click here to see for yourself and be really creeped out. So, how is this related to advertising? Well, if you’re not reading this article on an app, I’m guessing you’re reading it on Google Chrome. You know, Google? The same Google that’s the largest advertiser in the world. They also know your cookies, browsing history, when you log on, when you log off, and probably just about everything that goes into your Gmail account. I hope you’re not ready to go full tin-foil-hat mode yet. We’re just getting started.

Ad Retargeting

person using a macbook pro on a white table — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

You know when you look at a pair of socks online and the entire internet tries to sell you back that same pair of socks you were just looking at? Well, that’s called retargeting. It’s pretty simple, really. Let’s say you visit my website and I’m running one of these campaigns. I’ve got a piece of code on my site that identifies you as a user of an advertising network that I pay to track you. Now, for the next 90 days, or however long I set the ad contract when you leave and visit a website that is affiliated with my network, you will see my ads.

Even though the simplest form of retargeting involves you visiting my site, there are other ways to do this. You can do this through a related search. Let’s say you are searching for a muzzle for your dog because you can’t stop him from barking. I could serve you an ad from my online dog training course in an ad targeting network to try and stop you from doing something like putting a muzzle on your dog. Yay! Now you bought my awesome services, you bonded with your dog, and you have a better understanding of why he was barking so much in the first place. My creepy ad just made the world a better place. There’s nothing wrong with these ads, right?

Then there’s predictive targeting. What is that? Well, it’s basically AI trying to figure out what you are going to buy in the future based on past behavior. Predictive targeting takes all of your past browsing behavior and uses AI to predict what you are going to be shopping for in the future. Let’s go back to the socks example. A simple way to explain this is if you’ve been shopping for a lot of socks, maybe your next purchase will be shoes. Or maybe some toenail clippers. I’ll admit, so far, still not super creepy. Hang on, it gets worse.

Email

computer desk electronics indoors — Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Email can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, come on, it’s email. It’s been around forever. In the internet timeline, it’s a dinosaur. I hate to break it to you, everything you do and interact with on an email is tracked. I can track if you skimmed or read my email, what parts of it you liked and clicked on, how many times you opened it, and I can even infer if you forwarded it to someone. From there, well, who knows. I could do some follow-up targeted emails based on your interests.

Let’s say I was trying to really narrow down niches within my customer base. Back to the sock example, let’s say I sell socks and shoes. If I really wanted to understand my customers’ interests, I could send them a simple, general email and see what they click on. Let’s say they click on shoes and nothing else. Wow! I’ve just identified them as a potential shoe buyer. Cool. I can put them in a “shoe” target email. They’ll get that email 24 hours later. That shoe email will have running shoes, hiking shoes, and walking shoes. The shoe email goes out, they click running shoes, boom! I’ve got a runner. Wow, let’s add them to the running list, so every time I have a promo on running shoes or publish a blog about running tips, they get the email. Depending on how active you are on social media, and how tied in and easy my ad tech platform can find your email, I might be able to find you there. And an advertiser can scrape that info pretty easily.

Geofencing

crown group modern motion — Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

So you know how all of your apps want to know your location? Well, from an advertising perspective, this data is really valuable information. An advertiser can set up a “fence” based on your GPS coordinates. Let’s say I’m trying to sell video game accessories. I could choose to target everyone that visits any GameStop store in the country.

An advertiser can get pretty specific. With hyperlocal Geofencing, I could target a specific aisle. Let’s say for instance I just wanted to target everyone that passed by or visited the video game section in a larger department store. Yep, that’s an option.

Your Smart Speaker

black amazon echo on table — Photo by Fabian Hurnaus on Pexels.com

In July of 2019, it came out in The Guardian, that Apple was paying contractors to listen to Siri conversations to “help Siri and dictation…understand you better and recognize what you say”[1]. Of course, Apple denied using this information for any nefarious purposes. But we should all trust a company that has a higher value than the GDP of Brazil, Australia, or Canada, right? While we’re on this train of thought, how about Alexa? Well, in May of 2019, the Washington Post [2] reported how Alexa records everything after it hears its name. Yep. Everything you say. Everything you do. Every noise that it can pick up. Neat. There’s also been a bunch of warrants to obtain the recorded data.[3]

Social Media

apple applications apps cell phone — Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

Let’s not get into the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I’m guessing you know about that already. Let’s just start with the easy stuff. The first thing to understand is why social media exists in the first place, besides cat pictures. Okay, I’ll give, it also exists so you can argue with your aunt on who she is voting for. Actually, those are just residuals for the real reason that social media exists: data. Yep, as I said before, your data is super valuable. Most people just willingly give it up. They give their name, location, interests, and tons of other information when they first fill out their profile. But it goes deeper. You can be targeted by the pages you like. Did you happen to like a few posts about shoes? Cool, you’re lumped in my sock shoe store thing. Did you happen to share a few posts about grilling out? Congratulations, you’re a candidate for A1 Steak Sauce. Is your feed manipulated based on what you do? Well, let’s just say they call that “how the algorithm works.” Did you have the geolocation feature turned on? Cool. Now I know that you just grabbed a pizza, maybe I can serve you an ad for ice cream.

The Super Creepy

photography of person peeking — Photo by Noelle Otto on Pexels.com

So let’s get to the speculative. Well, sort of speculative. I’m sure you know something about the TikTok ban but maybe you don’t know why it was banned. Well, not banned. Well…sort of banned? Anyway, one of the things that TikTok does is access the iOS clipboard. Yep, Apple. You know, the company worth $2 Trillion that’s famous for their amazing security. The very same Apple. What does this mean? Have you ever cut/pasted information on your phone, maybe a password? Well, that goes to a clipboard. They’re not the only one that does this. CBS News, Accuweather, well, a bunch of others are or have been doing this too.[4] Not only that, TikTok’s own privacy policy says that they collect your mobile carrier, IP address, “unique identifiers”, and keystroke patterns.[5] So other apps are doing this, but the reason that TikTok is banned is because it’s Chinese? From what I can gather, yes.

So let’s get to the big question. You know how you had that conversation with your friend, whether via text, or on the phone, or even in person and you mentioned something? For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say it was Nike. You then pick up your phone, check a social media network and immediately see a Nike ad. You then call or text your friend frantically and say something like “OMG, you know how we were just talking about this, check it out”. So, is Facebook using your microphone and camera to spy on you, even when you’re not using the app? Well, they’ve repeatedly denied these allegations and try really hard to come up with explanations on why this happens. So are they? Good question.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of if you are now masterfully creating a pattern for a new tin-foil hat or not, creepy ads are here to stay. As a society, I don’t really see how we can go back. The only way they would go away is if they didn’t work. Maybe they would go away if we found out that many of the advertisers were committing fraud. Oh wait, we already did that. In 2019, Facebook paid $40 million because they lied about their video stats, [6] Google ran ads with a bunch of fraudulent traffic [7], oh, and about all of those fake clicks…[8] Maybe we’ll never learn.

[1] Hern, A. Apple Contractors ‘Regularly Hear Confidential Details’ on Siri Recordings, Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings

[2] Fowler, G. Alexa Has Been Eavesdropping on You This Whole Time, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/06/alexa-has-been-eavesdropping-you-this-whole-time/

[3] Epstein, K. Police Think Amazon’s Alexa May Have Information on a Fatal Stabbing Case, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/02/police-think-amazons-alexa-may-have-information-fatal-stabbing-case/

[4] Jones, T. It’s Not Just TikTok Spying on Your iOS Clipboard, Retrieved from: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/07/ios-clipboard-apps-spy-tiktok/

[5] Mahadevan, T. TikTok Responds After Reddit CEO Calls it Fundamentally Parasitic, Retrieved from: complex.com/pop-culture/2020/02/reddit-ceo-calls-tiktok-fundamentally-parasitic

[6] Gardner, E. Facebook to Pay $40M Under Proposed Settlement in Video Metrics Suit, Retrieved from: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/facebook-pay-40-million-under-proposed-settlement-video-metrics-suit-1245807

[7] Haggin, P. Google to Refund Advertisers After Suit Over Fraud Scheme, Retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-refund-advertisers-after-suit-over-fraud-scheme-11558113251

[8] Fake Clicks on Online Ads Costing Companies Tens of Billions a Year, Retrieved from: https://www.ft.com/content/8f0d4b98-21c7-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b

How Bringing a Multimillion-Dollar Jet Through the Streets of Las Vegas Created a Niche Market

In Order to Create a Niche Market, You Have to Take Risks and Dare to be First

In 2015, I was sitting in the back of a brand new Dodge Ram at 11 PM at the McCarran Airport in Las Vegas trying to stay warm. It was freezing to the point where it snowed the next day. I was wearing multiple layers because I was about to walk with a newly refurbished multimillion-dollar jet through the streets of Vegas. My company was displaying this aircraft inside of the convention hall during our largest trade show of the year. Actually, NBAA is one of the largest trade shows in the US attracting owners, pilots, mechanics, and industry leaders from all over the world. I was pretty terrified because this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. Although I was confident we had a great product, there was no way of knowing if the major risk we took as a company was going to pay off.

This wasn’t just my first time. To my knowledge, this was also the first time anyone had displayed a jet of this size inside of the convention hall, so we didn’t really have the proxy to measure our success. I had a major case of imposter syndrome. At this show, we were competing with huge companies like Bombardier, Textron, Gulfstream, and Dassault. How could we compete with multibillion-dollar companies and stand out? They have teams of people who are much smarter and more capable than me.

My mind was racing and I was nervous about all of the things I couldn’t control. What if they didn’t measure the traffic signals properly and the tail runs into a stoplight? What if the belly scrapes coming out of the airport ramp onto the street? What if the tow bar head damages the landing gear? What if they couldn’t get it in the hall? (To be fair, the wingspan was larger than the opening of the door, so that last concern was somewhat legitimate.) I ordered carpet to be laid after the aircraft arrived so it didn’t get chewed up from a jet rolling over it. How was that even going to work? Did I order enough spotlights? No matter how nervous I was, it didn’t matter. All of the hard work, engineering, and craftsmanship that went into this airplane; now it was my job to make it pay off at the trade show. I had to stay confident and let all of the months of planning pay off. Our team had imagined this concept over a year ago and it was finally time to execute.

They opened the north gate at the airport. Since we were the biggest airplane, we were the last in line and we would be the last ones in the hall. After waiting nearly an hour for the caravan of airplanes to progress far enough to where we could actually get out of the gate, we were finally on the road. The Nevada State Highway Patrol was providing an escort, blocking the streets in front and behind the caravan as we slowly made our way up Paradise Road.

Nearly three hours later, we arrived at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We sat outside for a few hours as each airplane was carefully brought onto the trade show floor by a special tug which was operated by a guy that flew in from the UK. An hour and a half after we attached the airplane to the special tug, we were placed in the hall, ready for finishing touches before the show.

Creating the Niche Market

So, how did we arrive at the Las Vegas convention center with a refurbished jet? Was it just to display our quality of work? Was it just to be noticed? No, we were creating a niche market. To be successful in a niche market, you have to have a team that is willing to take huge risks to create an outstanding product at a reasonable price. You work together to create the niche. That makes the advertising pretty easy. Let me explain.

The Problem

Garmin was launching a new avionics program, known as the G5000, for a light jet called a Beechjet 400A (and the newer iteration, the Hawker 400XP). Our company was and still is, the industry’s leading Garmin retrofitter. So much so, that we have done more Garmin retrofits in King Air turboprops than all other dealers in the world, combined. However, this was the very first jet that would be certified for a Garmin retrofit, so transitioning from our expertise in King Airs to Jets was critical. We needed to leverage our experience in completing large Garmin retrofits to a completely new niche. This new market had a different type of buyer, with different buying behaviors. Although the audience was small (this system applied to less than 600 airplanes across the world), even conservative projections for the overall market saturation rate and our projected market share made financial sense for us to pursue this niche.

In our industry, being the first to complete a major project like this particular Garmin retrofit was critical. The business aviation community is small. Since our brand was so closely aligned with Garmin, an early lead in a new niche would establish credibility with the new target audience and lead to early success. Once that credibility caught on, we would be hard to catch.

Why This Niche Made Sense

As stated, we were Garmin’s largest aftermarket dealer and as they expanded into new niche markets, we wanted to expand with them and maintain our position as the industry leader. This market made further sense because we were an authorized service center for this kind of aircraft and we had many maintenance technicians that had 20+ years of experience working with the airplane. As a one-stop-shop, we would also be able to handle any avionics, maintenance, paint, interior, or landing gear overhauls the customer might need when receiving a large retrofit.

Action – The Big Risk to Be First

I remember the meeting. We were all sitting around the small conference room table discussing how we were going to become industry leaders. If we wanted to be the frontrunners, we would have to take some major risks. If we were going to pursue this niche and be the first to market, everyone who owned this type of aircraft, and everyone in the industry would need to know how serious we were.

“What if we bought an airplane, completed all of the refurbishments, brought it down the street, and parked it inside the convention hall?” The room got quiet. I don’t remember who asked the question, whether it was me or one of our other team members. It didn’t really matter because we were all thinking the same thing, but we knew there were huge risks. We would have the initial multimillion-dollar risk of the acquisition cost of the airplane. We would have additional costs tied up in the refurbishment. We would also have the opportunity cost of turning away some customers for the number of hours that this refurbishment required.

Although we knew there would be major risks, we knew there would be huge rewards. In addition to being able to sell the airplane after the show, if we succeeded in receiving several orders for the Garmin system at the trade show, we would have a major lead in the industry. As stated earlier, a head start in this program was all we needed.

For this November trade show, we started sourcing an aircraft in late spring. We found a 2006 Hawker 400XP, but the challenge with this airplane was that it needed engine overhauls. This added a major expense and additional downtime in our already compressed timeframe. Despite the challenges, we purchased the aircraft and began work. The entire scope of work included a major inspection, engine overhauls, Garmin G5000 avionics retrofit, special Vegas gold pearl paint job, and a refurbished, weight-saving interior with WiFi and color-changing LED lighting.

Marketing Actions to This Niche

From a marketing perspective, the biggest goal was to create an associative network in potential customers’ minds linking our name with the new Garmin G5000 system in this particular aircraft (Beechjet 400A/Hawker 400XP). This type of plan involves understanding how the brain works and how an associative network influences retrieval. As marketers, we know several things about this type of network. The first, and most obvious, is that stronger links are more accessible. That’s why we try to strengthen the links between brands (in this case, we were trying to strengthen the association with the Garmin brand).

Good marketers also know that there is a spreading activation effect, which allows for the free association between like-products. For instance, when you think of BMW, you may think of luxury cars. As another German brand, you may think of Mercedes or Audi. However, due to the luxury nature, you may also think about Rolex. Your brain could also think about leather. By putting a top-of-the-line avionics system in a pristine looking airplane, we were building a spreading activation centered around the Garmin system but also associated with “the best” quality. This included the best quality Garmin installation, but the best quality paint, interior, and engineering.

We also know that there is a sleeper effect, meaning that the actual message stays tied to recall much longer than the recall of the source of the information. Basically, I wanted to create a plan where we were seen as the experts in any and all sources that I could use.

So, to the best of my recollection five years later, here’s what we did.

Public Relations

There were several hooks that we identified in this story that made it interesting to the press. The first, and most obvious, was that we were the first Garmin dealer in the world that was going to attempt this type of retrofit. Even before the project started, we took the risk and committed to being the first dealer to deliver. That alone got the attention of the press in our industry. However, to truly make a good story before launching the PR strategy, we had to fully develop the five basic elements of the story. By committing to purchase an airplane and displaying it in Vegas in a short time frame, we had all of the components we needed. We had the characters (our team and brand), setting (Vegas), plot (buying and retrofitting an airplane with something that had not been done before), conflict (short time frame), and the resolution (successfully completed everything).

Once we developed the story arc, we sent and press releases and landed coverage with industry publications from the day the airplane was purchased. Our initial press release outlined our entire plan. We then had follow-up press releases that highlighted when we started the avionics system, and when the aircraft delivered.

From the day the first press release was sent, the top publication in our industry ran a feature on the project. The subsequent releases were also picked up by several other outlets. From a PR standpoint, all of the major trade publications wanted to know more and track the progress of the project. During the trade show, we had several articles published in the daily publications. Media outlets also conducted video interviews with our team members going over the project details.

After the show, there were residual public relations opportunities which included press releases when we sold the aircraft and after each milestone delivery (the first company to five installs, first to 10, 20, etc.)

VIP Event

We set up a cocktail event for owners and operators of this type of aircraft where they could come by at a certain time and have a drink on us. This was exclusive to our industry partners as well as owners and operators of this type of aircraft.

Digital Advertising

Our team developed a digital strategy to target operators of this type of aircraft via email prior to the show to let them know what all was included in the aircraft upgrade, where they could find us, and when they could attend our VIP event. We also created a preview video on YouTube and targeted our customers through YouTube ads.

We also set up retargeting ads to any viewer that visited our G5000 page and targeted emails to anyone who had visited this page a certain number of times.

Direct Mail

Our team designed eight-page brochures introducing the new system. To add to the feeling of luxury, we used a combination of soft-touch and high-gloss UV coatings. We had also mailed special invitations to our target audience including VIP identifiers to attend our VIP trade show event.

Social Media

Social media posts were scheduled before, during, and after the event on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Posts were boosted to the target demographic.

Result

Although we were all nervous about the huge risk that we were taking, this series of events of buying and retrofitting the airplane had major rewards. Prior to the system even being certified, we were able to pre-sell a dozen Garmin G5000 retrofits, which was more than all other dealers in the world combined. From the very beginning of this program, our team put a considerable amount of effort to be the industry leaders. However, it was not the result of just one series of actions. It took our entire company to believe that we could do it. When diving into a project of this magnitude, the first thing you have to do is believe that you can do it. With the entire company behind the success of the program, we were able to create a great niche market, one that has now ballooned nearly 30 systems sold, which again, is more than all other dealers in the world, combined. Throughout this process, we also found an opportunity within the LED lighting market. We have since created and now manufacture LED aircraft lighting and currently have 13 US dealers.

What I Learned

Building a niche market involves creating a product that truly connects with your target audience. Your market can be incredibly small. In this case, there were less than 600 potential customers in the entire world. However, the financial case for us to pursue this market made sense and it perfectly fit our brand. When you create a niche, what you are selling will apply only to a small group of people, and that’s okay. The bottom line is this: create something of incredible value to your audience that no one else can provide.

You can find out more about niche marketing here.