The aerospace industry continues to grow thanks to new design technology, new materials to construct spacecrafts and aircrafts with, improved engine design, and the expansion of the civilian space market. To capitalize on this potential, aerospace companies need to have access to sophisticated marketing capabilities, so they can promote their products and services in both digital and offline channels in a highly regulated, lucrative, and highly competitive market. So the question emerges: what is aerospace marketing, and how is it best accomplished?

What Is Aerospace Marketing?

Aerospace marketing refers to promotion of an aerospace company through a combination of content generation — in order to cultivate organic traffic, earn backlinks and show a company’s thought leadership — as well as digital marketing and public relations campaigns. Companies in the aerospace industry will need comprehensive aerospace marketing plans to deliver the best results, because of the level of competition around popular channels in this sector. An experienced aerospace marketing agency will leverage multi-tiered tools to illuminate a brand and make it more visible to its target audience through strategies like the following:

 

  • Public relations, including press releases and media placement for new products, DOD and industry contracts, partnerships, or initiatives.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on company websites.
  • Social media channels, including paid advertising, on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
  • Internet advertising, including ads triggered by Google searches.
  • Videos and imagery posted on social media and YouTube (aerospace material tends to lend itself to visual representation).

 

8 Benefits of Digital Marketing For Your Aerospace Company

Digital media is everywhere, following from the dizzying rise in the use of mobile devices. Mobile device use has increased 78% over three years, and it’s more popular than television in the 18 to 34 age group. 97% of Americans own a mobile device of some kind, according to Pew Research. It’s this area that today’s digital marketing efforts often concentrate on, particularly as young engineers and entrepreneurs put their knowledge, talents, and creative visions to work in aerospace companies.

Desktop devices remain popular as well. Half of B2B inquiries were made on desktops in 2022, typically because businesspeople use them at the office. Whether through mobile or desktop, digital marketing offers a way for aerospace companies to capture the attention of potential partners and customers. Here are eight benefits of launching a digital marketing initiative for your aerospace company:

Cost Effectiveness

Digital marketing allows you to easily track KPIs to see which campaigns are most effective in landing leads. And in an industry characterized by large sales, even one conversion from a lead generated through digital marketing can more than offset the cost of your marketing efforts for a long time. An aerospace marketer can help you set up KPIs and conversion goals.

Audience Reach

Reaching a larger audience starts with defining a target audience (persona development) followed by creating a comprehensive strategy. With strategy development, an agency like Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) can help your aerospace company amplify its voice, conducting competitor research to get a sense of where you fall in the market, find out what competitors are doing right, and then attempt to outperform their efforts.

Flexibility to Re-plan and Re-strategize

As an aerospace marketing company gathers data from ongoing campaigns, and as real-world events interact with your strategies, digital marketing allows you to easily shift priorities or make adjustments. For example, say your launch schedule faced delays and your rocket is going up a month later than usual. An aerospace marketer handling your digital marketing can easily shift social media posts, ads, and blog posts to better coincide with the launch, in a way that is more difficult to achieve with traditional offline marketing.

Better Conversion Rates

With targeted marketing, an agency you partner with can foster higher conversion rates, depending on your goals and the limitations of your campaigns. This process often starts by casting a wider net with all-purpose content in the beginning, and homing in on audience motivations and pain points once data begin to roll in.

Also, digital marketing allows you to easily repurpose and adapt content to new uses or to make it more convertible. For example, if you have a high-quality white paper or case study you want to promulgate, adding an email form for potential customers to gain access to the documents gives you a contact email that’s an instant warm lead.

Opportunity to Engage with Customers

Digital marketing affords aerospace companies a wealth of opportunities to engage with customers across many channels:

  • Social media
  • White papers
  • Case studies
  • Contact forms
  • Dynamic ads
  • Videos

Round-the-Clock Activity

Digital marketing never stops working. The campaigns companies launch online capture leads, demonstrate authority and generate interest around the clock, which is important in a globally-connected industry like aerospace. Digital content might get the attention of a German manufacturer or DOD business partner at a time when you normally wouldn’t be active outside of digital spaces. In addition, many companies run third shifts overnight — some lead aerospace engineer might stumble on a solution to a problem you’ve posted, while you sleep soundly.

Personalized Message

Aerospace companies need branding that stands out, but they also have to tailor messaging to a target audience. Digital marketing provides a means to walk this balance. Email marketing, for example, lets you both automate and personalize messaging, as does social media. When a new trend or industry announcement comes to light, digital marketing allows for personalized responses that strengthen a brand and demonstrate thought leadership.

Measurable Results

Along every step of the digital marketing journey, aerospace companies have an opportunity to view metrics and KPIs to measure results of campaigns. Popular platforms often enhance this visibility: Google has several analytic tools, as does Facebook, to monitor the performance of ads and content.There are also many software tools business owners can tap into that show how a company’s standing has changed since the start of a campaign.

How to Use Aerospace Marketing For Your Business

Aerospace marketing can be useful for leaders in all of the following sub-sectors:

Spacecraft & Aerospace Manufacturers

An aerospace marketing partner can leverage digital and traditional ads, as well as earned media, to put manufacturers’ names out to decision makers of supply, software, and launch platform companies to make sure their products are in consideration for new orders. In addition, they can help these companies build authoritative websites and video content that showcases what they can do. Aerospace manufacturing is a flexible niche with lots of marketing potential, as companies can leverage either side of the supply chain, either as a supplier to the manufacturer or buying products from the manufacturer.

Commercial Aerospace Manufacturers

Through balanced marketing arrays consisting of interlocking components like SEO posts and email newsletters, an aerospace marketing agency can help these businesses deliver a targeted, compelling message to other aerospace manufacturing companies, vehicle assembly companies, and launch companies that can use parts and equipment as part of their next-generation rockets or airplanes.

Satellite Communications

Say you have the industry’s best software developers working on new communications protocols and technology, or you’re developing new digital antennas that can send even more data per second. If one knows about these advancements, they cannot grow your business. Running PR campaigns and creating exciting content that touts your next-gen tech, such as video updates and white papers that speak to industry experts while telling your story, can clear this roadblock.

Space Logistics & Infrastructure

Space hardware, which is highly advanced and usually very expensive, needs to get from the plant to the pad in one piece. Digital marketing can help logistics companies tell the story of the journey and how they protect the integrity of the products involved. Given a choice between a logistics partner whose marketing explains their safeguards, experience, and successes, and one whose marketing does not, most aerospace companies will want to work with the former.

Rocket Propulsion Systems

Propulsion systems companies can benefit from all the usual digital marketing components, particularly thought leadership pieces that show industry insiders the technical differences that set these companies apart from competitors. Here, a marketing partner can find a way to express a brand message that is equal parts entertainment and authority.

Space Tourism

Space tourism is set to become more and more popular in the coming decades. Business sectors are taking note with sponsorships and high-profile launches. This niche is ripe with chances for earned media such as broadcast media placements and other coverage that generates public excitement.

Geospatial Imagery

It does no good to have your aircraft or satellite taking gorgeous photos from above if the people on the ground don’t get to see those photos. Digital ads, website development, SEO initiatives, and other strategies can bring an imagery company’s offerings forward in search engine results and put more eyes on the company’s achievements.

9 Effective Aerospace Marketing and PR Strategies

A digital marketing plan for your aerospace company can have several moving parts that work together to strengthen the overall structure and prevent one low-performance arm from making the whole ineffective. A marketing strategy partner would achieve this utilizing a variety of techniques:

Brand Communications

Your brand tells a story, and an effective aerospace marketing agency will be a storyteller.

Brand communications revolve around getting your story out to your target audience through appropriate channels, whether it’s the origin story of your company, the latest plane engine, or how your aerospace company is making waves in sustainability circles, there is a way to spread that message to the right audience at the right time.

Content Marketing

Content marketing means writing, imagery, sound bites, podcasts, videos, and the like across your website and social media channels. If it’s producible and people can read, watch, listen to or view it for edification, entertainment, instruction or news, it falls under the content marketing umbrella. This type of material is the cornerstone of the digital space.

Crisis Communications & Reputation Management

In case of unforeseen adverse events, you’ll want experienced crisis communicators on your side who can help you take control of the story and bring public focus back to productive areas. An aerospace marketing agency skilled in reputation management offers just this sort of support.

Strategic Communications

Strategic Communications, such as internal comms, PR, social media, website content, and the like, are all part of a well-tuned marketing strategy, helping your aerospace company reach people where they are, namely, online.

Internal Communications

Alignment from the inside has a huge effect on the message that ultimately travels out of the company. Internal communications can make sure your team sees the big picture, buys into it, and understands how their individual roles contribute.

Public Relations

A public relations agency with industry contacts and expertise can pitch stories to high-visibility outlets, promoting their company’s work and giving their target audiences a sense of their credibility, vision, and values.

Social Media

Social media allows plenty of room for creative expression and range of content.

And when you consider that more than 2 billion people use Facebook every day, it’s easy to see why  social media marketing is a vital part of any digital marketing strategy. Whether you want to leverage LinkedIn ads to find CEOs to market to, want to showcase dancing astronauts on TikTok, or want to post a video about rolling out your new airplane engine, social media channels give you a place to do it.

Website Development

Website development can drive organic traffic to your content, move more leads down-funnel, and jumpstart the positive feedback loop of SEO performance and visibility that can make big impacts on a business’s success in a short amount of time. Finding a communications partner who is also proficient in this aspect of marketing can simplify the process of promoting your business significantly.

FAQs About Aerospace Marketing

How do you market an aerospace company?

Marketing an aerospace company involves first determining a target audience to develop personas, and then finding a cohesive strategy to achieve marketing goals.

What is the scope of marketing in the aerospace industry?

The scope of marketing in the aerospace industry is as wide as the marketing methods used to achieve it are varied:

  • Social media
  • Public relations
  • Websites
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Imagery
  • White papers
  • Case studies
  • Landing pages
  • Paid advertising

What is one current industry trend for aerospace marketing?

Some industry influencers are taking to TikTok to post videos about flying and how it affects their lives. Posts related to space tourism are also on the rise. The platform is gaining popularity in aerospace due to its capability for developing visual media in concise forms.

Develop Your Comprehensive Aerospace Marketing Plan With Us

CSG’s wide range of services as an aerospace marketing agency allow our partners to put their messages in front of receptive audiences and keep their operations on track in a competitive, cutting-edge field.

To give your aerospace company new life, contact us for a consultation. Onward and upward!