Hot Aerospace Marketing Topics
Updated: Oct 24, 2022
We reviewed 3 leading brands to see what's trending...
Staying on track with content marketing is a process of evolution, especially within the aviation industry. The demands of your customers, the industry around you and of course, your business are moving forward all the time. Therefore a quick check and balance to see what the world around you is saying never hurts.
It’s an opportunity to consider how your marketing is differentiating from the crowd, the staple topics you must contribute towards and what’s missing from your content calendar. To help, we thought it would be useful to fast-track this process and look at 3 leading aerospace brands and assess the topics they cover, the frequency of their coverage in these topics and any helpful observations we could find to inform your future content decision making.
Each of these brands delivers a diverse blend of content, but have clear content marketing objectives driven by wider business strategies. Throughout this, it’s worth considering what your overarching content marketing goal is and how you are weaving these content pieces into your posting calendar.
Boeing
Primary Goal: Community focused for workforce recruitment and retention
Frequency of Posting: 7- 8 posts per week
Average caption size: 47 words
Volume of topics: 7 general topics
Topics Covered - last 25 posts reviewed:
Example Posts:
Observations:
#TBT to the old days - use of trending hashtags within posts
#TeamBoeing used consistently to drive a community feel within the company
#womenshistorymonth - supporting their diversity and inclusion aims
Tagging customers and partners within post to increase exposure
Tone of voice is professional, respectful, reserved, friendly. Very light and easy to read - written for an international audience to be informative but readily consumable
There is a clear effort to be outwardly community driven, championing their workforce and being a voice for inclusivity and diversity within the industry
Summary:
Prior to the pandemic 42% of aerospace leaders believed that labour shortage in the maintenance technician field was their most pressing challenge. Boeing itself suggests they would need to recruit 769K new technicians to meet demand in 2037. Coupling this with the well-known diversity and inclusivity gap in the industry. You can see the need for a workforce retention and recruitment narrative to their page. Boeing has actively increased their communication around these topics to strengthen their wider appeal to current and future employees.
Lufthansa Technik
Primary Goal: Nurturing for client recruitment & retention
Frequency of Posting - 2-4 posts per week
Average caption size: 128 words
Volume of topics: 7 general topics
Topics Covered - last 25 posts reviewed:
Example Posts:
Observations:
Coined the hashtag #wekeepyouflying
Innovation and product centric posting to support the hashtag campaign #wekeepyouflying
Supported by a podcast series ‘Keep You Flying’
Professional grade images regularly used throughout their posting
A handful of community posts centred around pandemic supplies support and Ukraine Crisis Appeal
Professional, corporate, technical and often statistics infused captions - in general, there is an avoidance of character or phraseology and actively opting to stick to the facts.
In one single post in the last 3 months we found ‘Shark in the Alps? No Kidding!’ Introducing the smallest hint of humour to reference their AeroShark technology being used by Swiss International Air Lines while flying over the Alps.
We also found one ‘Did you know’ style post to discuss an engine maintenance issue
Summary:
Lufthansa Technik is taking a ‘pandemic recovery’ approach to their feed. Throughout the pandemic it is thought nearly 16,000 passenger aircraft were sat static, which is a major problem for planes. The maintenance on aircraft sitting in situ generally increases and so, Lufthansa Technik’s #wekeepyouflying campaign makes a lot sense. Focusing their efforts on helping to make the lives of fleet managers easier by keeping their planes in the skies. Their primary narrative across social media focuses on the innovations, products and services that help to achieve the ‘we keep you flying’ outcome.
IATA
Primary Goal: Industry engagement
Frequency of Posting: 8-10 posts per week
Average caption size: 63 words
Volume of topics: 7 general topics
Topics Covered - last 25 posts reviewed
Example Posts:
Observations:
Use of emojis within their captions - professionally used
Using ‘did you know?’ to engage their audience
Posting also used to help drive for policy change
Digital transformation discussed in one topic
Easter Holidays celebrated
Puzzle code post to drive community engagement
There is a supportive and informative tone of voice, championing change and progression within the industry. Every now and then the tone becomes more conversational, but on the whole, very professional.
Summary:
As to be expected, the International Air Transport Association is successfully focusing their efforts on industry guidance and insights. Their aim is to drive wider community engagement and awareness of the current market forces at play and help guide on routes to react. From stats on passenger demand recovery rates to championing diversity and inclusivity - they have their finger on the pulse when it comes to the key topics in aviation. Out of the 3 brands they are the only brand to use emojis, we quite enjoy the use of an emoji to break the corporate professional tone and include a realisation that a social post isn’t a boardroom document.
Where is environmental & sustainability?
Out of the 75 posts across three leading brands in the industry, only 5 posts talked vaguely about Environmental or Sustainability issues. As global brands with important voices in aerospace, it would be expected to see, especially in the current climate following COP26 increased visibility on these topics. There is very little to suggest enough is being done to redress the need for sustainable aviation fuels or for example a circular economy to aircraft parts.
A potential observation could be that these leading brands are worried about communicating too heavily about their green credentials in fear of being labelled as green-washing. Whether it is right or not to have this fear, you could understand their worry. However, is it better to stay quiet on these issues or instead, be vocal about the need to resolve challenges and be transparent on the journey being undertaken to resolve them?
Final Thoughts
It’s important to create a content strategy to align with your wider business goals and your brand. Both of these are influenced by what is going on in the industry and it’s helpful to know what others are talking about to check and balance your communications against. Generally the tone of voice through the sector is professional, corporate and respectful, but does it feel stagnant and lacking the personality and flair delivered by other technology driven sectors, possibly. One well known marketing author - Mark Schaeffer said "The most human brand wins" - when talking about the current marketing rebellion - a sentiment for the aviation sector to consider.
If you would like to create a fresh content marketing strategy for your aviation or aerospace business we’d love to help. We are specialists in B2B digital marketing with excellent experience in the aerospace sector.
