Aviation Suppliers and Maintenance Shops - Sales and Marketing Trends 2022by Editor - Daniel Brindley | February 3, 2022

Every Aerospace Company, FAA Repair Station, OEM or Aviation Distributer needs sales and marketing to grow their business and keep it healthy! We discuss ways to beef-up your sales and marketing productivity and revenue through great software tools! We look at specific software applications and use case scenarios as well as recommend software providers. This article is aimed at C-level executives, directors of maintenance, sales and marketing executives and individuals that decide on sales and marketing tools, technology, and budgets.

Sales & Marketing Software Trends

When looking at leading sales & marketing software you notice (see below) that leading applications have several things in common that make them appealing. Simply put all you need now is a modern web browser. Subscription based software means no upgrades, no downloads, no need for servers everything is in the cloud. You chose how many users and the software scales with you.

• Cloud based applications
• No coding required
• Integrate with your main software applications
• Can scale with your business
• Available as freemium models or subscription-based pricing

What sets successful sales and marketing software applications apart is automation and artificial intelligence. What used to be a full-time office assistant role; lead management, database admin, customer service/ office receptionist has now been replaced with software. These features save time and money.

• Workflow automation
• Email automation
• Landing page integration
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML)
• Integrations (native, 3rd party and APIs)

Aviation Software Integrations/APIs/webservices

APIs are specialized programs written by your software provider to share data and integrate with other software applications. As an example, Pentagon2000.com, a leading aviation maintenance Enterprise Resource Program (ERP), offers many APIs/ Integrations. Including integrating with leading sales and marketing CRMs like hubspot.com and salesforce.com. This allows the transfer of data (contact information, emails) to the CRM for sales & marketing activity. Pentagon integrates e-commerce providers like shopify.com and with ILS, and other parts marketplaces to generate RFQs and publish available inventory. Your ERP is your business hub and integrating it to outside services adds value to business by automating and streamlining operations.

Another example is ILS, the leading parts inventory and repair service marketplace. ILS provides a portfolio of Web Services, which are a subcategory within API’s. One of the ILS web services for example connects your RFQ software and Inventory Management software. This means the sales team can quote an RFQ from ILS and update the ILS inventory without having to log-in. Beyond this web services, ILS also provides web services for specific applications and/or (e.g. MRO) specific supply chain tasks.

Customer Service Automation (Chat Bot)

Does the phone often ring with repetitive questions about your products and services? Or maybe you receive more complex questions not just Yes/No but still repetitive. Or maybe you spend 30 min chatting with a lead only to realize that your product is too expensive, not available in their region or not right for their use case. Imagine using a chat bot to answer all those questions, hosted on your website, to free up your time!

A high-quality subscription-based chat bot like intercom.com uses advanced ML, meaning the Chat Bot AI will upload your product and services data (knowledge base) and be able to deep dive into the data based on lead/ prospect queries given to the chat bot, like warranty, features or pricing. You can customize when and where the chat bot appears, tailor the bot message to specific pages, give clients a product tour and integrate the bot into other sales and marketing tools. Some chat bots are freemium, and some leading Customer Relationship Management (CRMs) provide them too.

Integrated Landing Pages

Landing pages are web pages that sit on your website customized with a masked URL to look and feel like they are part of your website. The goal is to use tried and tested templates to capture leads, communicate with clients and or sell more products or services. The landing page software allows you to quickly a/b test and optimize pages without relying on a 3rd party provider. This helps foster innovation, experimentation and increase lead capture. Think of landing pages as a website upgrade without paying for it other than the monthly subscription. Some are heavy hitters with a lot of features like instapage.com others are part of your CRM or Email marketing subscription (see below).

Funnel Marketing

IF you sell off the shelf products like Tools, Fasteners, Adhesives or Tapes you might consider a funnel page. Funnels works like landing pages but are designed to sell the product for you. You simply add the content (professional content can be purchased too), video, payment options and pricing. The funnel allows an “upsell” after the purchase click or a “down sell” (cheaper price) if the consumer declined the initial offer. Richard Brunson perfected funnel marketing check out his website clickfunnel.com

Email Platforms & Automation

Email automation is the ability to map out the interaction you want with your customer by email and then automate it. So you create multiple templates/ customized emails for different types of customers (new, existing and prospects). By automating a path for each type of customer with specific content, timing and frequency of email you keep customers engaged. Highly customized emails for specific types of buyers increase email open rates, traffic to your website and ultimately sales. The beauty of email automation is that once you set it up its done, and a good email platform will provide you with the data analytics to understand your success rate.

Email only platforms

Email platforms are growing muscle, many email marketing platforms now include additional features like automation, landing pages and easy integration with CRMs. Email only platforms are great but only if you integrate them into your other lead generating tools, website, landing pages, CRM. The goal is to ensure that emails are being shared and not missed as new emails come into the CRM the email platform needs to pick them up. If you can also ensure that the CRM can be notified via the email platform of any clicks and or opens even better.

Great Email/CRM platforms should also:

• Integrate with your graphics software like Adobe Suite or Canva.com
• Provide HTML options to save time remaking templates
• Provide an easy-to-use interface to create emails
• Provide email automation
• Allow you to create RSS feeds for content management
• Gives details performance analytics
• Integrate with your landing pages

There are so many to choose from, best to try a few and get a feel for which ones work best, classics include constantcontact.com, mailchimp.com and mailerlite.com to name but a few.

CRM based email platforms are best

The native integration of email with the CRM means that you have one log-in and one dashboard for lead nurturing, email marketing, task management and pipeline. This deep integration allows the marketing and sales team to see in real-time the success of any email campaign. Marketing can see the overall data analytics and sales will get immediate notifications if any of their prospects open an email, identify link clicks etc. This ensures that hot leads can be followed up on within minutes of the email being sent out. In my experience this gives you an edge over email only platforms! I recommend hubspot.com, activecampaign.com or salesforce.com.

CRM Sales Tools

Every salesperson needs an edge when they are juggling multiple clients and trying to hit their sales targets. The following automations are becoming standard across CRMs

• Email data is auto integrated with client history in the CRM informing sales of email opens and clicks
• Deep task and data tools, custom dashboards, lead filters and detailed pipeline tracking
• Ability to create templated and customized emails with calendar invite, conference links and document links built in.
• Provides a smartphone app with key functionality including the ability to scan business cards directly into the CRM and auto-populate company info.
• Detailed reporting on sales productivity and success rates across phone, email
• Info on what companies visit the website, number of pages and time on site

How to choose sales and marketing software

• Evaluate multiple CRMs because each has its own competitive edge, differentiation, integrations and price. Also, some CRMs have a steeper learning curve than others so take advantage of two-week trials.
• Also, look at what is “business critical” that is the software that you need like Google, MSFT, ERP, Inventory management systems, RFQ Automation etc. See how many of those application integrate with your proposed sales and marketing tools
• Speak to your IT professional
• Use review websites G2.com and capterra.com the reviews are primarily paid users and the website allows for deep comparisons.

Disclaimer

Please do your own due diligence and consult with your IT professional when considering any changes in your technology stack! Unlike “off the shelf” software and native integrations more complex APIs, web services and workflow automations need researching and planning out.

The links I have provided are to proven companies that have scaled with thousands of users. Or are based on my own user experience and not affiliate links. If you are looking for help implementing an CRM, Email Automation, Landing pages etc. or need help with SEO and Content Marketing then please send us an email – info@puremro.com