Marketing partners can be highly advantageous for small businesses. They often have more capabilities than the enterprise has in-house and can provide the insight needed to improve advertising campaigns. However, not all marketing partners are created equal — forging a partnership with the wrong agency can leave your facility scrambling, exhausting more personnel and resources to fix their mistakes.

As such, a significant component of selecting the right marketing partner is recognizing what to avoid. This can be especially important for small to mid-sized airports, which have very specific needs. To make a choice that ultimately benefits your facility, discover three red flags in marketing partners from Advance Aviation.

What Indicates the Wrong Marketing Partner?

Agreeing to work with a marketing partner that creates more work for your airport is a worst-case scenario. Luckily, you can keep yourself from this situation by noticing the warning signs beforehand. Some hints that a marketing partner may not be right for you include:

Inadequate Online Presence

In this digital world, a company’s online presence is often how people — and businesses — discover them. A marketing agency’s website should be well-organized, making it easy for visitors to locate the services and resources they need to learn more. It should also contain sufficient information about its staff, allowing viewers to read more about their experience and qualifications. If the agency’s website is difficult to navigate, how can you expect them to help you with yours?

Similarly, the agency should have a vibrant social media presence. Social media is an essential tool for engaging audiences — some studies suggest that around 75% of internet users research brands on social media platforms. If the potential partner effectively uses social media to their advantage, chances are they can help you do the same.

A Lack of Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials are crucial for generating trust with prospective clients. When a business highlights reviews from past customers, positive and negative, it allows visitors to see how the agency helped others in a similar situation.

If a marketing agency has no testimonials on its site, this can suggest there are no positive reviews to balance out the negative. It may also imply the business is a scam and has no real customers. Leaving up more critical reviews may seem counterintuitive, but it can highlight an agency’s transparency with its clients. Conversely, too many negative testimonials can be a sign to look elsewhere.

Quick-Fix Approach

How the agency talks about helping your airport achieve marketing success can reveal much about how the partnership will play out. Effective marketing recognizes a company’s challenges and aligns with its goals to craft a strategy catered to its needs. This comprehensive approach is particularly necessary for aviation marketing as airports typically require multifaceted marketing techniques.

If the agency is more interested in securing a new client, they may offer quick-fix solutions. While there are some marketing tactics for solving issues rapidly, relying on these methods alone is not sustainable long-term.

One solution that these types of agencies will peddle is search engine optimization (SEO) for fast rankings. Make no mistake — SEO is integral to effective marketing, but too much of a focus on this one solution can be a sign avoid to the marketing agency. Search engines typically catch onto this scheme and may penalize a site for it. Similar services a quick-fix agency may bring up frequently are link building (placing links to other websites on a page) and guest posting (writing articles for other sites).

What Should Small and Mid-Sized Airports Look for in a Marketing Partner?

Not all small businesses have the same needs. For example, a grocery store will likely not require the same type of assistance with marketing as an airport. This may seem self-explanatory, but it’s important to make the distinction because one marketing partner may suit one company but not another.

In other words, the signs mentioned above are not the only factors you should consider before selecting a marketing partner — you should also reflect on how the agency can meet your needs. The following are some questions to ask when evaluating your options:

• How much experience do they have serving the aviation industry?
• Do they have a well-defined approach to providing marketing assistance?
• What kinds of resources do they have access to?
• Does the agency plan to tailor solutions for each airport?

Find a Reliable Marketing Partner in Advance Aviation

Small and mid-sized airports searching for a marketing partner they can trust should turn to Advance Aviation. A full-service airport marketing partner that serves over 100 facilities nationwide, we work exclusively with small and mid-sized airports, helping them increase community engagement to fly local. We utilize a proven digital strategy that incorporates creative concepts, strategy development, and traditional media buying and planning. Contact us today to learn more about our services for small and mid-sized facilities.