For your small or mid-sized airport, it’s vital to seize every marketing opportunity, from improving your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to choosing the best time to post on social media. But far too often, airports overlook one of their most valuable assets when forming their marketing campaigns – their employees. As the literal heartbeat of your brand, your employees are not only a huge component of how travelers perceive your airport and but also a part of each customer’s experience. Advance Aviation, a division of Advance Media New York, explains how to position your employees as your brand’s best ambassadors.

Gather Their Insights

First things first – make your employees a part of the conversation, as their insights are invaluable to your marketing efforts. They’re the ones on the front lines, interacting with your customers and representing your brand, so they have an insider’s perspective on how your customers feel about your airport. Here are just a few of the topics you should ask them about as you perfect your marketing strategy and turn them into your newest brand ambassadors:

• The most frequently asked questions by travelers
• What your airport’s mission currently says to them
• Any and all feedback about what customers like and dislike
• How they feel about your merchandise and promotional materials

Involving employees in the planning stages of your strategy motivates them further to represent your airport in the best possible light. It’ll also make them more likely to participate in the initiatives you need help promoting the most.

Engage Them in Social Media Efforts

Many airports and businesses across the board discourage employees from associating work with their social media accounts. However, having a policy in place that promotes exactly the opposite can provide a huge boost for your marketing efforts. Your employees are already talking about their jobs with their friends and family, so why not capitalize on this free word-of-mouth advertising even more by encouraging them to share your company’s posts? Here are a few best practices for doing so:

• Allow your employees to use social media during the workday – as long as their activity is related to your airport.
• Make your online marketing content easily shareable in user-friendly formats so employees have no trouble posting.
• Put rules in place for what types of things can and cannot be said on social media, and make the repercussions for not following the rules as clear as possible.
• Create incentives by holding contests and rewarding the employees who get the most shares or likes that week.

Feature Them in Your Advertising

What better way to encourage your employees to share your blogs, photos, and videos than by including them in the content itself? Dress them up in your brand’s swag and have them pose in photos, act in videos, or write guest blogs for your website. There are numerous ways to involve them in content creation, and they’ll be excited to share the posts with their social networks. Before you know it, your social media pages will have more followers, your posts will see more engagement, and your website will see more organic traffic.

Extend Your Marketing Team with Advance Aviation

Transforming your dedicated employees into effective brand ambassadors is only one small piece to a truly impactful marketing strategy for your airport. To learn about other marketing tactics that all airports should include in their planning, or to find out how Advance Aviation can serve as a trusted extension of your marketing team along with your brand ambassadors, contact us today.