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Airline Market Development

Developing routes through partnerships with airports and communities.

An airline can have a quality schedule, great pricing and an amazing product, but without an effective communication strategy, no one will know about it. This is particularly critical for niche, regional carriers that predominantly compete with the highway or trying to develop completely new routes without a lot of proven demand.

On top of these challenges, retaining an advertising agency isn’t necessarily cost effective for all airlines. Embark provides a variety of services to help manage or develop your airline’s marketing strategy.

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Effective Marketing strategy includes five key areas: advertising, sponsorship, trade/promotions, co-operative programs, and market development. Embark has helped a variety of our partners develop marketing strategy, as well as develop co-operative marketing partnerships. Embark has helped partners source and execute over $3 million in marketing incentives and co-op dollars to support new markets.

  • Airline Airline Advertising Planning & Execution
    Embark can help co-ordinate and manage an airline’s advertising strategy to generate the greatest impact. This includes developing creative, plan media, and execute the media plan. In addition, given our Pricing and Revenue Management experience, we can create and manage a price-point advertising strategy that meets DOT requirements and can easily be communicated with community partners.
  • Trade/Promotions
    Trade and promotion delivers incremental, experiential media value and ROI leveraging travel trade, in lieu of cash investment. Embark develops programs for airlines that leverage trade effectively as part of their overall strategy – it’s a great way to build messaging with little to no advertising budget.
  • Co-operative Marketing
    Airlines can augment their existing media budget significantly by forming co-operative marketing partnerships with communities, resorts, or other entities. Embark efficiently creates programs that leverage co-operative programs to augment working media budget.
  • Airport Marketing Incentive Programs
    Airports and other community entities generally provide attractive marketing incentive programs to attract and develop new service. Often, this is a time-consuming process that doesn’t quite fit with existing airline marketing strategy, or even more challenging if an airline doesn’t have an advertising strategy at all. Embark can develop, execute, and manage media plans leveraging airport marketing incentive funds. In some cases this can be accomplished with no out of pocket expense to the airline.
    In addition, with extensive media strategy experience with airlines, Embark can help airports create and utilize their marketing incentive programs. In some cases, airlines choose not to use these funds, or in some cases, do not know how to best use the funds effectively. Airports can capitalize on Embark’s expertise to help these airlines use their eligible funds – a win for the airline – and a win for the airport.
  • Airline Market Development
    Embark can develop and manage day-to-day relationships with communities to develop routes, identify revenue guarantee markets, and manage DOT air service programs (including EAS and SCASD grants). With Embark’s extensive experience in Airline Network Planning, Embark has worked with both airline and airport clients to build route cases for EAS bids, develop Small Community Air Service Development (SCASD) grants, and negotiate Revenue Guarantee partnerships. This not only includes the overall development of the business case, but also includes engagement with local government and tourism entities, key business partners, as well potential airline service providers.

Our services include:

  • Media strategy and advertising management
  • Retail advertising development and management
  • Co-operative marketing development and management
  • Marketing incentive program development and execution
  • Sales Strategy and development
  • Local Marketing outreach program management