The Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Airport (CHO) is a client that serves a wonderfully diverse group of people. In fact, the group is so diverse, we can divide it up into several smaller groups. That is exactly our approach to reaching their audience with an effective tailored message.
We know that everyone has different interests when selecting their ports of travel, different tolerances for convenience, different thresholds for timing and different sensitivities to service. Following the logo redesign, the marketing plan we created for FY 2009 addressed all of these by first addressing the groups that make up the group.
We divided the overall pool of travelers into over 10 distinct demographic groups with defining characteristics such as existing customer, local vs non-local, student vs UVa staff, business vs personal, family vs individual, travel agent vs corporate travel planner, and then some. The diversity turns out to be more than we can reasonably address and track within a given year, but the high-level thinking was done and the groundwork laid up front so in the subsequent years, we have a solid, comprehensive plan that we know covers the entire market.
Having put a bead on who we were dealing with, the next step was to determine how to reach them. The mix of media and marketing for each group varies right along with their demographics, where they travel to and from, when they travel, what media they consume and so on. Where possible, our solutions started with a general audience piece to get the biggest bang for the buck and start spreading awareness of the new emerging CHO brand. The blanket approach is being followed up with the more specifically tailored messages, as well as the delivery of information customized to the wants and needs of that particular demographic group.
