How to Find Clients & Get Contracts in the Aerospace Industry

Aerospace is a large industry that regularly needs fabrication, engineering, and testing services, steel, film, carbon, batteries, ventilators, audiovisual equipment, and many other products and services.

Being picked by a particular airline can mean a high-value and long-term contract with a stable income for the companies selling such products and services.

However, finding the right person to pitch, getting their contact information, personalizing your offer, and maximizing the chances of being chosen by a company from the aerospace industry is extremely difficult.

In this article, we will review the best ways to find clients and obtain contracts in the aerospace industry.

Marketing in Aviation & Aerospace Industries

Marketing in the aviation and aerospace industries differs a lot from promoting your products to retailers, financial or pharmaceutical companies. There is a very limited number of airlines and potential aerospace industry clients. State-related organizations play a crucial role in this industry, with companies like NASA offering multibillion-dollar contracts for many following years.

This makes it very important to get as much information about your potential buyers as possible and prepare well to offer the most personalized and suitable offer. Otherwise, you will have to wait many years for the old contract to end to come up with a new offer again.

How to Pitch Aerospace Industry Professionals

Perform thorough research by learning about the company, what they do, how they differ from the competition, is the cost or quality more important for them, what is their strategy, what they are currently working on.

Large companies in the aerospace industry often publish their mission, vision, values, and strategic goals on their website or in annual reports.

Some companies also have a section on their corporate websites about the main employees and their functions. You can also try searching for company employees on LinkedIn.

It is crucial that you contact the right person – preferably one of the main decision-makers, or an employee who has a large influence over the final purchase decision.

If you’re selling accounting software, the right person to contact could be a CEO, CFO, founder, major shareholder, or head accountant.

When selling airplane parts or other details used in the production, you should rather contact a person who knows what the company needs and how to choose appropriate parts.

The right person to contact also depends on the actual responsibilities and functions of that particular person. Employees from different companies holding the same position can have different functions and influence over the final decision. Do thorough research, not to waste your time and chance to get a new major client.

When you understand who your target audience is, it is time to move to ways to find it.

How to Find Aerospace Clients

Attend forums, expos, and other professional networking events to have a chance to see some aviation industry leaders in real life. However, remember that there are many other people like you and companies like yours that try to pitch them, so it might be very difficult to stand out.

Once you have a new product or service, you should also write about it in a press release on your website. After that, try to share it on relevant PR submission sites and aerospace industry portals. Do your best to appear on the sites where aviation and aerospace professionals look for industry-related information.

You can also use your website to collect leads of potential buyers of your product or service. If you provide useful information on your website that aviation industry professionals can be interested in, they are more likely to find it and sign up for an email newsletter or contact you via a contact form.

Creating free e-books often works very well as lead magnets. You can provide insightful market research or ways to improve performance, lower costs, increase revenue, ideally connected to your offer. Once building trust by providing useful information, your ‘lead’ is more likely to become your customer.

Social media marketing can also work well in generating leads but make sure you publish the type of content in the type of social media your potential customers actually use.

If you know the right roles of people to contact, you can also try looking for their contact information online. Sometimes, you can find it on the corporate website. If not written directly, you can use email extraction apps and extensions like Email Hunter to get their emails. Another way to contact is LinkedIn and similar professional social networks.

Very often, the contact information of the top employees is well hidden, so you might need professionals to collect contact information in aerospace industry mailing lists that can include all the necessary data you need to prepare a personalized pitch.

Good luck finding clients in the aerospace and aviation industries. You can always contact Gethrough for customized contact databases of the employees you need. Save time on research and start pitching now!