RYANAIR: BECOMING THE GO-TO BUDGET AIRLINE

Morning!

I’m writing this a few thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean on a flight back to the UK. The time is 00:08, I’m 3 hours and 30 minutes into this flight, I still have 3 hours and 30 minutes to go, my left hamstring is cramping, I didn’t pay for Wifi because I’m a tight bastard so I’m writing this on “Text Edit” on my Mac (whatever that is), oh and I have another connecting flight to get after this.

That was me letting you know that my current writing conditions are far from optimal. Nonetheless, it makes what I’m about to write about much more of a current event.

Because today I’m going to show you how to market exactly what I’m sat on - a cheap plane.

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When it comes to buying plane tickets my criteria is as simple as it gets:

1. I want to be on a plane that won’t crash.

2. The tickets don’t cost stupid amounts of money.

For years I’ve stuck by that criteria. Because who cares about leg room right? It’s only an 8 hour flight who needs that?

Turns out I do - on this flight.

Moaning aside, my plane ticket search criteria has served me well over the years However, it has also limited my options of which airlines I fly on to well... let’s just call them “budget airlines”.

They suck, but they’re cheap. That’s kinda their shtick.

Generally speaking, the fact they suck doesn’t really matter because what they compete on is price. But on this flight I’m currently on, I feel more hard done than usual.

When I booked these tickets I thought I’d banked a bargain with an airline I hadn’t heard of before - Aer Lingus. Everything about them seemed a little bit more premium than the classic budget airlines. I thought I was onto a winner - genuinely.

Then I stepped on the plane.

0 leg room - literally 0. Their complimentary drinks consisted of one cup of water - you weren’t allowed the bottle. Then to top it off the staff were miserable.

It’s been an all-around bad experience honestly. But it got me thinking about other budget airlines and how they position themselves, with one in particular airline circling my mind….

Ryanair.

They’ve become infamous in recent years for their marketing - particularly on TikTok - but today I don’t want to talk about TikTok, we’ve heard it all before. Today, I want to talk about how they position themselves across all of their brand comms.

You see, most budget airlines (in fact, most budget companies in general) use all of their brand touchpoints to put themselves across as NOT a budget brand. But the problem is, people wanting cheap flights are looking for budget airlines. They aren’t scrolling on the Emirates site looking for prices, they aren’t looking for luxury - they’re looking for cheap.

And no one does cheap better than Ryanair, who position themselves as THE budget brand through doing 3 simple things:

1. They admit who they are from the off

You see Aer Lingus made themselves out to be some luxury Irish airline (or at least they seemed that way to me). So when the complementary bar walked around and handed me 1 cup of water - it was a big disappointment. Ryanair does the complete opposite. Across all of their brand touchpoints they never make themselves out to be anything they aren’t.

Instead, they put themselves across as a budget airline. They joke about it, they make memes about it, and they make TikToks about it. They understand exactly what they are and they communicate that magnificently to their target audience.

2. They humanise the brand

The only thing more important than cost to people looking for a cheap flight is trust. No matter how cheap a flight is, if you don’t trust the people you’re flying with no one is getting on that plane.

Ryanair solves that problem perfectly by humanising its brand across socials. All those stupid TikToks and Tweets may seem pointless, but what they are really doing is making the company seem more human.

And when it comes to brand comms, the more human you feel to consumers, the more they’re going to trust you.

3. They put themselves everywhere

Challenge for you: Name 5 other budget airlines. Thomas Cook? JetBlue? EasyJet? I’m stumped at 3 and I’m pretty sure Thomas Cook went out of business.

Yet, I know Ryanair and so does everyone else.

And that’s all because Ryanair put a shit tonne of time, money and effort to get as many eyes as possible onto their brand,

Points 1 and 2 (above) is the perfect combo to turn a prospect into a customer, but it’s this number 3 that is the jab that sets those finishing shots up.

Combine all 3 of them and you have Ryanair positioned as the go-to budget airline that ticks all the boxes.

Not the boxes of the best flight ever. But the boxes of the budget airline that we all go and search on first before we look elsewhere.

Buying budget airline tickets all starts with a search and Ryanair’s 3-punch combo is what allows Ryanair to steal all of that search demand.

That’s the strategy, but how can you implement something similar?

I’m slowly drifting off here so I’m going to turn this into a TL;DR, here we go:

1. Admit who you are

Harder than it sounds, but more impactful than you could imagine. No one likes someone that tries to be something they’re not and that applies to brands too. If you’re a budget company, be a budget company. Don’t hide it, express it.

People need a budget company, so make yourself the go-to.

2. Stop being a corporate Colin

No one connects with brands that have comms that feel like they’ve been written by a robot. When you communicate with your customers, be human - they’ll like it.

3. Put eyes on you

None of this matters if no one sees your brand or knows your name. As the Twitter saying goes: build an audience, then a product, Not a product then an audience.

If you haven’t already got an audience, find a way to get eyes on your brand QUICK. Your positioning is useless if no one sees it.

Right, that’s it for today! I’m going to try and catch some sleep for the next hour. Update: Currently in Dublin, didn't get any sleep, I refuse to fly economy ever again.

Enjoy your Sunday guys.

— Niall

This has been a breakdown of Ryainair'smarketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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