I decided to experiment with driving school advertising on facebook since it has over 140 million users worldwide even though I'm only interested in 17 - 40 year olds in London who might want to learn to drive.
Ask any successful business person, and they will tell you it takes money to make money, so advertising and marketing needs a budget set aside for it as well.
The purpose of my marketing campaign on facebook was to attract people to a new page I had created which will serve as a hub to drive targeted traffic to my main website. I'm going to share the results here just so you can see how I got on, you can then decide if you should use a similar approach for your driving school marketing efforts.
If you need advice on how to setup a facebook marketing page for your driving school, then go to Self made minds.
I logged into my facebook account, and created a marketing campaign for the page, and opted for the pay per click basis as opposed to the number of impressions, since the object was to get fans to subcsribe.
Having selected the target market including, age, geographical location, interests, the system then recommended a bid amount for how much I was to pay for each facebook user that clicks on my advert 75p, but I was not going to pay that amount as it was too much and I only wanted to pay a maximum of £5 each day the advertisement was running.
So for the first day I only bid 10p and within the 24hrs my driving school advertisement only had 3 impressions(number of times it was shown), with nobody clicking on it.
For the second 24hr period I decided to double the campaign bid amount to 20p, this then resulted in 16843 impressions with 8 people clicking on the ad and thus being shown my facebook driving instructor page, but only 2 of them actually became a fan and subscribed. This low amount of clicks for such a large number of impressions meant that my adverts were less targeted, so I decided to increase the bid amount to 25p, but narrow the audience only to those interested in driving lessons as opposed to those that liked cars and automobiles.
My 3rd day of advertising gave me 6411 impressions and only 2 clicks, with no conversions, so no progress this time.
Still no more clicks and conversions on 4th day, so I've decided to keep the advert running until I reach my target.
Driving School Business Cards
One cheap way of effectively marketing a driving instructor is through the use of driving school business cards which can act as a complimentary way of advertising.
The average cost of printing 500 black and white business cards online for your school is around £25 (the price of a single lesson), but the effects it could have if properly used could run into hundreds of pounds return on investment and it could be a few months before you need to order more of this stationary for the office.
Your driving school business cards should have the following basic details printed on them.
1. Driving school name. This is your identity and brand representation.
2. Business logo and motto if you have one.
3. Instructor name and contact number (usually mobile, but could be a landline if using an answering service or spouse at home acting as secretary)
4. Driving lessons website, you can't compete in the current day and age or be able to promote your ADI and learner driver services without one.
Let me illustrate with an example of how handing out a business card to one person if you are in the right place at the right moment can bring more learner drivers to you.
I met a woman who joined me for driving lessons, she in turn introduced me to her son (complete beginner), brother in law (foreign licence holder), sister in law (partly trained driver) and sister (beginner). If I didn't have a card that pointed her to my website where she was able to get a lot of information about learning to drive, the DSA test which prompted her to use me despite not being the cheapest in the area, I could have lost out on the hundreds of pounds of business.
Don't under estimate the marketing power of driving school business cards, I have mentioned in the past how I missed a promoting chance while out in the car because I had run out of cards, so make sure you have supplies in your vehicle, wallet, purse because you can have a networking moment anywhere, supermarket, childrens school playground, etc.
The average cost of printing 500 black and white business cards online for your school is around £25 (the price of a single lesson), but the effects it could have if properly used could run into hundreds of pounds return on investment and it could be a few months before you need to order more of this stationary for the office.
Your driving school business cards should have the following basic details printed on them.
1. Driving school name. This is your identity and brand representation.
2. Business logo and motto if you have one.
3. Instructor name and contact number (usually mobile, but could be a landline if using an answering service or spouse at home acting as secretary)
4. Driving lessons website, you can't compete in the current day and age or be able to promote your ADI and learner driver services without one.
Let me illustrate with an example of how handing out a business card to one person if you are in the right place at the right moment can bring more learner drivers to you.
I met a woman who joined me for driving lessons, she in turn introduced me to her son (complete beginner), brother in law (foreign licence holder), sister in law (partly trained driver) and sister (beginner). If I didn't have a card that pointed her to my website where she was able to get a lot of information about learning to drive, the DSA test which prompted her to use me despite not being the cheapest in the area, I could have lost out on the hundreds of pounds of business.
Don't under estimate the marketing power of driving school business cards, I have mentioned in the past how I missed a promoting chance while out in the car because I had run out of cards, so make sure you have supplies in your vehicle, wallet, purse because you can have a networking moment anywhere, supermarket, childrens school playground, etc.
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