Today I missed an opportunity to market my driving instructor services to a potential client while out giving lessons in my car because I had run out of business cards.
We were in traffic, when this cyclist pulled up next to my open window and said have you got a card on you? I looked in my dashboard pocket, but there where none, so I said sorry I've run out. He had a look at my driving school car graphics, read out aloud the school name trying to memorise it as he rode off. Now I have no idea if he would have called after finding out how much I charged for lessons, but at least he would have visted the driving school website, and maybe the information there could have persuaded him to pay a little extra for a higher quality instructor rather than go for the cheapest driving lessons he could find.
I have now restocked my car, so hopefully that will be the last time I miss giving out a card to a potential client and lose the chance of advertising my driving school.
PS: I'll be posting a new article soon about free driving school websites, so make sure you bookmark this blog, follow me if you are a blogger user or subscribe by email entering your address in the box provided above.
Showing posts with label driving instructor marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label driving instructor marketing. Show all posts
Driving instructor marketing what have you done today
If your driving school needs more learner drivers, here is a question for you, what instructor marketing efforts have you tried today?
1. Could you have sent a sms text or better still called some of the people who have called you and made enquiries about learning to drive in the past 3 months (surely you have kept records of all those prospective clients including name). But if they are ready, they will call me, maybe or they might call your competitor.
Even if you only get one driving lesson out of 10 calls, that is better than sitting and waiting for the phone to ring. I use this marketing system regularly to top up sucsessful referals from my driving instructor website.
2. Have you registered that driving school domain name, that you have been putting off for the last 4 weeks? Did you know that all things being equal, a 3 month old domain will rank higher than one that was registered 1 month ago?
3. How about that overdue article you have been planning to write for your driving school website about the complex junction used by your local test centre, don't forget to drive down and take a few pictures to illustrate your maketing article. But if I give free test tips away, people will be able to pass the driving test without having to take any lessons or tuition with me! If you don't put the information on your website, people will not find your website, see it is useful, link to it and pass it on to others! In any case there will still be those who know the theory, but can't put into practise and they are the ones who will call you up especially if they had an attempt with one of your competitors who never quite gave them the helpful tips you shared online.
4. Could you have ordered your driving instructor business cards that you don't have.
5. How about washing your dual controlled instructor vehicle, so that it looks more attractive and those school advertising graphics can really shine through and grab the attention of new potential learner drivers.
6. Online forum activity. Use the free time to join a learner driver forum, and start giving advise to test candidates, you have setup a signature with your website url so people can also visit and find out more about the services you offer. If you are consistent with your activity, people will be willing to recommend or try you out.
Being a good teacher is just a small part of the things required to run a successful driving school business, marketing your services is just as important especially in the early years, as it will be a long time before you get a steady flow of recommendations coming in from those you have helped to pass.
So I ask again what driving instructor marketing or advertising have you done to grow your business today?
1. Could you have sent a sms text or better still called some of the people who have called you and made enquiries about learning to drive in the past 3 months (surely you have kept records of all those prospective clients including name). But if they are ready, they will call me, maybe or they might call your competitor.
Even if you only get one driving lesson out of 10 calls, that is better than sitting and waiting for the phone to ring. I use this marketing system regularly to top up sucsessful referals from my driving instructor website.
2. Have you registered that driving school domain name, that you have been putting off for the last 4 weeks? Did you know that all things being equal, a 3 month old domain will rank higher than one that was registered 1 month ago?
3. How about that overdue article you have been planning to write for your driving school website about the complex junction used by your local test centre, don't forget to drive down and take a few pictures to illustrate your maketing article. But if I give free test tips away, people will be able to pass the driving test without having to take any lessons or tuition with me! If you don't put the information on your website, people will not find your website, see it is useful, link to it and pass it on to others! In any case there will still be those who know the theory, but can't put into practise and they are the ones who will call you up especially if they had an attempt with one of your competitors who never quite gave them the helpful tips you shared online.
4. Could you have ordered your driving instructor business cards that you don't have.
5. How about washing your dual controlled instructor vehicle, so that it looks more attractive and those school advertising graphics can really shine through and grab the attention of new potential learner drivers.
6. Online forum activity. Use the free time to join a learner driver forum, and start giving advise to test candidates, you have setup a signature with your website url so people can also visit and find out more about the services you offer. If you are consistent with your activity, people will be willing to recommend or try you out.
Being a good teacher is just a small part of the things required to run a successful driving school business, marketing your services is just as important especially in the early years, as it will be a long time before you get a steady flow of recommendations coming in from those you have helped to pass.
So I ask again what driving instructor marketing or advertising have you done to grow your business today?
Dont lose driving school website
Having set up one of your most important school online marketing tools, you need to ensure you don't lose it, which is why I've shown you how to create a £5 driving school website.
One of the reasons why a lot of instructors lose or neglect their websites is due to running costs which can be a bit high if you use the wrong company to design and create it, couple that with the fact that the design company might not optimise your online presence to properly market your driving school.
All marketing costs are tax deductible, but any business owner will always get rid of any costs that they can't justify, so paying large hosting fees for a website that they don't see to be performing is a wise decision as far as they are concerned. As I mentioned in other parts of this blog, the only driving school marketing I do is with my website, and it works for me, and there is no reason why it can't do the same for you too if you follow the advice given in the various articles onn this site.
I'm just going to show you another reason why keeping your website is important.
A learner driver who passed their test, wrote about it in their blog, and recommended their instructor, adding a link to the instructors website (note the poor anchor text 'go to his website'). In December 2008 when this post was made, the website was up and running, however today, the driving school website is no longer there, while the phone number is also there, not many people will call, but a lot will click on the link. What a wasted business oportunity, if only they knew how to get a good online presence for a reasonable fee.
Additional Reading
Reasons for school website.
One of the reasons why a lot of instructors lose or neglect their websites is due to running costs which can be a bit high if you use the wrong company to design and create it, couple that with the fact that the design company might not optimise your online presence to properly market your driving school.
All marketing costs are tax deductible, but any business owner will always get rid of any costs that they can't justify, so paying large hosting fees for a website that they don't see to be performing is a wise decision as far as they are concerned. As I mentioned in other parts of this blog, the only driving school marketing I do is with my website, and it works for me, and there is no reason why it can't do the same for you too if you follow the advice given in the various articles onn this site.
I'm just going to show you another reason why keeping your website is important.
A learner driver who passed their test, wrote about it in their blog, and recommended their instructor, adding a link to the instructors website (note the poor anchor text 'go to his website'). In December 2008 when this post was made, the website was up and running, however today, the driving school website is no longer there, while the phone number is also there, not many people will call, but a lot will click on the link. What a wasted business oportunity, if only they knew how to get a good online presence for a reasonable fee.
Additional Reading
Reasons for school website.
Getting driving school website indexed by Google
Now that you have successfully completed the initial setup of your driving school advertising/marketing website and blog, it is time to get it indexed by the google search engine, as unless you get this step completed, there is little chance of your website being found by people searching for an instructor or lessons in the area you operate in.
Now you might be wondering why I have just mentioned the google search engine, afterall there are many others out there like Yahoo, Bing, Ask. The simple answer is that google dominates the online search market with almost 70% of all information being looked for on the internet through them, and to prove it, I want you to take a look at the graph below which shows how many people found my current driving school website while looking for information on the world wide web during one day.
As you can see from the figures, there is only one place that you want your online marketing website to be indexed, and that is in google, the others matter as well, and that will naturally happen once the most important engine finds out about you.
So I guess all I have to do now is find the form that allows me to submit my website, enter in a few details and I'll be done.
Wrong! Don't go to google.com and fill in the submit website form.
While doing this will be sucessfull, it could take up to 3 months for your marketing website to be found, there is a much quicker way to get indexed.
Find a website or blog that is already indexed, and get them to add a link to you. When the googlebot crawler next visits the site which could be the same day if they posted a new article, it will find the link to you, and add your driving school marketing website to it's index.
Those of you paying attention might have noticed the link I placed at the beginning of this article to my Hampstead driving lessons blog, what I did was post this article half finished just so I could prove this system works, because less than an hour after publishing, I did the following.
A search on google.com for 'driving lessons hampstead' as shown above, notice that it is not a very competitive term as there are only 35,200 results and this is the first page. Notice the entry in position 4 above "Driving Lessons Hampstead NW3 | The Driving Schools Blog"
Now look at the entry 3 positions below that in the next picture!
It is my newly created Hampstead blog in position 7 on the first page of google. Now before you start asking how much I paid to achieve that, let me explain a few things to you.
Google likes fresh content and will promote new websites or articles as they become available for a short time, that and the fact that the driving school domain name contains the searched for terms, helped to get the website registed on the 17th September 2009 on the first page of google in less than a month on a not too competitive search result.
The website will later fall off the first page as other content is published, and to get it to say on the first page needs some work which I will tell you about in a later internet marketing article, so come back soon.
Now you might be wondering why I have just mentioned the google search engine, afterall there are many others out there like Yahoo, Bing, Ask. The simple answer is that google dominates the online search market with almost 70% of all information being looked for on the internet through them, and to prove it, I want you to take a look at the graph below which shows how many people found my current driving school website while looking for information on the world wide web during one day.
As you can see from the figures, there is only one place that you want your online marketing website to be indexed, and that is in google, the others matter as well, and that will naturally happen once the most important engine finds out about you.
So I guess all I have to do now is find the form that allows me to submit my website, enter in a few details and I'll be done.
Wrong! Don't go to google.com and fill in the submit website form.
While doing this will be sucessfull, it could take up to 3 months for your marketing website to be found, there is a much quicker way to get indexed.
Find a website or blog that is already indexed, and get them to add a link to you. When the googlebot crawler next visits the site which could be the same day if they posted a new article, it will find the link to you, and add your driving school marketing website to it's index.
Those of you paying attention might have noticed the link I placed at the beginning of this article to my Hampstead driving lessons blog, what I did was post this article half finished just so I could prove this system works, because less than an hour after publishing, I did the following.
A search on google.com for 'driving lessons hampstead' as shown above, notice that it is not a very competitive term as there are only 35,200 results and this is the first page. Notice the entry in position 4 above "Driving Lessons Hampstead NW3 | The Driving Schools Blog"
Now look at the entry 3 positions below that in the next picture!
It is my newly created Hampstead blog in position 7 on the first page of google. Now before you start asking how much I paid to achieve that, let me explain a few things to you.
Google likes fresh content and will promote new websites or articles as they become available for a short time, that and the fact that the driving school domain name contains the searched for terms, helped to get the website registed on the 17th September 2009 on the first page of google in less than a month on a not too competitive search result.
The website will later fall off the first page as other content is published, and to get it to say on the first page needs some work which I will tell you about in a later internet marketing article, so come back soon.
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