From the 1st March 2011, all UK online marketing communications will be regulated by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), and they will be able to investigate complaints about false marketing campaigns on websites.
This now means that all owners of driving school websites need to make sure all claims are true and can be substantiated.
For more information about these new online marketing law changes, visit the ASA website.
These changes are most unlikely to affect driving instructors who only teach provisional licence holders for the UK 'L' test, but would probably lead to a rise in complaints against ADI training organisations or franchise operations who aren't quite truthful about their services.
Showing posts with label driving instructor online marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label driving instructor online marketing. Show all posts
Driving school marketing for Winter
It might just be september, and as an instructor business might be much healthier than it normally is, especially with the last minute rush from learner drivers to beat the new driving test in october, but one of the secrets of successful driving school marketing is to prepare for the future now.
Anyone who has been in the business for a while or who did their research into the industry before becoming involved would know that things slow down in winter, especially in the run up to Christmas and this year is going to be no exception, in fact things might even be tougher in 2010 due to the announced reduction in government public sector spending, so competion is going to be stronger in getting the few driving lessons that people might be willing to take, so you need to start thinking about how you are going to advertise and market your services from now!
I have already started my advertising and marketing campaign both online and offline, gearing up to make sure that I reduce the fall in income and revenue over the traditional christmas period and not wait till the january new resolution driving lesson craze kicks in.
So you are wondering what can an instructor do as far as pupill generation, marketing, advertising (and this doesn't necessarily mean newspapers, yellow pages, google adwords or student union magazines) is concerned to increase the pupil awareness of a driving school's services and attract enquiries and hopefully sales conversions in a downturning market that generally refocuses on holiday gifts.
Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not going to share my specific targets and goals including steps to achieve them with you, as that would be business suicide. You can have a look through this blog and try and implemet some of my how to market your driving school ideas. If you are one of those that has be putting off getting a driving school website then do so TODAY (not that this will be able to help this winter, but not having one is bad marketing anyway). There are other ideas I have shared here which if you haven't implemented you should try.
Remember your current client base can be used as leverage to get more business, but don't offer stupid rewards like free first assessment lesson! Any loss leader must have a hook, so a better way is third lesson free if you pay for 2 in advance, reward you current pupil with a free lesson if friend takes 10 lessons or half price if colleaugue takes four not one!
The purpose of this post is to get you thinking about future business now while the going might be good, just because you get home at 7pm doesn't mean that you can't spend an extra 30 minutes doing some driving school business marketing and offline advertising before calling it a day. Even if you are at the top of your game, doing nothing will not keep you there!
Anyone who has been in the business for a while or who did their research into the industry before becoming involved would know that things slow down in winter, especially in the run up to Christmas and this year is going to be no exception, in fact things might even be tougher in 2010 due to the announced reduction in government public sector spending, so competion is going to be stronger in getting the few driving lessons that people might be willing to take, so you need to start thinking about how you are going to advertise and market your services from now!
I have already started my advertising and marketing campaign both online and offline, gearing up to make sure that I reduce the fall in income and revenue over the traditional christmas period and not wait till the january new resolution driving lesson craze kicks in.
So you are wondering what can an instructor do as far as pupill generation, marketing, advertising (and this doesn't necessarily mean newspapers, yellow pages, google adwords or student union magazines) is concerned to increase the pupil awareness of a driving school's services and attract enquiries and hopefully sales conversions in a downturning market that generally refocuses on holiday gifts.
Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not going to share my specific targets and goals including steps to achieve them with you, as that would be business suicide. You can have a look through this blog and try and implemet some of my how to market your driving school ideas. If you are one of those that has be putting off getting a driving school website then do so TODAY (not that this will be able to help this winter, but not having one is bad marketing anyway). There are other ideas I have shared here which if you haven't implemented you should try.
Remember your current client base can be used as leverage to get more business, but don't offer stupid rewards like free first assessment lesson! Any loss leader must have a hook, so a better way is third lesson free if you pay for 2 in advance, reward you current pupil with a free lesson if friend takes 10 lessons or half price if colleaugue takes four not one!
The purpose of this post is to get you thinking about future business now while the going might be good, just because you get home at 7pm doesn't mean that you can't spend an extra 30 minutes doing some driving school business marketing and offline advertising before calling it a day. Even if you are at the top of your game, doing nothing will not keep you there!
Choosing driving school domain name to register
Choosing a driving school website domain name is one of the most important steps you need to get right in order to effectively market your driving instructor services online with a blog as I will be showing you here. We want to make sure that whatever we choose has an effect in targeting our chosen audience as far as the search engines are concerned since that is how we intend to get most of our clients, so I will use a real life example to illustrate the point.
I want to make sure that anyone looking for driving lessons in Hampstead comes to me, so that is my target audience that I am aiming to reach via my online blog and what my marketing and advertising will be concentrated on. I therefore want the domain name I will be registering to include some or all of these target keywords and will thus opt for the name drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk (other options might be replacing 'lessons' with either 'instructor' or 'school') don't use all 3, and this will be viewed as spamming by google (the king of all search engines owning over 65% of online activities when it comes to finding information on the internet) and will be banned or penalised on their results and you don't want that happening (loss of clients and income).
It is important that your chosen name includes the town, city you are targeting as this adds more weight to search results, while it might make your website url longer, you have an added advantage over your competitors who haven't used it in theirs.
why .co.uk and not .com
The reason I have chosen a uk domain is pretty obvious, I'm located in Britain, and so is everyone that I will be doing business with so it is the logical choice, but the most important reason why I've gone for it, is because they are the cheapest to register and maintain on a yearly basis.
If you have a much more global market that you will be targeting, then you might want to consider a .com domain name or even both as some companies do.
To start we will go to the 123-Reg Homepage and type in the domain name we want to register as shown below.
Click on the search button.
Untick all the options except the .co.uk name as shown below.
Click on add to basket then ok, let's continue.
On the next screen shown below, make sure you have spelt the chosen website domain name properly where it says choose your extras (mine currently has a spelling mistake 'p' missing). We will not be using any of the extras at this point, though if you want to host the website on a non free hosting platform or if you want a personalised email address using your chosen domain name for your business (e.g. enquiries@yourdrivingschool.co.uk) you can add it now (I will be dealing with these advanced features in a later article).
Click ok, let's continue.
You now have to either sign in if you already have an account with 123-Reg, or create one, as shown below.
Note: An email address is required, use your hotmail, google or other account and not your new business domain address if you added email in the steps above.
Once signed in, follow the instructions to pay for your ordered features (double check you have everything correct to avoid having to contact support as refunds are not usually given for mispelt domain names). If you have successfully completed the order, you should see a screen similar to the one below, with your ordered driving school url listed (I have corrected earlier typo).
You have now sucessfully completed the first step of establishing your school business internet website online.
To confirm this, open a web browser and type www.drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk (replace the text in bold with the domain name you have just registered), you should now get a screen similar to the one shown below.
drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk was successfully registered on 17th september 2009.
Next step creating your driving school blog.
I want to make sure that anyone looking for driving lessons in Hampstead comes to me, so that is my target audience that I am aiming to reach via my online blog and what my marketing and advertising will be concentrated on. I therefore want the domain name I will be registering to include some or all of these target keywords and will thus opt for the name drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk (other options might be replacing 'lessons' with either 'instructor' or 'school') don't use all 3, and this will be viewed as spamming by google (the king of all search engines owning over 65% of online activities when it comes to finding information on the internet) and will be banned or penalised on their results and you don't want that happening (loss of clients and income).
It is important that your chosen name includes the town, city you are targeting as this adds more weight to search results, while it might make your website url longer, you have an added advantage over your competitors who haven't used it in theirs.
why .co.uk and not .com
The reason I have chosen a uk domain is pretty obvious, I'm located in Britain, and so is everyone that I will be doing business with so it is the logical choice, but the most important reason why I've gone for it, is because they are the cheapest to register and maintain on a yearly basis.
If you have a much more global market that you will be targeting, then you might want to consider a .com domain name or even both as some companies do.
Registering your domain name
You do this by using a domain registrar, and my prefered one is 123-Reg because they offer the lowest price on UK domains, just under £7 for 2 years (correct as at sept 2009) and have offered excellent service over the years. In order to complete this domain registration process we will need a credit card and create an account with them if we've don't have one already.To start we will go to the 123-Reg Homepage and type in the domain name we want to register as shown below.
Click on the search button.
Untick all the options except the .co.uk name as shown below.
On the next screen shown below, make sure you have spelt the chosen website domain name properly where it says choose your extras (mine currently has a spelling mistake 'p' missing). We will not be using any of the extras at this point, though if you want to host the website on a non free hosting platform or if you want a personalised email address using your chosen domain name for your business (e.g. enquiries@yourdrivingschool.co.uk) you can add it now (I will be dealing with these advanced features in a later article).
Click ok, let's continue.
You now have to either sign in if you already have an account with 123-Reg, or create one, as shown below.
Note: An email address is required, use your hotmail, google or other account and not your new business domain address if you added email in the steps above.
Once signed in, follow the instructions to pay for your ordered features (double check you have everything correct to avoid having to contact support as refunds are not usually given for mispelt domain names). If you have successfully completed the order, you should see a screen similar to the one below, with your ordered driving school url listed (I have corrected earlier typo).
You have now sucessfully completed the first step of establishing your school business internet website online.
To confirm this, open a web browser and type www.drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk (replace the text in bold with the domain name you have just registered), you should now get a screen similar to the one shown below.
drivinglessonshampstead.co.uk was successfully registered on 17th september 2009.
Next step creating your driving school blog.
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