There are many ways that you can promote your school business and I'll list a few below, but I've found out that having a driving instructor website (I use a blog) online is one of the most cost effective advertising and marketing ways, with a very high return on one's investment.
While marketing online can be very effective, here a few ways of advertising your driving school business offline which will complement your website or blog once it is up and running.
Driving School Car
Your school car can be used to let potential clients know of your services, but many driving instructors don't maximise this potential. Having a roof sign is good, but putting graphics on the car is even better.A roof sign will only advertise your number or school name while it is on the car, but having graphics on your car can advertise your name, number, website, slogan everytime someone sees the vehicle whether you are instructing or not.
If you are one of those that says I want to be able to use my car privatey without drawing attention to my business, then you either have enough clients (which is fine), or you have no business sense and are being stupid. If you want learner drivers to call you, you need the maximum exposure you can get, which is why the national driving schools such as AA, BSM, RED, LDC all have graphics on their vehicles, it looks professional, draws attention but most importantly advertises the business and reminds people who to call when they want driving lessons.
Business Cards
Business cards are another marketing tool that you can use to advertise your services, and you need to have an abundant supply of them on your person as well as your car to hand out either when asked while out giving tuition, or when ever you might be networking.Your business card should have your school name, contact number, website details as a minimum, other things you can add are your name, company slogan. Don't put things like prices or special offers on them (your website can carry those) as they tend to change, and cards could be kept for years before being used.
Clothing
You can get things like ties, polo shirts and jackets made with your driving school name, website or number embossed on them, and wearing these in public give a professional image while at the same time serve as a means of marketing your services to potential clients. The fact that you are a local independent instructor does not mean you can use some of the big companies methods as well, if it works for them, why not for you. You can even go as far as geting caps made which you could give as a gift to students that pass their driving test with you.Other ways of marketing
Job fairs or career advice days at local colleges. Offering free driving lessons as prizes for year 12 students or A level institutions. Some people do leaflet drops (expensive and not very effective), others advertise in newspapers and yellow pages (I don't do this, as you don't get many enquiries from these avenues, instead the papers make the money and will continue to try to get you renew your adverts). Some driving school instructors advertise in university magazines, I have no idea how effective this is, but you can try it and see if it works for you.Whatever method you use to market your business, it is very important that you monitor your adverts and only use those that work, don't be pressurised by sales people into renewing adverts in papers, yellow pages, magazines that don't work.
With the help of information in this website, I hope you will be able to build an online marketing tool that will generate many enquiries and give your business great exposure.
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