Getting student pilots is crucial to the running of your flight school but with increased competition and a heavily saturated online space it’s not easy. This is where world-class marketing is needed. Ultimately its your marketing that will determine how many cockpits get filled. To help you with your marketing we’ve listed some common problems faced by flight schools and the superior marketing solutions that can fix them.

Same Messaging to Different Groups

When it comes to many flight schools we have found that they don’t segment their students which fall into two segments/groups — 1. Career pilots (wanting jobs in aviation) and 2. Recreational pilots (flying for fun). If you don’t segment your marketing your messaging won’t be targeted, and you’ll be saying the same thing to both groups. But this doesn’t work. You need a different message for both groups and a different conversation when speaking to them in person.

Pro tip – A/B test your messaging for each group and see which one works best.

Lots of Enquirers but no Conversions

Perhaps like so many flight schools your getting a lot of enquirers from your website, email, word of mouth, in-person events etc but no conversions. This is frustrating but stop and pause and dig a little deeper and see why they are not converting. It’s not always just bad luck! Very often in our experience we have found that its due to flight schools not having in place:

• A compelling offer (why should a student come to your flight school?).
• No discounts or extras are thrown in like student referrals to make it worth their while.
• Innovation that makes them look modern and up to date.
• Great customer service that leaves a wonderful first impression.
• Inspiring content on the website, social media, and other channels.
• No values clearly articulated (what do you stand for?).
• Empathy in messaging (Post COVID messaging needs to be more emphatic).

Pro tip – get to work on just a few of these or even better all of them and experience the difference. If you are short on time hire aviation marketing experts who will do it for you.

Struggling to keep up with SEO

There is a lot to SEO and Google doesn’t make it easy either with its constant SEO updates and algorithm changes. Flying a plane can seem like a piece of cake compared to SEO. The truth of the matter is that you do need to have a reasonable understanding of SEO for your online marketing to work. You can either take the time to learn it yourself or hire aviation marketing specialists that can look after your SEO. They will help you with crucial things like:

• Ranking for certain keywords
• Getting your brand name to rank well on Google, Bing etc
• Optimizing all your content for SEO ie: videos, podcasts, blogs etc
• And so much more

Pro tip – For every piece of content you put out you must always optimise for SEO. Without SEO your flight school won’t be found online. It’s wasted marketing!

Branding is on Auto-Pilot

Many flight schools have their branding on auto-pilot which is the worst thing you could do.  You got to be intentional and consistently work on your brand. Remember your brand is your professional reputation and you need to do all you can to protect it and ensure you don’t do anything to dilute it. Never cut any corners with your training and students. This is a sure way to tarnish your brand. In addition, keep implement the following:

• A cohesive and clear brand message across all your marketing channels.
• Ensure your brand’s colours, logos, slogans etc are consistent throughout.
• Ensure your values and what you stand for come through in your messaging.
• Do all you can to dominate the SERP results on Google for your brand name.

Pro Tip- Get your team together and do a branding strategy session and come up with a plan just for your branding for the next 3 to 6 months.

Your Flight School’s Personality

We don’t mean to be rude and disrespectful here but often it’s your personality or that of your overall flight school getting in the way of your marketing. After all the best marketing in the world boils down to your personality (who you are as a person). Humans like to do business with people they like and trust. That’s why people like Richard Branson are legends of aviation. People for the most part find him authentic and genuine. So, it’s important that your flight school comes across with a great personality both online and offline.

Pro tip – You can spend all the money in the world on Google Ads and other channels but if your personality comes across as inauthentic and not genuine your marketing is broken.

We can’t recommend enough implementing these super strategic and highly practical and highly actionable marketing tactics that will take your flight school’s marketing to a whole new level. For more help with marketing your flight school Contact Off The Ground Marketing, the experts in aviation marketing.