The global aviation marketplace is mature and tremendously complicated. If you are an established airline, a charter carrier, an airport, a fixed base operator, or a vendor provider, your services are intertwined. Airlines need airports and vice versa, but they all need pilots, making flight schools the backbone of a billion-dollar industry.

Over our years of experience working with Flight Schools, we have learnt how best to utilise the essential aspects of the digital world.

Although marketing is never as simple as a plug and plays template, we have narrowed down our top tips for reaching, capturing and qualifying leads, as well as creating an efficient onboarding system for new and eager clients.

This system is based on three pillars:

• Exposure and Reach
• Pre-Qualifying Students
• Student Management System

Flight School Exposure and Reach

Starting with the bread and butter, “exposure”, we use digital marketing avenues and well-researched content to reach potential students.

Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t consider being a pilot a viable career choice. We’ve set out to change this mindset.

Through targeted social media, email marketing, unique content, and digital advertising — You can ensure your targeted market is well aware of the remarkable career options for aspiring pilots. Aviation delivers an incredible lifestyle, competitive compensation, excellent quality of life and the chance to see the world.

To begin with, we will establish the right ‘tools to use in the online space to reach and intrigue your ideal client by considering the following questions;

• Is the audience centred on specific geographical locations?
• What’s the purpose or intent of the student?
• For what rational and irrational reasons are people looking to approaching your flight school currently?
• What other behaviours, facts and information related to students interests beyond this are known?

Student Pre-qualifying

When you have secured a strong and continuous flow of potential students attending your flight school, it is necessary to implement a system that allows you to qualify them effectively. The management team needs a system like this to make their job more comfortable and more effective.

Nowadays, interest can be measured in two ways: Physical and online. Your flight school can assess the prospects’ level of interest by actually talking to them in person when they show up to your school or by measuring their online behaviour and interaction with your flight school’s channels.

​By intersecting these two variables, we can categorise our leads into four kinds:

Usually, the management team can wander around without such a system and spend time with the leads that won’t enrol for serious training opportunities.

Student/Aircraft/Customer Management Systems

We don’t mean any offence, but if you’re a flight instructor, your best trait is probably, flying.

If you have a Customer Relations Management system in place but don’t use it as much as you feel you should, then take that extra step. If you’re using google sheets to run your business, then you most certainly should invest some time into integrating your school into one.

Something that provides the following:

• Online Presence & Exposure
• Customer Follow up
• Staff and Aircraft Calendars
• Student Calendars
• Two-way texting & email
• Pipeline management
• Online course portal

We hope this provides the necessary perspective to get the ball rolling, but if you need help, we offer all these marketing solutions and the software requirements to hit the ground running. Our understanding and passion for aviation provide our clients with a marketing partner that has a real feel for their business and a team with national and international experience with every surface of the marketing and promotion process.

It is the synergetic nature of understanding all verticals in aviation that makes the whole thing work. We are a bunch of marketers who live and breathe aviation.