Elevate Your Driving School Marketing Game

1. Market me Carly Brookfield, Head of Membership Services Driving Instructors Association

2. Your marketing assets and tools ...your product and your brand • You • Your knowledge and expertise • Your experience • Your diversity – specialisms and flexibility • Your car • Your brand • Your pupils and key referrers • Your track record • Your reputation • Your experience as a customer of any kind, for any kind of service • Your continuing professional development (new skills, new knowledge)

3. What is your Elevator Pitch? I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten for this pitch...

4. Marketing superheroes harness lots of powers • Use the key marketing channels and tools at your disposal • Experiment and evaluate – decide what works, drop what doesn’t • Research - what are other small businesses doing to market themselves, locally, nationally, globally • Network • Perfect your elevator pitch

5. Key Marketing Channels for ADIs • • Direct Marketing • • PR • • Emarketing (including social media) • • Events • • Partnership/networking • Product development – packages, deals, new skills and specialisms • • Market Research

6. PR & Events • • Community events – you are a community resource, have a presence, build profile • • Local business networks • • Editorial hooks – you can be a contributor • • Writing a driving or road safety article or columns • • Vox pops/rentaquote – become one on road safety or driving issues • •Talks to local groups - offer yourself to everyone! • Local groups - want speakers, potential customers or influencers in the audience • Use community resources to advertise free or cheaply

7. Partnership & Networking • • Local business groups & networks • • Look at who else wants to target your audiences • Enter in partnership and do some deals, reciprocal marketing • Who to partner? • - Youth orientated businesses such as sports clubs, leisure providers • - Other private tutors/trainers - dance schools to football clubs • - Schools and FE Colleges • - Youth groups

8. A word about your package • You’ve perfected your pitch but what about your package? • Don’t compete on price, compete on value • Packages and deals are not the devil’s spawn • Effective recruitment and retention tool (ties people in for longer) • Bulk up your package – what added value can you offer? What deals can you do? • Pre and post-test packages • If they fixed the prices tomorrow, you’d have to market harder and create even more differentiation – packages and deals would be even more important

9. The most powerful form of Marketing? • Word of mouth • Ask for recommendations • Incentivise referrals - one bottle of wine goes a long way! • Track referrals so you know and can exploit your best sources • All your other marketing activities work towards fuelling this most powerful marketing channel

10. Key Online Marketing Channels for ADIs/Driving Schools • Own website • Online advertising tools such as Google Ads • Display Advertising and editorial content on other websites • SEO/SEM • Social Media • Directory listing • Emarketing campaigns

11. Your website – DIY or Designer? • Various online build you own options and you don’t need to be a web programmer • Moonfruit, Go-Daddy, 1and1 are all big brands in this marketplace • Easy to use guides • Plenty of designed solutions available too • Ask for recommendations • Research their portfolio/client list • Look at other local business sites or other ADI sites you admire – who do they use • Lot of rogue traders in this area so watch out • DIA design service in development – watch this space

12. Essential web design • Mobile and tablet version of your website • Content Management System (or CMS) • Metatags – key descriptors of you site’s content • Unique, accurate page titles • Have a Site Map – search engines love them. • Have clear and obvious navigation– • Think of the user journey, least steps possible to find information and make actions • Avoid 100% flash web sites, search engines find it difficult read, people are impatient • Avoid music • Keep text above the fold • Think about use of colour and text size fonts – doesn’t just need to be attractive, • needs to bereadable and also needs to comply with legislation • Does it echo and reflect your brand so you generate brand recall?

13. Desirable web design • Use images, video and enrich your content – search engines like • enriched content • Payment function • Online booking and diary function • Multi-platform instant publishing - technology which helps you publish • across all your sites and social feeds at once • Facebook, Twitter and other social media links

14. Essential content • Contact details must be prominent on every page • Clear positioning statement about what you do– your elevator pitch • Explain how you can help visitors to your site, • Incorporate important keywords and phrases – what you do, not waffle • Allow room for at least 50 words but preferably less than 100 words • Search engines regard the first 100 words on a web page as the most important • Keep it fresh and interesting so people have reasons to come back

15. Desirable content • Pricing or idea of ballpark costs of your services • People profile - qualifications, accreditations, awards and experience plus personality • Testimonials and case studies • Credibility Logos – i.e. DIA brand, DSA etc • Success rate - more than just your pass rate • Any offers or incentives • Tips, news and advisory articles about learning to drive • Blogs – pupils, and your own • Links to other useful sites • Online learner logs – coming soon from DIA!

16. ‘A tree falls in the forest…getting your website seen’ • 97% of consumers search for local businesses online – will they find you? • You can build a perfect website, but its content can remain invisible to search engines unless you promote it. • Search technology relies on the metrics of relevance and importance to display results • Search engines still needs humans to like/want and seek out what you offer to gauge • popularity and relevance and rank it highly • Develop your website with the user in mind, and search engines will like it too

17. Free emarketing tools • Use free online resources – Google Webmaster Tools • - Google Places • - Google Alert • - Google Website Optimizer • - Google Analytics • Google, Bing and Yahoo yourself regularly to check position on key word searches • Ask friends, family and pupils to search on key terms for and review your site in terms of ease of use, ease to find and how you compare • Free website audit and design brief – check they are no obligation and be comfortable saying no to pressure sales afterwards

18. Users and search engines love originality… Make a splash and standout

19. ‘I’ve got a website and I’m not afraid to use it!’ • Email campaigns • Enewsletters • Advertise your online presence - in your branding and marketing? Car, business cards, flyers? • Make sure your domain name is memorable - as you whizz past or you’re parked up can they see it and remember it/type it into search quickly? • Use other marketing channels to fuel your SEO and drive traffic to you • PR • offers and incentives – only available online? • social media • enriched content • links to and from other sites your target audience use • blogs – yours and your pupils

20. Customer service and marketing tool • Use it to also manage and increase efficiency of customer service/cut down on admin etc • You’re in the car teaching – your website and emarketing channels need to work as customer service channels • Incentivise/encourageonline bookings and payments, possibly even initial enquiries • Online booking, payment function, surveys, automated online assistant (Moxie, Zoho)

21. Search Engine Marketing - ‘paid for’ SEO • Promotion of websites increasing their visibility in search engine results • Google Adwords– you chose the phrases and keywords most relevant to your • product, service or audience, Google pushes them for you • If unique enough and not much competition even a one month campaign can boost SEO for months – hence originality overall so important • Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter other options • . • Paid inclusion – paying for listing in search engines, normally annual fee • Pay per click (PPC)– advertising on other sites where you paying for volume of traffic clicking through on adverts

22. Monitor it • Analytics are not just for geeks • It’s free! • Understand your visitors and what they do on your site • Check positioning and ranking in all major search engines • Regularly Google your site and all brands/names associated with your business • Google and monitor competitor sites • Search on what users would search for, not just your business name and see where you appear • Monitor source of all enquiries/business - how many cite your website or emarketing channels as source? • Reputation management

23. Social Media Marketing • Social media marketing  - process of gaining web traffic or attention through social media sites • Twitter • Facebook • Foursquare - location based social networking website, where users can check into locations via their smartphones. • Instagram - free photo-sharing program and social network - 100 million registered users. • Blogs • LinkedIn • YouTube • Groupon and similar – voucher based sales to subscribed community • Gumtree • Freecycle- exchange/barter based community of subscribers

24. Social Media Marketing – Free Stuff • Create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks • Offers and incentives • News • Success stories, passes • Student blogs • Competitions • Surveys • Anything that can go viral – shock and awe campaigns (though be aware of the pitfalls)

25. Social Media Marketing – Paid For • Facebook and Twitter, in fact most social media channels, now offer advertising options • Facebook surveys, sponsored content, games and giveaways • Facebook also ‘sell’ user data based on behaviours in Facebook • Twitter – pay to promote your tweets – good platform for new products and promotions • Twitter ‘Promoted Accounts’ – pay for followers • Groupon and similar promotions

26. Want to know more about online marketing? it!

27. How we can help with Marketing? • National PR and marketing campaigns to educate the public about driver education • FADI-free with membership • New Learner portal coming soon • National contracts and strategic partnerships – delivering work for our members • Helpdesk support – expert professional marketers on the ened of a phone or email • CPD – business development modules to short elearning courses • How To Guides on social media, marketing etc available soon

28. Contact us with any questions of queries:carlybrookfield@driving.orghelp@driving.orgtraining@driving.org