7 Ways Driving Instructors Can Advertise Their Business

Driving instructor advertising should about uniquely promoting your services, including behind-the-wheel and classroom instruction, defensive driving, road testing, and/or related service options. Below is a straightforward list of advertising strategies that any driving instructor can use.

1. Create a Compelling Website

Your driving instructor website is very important, because parents and adult students are intending to spend hundreds of dollars on your program. These customers are looking for a driving instructor who offers a safe program, great value for the money spent, and experience suggesting that the driver will be successful.

A highly professional website helps to separate your driving instruction program from the competition and helps to provide greater confidence for the customer before they purchase lessons from you.

2. Win on Google with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Being found on Google for “driving instructor + [your location]” and a variety of related terms will drive additional customers to your business through the website. The more terms you add and the broader the locations in which you want to be found, the greater the increase in website traffic over time. This in turn creates a long-term business growth opportunity. The importance of winning in local online searches cannot be overstated.

3. Advertise on Facebook

We cover this in-depth in other posts, but basically your goal should be to create Facebook posts focused on the success of your school, occasionally adding in special promotions and alternate graphics. Then, these posts and that Facebook page overall should have a budget behind it that promotes your business to customers of proper age in your community (e.g. teens and the likely age range of their parents, etc.).

This creates an opportunity for new people to hear about you, and it’s doubly compelling if they hear about you after seeing a picture of a successful student and a testimonial from that student endorsing your driving school.

Related Article: Driving School Advertising Basics – Part One

Related Article: Driving School Advertising Basics – Part Two

4. Advertise using Google AdWords

AdWords supplies immediate website traffic, which is useful if business is down at a given time. Just make sure that the keywords are properly formatted in your campaign to both (a) focus on the keyword quality and (b) create ads that only show to people in the area you serve. For example, “driving instructor new york city” is very different from a non-quotation mark version of the same term. “Driving instructor new york city” with quotation marks will only show to people who type those exact terms. ‘Driving instructor new york city’ without proper quotation marks will show to anyone who types literally any of those words. If you spend your budget efficiently, you should grow your business.

5. Enable Ad Retargeting on Your Website

Ad retargeting basically results in your website visitors being followed with ads about your driving school. Since most driving school customers do not know how to judge between one driver education program and another, retargeting – which only reaches possible customers who have already visited your website – is a great way to build the perception of your brand quality.

A driving school that advertises more is likely perceived as a more qualified and professional driving school. At least that is what we observe and it is why retargeted does such a nice job of increasing the Return-on-Investment for all other driving instructor advertising strategies.

6. Create a Postcard Campaign

Once your Internet marketing is up and running, you may want to try creating a postcard campaign. You might make a special offer, but most important is that the postcards are sent within the community you serve – very widely. If you send these postcards during the best seasons for the driving school industry, which is usually Spring and Summer – and especially if you send these close to when students are about to have a block of time off (such as Spring Break), you can increase the response rate from the postcards. There are other factors at play, but this is worth experimenting with if you have the budget.

Just keep in mind that postcards should come after Internet marketing, because customers will Google you to learn more about your driving school. You driving instructor advertising will be more efficiently spent if customers can learn more about you easily online.

7. Develop Partnerships with Local Organizations

Schools are the obvious organizations to contact, but hospitals also need driver evaluation services, and court systems and lawyer have clients who should perhaps receive defensive driving services. If you can expand your services or already have the ability to fulfill some of these requirements, you may want to look into developing partnerships with these organizations. Sometimes, for example, a local high-school may have a need for a driving instructor, and you can then advertise your related behind-the-wheel services outside of just teaching in the classroom.

Individual or collectively, we have used each of these strategies successfully for helping our driving school clients advertise and grow their businesses. You can try these on your own or give us a call, we’re happy to answer any questions. Good luck!

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Josh Meah

Josh is the CEO of DrivingSchool.Marketing. His goal is to be the marketing and business development partner of driving schools around the world, helping them become thriving businesses while also expanding general awareness for the importance of traffic safety standards and education.

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