5 Local Marketing Ideas for Flight Schools

FLYTSITES is all about digital marketing, but sometimes some traditional marketing can really help a flight school get fast results when it comes to generating new students. Using these techniques can add up to make a big impact.

Here’s our list of 5 ideas to try:

Tip #1: Drop Off Pilot Career Brochures To Local High School Counselor Offices

High School guidance and career counselors are always looking for new ways to get their student population excited about their opportunities in the future. Create a stack of compelling brochures about the benefits of your school, career options, financing, and scholarship opportunities. Offering a special on a discovery flight in the brochure is a great way to get these students introduced to aviation. 

Strategy #2: Attend a Local Career Fair

High schools frequently host career fairs and it’s a great way to get face to face time with potential career students. These events are typically free and the only costs will be marketing materials and booth design. 

Here’s a couple of tips:

1. If possible, bring a couple of pilot colleagues from different fields in aviation to speak about their direct experience. These can be from any industry, such as medevac, airlines, charter, cargo, military, LEO, fish and game, local airport ops, air traffic controllers, etc. 

2. You can partner with non flying aviation businesses to help offset costs in booth design and marketing materials. These can be large corporate businesses like Boeing or Garmin, charter operators who need flight attendants and schedulers, major airlines, local airports and more. 

Strategy #3: Target Graduating Seniors With Direct Mail

Colleges, Universities and even national flight schools have all seen the benefit of sending direct mail brochures and info packets to high school seniors during this pivotal transition period in their lives, and now.. it’s your time. 

There’s a lot of different ways to create compelling marketing materials for direct mail, from doing it yourself on software like Adobe’s Creative Cloud or hiring a professional copywriter and designer. Don’t forget however, the quality of your marketing reflects on the quality of your brand and your service.

If you don’t really know what you’re doing, we suggest partnering with experts like the team at FLYTSITES to design your content. A small budget targeted correctly can go a long way, but you’re still competing against large brands who have deep pockets. 

Strategy #4: Host Career Day at your Local Airport

Hosting a local career or aviation discovery day event at your local airport is a great way to increase interest in your local community. Kids love aviation, and parents and grandparents love to see their kids around airplanes, even if they aren’t pilots. It’s why you frequently see those random cars parked along airport perimeter fences with smiling faces looking to the sky.

The key to any good event is about two things. Promoting the event to make sure you have a successful turnout, and successfully running the event to everyone’s expectations. 

*Pro Tip*  Often times, the airport will cosponsor these events and provide additional benefits for the event such as the AARF Truck and Firefighters, Airports Ops Staff, Air Traffic Controllers, and other aviation personnel to show the different careers available in the field of aviation.

Strategy #5: YARD SIGNS Placed Strategically Near Colleges and High Schools

Yard signs are a simple and cost effective way to increase visibility. For a few dollars you can create several signs and place them in strategic locations around educational facilities and other high traffic places. 

Now it’s time to get out there and get some of these a try. Good luck!

As always, reach out to the team at FLYTSITES with any questions or help with digital marketing and content creation needs.

4 Reasons To Use A Flight School Specific Digital Marketing Agency

Flight School Marketers Speak Your Language

IFR Certificate? Flight review? CFI or MEI? Good flight school marketers are already intimately familiar with the unique language of aviation. If you aren’t succeeding, then we aren’t succeeding and it’s our job to know exactly what you’re talking about. We know what you offer, how to position flight training in the market, how to entice prospective flight students, and we know how to get them through a sales funnel to get a phone call or book a discovery flight. Having the unique skill set of understanding digital and local marketing, but also focusing solely on the flight school and instructor space allows us to go deeper into what works, use data comparisons to make decisions and to leverage the successes of other flight schools into the successes of your business.

The FLYTSITES Approach

At FLYTSITES, we value client service over everything we do. Our mission is to deliver the best flight school marketing in the industry and dominate digital marketing for our clients… We may not be based in your town, but we’re in the client service business and we know what it takes to become a true partner. Making sure we pick up the phone when possible, responding to emails as soon as possible, and ensuring we have opportunities to discuss performance and results. Whether that’s over the phone or a Zoom video call. We always go the extra mile for our flight school clients, because when you’re a FLYTSITES client, you’re family. We’re great communicators and are a results-driven agency.

We Know Aviation

Local agencies can pretend they understand you and send your flight school services on the same path as they send restaurants and retail stores. The reality is reaching new flight school students for a business owner is not as easy as it might sound. The fact is flying is not as easy of a sell as cheap gifts, clothes, new restaurants, vacations, electronics...you get the point. Local agencies typically struggle to adapt to the aviation and flight training market.

We Have Flight School Specific Processes

Our aviation roots have made us very efficient and effective in working with flight instructors. Our teams’ processes, ideas, and efficiencies have been refined to work in the flight training market. From our reporting to our approval and creative process, we do what works for our flight school owners and what is in the best interest of their businesses.

Whether or not you call FLYTSITES when you’re evaluating your flight school marketing options is your choice, but we strongly encourage you to work with a marketing agency that prioritizes flight schools and combined with the service of a local agency as you search for the right partner for your business.

~ Reach out to our team for a free consultation