How to Start a Driving School
Do you know that starting a driving school can be lucrative? Typically, almost everybody like to drive, but before you do, you have got to learn how to drive. More so, to learn, they’ll need someone to teach them. And this teacher should probably own or work in a driving school to be able to teach effectively.
In recent times, the surge of interest in learning how to drive has created a massive opportunity to start a driving school business. However, before you venture into this business, you’ll have to be conversant with the region’s criteria or requirements. You should know things like, who are currently offering driver education services in your state? The next line of action for you would be how you can let people know that you run a driving school.
To start successfully, you’ll need a mentor to help and guide you, and this article would play that role. After reading it, you’ll be well prepared with the necessary knowledge to launch a successful driving school business:
Here are ten tips that would help you kick start your driving school business
- Research your region’s driving school licensing process.
Every state has its requirements, usually on the State Department of Motor Vehicles (what New York calls it).
Though some states can call this the Department of Licensing or several other names they choose to call it, it doesn’t have to be universal.
When you have found it, you’ll have to know what you’ll if they might need you
- Have a location for your driving school
- take a different assessment to become an instructor
- Your vehicles to meet a certain level of inspection
Since the requirements of states vary widely (for instance, some do not need a physical location for you to indicate your business status – others do).
You may want to learn this beforehand because this will influence the costs involved in starting the driving school business.
- Set budgets for starting your driving school
You’ve probably known the requirements of your state; the next thing to do is create a budget. If you own a moving vehicle, then you should add rental cost to your budget (if you’ll need a venue). Other costs are advertisements, vehicle maintenance, and petrol.
If you intend to employ an instructor or administrative help to get started (though, most newly started driving schools don’t), you should add that to your budget.
Read Also: How To Set Budget on Marketing
- You should find out about your competitors.
Since almost everybody wants to know how to drive, most places would already have a means of providing driver education to the community – and that is a beautiful thing! Identifying your competition right from the start will put you on a pathway to business success and prosperity.
Here are things you should know
- The driving schools situated in your area
- The services they provide and the costs for those services
- The high schools, churches or other voluntary organizations providing free driving education services to the people
When you have painstakingly researched all this information, you will be several steps ahead in your business, had you not done it. Furthermore, you will be able to develop strategies that can help you edge out the competition.
- Create a list of your driving school services along with their prices
Having executed Step 3, you should have ample information as to who your potential competitors are.
For instance, you might discover that offering behind-the-scenes driving lessons is an excellent option for you than offering classroom-based defensive driving lessons, mainly when there are many defensive driving schools in your area.
One thing you should never do is try to beat your charges too low to lure customers. This is not a good move. It might just backfire.
Sometimes you might have a genuine reason to want to go that route; however, you must keep in mind and always remind yourself why you are in business. You should start making money from the very first day.
You should try picking a price you consider competitive, something that’s prudent for your business.
- Obtain an instructor driver’s license
You should have known and fully understood all the fundamentals about your driving school, the services you’ll provide, the venue if you need one, where your customers reside, and the budget that you want to start with. Once you get your instructor driver’s license, you’ll be able to hit the ground running!
- Create a curriculum and a lesson outline for your classes
Whether you offer only behind-the-wheel lessons or a full suite or classroom and behind-the-wheel services, you’ll want to know what you plan to teach your students.
For classroom services, you can buy ready-made training materials from the licensed list of providers in your motor vehicle department. A few other national providers, such as AAA, provide an excellent co-branding opportunity for your school. Think about telling your customers that your driving school uses direct lessons from AAA – sounds fantastic, right?
Your back-to-the-wheel lesson plan should also include locations that are safe for students and can help them to experience various road and traffic situations with time. If you can study and understand the road test route given by the local Department of motor vehicles – test training would help you and your students understand the basics.
- Advertise your driving school
Exciting! You’re an entrepreneur, and the sky is the limit for your new business, and now it’s time to get you your first customer. Do your research to know the leading provider in the world for Internet advertising services for driving schools. Also, you can find documents written on driving school advertising as a two-part series. Websites, Google, local high school connections, social media, and additional partnerships, such as hospitals and court systems.
- Enhance the online presence of your driving school
Teenagers are always making use of their phones, and so are their parents. In the past, word-of-mouth was powerful enough to make a business grow. However, nowadays, most people make use of Google to search and find the most services. You should make sure that your driving school business is visible online.
There are times people might try to find you using the name of your driving school while others might try looking for “driving school + your location” on Google, or they could also use other similar keywords. This is one sure way of ensuring that your driving school is visible to people who are always using Google to search for services.
- Request for reviews and testimonials from your customers
While growing your brand, always remember that online reviews would help your driving school business. Ask teens, parents, seniors, defensive driving students, and every customer you have in total to share a positive review online.
Having a good reputation online will help you in convincing many customers to pick you over your competition.
Furthermore, as long as your online reviews keep improving, you’ll be able to increase the prices for the services you offer– after all, you’re the best driving school in the city.
- Organize your administrative systems and grow your driving school
Once you get to this point, you are well on your way to success. Different states have different requirements for record-keeping related to students meeting classroom and driving requirements. Know your state’s requirements and keep clean records from the get-go. There are software solutions to help you with this. This will also help you around tax time when clean records will help you save a ton of money.
Driving School Marketing Tips
Driving schools and instructors are highly demanded in almost every city and region in the world today. What makes them stand out is not their reduced prices, nor is it the vehicles used. Instead, they can do effective marketing. Driving School marketing is an essential tool you need to develop and boost your driving school business.
There are times you just need to spend money to make money. However, the good thing about it is that you can succeed even in a cheap budget.
To implement these tips, you have to identify who your audience is.
Then you can think of attracting customers.
These tips would help you market your driving school effectively.
- Build your brands
Your main goal should be standing out. You shouldn’t be doing what almost every other driving school is doing. The most reliable way of setting your standard right above-average driving school is to build a reliable brand. This process depends on the way you communicate certain benefits that your school business offers.
For example, do you have exceptional pass rates or outstanding cars? Are you perhaps cheaper than your competition? Whatever it is, make your unique value proposition and main selling points crystal clear. Describe your style of teaching and do not hesitate to show some personality. Create a compelling narrative and experience around your offerings.
- Put together a website driving school marketing.
Marketing has changed tremendously, and this is because of the effect of the revolution of the internet. Creating a substantial online presence is essential for all businesses, including a driving school. This would help you transform your visitors into paying customers.
So it’s wise you create a full-fledged booking website which is well-optimized for mobile devices and search engines. Include basic features like online lesson scheduling, contact forms, online payment processing, student testimonials, coupons, and visual content.
- Claim business listings
Immediately you’ve created your website. The next step would be to drive traffic to it. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the best way to achieve this goal quickly. Start making strides by claiming your business listings on sites such as Yelp, Google My Business, Foursquare, and Driving School directories. Creating profiles there will make you visible to people searching for a driving school through Google Maps and organic search.
It is of the utmost importance to display accurate information and ensure it is up-to-date. This includes your business descriptions, address, social profiles, phone number, and working hours, etc. Doing all this might seem tiring as you’re just starting; nevertheless, you will get some SEO points and advance in the search engine result pages (SERP). The advantages of taking a front-runner position are immense.
- Mind the reviews
Before anyone decides to attend your driving school, many students will check what your previous students said about your school. That is to say that they want reassurance from their peers; they take their opinions critical. And you can agree that it’s better the reviews and testimonials and in your favor.
There are several ways of garner these reviews; however, developing your customer service is a top priority. Attend to every complaint and problem behind bad reviews instantly. You can offer free products, refunds, and exchanges to compensate for the negative experience. Good reviews will increase your credibility and reliability. Negative ones might shatter your reputation completely.
- Initiate a referral system
Referrals are a vital marketing tool. A recent study shows that almost half of all business gets customers through referrals. You can see it as a free kind of word-of-mouth promotion. You certainly can’t afford to neglect. Therefore adopt a compressive referral system.
Try finding out who are your most loyal customers are, and once you’ve known all, have an open conversation with them. You can directly ask for referrals and but be willing to offer rewards.
This can only be possible when you nurture meaningful, long-term relationships with students and increase satisfaction.
Rather than treating them like some dollar signs, you should inspire and empower them. By doing this, they’ll become committed and loyal brand ambassadors by spreading positive news about your driving school.
- Use social media as a marketing tool.
Social media is a booming marketing platform with an unparalleled global reach. In this tumultuous ecosystem, it is possible to make waves for a fraction of traditional marketing costs. Setting up a profile comes free of charge, and so do many tactics you can execute. Just make sure first to select the right networks, ones where most of your target audience is.
The rest boils down to engaging people in conversations and delight them with quality content. For instance, upload fun and informative videos (including live streams) that gather heaps of likes, shares, and other social singles. Hold contests and award the best contributors of user-generated content. Use instant messaging features like customer service tools and dazzle with your response times.
- Take advantage of email marketing.
While many have prophesied its demise, email marketing continues to be an essential marketing strategy for small businesses. It’s quite cheap, but it brings an impressive Return on investment. Besides, use automated email software to make your life easier.
They streamline the entire marketing process and transform campaign planning and scheduling into a breeze. In reality, it has never been easier to keep everyone in the knowledge loop, particularly when it comes to promotions, exclusive deals, and upcoming offers. So, be as responsive and attentive as you humanly can be.
Read Also: Usefulness of email marketing to small business
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Want it or not, advertising is the lifeblood of the internet. More to the point, it can help you attract more business to your school. This is the culmination of a new, data-backed strategy that produces concrete and observable results. Also, there is no lack of significant PPC networks for display and search advertising.
Leading providers such as Google AdWords require you to pay only when someone clicks and is sent to your website. The rates also depend on the nature of competition — how many people are vying for the same keywords. Marketing Return on investment is not assured, however, if you target and roll out your ads smartly, you will spread brand awareness far and wide.
- Be active in your community.
Consumers prefer local businesses with a good sense of social responsibility. So instead of hunting profits, think and act locally. Make a name for yourself by taking part in business shows, conferences, and workshops. Find similar, non-competitive businesses and enter into cross-promotion deals.
Seek to become a respected expert and public figure and turn up at the locations that your target audience frequents. Get acquainted with prominent media outlets and publications and collaborate with bloggers in your area.
Finally, sponsor real events and fund social movements that you believe in. Your efforts should ultimately produce results in the form of awareness, freedom of the press, and good faith.
- Make the most of traditional marketing.
Traditional marketing is still useful. Despite all the digital hype, traditional marketing is still alive and kicking. Many business owners overlook the fact that they need to employ marketing what works, not what seems to be trendy. Do yourself a favor and avoid this dire mistake. Television and radio are probably too expensive, but that cannot be said about print media.
So, create business cards and always have them close by. Deliver well-designed brochures from house to house or leave some branded bookmarks in a local library. Use discounts to target colleges and universities, where you are likely to find a lot of young aspiring drivers. Lastly, explore guerilla marketing options in your local landscape. It is time to attract more students and outmaneuver the competition.
The requirement for starting a driving School
For a driving school to be registered and certified, the following minimum standards must be met.
- Classroom and Administrative offices
- Roadworthy vehicles for driving instruction (Dual control)
- Licensed driving instructors
- Course manual
- Highway code
- Traffic laws/regulations
- First aid facilities
- Fire extinguishers
- Open space/ Driving range
- Roads sign models
- Visual and audio-visual instructional aids
Other requirements
- Simulators (Mock vehicle)
- Vision Acuity Test Facilities
- Library
- Inspection pits/workshop
Six Must-Haves for Your Driving School Website
There are many driving schools in your town, and your prospective students have to enroll in a driving school. How do you ensure they pick your driving school?
Nowadays, people search for their driving school online. When they get to your website, you need to give them every reason to stay.
By making these six easy changes, you can make a big difference for your driving school.
- Homepage
Your homepage can only do two things; it starts or prevents the conversation between you and your students. But a clean web design will help you connect with your customer in a relaxed and direct manner.
A professional home page will make prospective students confident and attract them to your driving school.
- Contact Information
Every student should know the location of your driving school, and contacting you should be easy. You can write your address and phone number in an easily seen location, like the top, right-hand side of the page.
If they have questions to ask, they’ll be able to communicate with you on the spot, giving you a chance to start a relationship. However, if they would like to communicate via email, then ensure your contact forms are reliable. The fastest and simplest way of losing customers is by playing hard to get.
- State Validation
Prospective students need to be sure that your driving school will enable them to earn their driving license. They have to be sure that your driving school is accredited.
Ensure you tell them that the Department has approved you of Motor’s Vehicles of your state.
Placing a picture of the DMV’s logo on the page would show that you’re authentic immediately. Doing this would allay their fears and propel them to enroll quickly.
- Pricing
Students ought to know the cost of enrolling in your driving school. If they are not aware of how much your driving lessons cost, they will not enroll in your driving school. If they are unable to find your pricing information, they become skeptical and then find another school to attend.
- Content
To be unique, give your customers something other schools wouldn’t. Make them know that you sincerely care for them, and you’re serious about what you do by offering solely educational content. This proves that you’re a professional.
To make sure your customers have a pleasant experience on your website, edit twice. Typographical errors drive prospective customers away and towards their competitors.
- Differentiate
Look for certain things that would make that make your driving school stand out. Let’s say, few of your instructors have law enforcement experience, share it with them. If some of your instructors are skilled athletes, advertise it. If there are cases where you’ve helped ten thousand students acquire their driver’s license, tell them this.
Discover unique truths about your school and bring them to reality. Doing this would convey the unique personality of your driving school. This makes your driving school hard to forget. You would want your prospective student to continue thinking about your school even after they’re done researching.
Your website is very crucial to your driving school. A clean, intuitive design would give you an advantage over your competitors. Don’t forget to see your site from the perspective of your customers. Ensure choosing you would be easy for your customers.
Read Also: How to Start Car Rental Business
Conclusion
Finally, even though starting a driving school isn’t an easy task, their wards are amazing. You just have to diligent, consistent, and just get the business right.
You never know the problems you’re solving. For instance, reckless driving practices are the leading causes of the death of many youths. Therefore, by opening this driving school, you keep our families safe and being nicely rewarded at the same time.