What are some Marketing Tips for a small business?

Question

I manage a small flight school and have been trying to get more people to come fly with us....my target market has been identified as already licensed pilots looking for a new adventure and further training...I want to market specifically my tailwheel program....Do you have any suggestions as to what would work best for doing this...such as flyers, or tri-folds, or TV adds, etc....We have around a $1000 budget so whatever we do will have to be cost effective.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Okay, without a doubt word-of-mouth is your friend here.

A few simple strategies that have made a huge difference to people I have worked with:

WOM:

Are there any aviation-oriented get-togethers in your area?

Are there any bulletin boards in regional airports near the lounge or fuelstop?

Can you get a list of pilots in your area to call?

Can you sponsor a fund-raiser for retired military aviators?

WEB:

If you don't have a website, you can get a pretty good presence using Google local business center, Yahoo's local, and Live.com's local.  If you can have a simple website built, make sure you use your own domain name, your own hosting, and use good website practices.  you'd probably do really well with a wordpress installation using the revolution theme and the all-in-one SEO plug-in.

Just google those terms to read more about them.

Use the language of your target customer when creating these "about us" and "our services" entries.  

You can use pay-per-click as well, google, yahoo, live.com and others all have "geo-targeted" capability and you only pay for what you get in terms of targeted traffic.  Only people typing in "flight schools" would see your ad, and even then only if they click on it would you pay.  Just make sure you only use the SEARCH network, not the CONTENT network

Avoid spray-and-pray methods - they'll drain your budget and you'll end up empty handed.

Answer 2

i suggest you to start online marketing with a website.So you got to earn traffic to get revenue.Here are my 7 tips..

There are plenty of ways to promote your site.

1)Article Marketing

Really a powerful method in getting audience. Write a good article based on your niche topic and submit it in article directories. Just go to google or yahoo and search for "free article directories". It will suggest you a host of directories that you can easily submit your writings. When people surf in that certain directory, they might stumble into your article and you got all the fame needed to be successful in Internet Marketing.

2)Blogging

This method is just like the article writing. You write what you want but good contents for your audience in blogs. The better you got, the more audience you get. You can also submit the same contents that you wrote in blogs in article directories. You get instant viewers if your article is in top 10 within your niche

3)Offer free stuffs

It's always good to get free stuffs. Everyone likes it.So offer some free stuffs such as e-books or software for your audience. You will get a good, loyal and repeating audience. If you are looking for FREE e-books to market it in your site, check out this link.

www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com.It provides a host of e-books on internet marketing. The e-books will be updated weekly. So hurry up and get your best one soon.

4)E-mail Marketing

It's as easy as ABC. Just promote your site to all your online contacts using e-mail.Write a good email that will attract your audience. If you got the contents right and able to convince your contacts , you are on your way to success.

5)SEO-Search Engine Optimization

Check out

www.ezinerticles.com for HOT tips on s****.>
6)You Tube Videos

Use free videos from you tube and paste the links in your site. People like video tutorials better than articles or e-books.

7)Google Adsense

I strongly suggest you to visit www.abc-netmarketing.blogspot.com and learn about google adsense.If it's not the best, atleast one of the best income generator for your websites. Visit the link and watch the video tutorials for FREE.

Answer 3

licensed pilots you say, for small one-engines i guess?! the next step as far as i know is to become private pilot trainer for which they need 200 flight hours. a cool way is to post flayers to find for them 'share-a-flight' * enthusiasts, which basically means you promote (or hint your pilots to promote themselves) to people who want to experience one or couple of hours above the city - in that way you both help the pilots with decreasing costs and increase your popularity among enthusiast.  

if it was me, i would make a facebook fan page and spend half of the budget for promoting it locally.

have a good one.

* should not look as paying for service but rather as person to person agreement for sharing the experience and the costs