How to Run My Flight School Admission and Marketing in Autopilot

Running a flight school is a time consuming job between maintenance, regulations, instructors, admissions, finance, insurance and students just to mention a few. You probably feel drowning in all your to-do list, emails and paperwork. Also, on top of all those activities your recruitment and admissions are your priority number one. For your mental health and to be more productive in your position having the admission and marketing in autopilot it will be beneficial for you and your organization.

Autopilot reduce the workload in the cockpit flight school

Let’s explore the meaning of autopilot according to Wikipedia with a few tweaks. “An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle marketing and admissions without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle marketing and admissions, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems operations and good health of systems for the organization. As a result you and your team will have less workload and can focus on checking if the systems in place are working properly.

You must define your marketing, admission and enrollment seats

These 3 positions are critical to run your flight school in autopilot and most important to scaling your flight school business. Each position need to have their role and responsibilities. Keep them simple 3 to 5 responsibilities is a good number and it is crucial to have one person responsible for each position. In some case you might want to add more people like in admission you probably are getting a good amount of student leads every month and one person handling all request is overwhelming.

The enrollment position help you get documents students documents in place. This is a priority if you are planning to attract international students. International students documents are time sensitive and you will need to comply with all federal authorities to make sure those students land in your flight school without any issue.

The last but not least is marketing. Students are the blood of your flight school and without them is impossible to run your business. What are you doing today to increase the awareness on future prospect pilots? This is critical and if you a not having an answer today it's never late to look for help. When you are looking for help please avoid your nephew or any other friend who read “Marketing for Dummies” this will create more burden and stress on your end!

Key elements for a successful flight school marketing

Goal Setting: Sit down and think where you want your flight school to go. Read this article of how to create a SMART Goal. As in any flight the most important element is to have a plan from point A to point B. This will make sure we arrive in time and if there is bumps in the road make the appropriate corrections to not deviate for a long period of time.

Identify Your Ideal Student: Knowing who you are trying to attract is key to be able to create strategies and techniques to ensure that the message created will be the correct one, that the message will actually reach them and that the message will persuade them to become part of your flight school. The identification can be done through a Buyer Persona, a technique that reunites all the characteristics of your target audience in an imaginary person who will be the subject of all the content and strategies you will create.

Understand the Student’s Journey: The potential student’s journey has 3 different stages (awareness, consideration and decision) and your flight school must understand that this person may be found at any of these stages and not necessarily guide them through them all. That is why is necessary for the flight school to have content and techniques that are appealing and relatable for people at any of those stages of the journey, increasing the opportunities to attract them and enroll them on the school.

Following all these clear and key tips on your flight school and understanding well the concepts related to them will ensure a positive change in your company, bringing more of the students you desire to the flight school with less stress related to the operational tasks that you may be tied to currently.

So don’t hesitate and start building the bases to run your flight school admission and marketing fully in autopilot!