acropilot
Pre-Flight
For those of you who are freelance CFIs, or anyone with a good idea... What are the most effective ways which you market your services? I know word of mouth is probably the best, but I am looking for some other ideas. Thanks!
Freelance CFI marketing
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livitup
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livitup
Not a freelance CFI, but I'm looking for a CFI...
Internet, Internet, Internet. Have a complete website where you list the airports you operate, the planes you have access to, and some idea of your rates (best if you just state them, but many don't seem to want to do that except in person). Do (or pay for) some search engine optimization so that your site comes up for "Cityname Flight Training", "AirportName Flight Training", "IATAcode Flight Training", etc.
As I shop for a CFI, I am amazed at how hard it is to find accurate information on FBOs and CFIs beyond the (often dead) links in airnav and the like.
Internet, Internet, Internet. Have a complete website where you list the airports you operate, the planes you have access to, and some idea of your rates (best if you just state them, but many don't seem to want to do that except in person). Do (or pay for) some search engine optimization so that your site comes up for "Cityname Flight Training", "AirportName Flight Training", "IATAcode Flight Training", etc.
As I shop for a CFI, I am amazed at how hard it is to find accurate information on FBOs and CFIs beyond the (often dead) links in airnav and the like.
flyingmoose
Pattern Altitude
It is really tough to just pick up "Freelance" work. Most students are going to go through a flight school and use there instructors. Most of my freelance stuff comes from people I know who need BFRs and such.
Social media comes to mind as one of those things you can try. Just go hang around and get involved in activities and once you start to get known then you will get some business.
Social media comes to mind as one of those things you can try. Just go hang around and get involved in activities and once you start to get known then you will get some business.
NAFI has a searchable database. I have picked up a coupe of students via it. Otherwise, strategically placed business cards can help.
GauzeGuy
Pre-takeoff checklist
Are there any pilot shops or anything else aviation related in your area that allows postings? Also, have a good website -- most CFI's don't. Between those two things, that's how I've found everyone I've taken instruction from.
acropilot
Pre-Flight
Thanks everyone! Here is my website: www.KeystoneAerosports.com
Feel free to take a look at the site and PM me any suggestions you have.
Feel free to take a look at the site and PM me any suggestions you have.
livitup
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livitup
I don't mean this maliciously, but it's going to sound harsh. Your website is exactly what ****es me off about most current CFI websites. I would never contact you for training, based on your current website.
Look, most people who are seriously considering flight training know what a CFI is and what kind of "services" you offer.
Where do you fly from? Are you going to cost more or less than the guy at my home airport? Do I have to rent a plane, or do you have (access to) one?
I'm just starting my training. I have built a list of 3 CFIs to go check out before I pick one to commit to. All three on my list gave me at least that much information on their website. Generic "we offer private pilot, instrument, HP/Complex, and Tailwheel training" websites got ignored.
My $1.50.
John Baker
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I owned a custom picture framing business for over 35 years. Custom picture framing is little more than what you are selling, which is a learned skill. Very few people are interested in spending money on expensive hand made picture frames or on becoming a pilot, but those people are indeed out there.
I started out with no reputation and no customers. I ran an add every week in the weekly shopper, it was a cheap little classified ad. I also spent one hour every day walking the neighborhood, block by block, knocking on doors and introducing myself.
The Internet is just one of the many ways of people finding out about you. The best, of course, is word of mouth. The second best is a handshake. It takes balls to knock on strangers doors and introduce yourself and what it is you do, especially if what you do is expensive, but it flat out works.
There is the Internet, FBO bulletin boards, printed media, bus stop advertising, radio, T.V. along with a host of other advertising schemes.
Pick one, then flood it as much as your budget will allow. If you have no budget, do it the hard way, pound the pavement.
Whatever you do, do not try it for a while, then give up, pick it and stick with it for at least a year.
Most people think customers magically appear because of how wonderful they and their product is.....that is not the case. You have to earn every single customer, it's called work.
-John
I started out with no reputation and no customers. I ran an add every week in the weekly shopper, it was a cheap little classified ad. I also spent one hour every day walking the neighborhood, block by block, knocking on doors and introducing myself.
The Internet is just one of the many ways of people finding out about you. The best, of course, is word of mouth. The second best is a handshake. It takes balls to knock on strangers doors and introduce yourself and what it is you do, especially if what you do is expensive, but it flat out works.
There is the Internet, FBO bulletin boards, printed media, bus stop advertising, radio, T.V. along with a host of other advertising schemes.
Pick one, then flood it as much as your budget will allow. If you have no budget, do it the hard way, pound the pavement.
Whatever you do, do not try it for a while, then give up, pick it and stick with it for at least a year.
Most people think customers magically appear because of how wonderful they and their product is.....that is not the case. You have to earn every single customer, it's called work.
-John
acropilot
Pre-Flight
Thanks, I am looking for feedback so I can make it better. Feel free to pm me any other criteria you look for and/or suggestions you have.
acropilot
Pre-Flight
Thanks. I have found some local bulletin boards and such. I know customers won't just "appear", which is why I am looking for the suggestions. I just want to make sure I don't miss any ideas.
John Baker
Final Approach
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Whatever idea you pick, stick with it. Consistency is the key to successful marketing. There are cycles when people spend or try new things. When they get an idea, it is your name that you want them to think of. You might start your marketing program in a down cycle, you get no results, so you quit the program. You have to let it run at least twelve months to be able to tell if it is working.
Years ago I spent $10,000.00 to purchase the whole back cover of a popular local home magazine. For my ten grand I got three beautiful full color ads. I had zero results, so I gave up. I started getting results from those ads about six months after I gave up. By then the crash had occurred and I couldn't afford to run it again.
I continued getting the occasional results from those three ads up until I sold my business. The magazine was only published once a month. I guess slick magazines sit around offices and homes for years.
If a CFI who had the money did a similar thing on the back cover of a quality home decor or other publication that people had a tendency to let lie around awhile, I have a hunch they would soon have more work than they could handle by themselves.
I think advertising on the inside of any publication is a whole lot more expensive in the long run than buying the outside cover at a much higher initial cost.
-John
RyanShort1
Final Approach
I think a multi-faceted approach is important, and tracking WHERE your prospects come from as well. Also, I know my first bit of help was from The Savvy Flight Instructor by Greg Brown. It's a good place to start, then start reading some other marketing books that seem to match what you are trying to do.
Ryan
http://amzn.to/TpAGMR
Ryan
http://amzn.to/TpAGMR
NineThreeKilo
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I very much disagree with that. Every were I go I get people asking me about flying, almost everyone said at one point or another they thought about learning to fly.
The little kid test works,
Quite a few kids want to fly airplanes
Not many kids dream about picture frames.
stearmann4
Pre-Flight
Stephen,
I spent some time looking over your website. I love the graphics, and logo. To be honest though, it took me about 10 minutes of reading and picking through it to figure out if you actually had any airplanes or not.
Unfortunately, unless you work for a flying club that has a Citabria or other taildragger, it's really difficult to gain a reputation as a reputable tailwheel instructor without your own plane. It has much more to do with perception that actual skill.
I too was a free-lance tailwheel CFI with some solid experience, but really didn't get any business until I bought my Cub and folks started seeing me fly it around and how I cared for it. Then I started to create a niche' by getting requests for checkouts, BFRs in other people's tailwheel airplanes and ferry requests in everything from Citabrias, to crop dusters, BT-13s and T-6s.
People take notice, and you will gain your reputation by how other folks see you fly your plane and most importantly, how you maintain yours. If you fly a dirty, leaking piece of junk, that becomes your reputation. Conversely, if you maintain it well and fly it conservatively, potential pilots/customers will have some assurance that you will treat their aircraft the same. On a side note, other than meeting insurance minimums, this also one of the highly sought after foot-in-the-door "keys" to getting invited to fly for a museum. Right now I've got another 450 Stearman and AT-6 to fly for gas because I was in the right place and time to give the owner a flight review in both when he needed one because he saw me flying my Stearman locally.
There literally hundreds of relatively economical tailwheel airplanes sitting around the country in hangars for one reason or another, I'd think it wouldn't be too hard to find one to lease, if only for a season, just to see what it does for your and your business.
As far as marketing, I'm not a Facebook kind of guy, but my wife (er, administrative assistant) started a FB page for the company that I maintain and it has done well and reached demographics I could never have time to using conventional marketing. Plus, it alleviates me from having to make regular website changes to show customer feedbacks, news, etc.
I also spend a lot of time making to events and fly-ins where tailwheel pilots congregate. This is where I've generated much of my business and repeat customers. Good tailwheel CFIs are usually at a premium if by geography if nothing else. I get several calls a month "Can you help my smooth out my wheel landings in my Stearman, can I work with you for a couple of hours to get back into flying my Citabria, I need a flight review in my Decathalon / T-6". I also do a fair amount of formation /F.A.S.T. instruction but never charge, spending a weekend teaching in the back of a T-6, T-28, or Nanchang is more therapeutic than anything else. They also come back to you for their future training needs
)
It only takes a little time to gain that trust and reputation as the regional "go-to" tailwheel guy, which depending on where you live, and if maintained is like gold.
With so many qualified and eager CFIs out there today, I think the tailwheel, spin, and aerobatics niche' is one that will never become saturated, and quite frankly is a lot of fun. Sorry for the long post, I think I've got most of the bugs ironed out after making several changes over the years (except 100LL prices), let me know if I can answer any questions.
Mike-
Silver Wings Flying Company, LLC
Olympia Regional Airport (KOLM)
www.Silverwingsflying.com
I spent some time looking over your website. I love the graphics, and logo. To be honest though, it took me about 10 minutes of reading and picking through it to figure out if you actually had any airplanes or not.
Unfortunately, unless you work for a flying club that has a Citabria or other taildragger, it's really difficult to gain a reputation as a reputable tailwheel instructor without your own plane. It has much more to do with perception that actual skill.
I too was a free-lance tailwheel CFI with some solid experience, but really didn't get any business until I bought my Cub and folks started seeing me fly it around and how I cared for it. Then I started to create a niche' by getting requests for checkouts, BFRs in other people's tailwheel airplanes and ferry requests in everything from Citabrias, to crop dusters, BT-13s and T-6s.
People take notice, and you will gain your reputation by how other folks see you fly your plane and most importantly, how you maintain yours. If you fly a dirty, leaking piece of junk, that becomes your reputation. Conversely, if you maintain it well and fly it conservatively, potential pilots/customers will have some assurance that you will treat their aircraft the same. On a side note, other than meeting insurance minimums, this also one of the highly sought after foot-in-the-door "keys" to getting invited to fly for a museum. Right now I've got another 450 Stearman and AT-6 to fly for gas because I was in the right place and time to give the owner a flight review in both when he needed one because he saw me flying my Stearman locally.
There literally hundreds of relatively economical tailwheel airplanes sitting around the country in hangars for one reason or another, I'd think it wouldn't be too hard to find one to lease, if only for a season, just to see what it does for your and your business.
As far as marketing, I'm not a Facebook kind of guy, but my wife (er, administrative assistant) started a FB page for the company that I maintain and it has done well and reached demographics I could never have time to using conventional marketing. Plus, it alleviates me from having to make regular website changes to show customer feedbacks, news, etc.
I also spend a lot of time making to events and fly-ins where tailwheel pilots congregate. This is where I've generated much of my business and repeat customers. Good tailwheel CFIs are usually at a premium if by geography if nothing else. I get several calls a month "Can you help my smooth out my wheel landings in my Stearman, can I work with you for a couple of hours to get back into flying my Citabria, I need a flight review in my Decathalon / T-6". I also do a fair amount of formation /F.A.S.T. instruction but never charge, spending a weekend teaching in the back of a T-6, T-28, or Nanchang is more therapeutic than anything else. They also come back to you for their future training needs
)It only takes a little time to gain that trust and reputation as the regional "go-to" tailwheel guy, which depending on where you live, and if maintained is like gold.
With so many qualified and eager CFIs out there today, I think the tailwheel, spin, and aerobatics niche' is one that will never become saturated, and quite frankly is a lot of fun. Sorry for the long post, I think I've got most of the bugs ironed out after making several changes over the years (except 100LL prices), let me know if I can answer any questions.
Mike-
Silver Wings Flying Company, LLC
Olympia Regional Airport (KOLM)
www.Silverwingsflying.com
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dmspilot
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DISPLAY NAME
Yellow buttons at the top of the page don't work.
John Baker
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John Baker
An excellent observation that I can not help but to agree with. What I was actually trying to do was share my limited knowledge about how to market a tough to sell, low demand product.
My efforts over a 35 year span bought an Ericson 27 sailboat, (now sold) a sorta nice home in a very exclusive neighborhood of San Diego, several cars, and an airplane, (the airplane is also sold) and finally being able to retire.
I paid cash for everything but the sailboat and the house. I lived on my sailboat for twelve years and regarded the payments as rent while I built my business.
Although I am lacking in formal education in dealing with such matters, it seems I have successfully stumbled my way through it all, while probably spending more time and money than I should have, had I known what I know now.
-John
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livitup
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livitup
I didn't think of this originally, but this is a great point. We have an "Airfest" at our local airport, which is a fairly big deal, at least regionally. Something like 10k spectators, and we get a visit + show by the only privately owned Harrier in the world. There were tables out by all kinds of vendors - even Cirrus had a couple reps there showing off the latest SR.
Guess how many CFIs were there? Zero.
I had just gotten the green light from my wife to start training. This is the closest airport to my house, but has a podunk FBO with no marketing skills. If there had been a CFI at the air show, he probably could have signed me up. Instead I'm driving 30 minutes to the next closest airport, where there is a CFI who actually made it easy to find and contact him.
Art VanDelay
Pattern Altitude
There's a guy over on the Red Board that's quite the avionics whiz. He is lucky in that he started out in a rather "high-rent" area Boca Raton Florida where there are a fair amount of wealthy people. Anyway he now charges $1000 a day for his services, mostly in Cirri and Meridans, stuff like that. I guess he does quite well.
acropilot
Pre-Flight
Thanks, the buttons are now fixed.
Stearman4, Thanks for the help. Excellent website by the way. I'll be sending you a pm in the near future with some questions.
Thanks to everyone else for their critiques and suggestions so far.
ainokea
Pre-takeoff checklist
In the SF Bay Area I've seen schools and CFI's use Living Social, Groupon and similar websites to promote their demo flights and Bay Tours. If it's a good price they'll probably sign up and you never know. They may be your future students or they can give you a good word and review. Good luck!
livitup
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livitup
A local FBO did a Groupon for a discovery flight and they sold out all 150 they offered. In fact, it's because of this Groupon that I'm starting my training. I haven't decided if I wil use them for my full training yet, but it got me in the door.
Jesse, I love your website. It tells about you and what you do. Having a sort of blog is a great idea. You don't try to pretend to be a big corporation. It's just you. Honest and clear. The OP could take this to heart.
rafaelappe
Filing Flight Plan
What's his website address??
sarangan
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Andrew, CFI-I
I would agree with this opinion. Your website has no rates and no aircraft specifics and no mention of private pilot training, instrument rating etc. What exactly is "High Performance Aviation Training Solutions"? I despise the word "solutions" when a company is trying to sell a straightforward product. If you are shopping for a car, would you go to a place that says "we offer advanced automotive solutions"? Also, "contact us to find out how we can help" means we don't know what we are selling, so please ask me and I will sell you whatever you want.
sarangan
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Andrew, CFI-I
Wow I totally missed that this post was from 10 years ago. How did it wake up?
Tantalum
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San_Diego_Pilot
I almost made the same mistake, I wrote abwhole response up then saw it was from 2012. Somebody one or two posts up asked a random question, but as their first post it warranted them checking off the "I understand this thread is ancient" box
AggieMike88
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
Need to adapt your avatar to say “…Necro…”
After 10 years, who becomes the op? The guy from last decade? Or the guy who resurrected the thread from the dead?
I found this:
https://app.instructair.com/
https://app.instructair.com/
New POA participant. When you join up and start browsing or searching, you can come across all sorts of things.
@rafaelappe, welcome to our slightly dysfunctional family.
RussR
En-Route
Do they still require CFIs to run both their scheduling, and worst of all, billing, through them? If so, they're literally the reason I quit NAFI (NAFI stopped providing a free listing of member CFIs on their website and instead entered some kind of agreement with instructair for their referral service. Instructair required billing for referrals be run through them, obviously taking a cut. I didn't think this was an appropriate "service" for NAFI members, having already paid a membership fee.)
I don't know how it works because I have never completed the registration process. I stopped at the page where they wanted me to post my hourly rates for all the various ratings.
I would rather not make that public and I have no established hourly rate.
RyanShort1
Final Approach
I find this curious... I publish mine up front.
pfarber
Line Up and Wait
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100% agree. I hate having to 'contact us' for basic info that should be on a web site. Airports, planes and prices. Even current schedule load (are you even accepting new students?).
Dude might be a great CFI but ill never send an email to find out.
Hey CFIs a website is not a business card. It should be up to date and answer 99% of my questions. if you are not spending an hour+ a week updating your information then its usless.
rafaelappe
Filing Flight Plan
@midlifeflyer Thanks boss. sorry for resuscitating this thread from the grave, but I'm working on my CFI and got curious. I'll earn my lesson.
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Albany Tom
The funny thing is, the website probably isn't any better than it was almost a decade ago. I'm with the others, if I don't see rates for whatever the product or service is, I assume they're out of touch with their customers and overpriced, so I just skip it. It doesn't mean I'm shopping for the lowest price, but it does mean I don't want to wade through BS.
RyanShort1
Final Approach
Meanwhile, I'm often getting more calls than I have time to handle around my day job... I could almost take on a second instructor if I wanted to get serious with the flight school.