Bill Plant Driving School Instructor Support Update – 1st August 2021
Team Update – Marketing Department
In the last two Instructor Support Updates, we provided our Driving Instructors with an overview of recent developments within the Bookings and Customer Services Teams, Training Support Team and Training Department. This month, our focus turns to the Marketing Department, where there have been several developments we wish to discuss with you.
We are very pleased to see the continued success of our pupil acquisition strategies throughout the summer months, since driving lessons resumed. Whilst the industry backlog has certainly contributed to the current position, it is not without significant developments in both digital marketing and web development, over several years, that has allowed us to reach this position where 80% of our instructors remain fully booked (which has been the case now for some time).
It is firstly worth noting, that we are working as hard as possible to ensure that every Bill Plant Driving School instructor, no matter where they are based, has the pupils they need to run a successful business. While the backlog has meant a rise in demand for driving lessons, none of this potential can be realised without raising Bill Plant Driving School’s discoverability for these potential drivers!
To that effect, we have doubled the size of our internal marketing team alongside significantly increasing the number of marketing suppliers that we work with in order to achieve our stated goals.
Our goals from a pupil marketing perspective, are to consistently elevate your collective reputations as Bill Plant Driving School instructors, from both within and outside the industry, as world-class driving instructors. We aim to ensure these goals are not only met in the short-term, where demand is high, but throughout the long-term, allowing you to achieve higher earnings and an unrivalled reputation in your local area for prospective students.
How we aim to achieve this:
- Continued investment in PR and Digital PR
- Raising our profile on Social Media
- Boosting discoverability across Search
- Engaging in Content Creation
- Exploring Affiliate and Partnership Opportunities (upping discoverability and/or your earnings!)
- Engaging in Web Development projects and UX improvements for potential customers
Continued investment in PR and Digital PR
Working alongside our award-winning PR and Digital PR agency, Bill Plant Driving School instructors have been featured on the BBC, Sky, LBC, Heart and both National and Regional Radio (amongst many other platforms) to provide interviews, featured press releases, reactives and comments on a range of matters relating to the industry. Digital PR links have contributed 100,000+ visits to Bill Plant Driving School in the last year alone! Throughout the next year, we’ll be looking for greater opportunities to elevate your platform even further!
Raising our profile on Social Media
Through large scale social media campaigns, we are pleased to state Bill Plant Driving School has the most followers on Facebook of any nationwide driving school with 39,000+. We re-share all of our posts across our social media portfolio for maximum engagement.
All our platforms generate a significant number of new enquiries and you can be sure we’ll look at new ways to grow our audiences across Facebook, Twitter and Tik-tok even further in the future!
Boosting Discoverability Across Search
Did you know that in 2021, our PPC advertising on Google alone generated over 500,000+ impressions (views) for Bill Plant Driving School driving lesson advertisements nationwide? Through significant advancements in our Search Engine Marketing performance, Bill Plant Driving School has consistently remained at the top of the game in terms of online discoverability.
We’ve provided our instructors thousands of pupil bookings from very competitive non-brand search terms (e.g. those searching “driving lessons” as opposed to simply “Bill Plant Driving School”) This means we’re introducing your business to many new sectors of the market, who can thereafter learn all about who you are and your excellent tuition standards, often having known nothing about Bill Plant Driving School before!
Investments in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) have seen equally impressive results (see table above) with many high traffic keywords seeing huge improvements year on year! (Extra demand doesn’t equate to much if you are too hard to find!) – a key feature of 2021-2022 will be to push on from these positive results, to reach the next level!
Engaging in Content Creation
The second biggest search engine after Google? No, it isn’t Bing or Yahoo! It’s YouTube!
One major feature of the roundtable sessions with our instructors, pre-driving lesson resumption, was the request for additional creative content. This was a popular request as it enables instructors to promote their driving school business and to help existing learner drivers on their road to success.
Not only would delivering this content help improve our franchise proposition to you, by providing market-leading learner driver resources, but it also works equally well as a form of pupil acquisition, through creating ever-green video content to attract new students (such as the hundreds of thousands of students who look up how to ace the parallel park they just can’t understand, every single year!)
Over the next year, we’ll look to significantly invest in video content in the form of ‘how to’ style educational videos (and fixing up that long overdue ‘Show Me, Tell Me’ video in the process!) alongside various other content which you can share with your learners, so that you can really feel you have all the resources you need to maximise your quality of tuition as a world-class driving instructor!
Exploring Affiliate and Partnership Opportunities (upping discoverability and/or your earnings!)
Total Drive? Driving Test Success? MyFirstUK? Local Football Clubs?
We’re constantly searching the market for new partners and suppliers to improve our franchise offering to you, so we’re confident that you have every tool at your disposal to not only run a successful business, but position yourself as the cream of the crop in your local area.
For 2021-2022, we’ll be looking at a range of different solutions available in the market place, from partnering with premier league football clubs to teach academy players, to best-in-class app providers, to ensure your businesses are definitively known as the market leaders.
Engaging in Web Development projects and UX improvements for potential customers
Significant work is carried out on the Bill Plant Driving School website every single month, which drives a high proportion of our driving lesson bookings! The key features of the past 12 months have been the successful launch of our eCommerce system and the implementation of a range of measures to improve accessibility and user experience.
Changes to back-end systems, alongside front-end location page redesigns, have meant on-page conversion rates for driving lessons almost tripled in 2021, despite removing the ‘First Hour Free’ promotion offer.
This year has, despite the pandemic, been a very busy one for the Head Office team from a marketing perspective and we are confident that with a renewed focus for the rest of 2021 and 2022, we can reach new heights for all our Driving Instructors nationwide.
Next month, as stated in the last update, we will be focusing on further developments within the Training Department, with a renewed trainer proposition to franchisees.
Instructor of the month
When reviewing August’s Instructor of the Month award, the team at Bill Plant Driving School had plenty of potential candidates, but one entry we received very much stood out. We are delighted to announce that Wail Shaddad, based in Halesowen, has won this month’s award and franchise free week prize. As a relatively new starter, Wail has taken to driving tuition like a duck to water, amassing hugely positive feedback on both his standard of tuition and his personal qualities, showing exemplary patience and a profound care for the success of his students.
Overwhelmingly positive feedback has been received on multiple occasions from parents and learners, all within the first few months of Wail’s beginning his PDI journey. Alongside some great social media reviews and other independent review site testimonials – we would like to extend our personal thanks, from the whole team, for a fantastic start to your new career and for acting as an exemplary ambassador for the driving school.
We would also like to place on record our thanks, as a special mention, to Umer Mir, who referred several trainees to become Driving Instructors with Bill Plant Driving School and continues to offer excellent service across the board.
Fantasy Football 2021-2022
The Premier League is back this weekend, which means the return of something equally important – fantasy football!
For the 2021/22 Premier League Season, we’ll be once again launching our Bill Plant Driving School Fantasy Premier League Competition! Last year, Gobinder Dhanoya came away with first place and a £250 prize! While the tournament prize this year remains the same reward, we expect the competition to be even tougher with many of the teams making big signings during the latest transfer window!
Open to all Bill Plant Driving School franchisees and staff – joining the league couldn’t be easier. Simply use the link below and you’ll be added automatically after you’ve entered the game:
https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/auto-join/j09r3a
League Code: j09r3a
To keep things interesting, we will be adding various cash prizes for those lucky enough to reach the top end of the table!
£250 for the winner
£75 for the runner up
£25 for third
To be eligible to win, you must be a current franchisee or staff member at the end of 21/22 season.
Please do ensure that you submit your team and enter our league before the deadline this Friday (13th August) at 18:30pm
We look forward to playing against you this season!
Instructor Support
Should you need any guidance please do not hesitate to contact your Relationship Manager in the Instructor Support Team on 01765 643374.
From everyone at Bill Plant Driving School, thank you for your on-going support and stay safe.
Kind regards
Tom Hixon
Head of Instructor Support