Blue Skies Above

Nov 29, 2023
flight schools clients

Blog updated: August 18, 2024

https://flytheblueskies.com https://www.facebook.com/flytheblueskies https://www.instagram.com/flybsa/ https://twitter.com/flybsa

When I first met Matthew, he had recently finished up his CFI and had a single plane. He had the vision and goal of opening a flight school and had already gotten some of the groundwork done. He was working with designers to get his logo up and he also filed the regulatory work to make his business real. It wasn’t his first rodeo. He is also the owner of a IT business called, BourgTech, where he used the income and profits from the business to fuel his passion for aviation and instructing.

In November of 2023, he reached out to me and explained that he was looking for ways to grow his flight school business. Seeing me at the various trade shows and conferences, he knew that Right Rudder Marketing could be a good fit for him when selecting a marketing agency. Right Rudder Marketing is aviation focused and pilot owned so there’d be a lot of time saved when choosing an agency like this.

He had a small website built out prior to reaching out to Right Rudder Marketing but as we all know, it’s not just the website. It’s a multifaceted approach to become omnipresent in our visitors’ and prospective student pilots’ minds. We have to come up with ways to become highly authoritative and reputable so that prospective student pilots will reach out and choose our flight school.

Blue Skies Above presented a real challenge when it came to marketing online and getting more student enrollments. Geographically, the airport and the flight school is not in an immediate metropolitan area. So we had to find ways to get the Blue Skies Above name out there to nearby cities. We went straight to work. The first step was upgrading his website so that it could start ranking for relevant keywords.

Next, we looked at the geographical area and pinpointed where our ideal customers could come from. Towards the south, about 45 minutes away is the college town of Auburn, AL. Most famously Auburn University is located in that town. Moving to the east, there is the larger city of Colombus, GA. Then up north there is LaGrange, GA and La Fayette, AL. We programmatically added those location keywords into the website copy and meta descriptions. Next we built dynamic location pages to help rank for even more keywords and start popping up on search results for those areas.

Lastly as a cherry on top to our SEO efforts, we ran targeted geographical Google Ads campaigns. We have multiple ad groups running each targeting a specific location in addition to broad and general keyword targeted ad groups.

Google Ads map of Blue Skies Above geographical targets

This work paid off and his flight school is rapidly expanding. Matthew recently purchased a new TAA aircraft bringing his total fleet size to four airplanes which will help his commercial pilot students complete the prerequisites to pass their FAA checkrides. In addition with starting with just himself and two CFIs when he first partnered with us, he has now expanded his team and has on staff seven CFIs to serve the surging student demand.

With more demand and inquiries coming in, we’ve also helped his business on the software side by providing the Flight School CRM to take in and organize student inquiries. One of my favorite features of the CRM is the automatic text back when there’s a missed call which helps capture lost leads.

Missed call text back feature of Flight School CRM

The process is slow and organic, and each month we are improving our reach and enrolling more students than ever before. We are now focusing on establishing more authority and reputation. We will be shooting videos and adding them to the Blue Skies Above website and social media.

I am excited to see what is in store for Matthew and Blue Skies Above. I can’t wait to see them continue to expand their fleet and train more pilots.

Matthew with the Right Rudder Marketing team

Blue Skies Above website screenshot