Driving Lessons Videos Test Tips and Advice

Important: From 1st March 2011 online marketing communicatons on websites in the UK will now be regulated by the Advertising standards Agency. For more information click here

Winter is upon us driving instructors, and for many it is the most dreaded time of the year because business slows down as many learner drivers either take breaks to travel visiting family or divert money usually spent on driving lessons to the festive christmas gifts and this year will be no exception, but with the current credit crunch some might feel the effect more or even earlier than normally. Well this is time you can use to step up your driving school marketing efforts not only to get more learner drivers during the less busy christmas period, but more importantly for that new year rush when people renew their resolutions of getting that highly desired full British licence.



Even national organisations like AA, BSM, LDC and Red driving school recognise this trend and normally offer their franchise holders either a week or two of fee free benefits to boost earnings and help lighten the financial burden at this time of the year.

Now if you don't hold a franchise that has these benefits, or are an independent operation that still has to pay for the driving school car lease and other running costs what marketing efforts can one do to make good use of the extra time we might have on our hands while hopefully finding a few more clients that might want our services. I'll share a few tips that might help.

Marketing is one of the most ignored aspects of a business for many instructors, we spend time on administration (you keep records for the tax man I hope), accounts, checking with current pupils on lessons for the days or week ahead, clean the tuition vehicle, but not enough on advertising our services to generate more learner driver clients.
Being a good instructor is good, and will get you recommendations (some of which you have to turn away due to distance, I live and operate from Mill Hill and while I'd be willing to give driving lessons in hampstead which is slightly out of my normal coverage area, I can not give tuition to someone in Hackney E5 even if an ex-pupil recommended me), but you need to consistently market yourself to generate regular enquiries.

You need to learn from Red driving school and how they are agressively advertising to take advantage of the current economic climate, while I don't condone their business model, if you ask anyone in the UK about becoming a driving instructor, RED is probably the name they will mention, because their presence is everywhere, TV, newspapers, online. You don't have the budget of LGV, but there are still things you can do to make people aware of your services and increase your visibility to potential learner driver clients. I will list a few below:

1. Get a driving school website, or work actively at promoting the one you already have or see if there are any improvements that need to be done on it.
A website can be one of the most effective driving school marketing tools available to the instructor to promote his/her business and if setup and promoted properly could be the only means of pupil generation required to keep those enquiries coming in and one's diary booked with adequate work, and contrary to what you might believe, setting up and maintaining an online presence need not cost a fortune. You can have an effective driving school marketing website for as little as £10 a year.

2. Make use of your present pupils as advertising and marketing resources. Most instructors might mention on a new learner driver's first lesson that they can be rewarded for introducing a friend, and that is the last time you mention it to them. While you don't want to hound them every week, think of times when it is worth mentioning to them again. If you have any special offers going for new learners, let them know to inform their friends, also remember that it might be for things like mock tests (you can sell the fact that doing it with a different instructor will more closely simulate the dsa test, as the friend will be assessed by a stranger thus more realistically let them know how prepared they are).

If your learner has had a particularly good lesson or session, that would be an appropriate time to remind them to blog about it (if they have a blog and include a link to your website), or post a comment on their facebook profile, they might be more willing to do it, and this could be a re-occuring referal for you.

3. Follow up on previous enquiries. If someone has given you a call in the past about learning to drive, call them up and find out if they are still interested in getting their full British licence (note I said 'getting their full licence') they might have rejected your services in the past because they wanted cheap driving lessons, but having gone down that route of £15 an hour (yep people expect me to offer them tuition at that rate in London) and failed due to improper instruction, or found out that a lot of information had been held back from them, they might wise up and consider paying for high quality services from honest fully qualified instructors like you. I prefer to call rather than text, as it is more effective in converting enquiries to sales.

4. Be of help to learner drivers on online forums. If you show yourself to be knowledgeable and consistently helpful to provisional licence holders who are either being taught by another instructor or family and friends, then you might start seeing people wanting to use you either to pass the test after a failed attempt or transfer to you from family in order to increase their chances of passing. Make sure you include a link to your website in your profile and signature that is appended to every post you make if allowed (see why you need a school website?). If you need more learners to take driving lessons with you, then you have the time to do this, and while the results might not be immediate, it will come if you persist and are consistent in being helpful to others.

5. Check up on lost pupils. Some of your old learner drivers might be thinking of returning to driving, and a call from you might be all they require to kick them into gear.

6. 6th form career advice. If you have a college near you, then you might try and see if you can give a talk on topics such as 'Being self employed and running a your own business'. This might generate some enquiries in addition to the opportunity of giving out cards to 17 and 18 year olds.

7. Put graphics on your driving school car. While having a roof sign is good, it doesn't advertise your services when you are not giving a lesson and don't have it on your vehicle. If you lease your car, then you could opt for magnetic marketing signs which can easily be peeled off.

There are many other ways of marketing your instructor services, be creative and hopefully you will start to see the rewards. Remember which ever advertising methods work for you, should be continued, the most successfull brands keep advertising to keep their number one position (you will probably be seeing a Coke advert on the TV shortly this christmas season!).

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With the current rising petrol prices, and the cost of running a car set to increase on January first 2010 with Value Added Tax (VAT) returning to 17.5%, Volvo is trying to woo driving instructors and other heavy users of petrol with its C30 range which claims to be able to cover up to 828 miles on one tank of petrol.

While many urban driving instructors like me might not be able to achieve those figures in cities like London, Birmingham, etc it is still worth considering if you are serious about cutting running costs. To promote this car, Volvo has launched a challenge on facebook entitled around the world in 80 days.



For those of you currently taking driving lessons, you might think this doesn't apply to you, but the truth is that we all need to be more aware of our energy use once we pass the driving test, and not become lazy drivers who can't walk anymore to the local newsagents or fish & chips shop but have to go in our vehicles, would not share the local school run with parents nearby because you don't want their children messing up your new luxury car, or like racing at traffic lights with your sporty convertible.

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New car insurance laws.

Today one of my learner driver pupils came the closest to passing the driving test with no driver errors at the hard Mill Hill dsa centre when he got that pass certificate with only one mistake made during the 40 minute assessment in a manual car, the feedback from the dsa examiner being he was very good and safe driver, something he should keep up.



This was not the first time that someone taking driving lessons in London with me had passed with only commiting one mistake (I can think of at least 3 other this year), but what made it such a close call for me getting my first no mistake pass was the driving error was made during the part of the assessment when the candidate had complete control of what happened, performing the easiest driving test maneuver A turn in the road, the minor being for checking the right blind spot just after the car started moving instead of before!

With the current average pass rate being only about 40%, making only one mistake is a very big achievement for any learner driver, but it doesn't just happen, especially when you consider the fact, that my client had held an Iranian licence for many years, with many bad driving habits. It takes hard work, the right attitude towards the test, listening to instructor advice, making the right preparation by taking adequate driving lessons with a fully legal instructor, dealing with any weaknesses (all it takes is one mistake to fail if classified serious) and being confident in your driving skills/decision making.

Now don't get me wrong, you don't need to be a perfect driver rarely making mistakes to pass the hard UK car test, but you do need to be at the right standard which can only be achieved through proper training from driving lessons, and as much practise as possible (private or otherwise), so that by the time you sit in the car with the examiner the test nerves are subdued, your skills are polished and you are confident you will be giving it your best shot.

If you need some driving lessons to help you on your way to passing the test in north west London, from a dedicated, honest, independent and patient instructor, then give me a call on 07956233032 today, you just might be the person that would give me that record of a no error test pass!

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As an instructor I can tell you that it is not unusual for a learner driver to have a couple of bad driving lessons in the week or days leading up to their practical car test, and you should not panic if this happens to you even if it never happened to someone else in your family or friends that you know who have learnt to drive before.



While I can't give you an exact reason why this happens to candidates preparing for the DSA practical driving test, some might be nerves, others might be having an off day or have personal circumstances on their mind that is affecting their concentration.

Just because you have had a bad driving lesson doesn't necessarily mean that you are not ready for the driving test, and most importantly on the day of your appointment, you need to put everything that happened in the lesson before the test behind you, learn from the experience, and approach the 40 minutes with the DSA examiner with a clean sheet, only you knows the mistakes that were made in the previous driving lesson, and those errors should be used as a learning experience so that you are familiar with what to do if the same situation occurs while being examined.

You don't need to be perfect to pass the driving test, you need to be competent, at the required DSA standard, and most importantly safe (you should not affect other road users be it pedestrian, cycles or cars by your driving), and this is what your driving lessons should have been used for, by acquiring the skills and gaining relevant experience which will always be achieved after different number of hours or lessons so take your time before booking an appointment with the DSA examiner.

If during the hour before your test you have a bad spell, try and relax, listen to your instructor's advice, and give it your best shot and don't let all your efforts go down the drain, by giving up mentally. If you don't believe in yourself, it will reflect in your driving and all those hours spent on lessons would not be rewarded.

If you need more motivation, then think about the joys of driving your lovely new car unsupervised.

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Importance of driving lessons
If you want to have a good chance of passing your next attempt at the DSA practical car test then you should be taking driving lessons with an approved legal instructor. Now let me explain that just because you are taking driving lessons doesn't mean you have done everything required to get to the test standard, there are 2 roles that your having tuition has to satisfy.

1. Learn the required skills that will be tested by the examiner (Driving test maneuvers, how to deal with junctions/roundabouts, moving off and stopping).

2. Gain enough experience using those skills in various situations, different roads, time of the day.

Many learner drivers do not seem to understand the relevance of point 2 above, and I'd like to illustrate it with the example of what I would consider the easiest driving test maneuver a DSA examiner can request a candidate to perform, The Turn in the Road.



The turn in the road is most likely the first maneuver your instructor would have taught you while taking driving lessons with them, and it shouldn't take more than 2 lessons (for the average learner) to understand the reference points, clutch control and the way this exercise is carried out. So by the 3rd lesson after you were first introduced to it, you should be able to carry out the maneuver without any help from the instructor on the same road you were taught under the same circumstances. Does that mean you have reached the DSA test standard?
Of course not, you need experience of doing the 3 point turn on more narrow roads, know how to deal with situations where other cars arrive while carrying out the maneuver, when should I stop if other road users are noticed, and when should I not stop.

Since the DSA advices that a learner driver should have around 40 hours of driving lessons and plenty of private practise, therefore by the time a candidate goes to a test, they should have done the turn in the road maneuver around at least 40 times, so the important question why do people still fail the test on the simplest maneuver?
Not enough driving lessons, lack of adequate experience, poor instruction or just test nerves?

I offer high quality honest driving lessons to learner drivers in the North West London area, don't hold you back from making progress just because I want to make money out of you, my reputation is more important to me, and believe in good customer service knowing that a satisfied customer will give me many years of recommendations, and while not everyone would agree that I offer cheap driving lessons, I can tell you that I offer one of the best value for money driving tuition services in the area, in addition to free video recording of lessons for those who might benefit from revising in the comfort of their homes.

Driving Test Tips
I have mentioned before on this free online driving advice blog, that it only takes one driving error for a provisional licence holder to fail the 40 minute dsa practical assessment, which is why I offer various driving test tips with the hope that one of them will help save someone from committing a fault that will cost them that coveted pass cerificate. Some of the tips might be obvious, but as an instructor who has had the opportunity of sitting in on driving tests of many learner drivers, I can comfortably say that all advice given is based on real life situations so I'm sure there will be something that would benefit you.,
Sometimes people fail the driving test not because they are ill-prepared but due to silly mistakes which if they had thought about beforehand might have been avoided.

Driving Videos


A picture they say is better than many words, so what about a video. When ever words are not enough to help explain what is required by the dsa examiner during the driving test, I use an online video. These videos could either be from an actual driving lesson or they are specifically shot and cover various topics like roundabouts, hesitation or failing driving test for being too slow, there is something that you can learn from.

UKADI.co.uk has been offering free online help to provisional licence holders since 2005, and has over 400 articles so if you can't find what you are looking for immediately, then use the search box at the top of the page to see if your query has already been addressed, before posting a question.

Free online video - Roundabouts Signals

If you are considering training to become a driving instructor then make sure you take note of other people's experience, and do proper research before making any desions and parting with your hard earned money or take on any finance agreements with Barclays or other companies.

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