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On this page
4 min read
Somewhere between 95 and 98 out of every 100 people who land on a flight school website leave without filling out a form or calling. That is normal. A discovery flight is a $200 decision and a private pilot certificate is a $15,000 one; nobody makes either on the first visit.
Retargeting is the ad that follows that visitor for the next two weeks. It is the lowest-cost campaign a flight school can run, and most schools either do not run it or run it badly. Here is how to do it well.
What retargeting is, in one paragraph
A small piece of code on your website (the Google tag, the Meta pixel) records that a browser visited. You then tell Google or Meta to show your ad only to browsers on that list. The person sees your school again on YouTube, on a news site, in their Instagram feed, and the ad costs a fraction of a search click because you are not bidding against other schools for a keyword. You are bidding for one person’s attention, and you already know they were interested.
Who to retarget, and who not to
Retarget: anyone who viewed a program page, the pricing page, the discovery flight page, or the contact page and did not convert. These people were shopping.
Do not retarget: people who already submitted a form or called. Exclude them; an ad for a discovery flight they already booked reads as a school that does not know its own customers. Also exclude anyone who bounced from a blog post in under ten seconds; they were reading, not shopping.
What to show them
The first-visit ad said “learn to fly.” The retargeting ad should answer whatever stopped them.
- Cost. “A private pilot certificate at [school] runs $X to $Y. Here is the breakdown.” The number they were looking for and did not find.
- The instructor. A 15-second video of a real CFI saying what happens on a first lesson. People book people.
- The discovery flight. Price, length, and a booking link. The lowest-commitment next step.
- Proof. A student’s first solo photo with a one-line caption. Nothing sells a school like someone who just did it.
Rotate two or three of these. One ad shown 40 times is a school that looks like it has one thing to say.
How long, and how often
Fourteen days is the useful window for most schools; 30 for a career program where the decision is bigger. Cap frequency at three to five impressions a day. Past that you are paying to annoy people, and the ad starts costing you the sale it was meant to save.
Which platform
Google (YouTube and the display network) reaches the widest audience for the least money, and YouTube retargeting with a short video is the strongest format a flight school has, because a cockpit on screen does the selling.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) reaches the same person in a feed where they linger longer, and the parent of a teenage prospect is usually there. Facebook and Instagram ads for flight schools covers the creative that works.
Run both if you can; the budgets are small. Run Google first if you can only run one.
What it should cost
Retargeting is a line inside your Google Ads budget, not a separate one, and it is usually 10 to 15 percent of the total. On a $3,000 a month program that is $300 to $450. The cost per lead from retargeting is typically well below the search cost per lead, because the audience is warm. We do not have a school-level retargeting figure we can publish on its own; at Hawkins Flight Academy, retargeting was part of the mix that produced 348 leads in six months at $47.90 each with fees included, and it was the cheapest part.
The honest limit
Retargeting cannot fix a page that does not convert. If your program page has no price and no way to book, retargeting sends people back to the same wall. Fix the page first, then follow the visitor.
For the recorded version with the account walkthrough, watch The Power of Retargeting for Flight Schools. To find out whether your account is retargeting at all, and what it is spending, book a strategy call and give us read access before we talk.
Retargeting follows the visitor the search brought in. For the search terms themselves, the Flight School Keywords Guide is a free download.
