Marketing

Marketing lets parents know about your child care services and why they should use them. It gives parent information that they need to check out and use your business. The best marketing methods are usually: 

• Referrals and testimonials from families who use your services and tell other parents.
• Online parent groups or community-based organizations who parents trust for advice about their children.
• Broader advertising efforts, such as in a publication. 

The best way to market is to find out what makes your child care business special and how to best reach parents. Most importantly, keep all your marketing actions in a plan so you stay on track.  

Creating a marketing plan can seem overwhelming to many business owners. You might already have ideas for how to promote your business, but don’t know where to start. You might see ads you like but you have no idea how to create them. Or maybe, you already do some marketing, but don’t have a system. These are common problems. But there are easy steps to create a good marketing plan. A good plan will help you reach your goals. It doesn’t have to take you a long time to create a marketing strategy. Keep it simple and make a plan that fits into your busy schedule. Consider the following steps: 

1. Understand your business’s brand and identity 

   You probably care a lot about helping children. Sharing your values through your marketing plan helps new families to understand what makes your program different. Think about your child care program. What sets you apart from the rest? Your first answers might reflect the unique services you offer. 

   Maybe you teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Or maybe you communicate with parents about their children's daily activities. Other answers might reflect unique needs you meet for families. Maybe you are a Texas Rising Star Certified provider and can offer a high level of quality to your families. Perhaps you offer extended evening care or transportation services. These answers show your business’s values, what makes your program special, and attract families who want to enroll their children. 

2. Understand the marketplace 

   It's important to understand your competition. You should know their prices and the services they offer. Examine their strengths and compare them to your own. How do you compare? What's the reputation of each business? Why are families currently choosing them instead of your, or the other way around?

   After you understand your competition, think about where your business can improve. Other businesses can motivate you to build your business! You might expand your curriculum, offer longer hours, or introduce children to technology. 

   As you begin to define your business in the marketplace, be honest with yourself about challenges you might face. You can't fix some problems right away. You'll need short-term goals to make progress over time. Changing your location or training your staff are goals that take time. Each small step will help build a better business that more competes with other businesses. 

3. Set a budget, goals, and a timeline 

   Before you start, you need to determine how much you can spend on marketing. To keep within a tight budget, consider that social media can be a free avenue for marketing and that there are inexpensive website-building options as well. 

   Setting goals for your marketing plan is important: what is it you are hoping to achieve? Is it growing your enrollment, or do you have other goals such as offering additional services or educational programs? Extra value-added services can help you increase revenue with the same capacity. 

   You will need to keep in mind the amount of time it will take for your efforts to show results. What does a successful timeline look like for you? Mapping out tasks and goals for different time frames, such as 30 days, 3 months, and 6 months, will allow you to approach marketing both realistically and strategically. 

4. How will you measure your success? 

   Understanding and seeing the success of your plan, and tracking your revenue, will give you a better idea of where to put your time and budget in the future for continued growth. There are easy-to-use spreadsheet templates online that you could update on the computer or print and track on paper. Be consistent in recording the growth you have experienced and the goals you have achieved. 

With your marketing plan in place, you will now decide the methods of marketing that will help you reach your goals. This is your chance to get creative! Not all methods will work for all child care businesses, and as you measure your progress you will be able to determine what works best for you. 

Ask for referrals

Do not be afraid to ask current families for referrals. You can share availability with families and provide flyers or business cards to share with coworkers, friends, and family. Word of mouth can be a powerful tool. Happy families will share stories about the quality of care their children receive.

Hold open houses

Holding open houses during off hours allows families to see the environment and resources you will provide their children. Community members may be unaware of how close your child care is to where they live or what services you offer. Open house events do not need to be fancy or all-day events; a few hours one evening can have an impact. Often local stores and businesses will allow you to post a flyer advertising your open house. During your open house, have printed materials available. Capture email addresses and be ready to send email packets with information for parents. 

Ask for recommendations 

Ask families to write recommendations about the positive experiences with your program. Ask families if they would okay with using their first name and quotes on your website, social media, or print marketing. 

Join networking groups 

You could market your business by joining networking groups, both in-person or online. Consider joining a child care providers group in your area. You can stay up to date with news and best practices and there might be child care businesses in your area that have reached capacity and are looking to refer new families. Networking can go beyond your neighborhood. An online group of child care providers might be a great source of marketing and business ideas. You might also consider joining parents’ groups on social media. Members often ask for child care recommendations. 

Advertise in free or low-cost local newsletters

Advertising can be expensive, but a less expensive way to advertise is to include your business in a local newsletter. Parents’ groups, book clubs, and other organizations may have monthly newsletters for their members. Your community may also have a newsletter or message board where you could promote your business. 

Build a website

Building a landing page or a full website can be important to your business. This will help potential familiesto learn about the services you offer and the environment where you care for children.  You can include photographs of your facility or pictures of crafts the children have created. You can easily create and include a video tour of your facility. Or you can create videos discussing your expertise on topics important to families. Include a section that introduces yourself to families, such as your background, the reasons you love caring for children, or a fun fact about yourself! You can include biographies of staff members so that caregivers can see who will be caring for their children. 

Social media 

Social media is now an important part of marketing. You will be able to highlight all that your business has to offer, provide updates as you add services and programs, and remind families of time-sensitive topics, such as schedule changes or special events. Posting on social media platforms doesn’t need to be time consuming. Some small businesses choose to post something once a day, but one post a week with high-quality content can be effective as well. 

Create printed promotional materials 

A home printer can get you started on making flyers or you can find printing services such as Kinkos. Some programs already have design templates in which you can type in the details of your business. You can find free or low-cost stock images to add to your flyers. You can find free QR code generators that will allow you to connect to your website or social media on printed materials. To use QR codes, people would use their phone’s camera to scan the code and that scan takes them to your website.

There are many online sources for creating and ordering business cards. Online companies allow you to create a small quantity of business cards without a large investment. When thinking about how to maximize the impact of your printed materials, place them in the hands of families by posting and distributing at many different locations. This could include:

• City tourism/visitor centers
• Farmers’ markets
• Libraries
• Public parks
• Local family event
• Youth sports events
• Recreational, youth and cultural centers

Another idea is to visit local businesses where owners and managers would be happy to refer their employees to reliable, high-quality child care. 

There are many online sources for inexpensively creating and ordering business cards. Vistaprint is an online company that allows you to create a small quantity of business cards without a large investment. When thinking about how to best maximize the impact of your printed materials, place them directly in the hands of families with young children by posting and distributing at many different locations, such as city tourism/visitor centers, farmers’ markets, libraries, public parks, local family events, youth sports events and the many recreational, youth and cultural centers in your community. Another idea is to visit local businesses where owners and managers would be happy to refer their employees to reliable, high-quality child care. 

Once your marketing plan is underway and you have found the actions that are resulting in growth, you will need a means of keeping your marketing current. Do not forget to make changes to websites/landing pages and Facebook pages. Update flyers seasonally to illustrate new experiences or play activities you may offer at that time of the year. 

Consider maintaining a marketing activity plan to keep track of what you want to be doing and when. Remember those 30-day, 3-month, and 6-month marketing plans you created? Adding those dates to a calendar and mapping out the actions you will take during those time periods can help keep you on track. Social media management software is also available, and it allows you to curate and schedule social media posts. It also allows you to track the activity that your posts are receiving. Both free and paid options are available. Popular social media management software with free plans include Social Champ, Hootsuite, Buffer. 

Keeping in line with marketing maintenance is tracking the effectiveness of your efforts. As mentioned earlier in this guide, you will want to see how close you have gotten to your goals each step of the way. You can use a spreadsheet, a Word document, or a notebook to keep track of additional enrollments or the number of children now receiving enhanced services. 

Keep in mind how much additional revenue those enrollments or new services have generated to compare to your marketing costs so you can determine your profit. 

Lastly, you can plan on needing to make adjustments to your marketing plan from time to time. Flexibility and responsiveness based on your results will help to ensure the success of your plan. 

Having a strong, manageable marketing plan can greatly affect the success of your business. Taking the time to strategize and prioritize marketing will result in achieving your goals, and this will allow you to benefit from your smart planning and hard work. As you think about how you will approach your marketing plan, remember that there are a number of resources available to help guide you. 

Having a written plan is not a necessity but may be beneficial for a number of reasons: it can help you organize your strategy, it can be shared with others, and it gives you something to reference whenever you need it or intend to switch gears. 

Documenting your marketing plan doesn’t have to be a drawn-out process, you simply want to capture the components that were discussed earlier in this guide: 

• Your Business’s Brand and Identity
• Your values statement
• Competitor Analysis
• Your competitors
• Your pricing and services in comparison to others
• Opportunities for growth
• Challenges you may face when seeking growth in your business
• Marketing Goals
• The marketing goals you plan to achieve
• The marketing activities that will allow you to reach your goals
• The timeline for your marketing activities
• The budget needed to execute your marketing plan 

If you have any questions, you can access free, one-on-one business coaching by visiting childcare.texas.gov. 

Disclaimer 

The information contained here is for educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal, tax, or financial advice.