Marketing & Promoting Your Child Care Service An effective marketing campaign is an excellent way of increasing business Engaging in targeted profile raising activities to promote your child care service will help you keep vacancy levels to a minimum and will build support and recognition in your local community. Parents across Australia have great awareness about child care and high expectations about the standards of service they will receive. In this increasingly competitive environment, where parents vote with their feet, it is important to ensure your service stands out. An effective and well implemented marketing campaign is an excellent way of increasing business and raising awareness and understanding about the range of services on offer at your service. It can also help build loyalty within your existing customer base, ensure your service is in demand with a well padded waiting list and improve your ability to compete with other services in your area. However, when considering options for marketing your service it is important to ensure your promotional goals and activities are:
Target Audience Families with children in your service's age group or young couples expecting children are your primary audience and should be the focus of your marketing and promotional activities. Other secondary audiences include child related service providers who might recommend your facility to parents if they are aware of it, such as playgroups, local councils and primary schools. Once you have a clear understanding about your audience you'll need to think about their needs and priorities in terms of child care and how your service can best provide for these needs. Staff, directors and where relevant head offices may be able to assist you to put together this list of needs, however your most valuable source of information will be your existing customers, i.e. families with children already in your service, families who have recently left the service and families currently on your waiting list. Taking a little time to quiz these people on their priorities and expectations will offer valuable insights into what your customers expect and will help you work out how to develop and implement your marketing activities to ensure your potential customers clearly understand that your service offers the best of what they are looking for. Informal interactions with parents can be a great way of gathering information. Consider asking parents where they heard about you when they call to make initial queries, chat to them as you give them a tour of the facility, ask parents when they pick up their kids whether they are happy with the service and what changes they would like to see. These questions can also be asked at parent meetings. More formally, you could consider requesting families who are currently using your service, soon to leave or on the waiting list, to complete a survey including questions such as:
Using this profile to develop and implement your promotional activities will ensure your campaign effectively targets the people most likely to need your services and will enable you to highlight any points of difference with other services in the area. Targeted and Appropriate Promotion Marketing doesn't just mean large scale advertising on radio or in newspapers. In fact, for small privately run child care services this type of mass marketing would completely miss the mark. Advertising If your service does have enough money to engage in advertising consider community run and/or niche publications which are more likely to be read by your target audience such as:
Special Events Open days and fund raising events are an excellent way of connecting with the local community and promoting your service. They also give families the opportunity to check your service out before they commit:
Commissioning a professional to design and produce a logo for your service and applying it to brochures, business cards, staff uniforms etc will improve the image of your service and will further enhance brand awareness. Refer to the information gathered in your audience survey to help you decide what information to include in the brochure. Standard facts such as hours of operation, services on offer, contact details should be included but try and also include any points of difference and information on what makes your service unique. For inspiration think about your staff, the grounds, your location, your menus, unique programmes on offer, cultural or linguistic differences and/or anything else you think could be of interest to the local community or you are proud of. Make sure the brochure includes lots of pictures and has a simple, uncluttered layout that makes it easy to read. Consider using bullet points and lots of white space around the text to encourage people to read it from the start through to the finish. Once you have a suite of brochures and accompanying merchandise you are happy with you'll need to distribute it:
You need to be able to measure the effectiveness of the promotional activities you engage in, especially if they involve a significant cost. This may involve the implementation of a statistical key performance indicator, for example 'We want to achieve a 12 % increase in enrolments in six months as a result of advertising.' Or you may prefer to question people who call after a significant promotional activity about how they heard about the service and whether they saw your ad/brochure etc. Keep track of any new leads, especially if they mention your promotional activity, and follow up calls by sending out an information kit. Effective marketing campaigns require constant review and revision. Monitor what your competitors are doing and be prepared to alter your promotional activities accordingly. Remember, to really be helpful marketing and promotional campaigns need to be viewed as core components of your daily business. References and further reading: Family Day Care Marketing Website http://www.familydaycare.com.au/marketing_resources.html NCAC Effectively Marketing Your Service http://www.ncac.gov.au/pcf/Effectively_Marketing_Your_Service_Dec06.pdf CareforKids.com.au Marketing & Promotional Services for Centres, Family Day Care Services, OOSH & Pre-schools |
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