Engaging in targeted profile raising activities to promote your child care service will ensure you keep vacancy levels to a minimum and will help you build support and recognition in your geographical area of operation.

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 will vote with their feet, it is important to ensure your centre stands out.

An effective and well implemented marketing campaign can be an excellent way of increasing business and raising awareness and understanding about the range of services on offer at your centre. It can also help you 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:

• Targeted and relevant to your particular audience
• Affordable and realistic given staff, resource and time constraints
• Achievable and that the results can be measured

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 who should be kept in mind include child related service providers who might recommend your facility to parents if they are aware of it, such as local councils and primary schools.

Once you have a clear understanding about your audience you'll need to think about your audience's needs and priorities in terms of child care and how your service can best provide for these needs.

Centre staff, directors and where relevant head offices may be able to assist you 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 centre, 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:

• Where do you live?
• How far do you/would you travel for child care?
• Where do you work?
• What are/were your priorities when looking for child care for your family?
• How did you find out about our service?
• Why do you use/hope to use our service?
• What are the most important things are child care service should provide?
• What do you like/dislike about our service?
• What would you like to see improved in this service?

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:

• Local newspapers
• Publications dedicated to family and children's services.
• Telephone and internet directories
• Websites dedicated to family and children's services such as CareforKids.com.au

Special Events
Open days and fund raising events can be an excellent way of connecting with the local community, promoting your service and give children and families the opportunity to check your service out before they commit:

• Use advertising or a brochure drop in the local area to raise awareness about the day and the events you have planned.
• Enlist the help of parents to ensure the event is as cost effective as possible.
• Plan a number of special events and/or special guests and invite local media along to cover the event. Make sure invited media are introduced to key staff members and any VIPs.
• Ensure the whole service looks fabulous, make sure there is lots of art and project work on the walls and that outside areas look tidy and exciting.
• Involve the service in any community run fairs or festivals. Operating an information/activity stand at an event like this will help you reach a huge number of people in a very short time frame. Maintain a contact list on the day and follow up leads with an email, call or post out an information pack.

Brochures and Information Kits
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:

• Leave a pile of brochures anywhere frequented by families with small children, such as libraries, Early Childhood Centres, family doctors and playgroup facilities.
• Hand them out to families who come to check the service before enrolling. You could also post them to people who call for information.
• Include them in your service's show bag and be sure to have plenty available on open days and during any events the service is involved in, such as the community festivals mentioned above.
• Leave a pile in the children's services area at your local council offices.

This may involve the implementation of a statistical key performance indicator, for example - We want to achieve a 12 per cent 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

NCAC Effectively Marketing Your Service