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In my book, The Ultimate Child Care Marketing Guide, I teach eight key ingredients that should be included in every marketing piece for your child care center, daycare, or preschool. There are, however, two essential elements out of those eight that you can really concentrate on to make your marketing more effective.
The first is social proof, such as parent testimonials, and the second is a focus on the unique benefits of your center.
Social proof is a great method to build trust with a parent or prospect. Interspersing your ad with parent testimonials, stories, or even multiple testimonials will work wonders. In fact, your entire ad could be focused on the story of a child or family that is enrolled in your school.
I’ve seen this strategy used on several websites of leading child care centers, and it’s been a huge factor contributing to their success. They use social proof because it works! Parents really are out there looking for what other parents are saying about your center to help them form an opinion.
Take a minute to look at every brochure, ad, mailer, and flyer about your center to see if it features any good, credible, solid, benefit-driven parent testimonials. If it doesn’t, think about how you can incorporate testimonials into your marketing, or how you can even create a whole campaign just using this method.
For example, you could use a parent’s story about how their child benefited from being in your program for five years by being placed in the gifted program after attending your school. Any stories you have that tie in with your brand can be used in your marketing. Don’t have any testimonials or stories? It’s time to get to work! I have lots of blog posts that teach you how to get these.
The second important element to integrate into your marketing is to communicate the unique benefits of your program. These are the differences that set you apart from other centers.
Most in the child care industry have really lost focus on this essential ingredient and, in turn, have commoditized the industry. This means that some parents now believe all centers are similar and that they should therefore only ask about rates. We all know this isn’t the case!
What makes your center special and unique? In your marketing, make sure to focus on bullet point benefits that explain how your business is different from the rest. These unique benefits should be a part of every marketing piece, and should also be a main focus on your website. This should be what your employees talk about when they respond to inquiries on the phone and give tours.
It’s so important to constantly be communicating those unique differences across your messaging to parents. That will pull you out of being a simple commodity that blends in with the others, really setting you apart from competition, and finally allow you to charge what you’re worth.
If you integrate just these two ingredients into your communications, you will be on your way to more effective marketing, driving more inquiries and ultimately more enrollments at your child care. To your success!
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Have you ever thought about becoming an author?
Writing a book can be a powerful way to propel business at your child care center, daycare, or preschool, elevating you to an authority figure and immediately making you a local celebrity.
I’ve used this strategy myself by writing The Ultimate Child Care Marketing Guide, and it’s become a go-to resource for those in the child care industry and a key factor in the success of my business. I knew when I got into the child care industry that my credibility as a trainer, speaker, and coach would be skyrocketed with one single tool – a book. And it did! You can do the same thing at your own business.
If you write a book related to the child care industry, parents will start to see you as an expert on the subject of child care, creating a sense of trust and admiration. This will carve you out as a leader in the field helping you attract more clients, allowing you to charge more, and helping you get the name of your child care center out there.
Some of you may have already wanted to write a book for a while but you’re not quite sure how to get published. There are actually some very easy ways to do this.
My husband Devin just went through the process with his book, Child Care Marketing Online. He was able to write, edit, and publish it on a tool called Create Space, which then has Amazon print it on demand. There is even a way to get a Kindle version published via Create Space. This is an extremely inexpensive way to get your book out there and have instant fame!
Some examples of topics you could write about relate to early childhood education, curriculum, parenting, discipline, behavioral problems or whatever you may be passionate about that connects you to your core business. You can start out by writing a guide, a pamphlet, or even a quick consumer’s guide. Whatever it may be, becoming an author immediately makes you an authority in your field.
So take some time to think about how you can become the publisher of your own ideas to get more local celebrity attention at your child care center, daycare, or preschool. Get started today by thinking about a topic you want to write about, create a book outline and set a goal for yourself for 2014 to become an author!
Check out my own book, The Ultimate Child Care Marketing Guide, here.
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Daycare Systems LLC
419 6th St. #207
PO Box 3107
Crested Butte, CO 81224
877-254-4619
Info@Childcare-Marketing.com