How to Market Your Preschool, Daycare Center, or Family Child Care
Whether you’re embarking on new journey in early childhood education or you have a well-established daycare center, preschool, or family childcare, marketing your business is a critical part of your success.
Paper Pinecone has put together this definitive guide to marketing your daycare center, preschool, or family childcare so you can effectively reach new customers and keep your childcare full.
We’ll cover the following childcare marketing topics:
Choosing a Name for Your Childcare
Building a Childcare Brand
Designing a Logo for your Daycare or Preschool
Developing a Childcare Website
The Right Marketing Budget for a Preschool or Daycare
Marketing Plans for Childcare Providers
What You Should Say in Your Childcare Marketing
Online Marketing for Preschools and Daycare Providers
Offline Marketing for Preschools and Daycare Providers
FAQs for Daycares and Preschool Marketing
Choosing the Right Name for Your Daycare or Preschool
If you’re just starting out, picking a name for your daycare or preschool is one of the first steps to getting started. You don’t want to change the name of your childcare business down the line, so spend time coming up with the right name.
Your name is the first thing people learn about your childcare. Maybe they drive by and see a sign or maybe they hear it from someone else, but either way, it’s important that it’s memorable.
Names have meaning and conjure up images. If you name your preschool Adventure Kids, parents are going to expect days full of adventures – and you should provide that. If you name your preschool Peaceful Palace, in conjures up entirely different feelings and your program should also deliver on the name.
Your childcare business name should appeal to your target audience as well. And while all childcare centers and family childcare providers are targeting parents or caregivers of young children, there’s more to your picking the right name than that. Their psychographics, your market, your program, and your competition all should be considered when developing your daycare or preschool name.
Why You Need to Build a Childcare Brand, Not a Childcare Business
What is a brand, anyway and why do you need one?
Your business provides childcare services, and that’s true whether you care for a handful of children in your home, have a childcare center, or a childcare empire.
Your brand is more than that. It’s how you want people to perceive you.
Take two family childcare providers in the same town. They charge the same rates, provide the same services, and the quality of care is the same.
But one has built a brand. They’ve positioned themselves as the most loving family childcare around. And everything they communicate tells you that. It comes through in everything they do as well. You start to believe it and if you’re a parent looking for family childcare, what do you want? The most loving family childcare, or the family childcare that seems quite nice, but isn’t the most loving?
Major companies invest millions of dollars and a countless amount of time building their brand. And while most daycares and preschool don’t have that time, or money, you can still build your brand which will help set you apart from your competition and give you an ownable position in the market. The key is…you must deliver on it. If you say you’re the most loving daycare, everything you do must support that.
Look out for Paper Pinecone’s Foundations in 5 Childcare Branding course coming soon!
Designing a Logo for your Daycare or Preschool
A great logo for your daycare or preschool should immediately convey who you are. Your logo should be timeless – it’s not something that you want to update for many, many years – if ever!
Along with your name, your childcare logo often is part of that first impression. For better or for worse, your logo communicates something about your childcare. If you have a logo now, think about the components of it and what it says about you. Is it in line with who you are and how you want to be perceived?
Your logo is the foundation of your brand identity. The colors, font, and style should be extended to your other communication materials, like your website.
Need a new logo? Paper Pinecone offers affordable logo design services. Contact us today to get started at [email protected].
Developing a Great Childcare Website
Once you’ve decided on a name, created a brand position, and have a logo, the next step in marketing your preschool or daycare is your website.
As of 2019, nearly 40% of small businesses didn’t have a website. That’s a shocking figure, given that over 40% of people say they don’t trust a business without an online presence. Childcare is all about trust, so if you don’t have a website or if your website is in need of an update, you have a huge hurdle to overcome.
Whether you have a website now that needs updating or you’re creating the first website for your childcare, make sure it follows best practices for mobile responsiveness, is optimized to rank well in Google, looks great, and represents your brand.
How Much Should A Daycare or Preschool Invest in Marketing?
If you haven’t specifically budgeted for marketing, now’s the time to start.
The U.S. Small Business Association recommends that a small business spend about 7%-8% of gross revenue on marketing if your net profit is around 10%-12% and your revenue is less than $5 million per year. New and young childcare businesses should plan on spending upwards of 25% on marketing in the early days.
You may find that certain times a year it’s wise to allocate more to your daycare or preschool marketing budget, and other times you may not need to allocate as much. You know your market best. If most of your children start in the fall along with the local school calendar, increase your childcare marketing budget in the preceding months. If you have If your daycare enrollment is evenly spaced throughout the year, it make sense to allocate about the same every month.
Developing a Childcare Marketing Plan
Do I really need a marketing plan for my childcare? The short answer is yes. Even if you’re a small family childcare provider, you’ll benefit from having a marketing plan.
Having a marketing plan for your daycare or preschool will:
- Help you optimize how you spend your investment focus
- Focus on investments that deliver ROI
- Help you budget throughout the year
- Create timelines for your marketing programs
- Measure the success of your marketing
Speak with your local small business association about creating a marketing plan if you need help.
The Right Marketing Messages for Daycare and Preschool
Understanding the lifecycle of a parent seeking childcare and enrolled in childcare will help you use the right message in your marketing communications. This is also called customer mapping.
The childcare customer lifecycle has five stages:
- Awareness – this is when a parent first hears your name – they become aware of your daycare or preschool
- Consideration – a parent is researching your program and considering your daycare or preschool
- Tour – a parent has scheduled a tour of your childcare program
- Enroll – a parent enrolls in your program
- Refer – a parent loves your childcare program and refers others to you
Your marketing approach and messaging will be different for different phases of the customer journey. If you’re a brand-new program, your efforts will be primarily focused on brand awareness. If you have a well-established program but aren’t getting many parent referrals, you’ll invest more heavily in brand advocacy.
Regardless of what stage the parents you’re speaking to are in, always have a call-to-action telling them exactly what you want them to do now.
Online Marketing for Childcare Providers
There are online marketing tactics every daycare or preschool should be doing, regardless of where their customers are on their journey.
Develop a high-quality website optimized for mobile and search engine marketing (SEO)
Drive parents to your website using SEO best practices
Blogging (content marketing) generates 3X more leads and costs 62% less than other marketing channels
Business directories like Paper Pinecone give childcare providers credibility and improve your own website’s google ranking
Use email marketing – for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return rate is $42 and email marketing far outperforms social media – collect emails every way you can
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use other digital channels to market your preschool or daycare. In fact, using a combination of digital marketing tactics is best. However, email marketing, business directories, and blogging can be practically free and given the high return on investment, they should t of the digital marketing strategy for your childcare.
Offline Marketing for Childcare Providers
Offline marketing, like brochures, signage, preschool fairs, and branded promotional items are also important components of childcare marketing. Knowing when to invest in each will depend on your area and your objectives.
Childcare Business FAQs
Q: What makes a daycare stand out?
A: Making your daycare or preschool stand out takes more than just marketing. You need an internal commitment to the social emotional development of children, a strong play-based, child-led curriculum, dedicated, loving teachers, access to continuing education, and excellent communication both within the organization and with parents.
Q: Do I need to use a kid in my daycare or preschool logo?
No, there’s no need to depict a child in your childcare logo. In fact, we recommend against using a kid in your preschool or daycare logo. Refer to our tips to create a great logo for your daycare or preschool, or reach out to us for help.
Q: How can I make my daycare more profitable?
Childcare is a fixed cost business, meaning your expenses remain relatively unchanged month-to-month. Review your monthly expenses to see where there are opportunities for savings. Refer to our articles How to Reduce Expenses & Increase Profit at Your Child Care Business and How Childcare Providers Can Generate Incremental Revenue, Increase Immediate Cash Flow, and Decrease Costs.
Q: How much money do I need to open a daycare?
The average cost to open a daycare ranges from $10,000 to $50,000, however many factors influence what you’ll spend. Opening a home daycare is generally less costly than opening a daycare center. Opening an independent daycare center is less costly than opening a franchise. Daycare center franchise costs range from $59,000 to $3 million.
Q: Is opening a daycare a good investment?
Good, of course, is subjective. Daycare owners typically profit and average of $37,000 per year. However, many report earning significantly more. Opening a daycare can be a good investment, but you must understand your market dynamics, set yourself apart from your competition, have strong business acumen, and have exceptional management skills.
Q: How does a new daycare get clients?
Any new business needs to work hard to get clients. Since daycare is a worth-of-mouth business that relies on long-term enrollments and relationships, getting your first clients may take time. Heavily budget for marketing in the early days when you first need to get the word out about your new daycare or preschool.
Q: What is the target market for daycare?
The target market for your preschool or daycare will very much be driven by the area that you operate in and the ages of the children you care for. Most frequently the target will be parents who work outside the home. However, you should be sensitive to your market dynamics, for example, if you live in an affluent area with many stay-at-home parents, your target may be parents who wish to have some time to themselves or parents who want their child to socialize more. Remember, however, your target is always adults, not children, and your branding and marketing should appeal to parents and caregivers.
Q: What is customer service in daycare?
Customer service in daycare and preschool comes down to four main things: 1) providing exceptional, developmentally appropriate care; 2) having open lines of communication with teachers and being aware of both good and bad things happening in your daycare; 3) providing exceptional communication to parents, and 4) promptly addressing problems that arise with a plan to fix them.
Q: How can I access funding for my daycare?
Funding for your daycare or preschool can come from many sources. Personal savings and small business loans are frequent sources of funding for daycare. Asking friends and family to invest in your business can be another source of funding for your daycare. Child Development Block Grants, Community Facilities Grant Program, and other federal and state grants are available to help fund your daycare.
Q: Should my daycare be on the food program?
The Child and Adult Care Food Program provides reimbursements for snacks and meals at your daycare and can offer many cost-saving benefits. Many childcare providers find that it offers a significant cost savings if they offer meals in their daycare or preschool.