Just a quick blog post to let you know that I’ve “unlocked” the mysteries of how to get quality families to enroll in your program, and I’m revealing it ALL during my brand new 5-Week Intensive Enrollment Bootcamp! This is a “virtual” bootcamp featuring live coaching and training calls, an online resource center, and tons of awesome bonuses! Go here to learn more:
If you want a FAST program that’s affordable and guaranteed to help you get fully enrolled, you’ve found it! This is for child care center owners, family daycare owners, directors, managers, and anyone who wants to get better at marketing and promoting their child care program. Please join me! The Bootcamp begins on Thursday, August 26th, so don’t delay!
Daycare Centers or Home Daycare Programs:
Whether you’re seeking full or part-time care, either of these options could provide your children with a summer of fun. Many programs not only offer terrific activities on site, they also offer field trips and transportation to outside activities, such as trips to the zoo and swimming lessons.
Teen Babysitting: Another option could be a part-time teenage babysitter (with a car) who can take your kids to the pool, the library, the playground, and other fun places. If you choose this option, be sure to hire a responsible teen with a clean driving record. Ask for references, then check them.
Day Camps:
The best resources for finding camps in your area, are more than likely your local Parks and Recreation, Athletic Clubs, Swimming Pools, Dance and Gymnastics Academies, Community Churches and Children’s Museums. By choosing a variety of camps and alternating them, your child can experience a well rounded summer by attending those that offer sports, arts and crafts or educational activities.
Summer School or Enrichment Classes :
If you’re looking to enrich your child’s summer with learning, you may want to check with your Community College, Parks and Recreation Department or Local School District. Typically a variety of courses are offered from all three resources on topics varying from acting and writing to foreign languages and math.
Regardless of the type of care you choose, be prepared by having a back up plan in the event that the class, camp or center is closed or canceled due to lack of enrollment or already filled to capacity.
Above all else, when you are selecting care for your child at any level, it’s a good idea to ask the following questions:
For small or private facilities:
How long has the business, organization, class or camp been established?
Do they have references?
For all types of facilities:
Can you tour the facility prior to enrolling?
Do the teachers, aides, coaches and providers have background checks?
How many children are enrolled?
What are the child to adult ratios?
How are illness or injuries handled?
What are the discipline policies?
What safety precautions are taken regarding the arrival and departure of your child?
With a little planning and thought, you and your child can experience a summer filled with fun activities.
The winter holiday season is a GREAT time to promote your child care program. Here are four easy ways to tie into the holidays, and get some great publicity for your center. The key thing to remember is, it’s all about your community. Learn about what’s going on in your community, and tie into existing events…or create brand new events that really get your name out there!
1)Research all the child-related events in your local area, and choose one or two to tie into.It helps if you can partner with a large non-profit in your town, like the Rotary Club or Jaycees, because the local media is more likely to pick up on your story if you are raising money for a good cause.
For example, in our town, I just helped my child care center partner with the Rotary Club during its annual Santa on the Green event. We held a raffle that raised $520 towards the Rotary Foundation, and a staff member dressed up as “Elf” handed out cookies to all kids waiting in line. The cookies were given in cute bags with our logo on them. We received 3 mentions in the local paper and one photo.
2)Hold a canned food drive, a toy drive, or a clothing drive (i.e. used winter coats and boots).Do a press release letting everyone know about the drive, where to bring the items, and who it’s benefitting.
3)Host a party featuring Santa, at your facility.Invite the community to come, provide refreshments, photos with Santa, etc. for anyone in the community.
4)Give away a complimentary Holiday Gift, such as a children’s book or educational toy. You can get cute postcard-sized glossy cards printed very inexpensively (I use VistaPrint), and hand out the promotional cards to local retailers’ for their counters. We placed cards at our local bookstore, the children’s hair salon, Gymboree, and children’s consignment shops.
With a little creativity, you can find some really fun ways to promote your program and get a big boost in name recognition, leading to more enrollments in the long run.
More and more people are searching online to find child care. If you are not in the top couple of results you may be losing business as parents pick other daycares because they don’t know you even exist. Fixing this is very easy and most centers are not even trying.
A recent report by independent research firm eMarketer.com (September 2009) provided some great insights into how people are searching online for local products & services. Here are some of the major findings of the study:
37% of people who conducted an online local search ended up visiting the store in person.
People were 46% more likely to go to the store after finding them in a local online search, when compared to other ways of finding a business.
Even more local searchers contacted the business by phone after finding them online.
The top 2 business categories for local searches were child care and hotels.
All in all, the days of the phone book are gone. People now search online for a business when they need them, and child care is one of the TOP business categories that people are searching for online.
When you search for anything, who do you contact first? The top few results, maybe the top five. If you are like most people, you start with the top two results and only if they don’t work out do you continue down the page. Moreover, page two might as well be the moon - only the few diehard searchers get that far.
Based on these findings, your child care center needs to be high up in search results for your area (preferably in the Top 5), in order to increase the number of prospects contacting your about future enrollment. Now you don’t need to be number one, although you should be trying, but you should be “above the fold” so nobody needs to scroll down to find you.
The first thing you need to do is some keyword research. What terms are people typing into Google and Yahoo search to find child care in your area? For my area, here are the keywords I came up with. Feel free to adapt this list to your local town or region:
Child care, Hudson, OH
Childcare Hudson Ohio
Child care centers in Hudson OH
Best child care centers, Northeast ohio
Daycare in Hudson Ohio
When choosing keywords, do not forget about the areas and towns surrounding you. Far too often child care centers focus only on the city they’re in, but you likely have customers from other towns. Would you fit with a surrounding town, or neighborhood? How about big employers nearby? Target all of these too, not with as much effort as your main term, but still with some effort.
(By the way, the techniques that I’m going to teach you in this article are not being used by many centers, so by taking action on these tips, you’ll come out ahead of your competition!)
After you take action on these tips, it won’t take much time at all to see some results. Here’s an example I did the other day just for illustration purposes. These results took less than 5 hours to achieve.
I targeted Aurora, Ohio, the town next to ours for this example. Here you can see the results for “child care” and “daycare” in Aurora.
You can do this with any location. Now I did my example quickly and I would get even better results if I had let this run for more than 5 hours. However, I followed the techniques I will teach you and here are the results.
Yep, there I am number 5 for child care, and number 2 for daycare!
Do you think I would get some calls and customers off being that high up? Yes, I would. In addition, if I gave it more time I would be higher, and on the map section. It can take a couple of days to get there, which is still a relatively short amount of time to get a huge amount of online traffic.
I took the whole thing down after 5 hours, because I didn’t want to confuse parents actually trying to find child care. I just didn’t think that was right to do to them. Try this for yourself and you will be amazed at the results you get, and how little time it takes.
To get the 7 steps click here to check out my child care marketing informational site.
These days, it’s tough being a Cleveland Browns fan, especially when you’re surrounded by Steelers fans. But as you can see from this photo, I don’t mind being surrounded by the competition.
Nevertheless, what should you do if your child care is surrounded by the competition?
In my child care consulting practice, I’m seeing more and more centers with increasing levels of competition. Whether from in-home daycares or new centers that were built recently, more centers are competing for fewer new clients. This can be a problem because the new competition tends to drive down the price customers will pay, drive up costs, and overwhelm new parents.
However, you don’t have to roll over and give in. With the right strategies, you can beat the other child care centers in your market. The greatest tool for doing this is a strong marketing program that clearly states how you are UNIQUE and different than your competitors. Can you honestly say that your marketing answers this all-important question:
“Why should I choose to enroll my child at your center rather than any other child care center in town?”
Average marketing will only get you average results. To be highly successful, you need to use a marketing plan that enables you to stand out. Effective marketing will:
Make sure your center’s name comes up when parents are looking for child care.
Enter the conversation already going on in parent’s heads.
Make the competition a non-issue.
Return to you $2, $5, $10 or more dollars for every dollar you spend on marketing.
Allow you to charge higher rates than average.
Have a system that allows you to fill vacancies at will.
Provide better care for the kids under your care.
Have a waiting list of parents.
Hire the best staff.
And best of all, improve your profitability (or financial health if you’re a non-profit).
As you can see, great marketing is important regardless of your situation, whether you are surrounded by competition or not. An effective marketing plan simply has too much to offer.
As you may know, I have been helping child care centers with their marketing and enrollment-building challenges for a while now, as a coach and teacher, doing just what I have shown above. I love doing it and helping centers grow…but I also understand many child cares can’t yet afford this level of personal coaching and consulting (I regularly charge $150 an hour plus).
So to make this available to everyone and help you beat your competition, I have put together the Child Care Business Success System. With this one-of-a-kind training program, you will be able to win against all the other centers in your area – I guarantee it!
I came across a great article in the paper this week. The article is about which volunteer jobs are the most helpful to kids. Here’s the article: http://online.wsj.com/article
I like the information of where to volunteer and think parents may like it (i.e. something for your newsletter:-)). I found this section to be very relevant to those of us in child care as well as parents:
“Throughout school, the most important parental role of all is to shape your child’s attitude toward learning and school, communicate high expectations, and help him or her set goals and solve learning problems.
And setting expectations doesn’t mean telling kids, “We are bound and determined that you are going to get into Harvard,” Dr. Hoover-Dempsey says; it means sending a message that “doing the best you can is important for all the things you’re going to be able to do in life.” In elementary school, such coaching has roughly twice as big an impact on children’s grades and test scores as volunteering.”
As caregivers we have a massive impact on the kids in our care. We owe it to them and ourselves to do the best we can for them. Teach them to love learning, have fun with it, to do their best in everything they do, and to set meaningful goals in life.
In this new video, I walk you through step-by-step a quick & easy way to get more prospects finding you and calling your center.
This is one my top-secret “super-stealth” strategies and I decided to reveal it to you for free, because I know lots of child care owners are struggling with enrollment in this economy.
If you click on the video, you’ll also get information on a new free tele-class I’m teaching next Tuesday November 17th.
Pictures are one of the greatest ways to reinforce your value to parents. No matter the size of your child care center, you should be taking photos and using them to promote your business, both to current clientele as well as prospects.
Today I got the proof pictures from my daughter’s child care class photos. I’m just in love with these photos. These pictures will be going out to family for the holidays and great simple inexpensive gifts. And it is not just me, I’m sure the other parents will be doing the same thing.
Portraits
Portraits are a great benefit you can offer. It doesn’t matter the size of your daycare, you should be able to get something set up for a picture day. If you’re a small home daycare think about contacting the local college to find a top student, they may even do it as a project, or look for wedding photographers in the off season, they may do it to keep busy.
Everybody loves seeing their little boys and girls all dressed up in a photograph for years to come. And doing it at your daycare saves the family the trouble of going to a portrait studio in the mall…and will probably be cheaper for them too. What a great way to make parents happy and willing to refer your center to their friends, family, and co-workers.
Action Shots
Taking pictures goes beyond portraits. Think about taking pictures of the fun things your kids are doing. Here’s a picture of my daughter with what started as finger painting. She loves to get into whatever she does. I just love this picture, it’s framed in hallway. This picture was just taken by the daycare staff and emailed to me.
These pictures weren’t just sent to me, other parents get similar pictures when fun stuff happens. It allows parents to connect with their kids, and show them off.
An inexpensive digital camera from Wal-Mart should cost you less than $50. That’s nothing when you look at what it will earn you: great reviews, referrals, great enrollment… Plus you will likely be able to deduct the cost of the camera as an operating expense.
Daily Pictures
Parents love to see how their kids are doing at daycare. Before now it’s been hard, the portraits, and maybe some fun shots now and then. But the internet is changing that fast. With the growth of cheap small digital web cam and high speed Internet connection you can now broadcast your days to all parents. The best example of this is a service called Share In My Day. With this service, everything is set up for you and parents are given a login and password to access the daycare’s online webcam from anywhere, anytime. They can check in and see what’s happening and watch the fun. This is a new technology and everywhere it goes in, parents just rave about it. Could you do something like this for your parents?
Parents just love getting pictures of their kids. When you find unique and special ways to give them what they want, they will love you that much more.
Today I learned some sad news. An associate, mentor and sometimes-competitor of mine has had to leave the business. I won’t mention who, because it just isn’t important and is somewhat personal. But I am sad to see him go, because even competitors can make us better in what we do, and I never like to see ill come to anyone. So I wish him and his family the best in the future.
I always believe in looking for the lesson in everything in life. This case has a lesson to be learned too. My friend’s problems came about by pushing the limits just a little too much. We’ve all been there, so we know how this happens. You start off following the rules…say driving the speed limit, then pushing it just a little, 5 mph over. Nothing bad happens, we don’t get pulled over so this becomes the normal and acceptable way. We do this for a bit then push again, just 5 mph more, nothing bad, push again. We can even begin to believe its okay to be going this fast.
Before we know it we are 20 mph over the speed limit passing the officer with the radar gun. Oops!
The ticket, the fine, the trouble just snuck up on us. This is just what happened to my friend, and if you asked him, he would admit this is what happened. Now he’s lost just about everything and will need to start his business life over.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Take a couple of minutes today and think about where you are pushing the limits. Look at how you are operating your daycare, should you be operating differently?
Are you following the rules of your state and local government about number of children? It’s just one over the limit, right, but what’s next?
Do you have all your policies written out for your parents so both sides know the rules, or are you just “winging it”? Not having policies can get you in trouble and allow parents to walk all over you.
Do you have all the forms and paperwork you need on your children? Who can pick them up, what can they eat, where can you take them, I know this might sound simple and obvious but what happens when something goes wrong? There are lots of kids that can’t eat peanuts or shellfish, or parents in nasty custody battle. Just 5 minutes to slid back into line and you will be much better off.
Are you setting a good example for the kids in your care? As a care giver you have a massive affect on your kids, what they believe and how they grow up. Even if they don’t say it they are watching and learning. Don’t teach them the wrong things. Think about the words you use, the feeling you have, and how you deal with problems. Maybe it’s time to make some small changes.
Pushing the limits can sneak up on all of us. It takes some effort to see where we are over the limit and some restraint to come back in line. Slowing back down to the speed limit is hard, but in the end easier than getting the ticket and needing to show up in court.
I was running errands today and passed by this local childcare center with this sign up in front of the center. I had to stop and take a picture of it because they are doing some very important things right that you should be doing, too.
This is on a major road that ties my residential community to the business section of town so parents are driving by this sign all day long. If you didn’t know this was a child care center by the name, you’d definitely know it out now based on this sign.
This sign is marketing to both current and prospective parents. It reminds currently enrolled parents of what is coming and why they use this school. But it also markets to new parents by letting them know what they could be a part of if they enrolled here.
It shows the location of the child care center is good. When given a choice it is best to place your center where it will be seen often and by the right type of people. If you can’t be in the optimal location, you can still use signs like this to drive traffic. Make an arrangement with the home owner on the corner to allow you to place a sign for special events.
It enters the conversation in everyone’s head. Parents of young children are always looking for Halloween activities suitable for them, and safe. This daycare center is entering into that conversation already taking place in the minds of parents, and inserting them as a great option.
After this event is over, you can continue to get marketing “traction” from the event.
Send a press release to your local papers with pictures of the event. Fun news with lots of personality tends to boost your word of mouth among all the parents in town.
Create your own press release flyer and send it home for parents to read.
Send copies of the newspaper article to all of your current prospects just in case they missed the paper.
If you’re tied in with other organizations (church, business) make sure they include this event in their newsletter.
Get pictures and a recap up on your web site and/or in your monthly newsletter.
I know this may sound like a lot just from one sign, but it’s really not. Always use all the tools in your arsenal, including signage, to help market your child care center.
Remember the TV show “Ally McBeal”? One of the characters in the show constantly apologized for being “snappish”. If your daycare staff is being snippy with your parents, what’s the real cost to you? I’m here to tell you it can cost you tens of thousands of dollars, all in just ten seconds time. That’s one thousand dollars per second, folks.
But first let me tell you the story that has caused me to write this today.
I agreed to help out one of my girlfriends by taking her new dog to the vet this morning for an operation. My friend is a nurse in the local pediatrics hospital and was called in last minute, and as I was working from home I agreed to help out. The vet’s office is 10 minutes from me, not a big deal.
My friend tells me I can drop her dog off any time after 8:45 in the morning. My family got a slow start today, and I spent a lot of time with my daughter’s daycare helping them tweak some holiday promotions. All in all, I didn’t get the dog to the vet’s office until 9:30.
This is where 5 seconds cost this office a lot of money. I walk in with the dog, not as the owner just a friend to the VERY snappish receptionist who tells me “Well, you were supposed to be here at 8:45! Hmph! You’re lucky we don’t have anything else planed or we would have to reschedule!” I was miscommunicated to, sorry, but as it wasn’t a problem why bring it up?
Now I have a very negative feeling of this vet. I can assure you I won’t use them even though they are 30 minutes closer than my current vet and cheaper. Plus I’ve already told several other people about this and probably won’t stop any time soon. It is going to take a lot of work and praise for this veterinary office to recover from this episode of extreme snappishness.
In less than 10 seconds, this office lost all of my business and the business of many of the people I talk to. Easily thousands of dollars lost this year, and from any future profits they may have had. Ouch!
Is something like this happening at your daycare?
When parents drop of late or forget something, how is your staff responding? Are they friendly and helpful?… or snappy? Do you even know?
If the parents are doing something mildly annoying, but it’s not hurting anyone, probably nothing needs to even be said. If it’s becoming a problem, remind you staff how to politely offer the parent a gentle reminder and the reason why. “I just wanted to remind you we ask you to drop off kids before 9:00. This is because after 9, it becomes disruptive to the class and your child may miss something fun. It would be very helpful for all of us. Thanks.”
If the outcome changes because of the problem move on to solving the problem not rehashing what went wrong. Try your best not to blame but to solve the problem, that’s all that really matters. Nobody can do anything about the past now, the best you can do is make the future the best it can be. “I’m sorry but the kids have already left for the field trip, to get them back for lunch they had to leave at 9. If you want we can some fun activities set up here or you can meet up with the others at _______ and go from there.”
Spend some time working with your staff to make sure they are responding the way you hope they would. Let them know what you want and how you want problems dealt with. This little bit of extra effort can pay a huge dividend to you.
Although you might not lose your current parents over snippy responses I can assure you they will tell their friends and they won’t be jumping to come join you.
It doesn’t take one big thing to grow your daycare, it takes hundreds of small simple things, built one upon the other. The more you get right the bigger you’ll become.
One of the most import parts of running a child care center is effective marketing. Marketing can make or break your center, leaving you full with great profits or struggling to get by.
I also know that you did not get into this business to focus on marketing and advertising your child care - you probably would much rather spend your time taking care of kids and playing with them. :-) So I’m in the process of creating a Child Care Marketing Toolkit & Success System that’s going to make it easy for you to keep your enrollment MAXED and even create a waiting list.
My goal is to put together one of the greatest tools for child care marketing…everything you need all in one toolkit. I’ve spent several months putting this together, with real life examples from successful daycare businesses (homes and centers).
If you haven’t become member of Facebook yet, I highly recommend it. It’s free, fun, and the best way to keep in touch with old friends, while making new ones. Click the above link to become my Facebook “friend” and check out what I’m up to!
Everyone is “abuzz” about the economy and predicting what’s going to happen, and how long our slump will last.
If you’re a child care provider, how can you benefit from the current economic situation? This week in the Wall Street Journal and other national papers, it’s been reported that people are closely examining the amount of money they spend on child care, and trying to figure out a way to spend less.
So the current trend is to “downsize” in terms of the perceived quality of care, in order to spend less.
This means that people who had private nannies are looking at firing the nanny & moving their kids to a child care center. People who had their kids at centers are looking to more affordable family daycare options. And people who can no longer afford family daycare are calling Grandma or Grampa to come in and help.
How can you benefit from this trend?
If you own a family daycare, and you have openings or anticipate openings, you can start marketing to people who are currently enrolled at centers. This is especially true if you’re a family daycare who has a curriculum / learning program with circle time, arts & crafts, etc.
If you can show that your daycare is a high quality learning environment with a superior quality of care (get some testimonials from your current customers stating this point) then you can go after parents who are looking to trim their child care budget.
So how do you go about finding these parents? Well, you can try a local newspaper ad targeting these parents with a strong headline, or you can create flyers with the same headline and post them around town and in employee lounges and fitness center bulletin boards. Use an attention-grabbing headline like “Save Money On Child Care Without Lowering Your Standards!” and focus your ad or flyer on the BENEFITS to the parents & child that they will receive by enrolling with you.
Instead of complaining about the crappy economy, turn it around and discover how you can still make your business grow.
