Daycare Advertising Strategies Part 2 - More Tips to Increase Enrollment

As an extension to my previous article - Daycare Advertising Strategies - Tips to Increase Enrollment, here are more marketing strategies that many daycare centers and home daycare centers employ to get their enrollment up.

Also remember that the choice of the advertising medium you should use will depend on your local market's acceptance towards specific advertising channels - that is, some advertising strategy will be more effective than others depending on your target customers' taste and preferences. Over time and with experience, you will learn which advertising strategies are the most effective in terms of response rate and cost.

The following are more advertising strategies that are commonly used by daycare centers:

Open Houses

You can conduct regularly scheduled open houses to provide potential customers an opportunity to tour your daycare center.

Newspaper Ads

Please explore the idea of posting ads in your local newspapers, specifically your community newspaper, if available. Community newspapers are delivered and read by people in your local market. Having your daycare center ad posted in the newspaper creates visibility and business presence around your community.

Schools

Visit the elementary schools around your neighborhood. Speak to the principal and staff about your daycare center service. School staff are great referrals to daycare centers around the community. In addition, the principal may allow you to post your daycare center ad in their school's bulletin board, which is viewed by many parents.

Word of Mouth

By continually providing excellent quality childcare services, word of mouth naturally follows. You accomplish this by maintaining a daycare environment that is of the highest quality through your center policies and procedures. If your daycare center is not full, let everyone know that you are looking for more children to care for. For daycare centers, many customers are generated through referrals and word of mouth.

Community Events

Community involvement activities position your daycare center as a company that cares about the community. This sends a message to your prospects and customers that is often aligned with what they support and value, and it makes them feel good about being your customer. This generates good will, and genuine interest in your services. Word-of-mouth normally follows as well.

Flyers

Distributing flyers is also a very good advertising strategy to generate potential customers. With flyers, you have the ability to deliver your daycare information to every house in your neighborhood. This quickly generates awareness and business presence around your community. Please ensure you deliver flyers to new housing subdivisions and apartments. Apartments are great location for flyers because of its high turnover rate - that is, families are always moving in and out of apartments, providing a constant supply of new families with young children.

Other Advertising Ideas

Other promotional methods that could be utilized are listed below:

• Have a yard sale and distribute information about the center


• Develop giveaway hats, bookmarks, t-shirts and mugs that bear the mark of your daycare


• Sponsor workshops for local Early Childhood Educators to be held at your daycare


• Participate in a community clean up fair; invite families and staff


• Children's Christmas concert


• Build your own daycare newsletter to be distributed to parents. The newsletter should contain articles and information that is relevant to the parent (e.g. new staff in your daycare, craft activities that parents can do with thier children, etc.). Naturally, this will create word-of-mouth as well.


• Create posters and post them in community bulletin boards

For more daycare marketing tips and strategies, you can visit the marketing section of this How to Start and Manage a Daycare online tutorial.

For other topics on how to start and manage a daycare center including home daycares, please visit Parent Relief's Resource section.