Starting a Home Daycare – Marketing 4 of 4

In the other 3 articles I discussed mailers, door hangers, car signs, etc. In this last segment of marketing you home daycare (4 of 4) I discuss more general topics of focus, urgency consistency.

In general there are a few common marketing themes that you want to keep in mind in order to start a daycare. Number one is you want to keep all efforts very focused in a three to five mile radius of your home. Most of your kids are going to be coming from your neighborhood. Also, you want to show your location on all of your advertisements via a simple and easy-to-read map. The most important thing here is to point out your daycare’s location relative to the parent’s home or job. The more convenient/close it appears the better.

Number two is to create “urgency” and legitimacy right from the beginning with your ads (I talked a lot about this in my book and the other articles). In other words, you want to let the parents know that a rare vacancy has popped open. Say something like “Spot just opened for 12-24 month old” on all of your ads. Wording your ad like this implies a couple of things – the spot won’t stay open for long. And that you have customers, which seems to imply that other parents trust you so you must be ok.

Number three is consistency. Whatever marketing tools you decide to put into place, you have to be patient enough to see if they will work or not. They all take time, some more than others, but I certainly learned that you have to give them enough to see if they are working or you will just waste your time.

Last word, I have to admit the marketing aspect was a good kind of challenge for me. It was fun and exciting to see what worked. It was one of the aspects of the daycare that really felt like a business. We had to get clients and do it in the most cost effective way so that we would still make a profit. Getting the phone to ring felt really great and was rewarding. So use your creativity, with the idea of getting in front of as many parents as possible with the least amount of effort or cash to reach them.

Tania Rauth wrote a book on how to start and run a home daycare. More info at starting a daycare or how to run a daycare