One of the biggest challenges I faced when I started my home daycare was marketing. This came as a really big surprise to me as I never thought I would need to do any marketing at all. After all I was well known in our community, had a ton of friends with kids, had a nice little house, I’m out going, etc. And most importantly I had several moms encourage me to start a daycare with the promise that they would enroll their children with me.

When the dust settled (and I had quit my job), got my license in place, organized the house, etc none of them actually enrolled! It dawned on me then and there that I would have to get more serious about getting the word out.

Below is a list of the marketing activities that I tried. Some of it was a complete waste of time and money; some of them worked beautifully. Here’s what I tried:

· Print ads
· Mailers
· Door Hangers
· Car Sign
· Chamber of Commerce
· Mom’s Groups
· Internet Referral Network – Called the 3 C’s
· Flyers
· Website
· Others
· Word of Mouth

Print Ads

Let me start off with print ads. Print ads were probably the least effective and the biggest waste of money. It was one of our first marketing efforts. In Metro Detroit we have a publication specifically devoted to moms/parents. We really thought that it was a no brainer, due to the focus of the publication and that it was centered right in our community.

I put together a really nice inch by inch classified ad and signed the contract. We receive three calls from the ad but did not sign up one child. We tried the ad for 5 months for $189 per month, for a total of $950. With no results. Not the direction we wanted to go!
So, much to our surprise print ads, where not the right path. Not to say that it wouldn’t work for you but if you’re on a limited budget try something else to promote your daycare.

Mailers

Mailer’s where marginal. The first concern was having to put together something presentable to send the letters on. We chose to be traditional and printed out letterhead and envelopes. To print out a thousand of both was approximately $200 total for one color. The next issue was coming up with a list to send the letters to. We were able get a list from the city but it had issues. We only had the actually names of the residents on roughly half of the addresses on the list.

What do you normally do with a letter that’s entitled “Dear Resident”? I know what I do – round file. The alternative was to buy a list from a list company but that is another $100 that we just did not want to spend.

Another negative of the mailers was just the amount of time it took to print out, fold and stuff the envelopes.

As mentioned above, one of the main things we learned in general was to market directly in our neighborhood. And mailers can do just that. Unlike the print ad that was spread out throughout Metro Detroit we were able to focus our marketing dollars on our best possible prospects. Basically all our kids lived within 2 miles and most of them lived within 1 mile from us. So with mailers you’re able to control exactly who gets the letter, and keep your costs down.

All in all, this was a mediocre route for me. Looking back I guess if I could have gotten a list of homes with families, kids in my age group, and just sent out a mailer to 100 names or so when I had a vacancy that would have worked – though I don’t know how or if a list like that exists. Perhaps you could get a list like that from your local elementary school.

Stay tuned for part 2 -4 on Starting a Home Daycare – Marketing

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