With a range of factors impacting occupancy rates, including the pandemic and increasing competition in the sector, it is important to utilise innovative ways to boost your occupancy. Even if your service is currently thriving, a strategy to showcase your service to families in your community is a must.

Occupancy rates and the booming childcare sector

The early childhood education sector has been undergoing significant growth, with more families using childcare services. There are a number of reasons for this growth. Notably, the sector has been increasingly acknowledged for its important role in children’s development, wellbeing and education. Further driving the demand is improved Government funding which has made early childhood more accessible for more families.

In response to the growth and demand for quality childcare options for families seeking it, there has been a record number of early childhood education services opening around Australia. With so many options available creating increased competition, paired with the impact of the pandemic, many childcare providers are facing the challenge of reaching a level of occupancy that will allow them to continue to stay open — and to grow and thrive.

Creative ways to improve early childhood occupancy rate

Having a great service with highly skilled educators is vital, but how do you let your local community know how great you are? Even with restrictions, there are ways to stand out and showcase your early childhood education offering to prospective families. Let’s look at a few ideas:

• Stay on top of marketing: A strong, active social media presence that highlights your offering paired with an an up- to-date website are useful tools to present your service to the community. When people want to learn more about your service, they will typically head online, so use digital marketing and advertising to reach your prospective families and target specific clientele in your area.
• Strive for high NQS rating: Much like we check restaurants for their star ratings, families with young children tend to look to your NQS Rating for an indication of the quality of your childcare offering.
• Flexibility for families: Families are looking for flexibility from their providers, so when considering your hours or how you approach enrolments, try to be flexible and understanding where possible. Letting families see that you understand their situations shows that you genuinely care.

• Keep your educators inspired: Inspired, motivated educators create the most engaging learning experiences for children and make your early childhood education service shine. Keep your educators feeling valued, happy and support their upskilling and career goals. 
• Virtual tours, professional photography of your centre: Putting your best foot forward is important, and investing in professional photography can ensure you get the best angles to present your service for those deciding on where to send their children. And while in-person tours may not be allowed depending on your area due to restrictions, virtual tours are fun and free. Invite your social media following and target your local community with a virtual tour opportunity to show off your amazing centre. 
• Enhance your point of difference: Consider what makes your centre stand out. Do you have a unique focus on, say, wellbeing or literacy and numeracy? Is yours a Montessori or Reggio Emilia approach? Do children at your service spend a certain amount of time outdoors each day? Know what makes your centre special and tell people all about it in your marketing efforts. 
• Referral incentives from other parents: The best client or customer is often the one you already have. Ask your current families to recommend your service when they can to help support your contribution to early childhood education. You can even create a referral system with incentives to make families more inclined to recommend your service. This might be a in the form of a voucher for a local business for successful referrals, or a discount on a portion of their own fees. 
• Seek out media attention: The local newspaper or even more broadly are frequently looking for organisations who are doing some special, something different or just doing their job really well and with passion. If your service is hosting an event, getting certain outcomes or anything that might be of interest to others, reach out to the media to let them know what you’re up to.

Create the best early childhood service possible

At the end of the day, families want an early childhood education provider that they trust. One that they feel will give their children the very best start in life. A service prioritising employing quality educators who have access to ongoing training is capable of continually maintaining an exceptional standard of care for children during their most critical time of development.

Find out how we can support you in creating the best early childhood education service possible — get in touch with our team here at Practical Outcomes!

Whether you’re looking for a way to engage with your community, market your early learning centre and/or increase the awareness of your brand and values, social media could be just the tool for you. Utilise the power of social media to communicate with current families, prospective families and your community. You can showcase what you do and how you do it and position your childcare service as a leader in the early childhood education sector.

Still wondering why on earth you need to be on social media as an early learning service? Here are a few convincing reasons:

• You can attract more families to your centre
• Engage with your current families
• Build a community
• Position yourself as a leader in the sector
• Your competitors are already there
• Build brand awareness for your business and its values
• Gain valuable feedback and manage your own online reputation

Create a social media plan that works

Chances are you know that your centre needs to be on social media, but you signed up and created a page but can’t work out what you should be posting. Fair enough — it can be tricky, especially when you’re managing your social media without a plan.

A simple social media strategy and content plan will help you take control of your social media marketing efforts and get the most from them. A strategy is essentially looking at your business objective and how you can align this with a goal on social media. This is a template for a social media strategy, and there are plenty of them online that will help you make a start.

It can help to start by thinking about what you want to achieve and work backwards from there. For example, if you want people to understand your childcare centre’s approach and values, showcase what you and your educators do. This might be photos of everyone enjoying a recent event at your service. If you want to position yourself as leaders and advocates of quality education and care, post related articles or even write them and share on social media.

Top tips for early childhood social media marketing

Let’s dig deeper into what content you might post to support your early childhood centre’s marketing and community engagement.

Showcase your staff: Your team of educators are a crucial element of your childcare offering, and your prospective families will want to know more about them. Plus, early childhood educators deserve more recognition and should have their hard work and achievements celebrated! Showcase everyone at your early childhood education and care service with Q & A’s and photos to help everyone get to know your team and in turn, get to know your centre.

Promote your centre’s values and mission: Post content that is in line with your centre’s values and mission in the sector. Share quotes about quality care, children’s development and wellbeing, belonging, kindness, community and more. These can be designed alongside your business’s logo quickly and easily using a free online program. Articles from reputable sources can be shared to inform your audience and show them what your organisation is aligned with.

Share exciting updates: Post photos of new equipment, programs, initiatives and achievements. Share your community involvement. Your updates will make those who are already part of your community feel proud and inclined to share with their own circles. Furthermore, you will reach new people who may be impressed with what you are doing and who could be prospective families. Note: always make sure you have permission to share images or photos you have taken or that have been sent to you.

Virtual tours: Not everyone can be bothered putting in the effort to go and physically tour every early learning centre that they would like to. Especially with COVID-19 in mind which means more people are inclined to research online instead of venturing out where possible. Offering virtual tours of your early learning service via social media can give prospective families a closer look at what you do and what your centre has to offer. Plus, video content has a tendency to gain more traction on social media than other content types, so you have a better chance of reaching more people.

Community engagement on social media

Hopefully your quality social media content is engaging and results in comments and messages. Make sure you take the time to respond to questions or acknowledge comments. To save time, you can set up auto-responders for messages. These are custom and can provide answers to commonly asked questions or simply request that queries are redirected to phone or email.

If you have any negative feedback, turn it into a positive by engaging constructively and showcasing your exceptional customer relations skills. If a situation does arise and someone is behaving inappropriately via social media and you can’t resolve it, simply block the person and move on.

Reaching more people on social media

For the most part, social media is free. You can spend money to reach more people by creating ads or ‘boosting’ your posts directly to your chosen target audiences, but this is optional.

In saying that, you can experiment with as little as a few dollars to expand your content’s reach and potentially reach many more people who may be interested in your early childhood education offering. For example, try hitting the ‘boost’ button on one of your more popular Facebook posts as a simple exercise to get started and measure your results by recording how many people are reached and/or engage with your content.

Spend some time getting your social media sorted and reap the rewards for your early childhood education service.

While proximity to work or home is still a consideration, parents want to find a centre that provides high quality care, takes specific approaches in their curriculum and aligns with their own values. The first five years of life are now understood to be crucial in laying a strong foundation for children’s futures, and parents want to ensure their children get the best start in life.

It’s no secret that there is a surplus of early learning centres for parents to choose from, so standing out from the rest is vital to a centre’s success. So, how can a centre showcase what sets them apart and attract families to enrol at their service? In early childhood education, marketing is now essential!

Marketing for early learning centres

With improvements in government funding and an increase in both parents heading back to work, the demand for early learning places has gone up over recent years. To meet demand, more early childhood education providers have opened across Australia — of course, this also means more options for families and more competition for services. Standing out for the right reasons has never been more important.

If you are a new service or simply haven’t been marketing your early learning centre up until now, it’s time to start. The first thing to do is to establish what your goals are for your centre. Here are some to consider:

• Reach X% capacity
• Be known for XYZ in your community
• Grow a waiting list for enrolments

Once you’ve worked out what you want to achieve, you can start looking at what you can offer and the marketing strategies needed to help you get there.

What makes your centre special?

To begin marketing your early learning centre effectively and start ticking off your goals, you need to have a clear and in-depth understanding of your offering and who your target audience is. When considering what you have to offer families, ask these questions of your centre:

• What services do you offer?
• What families will be attracted to your service?
• What do your prospective families need?
• What are your values and your mission?
• What do you do differently from your competitors?

Take the time to examine your daily routines and identify what makes you shine. For example, do you do yoga with children? Does your centre have a vegetable garden? Do you take a Montessori approach? Do you have bush kinder incorporated into your curriculum?

This information will help you to send a clear message in your marketing that focuses on your unique selling points. When you know who your audience is and what they are looking for, you can shape your marketing efforts in a way that will be appealing to them.

Marketing strategy for early learning centres

Putting all this information together is creating a marketing strategy, which is important to do to reach your target audience. This means making a plan of execution for your marketing efforts and finding the best places to reach prospective families for your centre. Let’s look at a few of the avenues you might explore as part of your strategy to market your early learning centre.

Online marketing ideas for early learning centres

Build a website: A website that reflects who you are and what you offer is essential. Make it simple for families to get in touch with you to limit the steps between considering you and enrolling with you. You might consider adding a few blog articles to your website with a focus on keywords that will attract your target audience and position your service as an authority in the sector.

List your centre on Google: A Google business listing will ensure that your centre pops up when prospective families are searching for an early learning service in your area. This is free and can be very effective to get in front of families while they are researching.

Get active on social media: Social media is the new word of mouth and you would be hard-pressed to find a family that doesn’t use social media in some capacity. Create a Facebook page and/or Instagram to market your early learning centre. Here you can really showcase your personality and the amazing experience children have in your centre. You can also turn on ‘Reviews’ so that your current or past families can tell everyone just how great your centre is.

Pay for online ads: Advertising online isn’t as expensive as you may think and can get worthwhile results. Paying for ads might include Facebook ads to reach families in a certain area via their social media, or a Google ads campaign to improve your visibility when families are searching for centres online.

Traditional marketing ideas for childcare centres

While marketing online can be effective and inexpensive, it’s good to diversify your marketing efforts across a few platforms. These more traditional, offline marketing activities can work alongside what you’re doing online too.

Host open days: When it comes to getting a feel for your offering, there’s no substitute for having families visit your early learning centre. An open day that invites your local community to come and see how your centre runs and even meet your educators could be the perfect way for families to fall in love with your service.

Create brochures: We all check the letterbox every day or browse brochures or noticeboards from time to time, so having an eye-catching brochure is a useful marketing tactic to keep up. Do a letterbox drop to introduce your service to families within a designated radius, or leave a few brochures at the local library or family-friendly café.

Advertise in local publications: School newsletters, local area magazines and the local paper offer space for businesses to advertise, usually only for a small fee. Design an ad that captures what your service is all about, or enlist the help of a graphic designer to create an ad that showcases what you have to offer.

Encourage word of mouth: Let everyone know that there are spaces available at your centre or simply encourage existing families or people you know in the local area to share the news of your service with others. And don’t be afraid to talk up your early learning centre yourself too!

Marketing your early learning centre is ongoing

It can be tempting to stop putting effort into marketing your service when business is going well, but it’s important to commit to marketing ongoing. This is also a great way to build up a healthy waitlist and maintain steady enrollment. With the right plan and digital tools to support it, marketing your early learning centre doesn’t have to take up too much time.

To continue to improve and ensure you’re meeting the needs of your families, ask for feedback and keep an open line of communication with those in your community. This feedback can help you keep your offering on track and make sure you’re marketing your early learning centre appropriately.

Begin marketing your early learning centre now to start seeing results and delivering exceptional care to children in your local community and beyond.

In many cases for parents, it’s not about which centre is most conveniently located or the most affordable — but which centre can be trusted to provide the highest quality care. The best way for parents to find this information is through customer feedback and online reviews from the families who already use your service.

Online customer feedback is the new word of mouth and is essential for your early childhood education centre’s marketing strategy. With 91% of 18 to 34-year olds putting as much trust in online reviews as they do in personal recommendations, mums and dads are taking to the internet to decide whether your centre is the right choice for their children.

Customer feedback for business success

Data from across a range of sources highlights the importance of customer feedback for businesses to thrive. The message is clear — positive customer feedback and reviews online can help your centre attract more families. In a U.S. study, 93% of consumers confirmed that online reviews have an impact when it comes to choosing where to direct their time and money. If you think your competitive pricing will be the difference for your centre, consider this: 63% of consumers were willing to spend up to 15% more for the same product or service if they believed that the quality would be higher.

Feedback doesn’t have to be visible to everyone for it to improve or grow your business either. Just hearing what you’re doing right — or what you could be doing better — directly from the families who already use your service can help you to assess and update the way your centre runs.

Getting feedback from families

If you are ready for your centre to start gathering customer feedback online, you might be wondering how you can go about it. It’s one thing to know that feedback is important, but the next step is to create ways for your families to get the feedback to you.

Customer feedback can be gathered through a variety of means, including:

• Online surveys and feedback forms: You can make a free online survey for your centre’s families, past and/or present, with a tool like Google Forms or Survey Monkey and email it to them for feedback delivered in a private space.
• Social media feedback: Facebook recommendations are easy for people to leave and are a commonly viewed place for prospective families to research your business and its culture.
• Online reviews on relevant sites: There are many websites that list child care centres and provide families with the opportunity to rate and review the services. For example, consider the importance of your ratings on Care For Kids.
• Google reviews: As the world’s most popular search engine, the quality of your listing on Google can have a huge impact on your business. More on this later.

So, how do you get customer feedback rolling in from your families? It’s simple — just ask them!

Asking for customer feedback

You can ask in person, via email or over the phone. Some businesses might opt to outline the ways that feedback can be left online on signage in the reception area or noticeboard, or it can be included on brochures, newsletters or business cards. Feedback forms and surveys can be sent out to your families at various points in the year to provide the opportunity for people to provide feedback privately if they prefer. If you’re hoping to share feedback provided privately for marketing purposes, best to make your intentions clear and ask for permission.

When you are asking for customer feedback in the form of online reviews, it is important to familiarise yourself with the legalities that should be considered. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) makes these three points, stating that businesses should NOT:

• encourage family and friends to write reviews about your business without disclosing their personal connection with your business in that review
• write reviews when you have not experienced the good or service reviewed or which do not reflect a genuinely held opinion
• solicit others to write reviews about your business or a competitor’s business if they have not experienced the good or service.

Offering incentives in exchange for customer feedback can be tempting, but if you choose to do this then you must ensure that your incentives are offered regardless of the nature of the feedback. The ACCC explains that incentives can be used only if:

• incentives are offered equally to consumers likely to be complimentary and consumers likely to be critical, and positive and negative reviews are treated the same
• the reviewer is expressly told that the incentive is available whether the review is positive or negative
• the incentive is prominently disclosed to users who rely on affected reviews

Google Reviews to help business grow

We know that online reviews are important to parents who are in the research phase of finding an early childhood education centre that fits their criteria and they feel comfortable with. So, where are they doing this research? While Facebook is popular, for most people, it’s via Google.

To be able to ask for Google reviews from your customers, you will need to be searchable via Google Maps. This requires you to have a Google Maps listing, plus if you want to be able to reply to your customers’ reviews (which you definitely do), you will need to verify your business with Google. This process involves Google sending your business a verification code usually by post, though phone and email verification is possible for select businesses. Once verified, you can begin to receive Google reviews, edit your business listing including name, hours and phone number, or even claim an existing listing if one already exists for your business.

Once your business is set up to receive Google reviews, you can start asking your customers to leave reviews by providing them with your personalised link that takes them right where they need to go.

Get the most from good feedback (and bad)

It would be ideal to be able to request only positive feedback from your families, but chances are you will face some negative reviews or less than ideal ratings from time to time. While this might distress you, try to take it on as a learning opportunity. Is there something you can do to avoid this type of feedback in the future? Feedback that is less than glowing can provide your business with the chance to learn and grow. Discuss with educators how your centre can prevent similar issues occurring in the future, or how you can improve families’ experiences.

Sometimes customer reviews may appear online that seem unlikely or simply untrue. These situations can be frustrating, but they also give you the opportunity to showcase your professionalism and quality service through a thoughtful and carefully worded reply. This shows your prospective families that even if issues do arise, your team is capable of handling things with care and competence.

With customer feedback incorporated into your marketing strategy, your happy families can showcase your child care centre to other families in your community. This powerful tool also helps you to understand what you are doing right and what areas might need work. Start gathering online reviews to grow and enhance your business!

Get in touch today or check out early childhood education courses.