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Firm Management

How to Market to Childcare Businesses

While word of mouth and referrals are still the best marketing tools for you, here are some additional tactics you can use to market your firm to in-home day care clients.

Becky Livingston

Dec. 17, 2018

Childcare Image Photo Credit Mike Fox Unsplash 5be4c53aae208

While word of mouth and referrals are still the best marketing tools for you, here are some additional tactics you can use to market your firm to in-home day care clients.

Before you consider the tools you’re going to use in your marketing plan, it’s important to think about the five “w’s” and the “h.”

  1. Who is your target market?
  2. What services are you going to market?
  3. Where is the target market located?
  4. When should you send marketing messages to them?
  5. Why are you sending them information in the first place?
  6. How do you plan to engage with them?

While you’re developing answers to the above, also consider your competition. What are they doing in the space? How are they doing it? What easily-accessible tools are they offering that you can also offer or can you provide better solutions?

If you are finding it difficult to locate a good resource of in-home care providers, consider speaking with one of these groups to help get your message distributed:

  1. Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (https://bit.ly/2PSwV8L), which helps parents find child-care programs. There are service provides in many cities across the U.S. that host workshops, send out newsletters, and often share a list of tax preparers with their email list when requested.
  2. Child and Adult Care Food Program (https://bit.ly/2nsurQc) sponsors in this organization host a number of workshops and publish several newsletters each year.

Additional Efforts

In addition to the above, consider the following plan of attack as well.

  • Conduct workshops or seminars at local meetings or regional/state conferences.
  • Write and submit articles in local papers, magazines, and online resources. Help A Reporter Out (www.helpareporter.com) is a great place to start. By subscribing to a variety of their news feeds, you will receive notices from reporters looking to fill a void in their story. You may be quoted, interviewed, and/or published.
  • Offer to be a local resource on tax and small business matters through your chamber of commerce, hospitals, physicians offices, and more.
  • Get involved with the local chapters or groups of members to learn more about their business, their pain points, and their concerns.
  • Create content for your website that is easily consumable on a mobile phone, such as tip sheets, monthly tax due date calendars, tax tips, budgeting, software tips, and more. The goal is to keep it short and simple. Once created, also share the content on social media and in your emails. Remember to add hashtags on social media profiles to draw in readers, such as #daycare, #familydaycare, #childcare, #accountant, #taxpro, and #business.
  • Facebook and Instagram are your best social media platforms for this industry’s demographics.

o   On Facebook, consider creating a group page within your firm’s business page to provide this audience with access to content related only to their industry, needs, and circumstances.

o   On Instagram, connect with healthcare and daycare agencies, as well as individuals, and share important tips, downloadable content, and information. Create a unique account for your firm’s Day Care service line that will allow you to use link directly to their content on your website versus a generic account with a link to your site’s home page.

  • Online advertising is also a good option, whether on a search engine’s display ad network or on social media. Avoid wasting time and money on text ads. Rather go for the display network with managed placement that allow you to put graphic ads on relevant websites your target market is viewing. Find the research using Google’s or Bing’s Ads network.

Sample Online Ad

Creating ads that will resonate with your clients will be key. Here is a graphical ad sample (with sidebar text) to help grab their attention.

  • Need more time in your day? We can help with that.
  • Being a daycare provider isn’t easy. We can help with online tools, budgeting, + more. Make an evening appointment with us. 1-555-555-1212. www.YourAccountingFirm.com

Do you want to learn more about what child-care demographics and data look like in your state?

View the Child Care Aware “2018 State Fact Sheet (https://bit.ly/2PSwV8L) or the  interactive map www.childcareaware.org/resources/map/.

Now that you have a start, keep your notepad handy to help you formulate the plan.

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Resources for Childcare Businesses:

How to Run a Daycare: 10 Tips for Long-Term Success. https://bit.ly/2ztJEbk

Home Daycare Tax Deductions. https://bit.ly/2SgjOPa

Tax Guide from the National Association of Family Childcare. https://www.nafcc.org/taxes

Risk Management Tips for Child Daycare Centers. https://bit.ly/2BBRLnJ

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Becky Livingston has over twenty-five years’ experience in marketing and technology in financial services and engineering firms. She is the President and CEO of Penheel Marketing.

 

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