Child Care Marketing Why Do-It-Yourself Marketing Does Not Work
Most child care business owners are accustomed to playing many roles – manager, counselor, accountant, and sometimes plumber. Some child care owners also try to do their own marketing. Unfortunately, the marketing manager is often a role that most child care business owners cannot fill and when they try – the results are less that optimal. Here is why:
- Lack of Time. All the good intentions cannot make more time in a child care owners day to take care of all the tasks necessary to run a quality child care business. When a child care owner has to choose between addressing a parent complaint, complying with state regulations, interviewing to find a new director or working on marketing activities, working on marketing activities, do not rise to the same level of must do now tasks.
- Lack of Knowledge (you don’t know what you don’t know): Years ago- before the internet, child care marketing was far easier – an ad in the yellow pages, some flyers, an occasional ad in the local newspaper and maybe a registration special when enrollment dropped was all that was necessary. Years ago, the types of marketing available to the owner of a child care business were limited, required no special skill sets and easy enough for any child care owner to take care of personally. Child Care Marketing today is far more complex, primarily on the internet, requiring specific knowledge and skills to be completed. Sure, designing and maintaining a quality website, developing and implementing an internet marketing campaign, tracking conversations and return on investment can all be learned. However, what child care owner has the time to acquire the specific marketing knowledge needed and then find even more time on a regular basis to consistently implement the marketing plan.
- DIY Marketing Does Not Save Money: The primary reason child care owners decide to do their own marketing is to save money. However, often more money is spent with a lower return achieved when child care owners try to do their own marketing. Not having a broad base knowledge about multiple types of marketing, often results in spending too much money on marketing options that do not work and too little on marketing options that yield the greatest results and return on money spent.
At Child Care Owner, for years, we offered DIY marketing program options for child care owners that wanted to manage their own website, local internet search marketing, email newsletter or other marketing activities. No matter how much we tweaked our different DIY child care marketing programs, the result was the same – we lost money on every program. Why? It was easy, we spent more time training and explaining how to DIY than it would have taken one of our team to complete the task. Moreover, the DIY child care owners were often not happy with how their website looked after they made changes if they ever found time to make any changes. Of greater importance, their enrollment suffered when they could not find the time to implement a multifaceted marketing campaign consistently.
So, at the beginning of 2016, we made the decision to no longer offer any DIY marketing options. A member of our professional team takes care of everything for our child care owner clients – all website edits, designing print marketing, all email newsletters, all paid search marketing – all marketing activities. It has been one of the best business decisions we have ever made. Our child care clients are happy because their website always looks great and their high enrollment reflects the great return we achieve through our various marketing programs. Moreover, our team is happy because not having DYI child care marketing programs has allowed us to provide a higher level of service and results for our clients.
If you are a child care owner trying DIY marketing, and finding it is harder than you thought, takes more time than expected, is confusing and not producing the results you had hoped, give us a call. We are happy to provide you with a free analysis of your current marketing activities. Moreover, we can help you to select the best marketing programs from Child Care Owner, to meet your marketing and enrollment goals. As we like to say, “You run your child care business and we will take care your marketing.”
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