Many daycare businesses think that the key reason why their customers are not signing up is because of their prices. They think that by reducing the price, they will increase the number of children signing up for their daycare. Let’s take an objective look at how prices affect our customers.
Price matters less for the following type of products:
- Rare / Hard to substitute / No comparison
- Purchased infrequently
- Essential item
- Required immediately / urgently
- Emotionally sensitive
- Unique
Price however does matter for the following type of products:
- Readily available / Easy to substitute / Easy to compare
- Purchased frequently
- Non-essential item
- Not required immediately
- Emotion free
- Common
Price does matter, that is true. But not all the time. For example. Would you expect to pay fast food prices if you are dining in a fine dining restaurant? Why is it that people are willing to fork out 10 to 100 times more just to eat when you can get it cheaper elsewhere?
The key will be to help our customers see our daycare services as unique, difficult to substitute and not available elsewhere.
Knowing your daycare business well
Many a times, once we get to daycare centre up and running, it’s chasing one operational task after another. Sometimes, it is necessary to take a step back and reassess what you have done with the aim to doing better.
List your daycare services
Make a list of all the various daycare services that you provide; be it half day or full day care, the various types of enrichment lessons, payable or complementary, etc.
What do your customers think
Do you know what your daycare services do for your customers and how it makes them feel? You can learn the answer to that question by speaking with your customers. Depending on the resources you have, you can choose to survey all your customers or every nth customer.
How are you different
Looking at the list of your daycare services, how do you compare with your competitors? You can achieve this by either observing your competitors or asking your customers and suppliers, because chances are, they would either have come in contact with them or knows someone who does.
Have you improved
Evaluate to see if you have improved from a year ago or are you now overwhelmed with so many sign ups that you’ve shelved some of the “nice to have” services that you used to provide. Be objective. Or have you been losing prospects and customers to the daycare centre down the lane?
What do unhappy customers do?
What do your customers do when they are displeased? Do they have a dedicated person looking into their concerns? Or do they simply withdraw their child? A useful exercise will be to conduct an exit interview to find out exactly why they are unhappy when they indicate their intention to withdraw their child.
Most parents usually will not withdraw for minor reasons, especially when the child’s well settled in. It is therefore a good practice to find out what it is that makes the parent withdraw the child and subject the child to a brand new environment. Sometimes, the reason is unrelated to the daycare centre .e.g. they are moving to another state but if otherwise, it is a red flag for the daycare centre to re-evaluate how its business is being conducted.
List your daycare services
Make a list of all the various daycare services that you provide; be it half day or full day care, the various types of enrichment lessons, payable or complementary, etc.
What do your customers think
Do you know what your daycare services do for your customers and how it makes them feel? You can learn the answer to that question by speaking with your customers. Depending on the resources you have, you can choose to survey all your customers or every nth customer.
How are you different
Looking at the list of your daycare services, how do you compare with your competitors? You can achieve this by either observing your competitors or asking your customers and suppliers, because chances are, they would either have come in contact with them or knows someone who does.
Have you improved
Evaluate to see if you have improved from a year ago or are you now overwhelmed with so many sign ups that you’ve shelved some of the “nice to have” services that you used to provide. Be objective. Or have you been losing prospects and customers to the daycare centre down the lane?
What do unhappy customers do?
What do your customers do when they are displeased? Do they have a dedicated person looking into their concerns? Or do they simply withdraw their child? A useful exercise will be to conduct an exit interview to find out exactly why they are unhappy when they indicate their intention to withdraw their child.
Most parents usually will not withdraw for minor reasons, especially when the child’s well settled in. It is therefore a good practice to find out what it is that makes the parent withdraw the child and subject the child to a brand new environment. Sometimes, the reason is unrelated to the daycare centre .e.g. they are moving to another state but if otherwise, it is a red flag for the daycare centre to re-evaluate how its business is being conducted.
Collecting information of your daycare customers
To many market research is a mammoth task conducted by specialized research individuals who conducts questionaires, face to face or telephone interviews, observation, focus groups discussions and study reports and trends.
As such many daycare centres do not conduct market research. It is either because they think it is too expensive, do not have the time to do it or do not have the specialized manpower that is able to do it. Quite a lot can actually be done with very little or no additional costs incurred. It simply takes a little tweaking of the daily daycare operations to achieve that.
You’ll be amazed how much you can gather with these simple methods.
Group current customers into geographic zones
Looking at current customers and group them into geographic zones, e.g. zip code. As part of the registration form, include a field for zip code of their place of work or place or residence. It’ll provide you with a better picture of the percentage of customers who select your daycare centre because it is near their place of work versus those who select your daycare centre because it is near their homes. This will help you determine the geographical area(s) to concentrate your marketing efforts on.
As such many daycare centres do not conduct market research. It is either because they think it is too expensive, do not have the time to do it or do not have the specialized manpower that is able to do it. Quite a lot can actually be done with very little or no additional costs incurred. It simply takes a little tweaking of the daily daycare operations to achieve that.
You’ll be amazed how much you can gather with these simple methods.
Group current customers into geographic zones
Looking at current customers and group them into geographic zones, e.g. zip code. As part of the registration form, include a field for zip code of their place of work or place or residence. It’ll provide you with a better picture of the percentage of customers who select your daycare centre because it is near their place of work versus those who select your daycare centre because it is near their homes. This will help you determine the geographical area(s) to concentrate your marketing efforts on.
Survey your customers
Depending on the resources you have, you can choose to survey all your customers or every nth customer. Find out why their signed up with your centre (this can also be included in the contact / registration forms), what the customers think about your products and services, is the product meeting their needs, etc. However, remember to keep question period short – 5 questions minimum and spread it over a span of time of at least 2 weeks especially if you are surveying every nth customer. Observe your customers
Spend a few hours for 1-2 weeks and observe your customers to find out the information that you wish to gather. For example, do your customers drive, do the children come with their breakfast or do they eat it at home, etc. Monitor incoming phone calls
When a prospect calls up to enquire about your daycare centre, take a few seconds to gather some additional information such as where did they hear about you or where they are from. Once again, remember, to keep it short. Track responses to ads and direct mailers
There are two simple ways of doing that. - Track the responses for a week or two after the marketing campaign has run. E.g. track how many phone calls or walk-ins you receive after you had distributed your flyers.
- Include an incentive to respond. Include offers which requires them to bring the source of their communication to claim the incentive. E.g. include a “bring this coupon to redeem your gift” (discount).
Setting your daycare marketing objectives
Before embarking on any marketing campaign, it is always most important to identify the various objectives in which you are hoping to achieve with your marketing campaign, given the limited resources available to a daycare centre.
Know your customers
The daycare centre should seek to get to know their customers better. The daycare should employ effort to learn more about their customer so that they can better provide the daycare services that they are expecting.
Know your marketing environment
It is also important for the daycare to know the environment in which it exists. Daycare centres, regardless of how small an outfit, do not exist in a bubble. The marketing efforts employed will be highly dependent on the internal and external environment in which it exists. You will read more about the marketing environment in The daycare environment’s impact on its marketing
Tailor-make your marketing
From the information gathered in the first and second points, the daycare should then relook at its current business and tailor the daycare services and pricing to specifically address the needs of the customers, marketing environment and competitive realities.
Following that, the daycare should develop marketing messages which they know will grab the attention of the daycare customers, make them interested enough to find out more, either via phone call or visit, and motivate them into engaging their daycare services.
Customer satisfaction
Once the customer has successfully signed up with the daycare, the daycare should develop a customer service strategy to achieve maximum customer satisfaction, therefore ensuring that the customer continues to enroll the child in the daycare as well as word of mouth advertising.
Assumption is the mother of all foul ups. Effort should therefore be made periodically to talk with the customers to obtain their inputs on the daycare services and how it is meeting their needs and wants.
From the information gathered, the daycare should be able to accurately determine what are the areas that require fine tuning and what are the areas that it has done well.
Know your customers
The daycare centre should seek to get to know their customers better. The daycare should employ effort to learn more about their customer so that they can better provide the daycare services that they are expecting.
Know your marketing environment
It is also important for the daycare to know the environment in which it exists. Daycare centres, regardless of how small an outfit, do not exist in a bubble. The marketing efforts employed will be highly dependent on the internal and external environment in which it exists. You will read more about the marketing environment in The daycare environment’s impact on its marketing
Tailor-make your marketing
From the information gathered in the first and second points, the daycare should then relook at its current business and tailor the daycare services and pricing to specifically address the needs of the customers, marketing environment and competitive realities.
Following that, the daycare should develop marketing messages which they know will grab the attention of the daycare customers, make them interested enough to find out more, either via phone call or visit, and motivate them into engaging their daycare services.
Customer satisfaction
Once the customer has successfully signed up with the daycare, the daycare should develop a customer service strategy to achieve maximum customer satisfaction, therefore ensuring that the customer continues to enroll the child in the daycare as well as word of mouth advertising.
Assumption is the mother of all foul ups. Effort should therefore be made periodically to talk with the customers to obtain their inputs on the daycare services and how it is meeting their needs and wants.
From the information gathered, the daycare should be able to accurately determine what are the areas that require fine tuning and what are the areas that it has done well.
The daycare environment’s impact on its marketing
For a daycare center to successfully identify what sort of marketing strategies to employ for the daycare, it is important first to evaluate the environment that affects its marketing strategy. There are 2 types of environmental factors that the daycare will need to assess; its external environment and its internal environment.
External environment
External environmental factors are issues that affect the daycare business but are outside of the control of the daycare business. The daycare just simply needs to know what it is and work around its constraints.
Internal environment
There is also an internal environment in which the daycare exists which will affect the marketing which will require the daycare business to do some “soul-searching”. Internal environmental factors are those that are within the daycare’s control. The daycare will need to look at the daycare business as a whole and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Strengths will be those factors that the daycare is proud of or good at. Weaknesses are basically areas of improvement. A good guide will be to benchmark the daycare against a close competitor’s.
In internal environmental scan will require the daycare to conduct a close evaluation at the following:
External environmental factors are issues that affect the daycare business but are outside of the control of the daycare business. The daycare just simply needs to know what it is and work around its constraints.
- Political – what are the governmental rules and regulations in which the daycare is required to adhere to.
- Economic – what is the economic situation. – recession? Inflation? Etc.
- Sociocultural – what is the expectation of the people with regards to daycare services. Are they expecting just a nanny care service or are they expecting something more. Thjs will impact the daycare services that should be offered.
- Technological – this will impact the way in which we communicate with the customer as well as how we promote the daycare centre.
There is also an internal environment in which the daycare exists which will affect the marketing which will require the daycare business to do some “soul-searching”. Internal environmental factors are those that are within the daycare’s control. The daycare will need to look at the daycare business as a whole and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Strengths will be those factors that the daycare is proud of or good at. Weaknesses are basically areas of improvement. A good guide will be to benchmark the daycare against a close competitor’s.
- the daycare services it provides
- the price of its daycare services
- its current strategy to promote and market the daycare
- the way the daycare is operating
- its staff and their qualifications
- its finances and budget
Uniqueness of daycare marketing
The marketing of a daycare centre will be significantly different from the marketing adopted by the larger corporations.
Firstly, daycare centres usually do not have the marketing budget that the larger corporations have. As such, they need to ensure that they get value for their marketing dollar spent. Larger corporations can have campaigns dedicated for brand building/awareness. Daycare centres on the other hand will not only require their marketing campaign to build brand awareness but include some form of marketing action as well.
Secondly, a daycare centre is not likely to have a full-fledged integrated marketing campaign with advertisements, direct marketing, online market, etc. It is more likely that the daycare centre will spread out their marketing efforts throughout the year, employing only one or two marketing methods each time.
Finally, it is highly unlikely that a daycare centre will be fully equipped with a marketing director, creative director, marketing executive, etc. It is more likely to be the principal and/or supervisor performing that function, in addition to the other administrative duties that he/she will need to see to.
Firstly, daycare centres usually do not have the marketing budget that the larger corporations have. As such, they need to ensure that they get value for their marketing dollar spent. Larger corporations can have campaigns dedicated for brand building/awareness. Daycare centres on the other hand will not only require their marketing campaign to build brand awareness but include some form of marketing action as well.
Secondly, a daycare centre is not likely to have a full-fledged integrated marketing campaign with advertisements, direct marketing, online market, etc. It is more likely that the daycare centre will spread out their marketing efforts throughout the year, employing only one or two marketing methods each time.
Finally, it is highly unlikely that a daycare centre will be fully equipped with a marketing director, creative director, marketing executive, etc. It is more likely to be the principal and/or supervisor performing that function, in addition to the other administrative duties that he/she will need to see to.
Identify profitable customers for your daycare
You intend to start a daycare business. You are ready and raring to go. Your marketing plans are all set and you have put aside a nice budget that’ll help you inform your potential customers about your daycare business … but wait! Do you know who your daycare customers are? Does your target day care customer have a “face”? Do you know where they live, what’s their lifestyle, etc?
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