Projecting the right image for your daycare

Before your begin planning for your marketing campaign, you need to first evaluate the impression that your customer and prospects have of your daycare. Does it come about as well managed, reliable and successful? Does the customers and prospects receive a consistent message each time or is the message different each time a new marketing material is produced?

Advertising and sales materials
Advertisements – newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, phone books, community publication
Website
Direct mailers and flyers
Brochures
Newsletters
Printed materials e.g. curriculum, letters to parents, contact sheet, etc.

Signages
Entry door
Posters
Centre displays

Correspondence
Letters
Emails
Faxes
Business cards
Invoices

Logo items
School uniform
Any other things that carry the logo e.g. corporate gifts and giveaways

Questions to ask:

• Does the communications fit the image that you are projecting?
• Does the communications look alike or do they look like they come from 5 different daycares. Are the following consistent – colours, illustrations, images used, typeface / fonts, layout, messages, copy style, logo
• Does your communications appeal to your customers?

Your daycare marketing message competes with every other communication that bombards your daycare customers and prospects each day. You need to ensure that your daycare customers and prospects are receiving just one or maximum messages from you throughout rather than a different message each time. Isolate and update communications that are outdated or wrong.

Setting your marketing budget objectives

For a marketing campaign to work effective, effort must be put to ensure that the campaign is well managed.

Establish a daycare marketing budget
There are a number of ways in which a marketing budget can be derived.

• Arbitrary figure – This “best guess” requires the daycare owner to use his/her intuition and experience to determine what is the most appropriate marketing budget. A useful tip will be to use the previous year’s spending as a benchmark.
• Competitive – You can decide what to spend using what your competitors are spending as a guide.
• Goal oriented budget – You can list down what you hope to achieve and the various marketing activities that you will need to implement to achieve that.
• Percentage of sales – Based on your sales forecast for the following year, allocate a percentage of the forecast to marketing your daycare.

Spend the funds allocated
Remember to spend the funds that are allocated and resist the urge to not implement an activity to save costs.

View the daycare marketing budget as an important business investment
Marketing must be viewed as a business investment rather than as a cost.

Manage program well
Stick to the activities and deadlines listed. It is pointless to schedule a well-planned marketing campaign and not to follow up closely. There must be close monitoring of implementation of the activities as well as steps taken to evaluate its effectiveness.

Learning about your daycare competitors

Before you begin developing your competitive strategies, you need to do a little bit of study of your competitors . You need to first find out as much as you can about your competition. Resources are probably limited so it is best to focus within 500m of your daycare and expanding wider if/when you have more resources.

 

There are a number of ways in which you can achieve this:

• Speak to your current customers as, chances are, they would also have checked out your competition before signing with you
• Speak to your prospects as chances are they would also have checked out the other daycare
• Speak to your staff
• Speak to your suppliers
• Observation

 

You should be gathering as much information on them as possible. Here are some of the things that you may wish to find out:

• Estimated number of children that they have or their capacity can accommodate
• Where did they obtain their curriculum
• What are the daycare services that they offer
• What are their operating hours
• Any special daycare facilities
• What are their daycare charges
• How often do they promote their daycare services
• The number and qualifications of their staff
• Are their customers happy with their services 

Once you are done gathering all the information, you then need to evaluate and identify what are their weaknesses and how your daycare compares with theirs before you can think about how you can draw their customers over.

Developing a competitive strategy for your daycare

There are two strategies you can adopt to keep your daycare competitors at bay.

Price cuts
If their price is lower than yours, then employing a price competition strategy is one option although all marketing experts would advise against it as price cuts are followed by competitors and you’ll end up starting a price war.

A McKinsey study demonstrates that a 1% cut in price translates to a reduction in operating profits by 8%, assuming that there is no increase in registration.

Offering more value
Consider instead to compete to offering greater value to your customers by value adding to the current daycare services that you are offering. The greater the perceived value of your daycare services, the greater the chance your competitors customers will want to register their child with your daycare. Here are some ideas:

• Ensure that your current parents are very satisfied with your services. They are your best testimonials.
• Extending your operating hours so that you can cater to parent who work a little further away
• Install webcams so that parents can see their children in school
• Have a photo gallery on your website and periodically upload photographs of the children
• Develop a monthly or quarterly newsletter that is emailed to all parents
• Fine tune your daycare service by possibly offer complimentary enrichment lesson or improving upon your current curriculum
• Offer to feed the children dinner if you are extending your operating hours
• Spruce up your daycare regularly, paint tattered wall and put up new artwork done up by the children
• Ensure that your daycare is ever ready to receive new customers

Remember, the greater the perceived value of your daycare, the less likely your customers are going to haggle on the price.

Who are the competitors of your daycare business?

As a Confucius saying goes, Know yourself and your enemy and you will win all battles.

We hear the word "competitors" all the time. But do you really know who are your competitors? Without knowing who your competitors are, you will not be able to develop marketing strategies that can effectively overcome your competition

There are 2 key types of competitors that all daycare faces:

Direct competition
Your direct competitors are those that have an immediate impact on your sales and marketing efforts. An adjustment in their price or daycare service offerings is likely to have a direct and sometimes rather immediate impact on your customer numbers. Your direct competitors are the other daycare centres in and around your geographical area.

Indirect competition
Your indirect competitors are those who are not offering daycare services but services complementary to yours. These could be the home daycares, baby sitters or nannies. They may not possess the facilities that you have but they offer parents another alternative. Even home makers are your indirect competitors are instead of using your daycare services, the children are staying home with their mummies.

It is only when you know who your competitors are that you can develop strategies to overcome the competition.

Dollarizing your daycare services

Dollarization, according to Jeffrey J Fox, the author of “How to be a marketing superstar”, is a mathematical calculation of dollars and cents value of a product. Dollarization is important as it helps to determine pricing levels. Here is how you can consider dollarizing your daycare services.

Determine your daycare competitor
Identify the other daycare services that are available to your customers or prospects. Basically, list down who your competitors are.

State the benefit of your daycare
Assess the key benefit that your daycare possesses. Why should your customers register their child at your daycare? Is it the curriculum? Is it the extended hours that you offer? Is it complimentary enrichment lessons? Is it lower student to staff ratio?

Quantify your benefit
Next, look at the benefit and re-state your benefit in numerical terms. If you find it a challenge assigning a numerical value to your stated benefit, it may be wiser to select another because no one buys into the best, the lightest, the fastest, the longest, etc. It is much easier to see value in terms of numbers and facts than empty claims. For example, if you are offering complimentary enrichment lesson as your benefit, how many hours of complimentary enrichment lessons you are offering.

Dollarize the benefit
After quantifying your benefit, “dollarize” the benefit. Assign a dollar value to the benefit based on the quantity of benefit that the customers are getting. For example, what is the charge for the similar enrichment lesson outside of your daycare.

Dollarize the benefit in per unit terms
Next, breakdown the dollarized value down in terms of per unit terms. Using the example above, what is the dollar value of the enrichment lesson that the customer getting in terms per hour.

Demonstrate the true cost of your competitor’s product
From the above, you will be able to demonstrate the additional value that you are offering your daycare customers as compared to your customers.

Daycare pricing considerations

Buying decisions are rarely about price. It is usually about value. Before deciding on your pricing strategy, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

Daycare cost
What is the price you are charging for your daycare services? How much does it cost to run your daycare?

Quality of daycare services
How would you rate the daycare services you are offering? Be objective. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the quality of the services that you are offering.

What is included
What is included as part of the basic package that the parents are paying for? Are there any additional lessons that parents can opt for?

How convenient is your daycare
Is your daycare near a train station? Are there ample parking for parents to pick up and drop off? Is the traffic near your daycare always congested? Are your operating hours “work-friendly”, meaning, does the parents need to rush to pick their kids up or can they take their time? Do you provide additional baby-sitting services for parents who need to work late?

How reliable is your daycare
How reliable are you? Do you keep parents in the know about the progress of their child and/or any incident that happened to the child? Do you give parents ample notice when you are taking a day off? Do your staff take good care of the children assigned to them? Are you understaffed?

Can they trust your daycare expertise
Are your staff well qualified? Have you been in the daycare business long?

Any guarantee or promise?
For example, does your curriculum prepare the children for school life after preschool?

All the points above will determine the customer’s perceived value of your daycare services. Customers tend to be less price sensitive to products which they feel offer them value. The greater the perceived value, the greater the price you will be able to command.

Price your products according to the value the customer receives from your product. Pricing requires good customer knowledge, dollarization skills and courage – don’t be afraid to price the products to its real value. Determine your daycare service’s value to the customer and price your daycare services to that value.