How to Market Your Nursery Setting

Marketing your nursery or childcare setting can seem like an intimidating task, especially if you haven’t done it before.  However, there are some basic marketing steps you can carry out to ensure your nursery is being advertised properly.  

Here are six simple and cost effective tips to promote your childcare setting and reach your target audience.

Research

Research is an important first step in marketing: you need to know what your goal is and how you are going to achieve it.  

If you are trying to increase the occupancy in your nursery, you would need to know what parents are looking when they are choosing their childcare setting.

By looking into other nurseries, especially ones with positive reviews and waiting lists, you can see what is attractive to your prospective audience.  Parents can look at factors such as location, flexible hours, relationships with staff and advertised activities, to make decisions, so make sure to promote your nursery’s information to show how you are the right pick.

 Or if you are just wanting to increase awareness of your childcare setting, you can use Google to discover the top results for nurseries.  By researching and taking inspiration from these successful websites, you can see what is sought after and tailor it to your childcare setting.  These nurseries will also have something that separates them from other early years settings, and this leads onto our next point: your unique selling point.

Unique Selling Point

After researching what other nurseries have, you can now understand what makes your nursery unique and stand out to be the nursery parents should choose.  This is your unique selling point and should be marketed to make your nursery stand apart from the rest.

If you have a pick up and drop off service, a vegetable patch where children can plant and look after vegetables, or your nursery offers day trips, these are all unique selling points for your nursery that will encourage parents to pick your childcare setting.

Website

To advertise your unique selling point and compete with other nurseries in your area, you’ll need a good website.  By creating a good online presence, you can market your nursery and make it easy for prospective parents to research your childcare setting.

There are different ways to go about creating a website, including creating your own, using template website design services or blogging sites, such as Wordpress.  It depends on works for you and your capabilities. The most important thing about your website is to make sure you can edit it easily to showcase your professionalism and keep information up-to-date about your nursery.

You can include information on:

• what is good about your setting, and why parents should pick you as their childcare setting
• how you approach childcare, and how you meet the learn, develop and play requirements for early years 
• where you are located and if there is car parking, or how close you are to shops or parks
• how to make contact with you or your nursery
• any upcoming events by including an events page or a blog

Your website should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure all information is current and correct, and include important key words to help your website appear on Google and other search engine’s results page.

You should also include your certification, accreditation and any rewards your nursery has received, to emphasise your trustworthiness.  Displaying logos for OFSTED and NDNA showcases your nursery certification is up-to-date and your childcare setting is a safe and secure environment for their children.

Social Media Presence

Another great way to create an online presence is by using social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.  You can add the icons and links to your website, and vice versa, so everything is linked up and easily navigable.  You can include basic information about your nursery, such as opening times, location and contact details, so it is super easy to find.

Social media is a great way to both promote your nursery andinteract with existing parents.  You can use these pages to post updates regarding your nursery setting, pictures and information about your staff, and photographs of your setting, to establish a more personalised connection to your parents and prospective parents.

Local Advertising

There are also ways to advertise that do not involve the internet (I know, right?)  But by using location specific advertising and putting up fliers or adverts in local shops, schools and activity centres, can bring an awareness for your nursery.

You can also pay for adverts to be put in your local newspaper or be advertised on your local radio station to reach parents who are commuting.

Word Of Mouth

The final tip, and arguably the most important, is word of mouth.  Lots of parents are influenced to choose childcare settings by the recommendations from friends or other parents about the nursery they themselves use.  These endorsements have extreme merit with prospective parents, as these positive personal experiences with your setting reinforces your reliability.

You can kindly ask parents who are currently using your nursery to recommend you to their friends, supply business cards for parents to hand out, or even offer an incentive, such as a free day or week of childcare, to help spread the awareness of your early years setting.

By following these six simple and cost-effective ways to market your nursery, you should be able to increase the awareness, occupancy and success of your childcare setting.