Marketing your nursery – top tips
Find out why you should be marketing your nursery and the first steps you need to take in your marketing strategy – researching and planning.
Why you should invest in marketing your nursery
Marketing your nursery effectively will help nursery owners or managers to attract parents and increase nursery occupancy. A nursery with a strong understanding of marketing and how to use it well will attract a thriving customer base, develop strong relationships with parents and remain sustainable even in difficult times.
To summarise, the main reasons in marketing are:
- To attract new customers
- To establish a good reputation with parents and with other organisations in your community
- To increase or maintain your occupancy levels
- To improve profitability, therefore to ensure sustainability.
How to put together your marketing messages for prospective parents
It is important to take a step back and look at what you do and what you have to offer. Seeing your setting through parents’ eyes can help you understand your nursery better and know what works and what doesn’t. This will help you focus on where to concentrate your marketing activity, so you reap the best benefits.
When putting together your marketing messages, focus on the below:
- Explain to people what your childcare setting has to offer.
- Show why parents should choose your nursery over others.
- Explain how your setting can fulfil their childcare needs.
- Show my enthusiasm about what I do, and why I do it.
Market research and planning
Whether you are looking to open a nursery, or you want to begin a new marketing approach for an existing nursery, try to find out everything you can about what childcare exists in your local area, what childcare people might need now and in the future, and how you can fill any gaps.
Think about all the existing sources of information you could use to research your market thoroughly. Then compare these with our suggestions.
- Local authority data on childcare providers and places
- Local authority information about the number of unfilled childcare places available
- Data on local birth rates
- Travel to work patterns in the local area (particularly i.e. you are located near a main transport hub, such as a bus or train station)
- National and local websites about finding childcare
- Information about what local nurseries offer (for example from their websites)
- Information from your local chamber of commerce about businesses in the local area
- Unemployment and working patterns
- Population mix.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes a wide range of data that might be useful to you in undertaking market research. This includes data on birth rates, employment rates, travel to work areas and so on. Inspectorates publish regular data – broken down by local area – about how many childcare providers and places there are in the area and how this is changing.
You should also use your own eyes and ears, to see and hear about what is going on in the local area. For example, is there a new housing development being built, which might attract parents? Is there a new or expanding industrial park nearby? What are local newspapers and local radio saying about likely future events in your areas?
Check if there is a neighbourhood plan for the area, these will include potential developments for the next 10 years. Chambers of Commerce, and other local business organisations, can also help you to identify local businesses expanding or starting up, which may be a useful source of parents needing childcare.
