Using your website to attract prospective families

Digital Marketing Tips for your Child Care Center

Jenny Munn specializes in helping schools and education centers maximize their digital marketing.

She owns her own business and speaks at regional and national conferences.

She is a certified Google Partner.

She understands the world of digital marketing, search engine optimization—both organic and Pay Per Click (PPC) as well as paid social advertising.

Contents:

Website basics and best practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Organic Search (SEO) vs. Brand Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Pay Per Click (PPC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Social Media Advertising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Latest Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Determining a budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Getting started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Why is a website important?Do you want your child care center to be found by people looking for your services?

People don’t look in the yellow pages anymore.

A website is your business mothership. It’s your home base. It’s what you are. It’s where you are found.

It is where you inform and educate, but more importantly, it is where you:

Engage and Persuade prospective families to come to your child care center.

What do you mean my website needs to be more than a “brochure site”?In today’s world, families flit around like hummingbirds. They come to your “flower” to

get the “pollen” and get out—usually as quickly as possible.

Besides informing and educating, your website needs to persuade.

You need a distinct Call to Action (CTA) to get the webpage visitor to engage with you. What is your CTA? What do you

want people to do

Sign up for a Tour? Request Information? Request a phone call?

Check availability?

Don’t ever publish material without a Call to Action.

What is Brand Awareness and why is it important?

Brand awareness is about looking good, telling your story, and knowing who you are in the market. More importantly it’s building awareness of your center where

your prospective families can find you.

Where do your prospective families hang out and are you meeting them where they

are? Are you known? People need to see you 8 times before they will notice you. 8 times! Brand Awareness is being TOP of MIND when prospects are thinking about child care.

Tell us about Keywords.Very simply, keywords are the words, phrases, and language your PROSPECTS use when they are searching to find your center. It’s what they type

into the search bar.

Common keywords in the child care business:• Daycare

• Childcare or child care

• Preschool

• Early learning center

• Childcare near me

• Infant care

• Early education

Case Study #1 The importance of keywords

“Daycare” vs “Child Learning Center”

Do your homework or ask for help in setting up your keywords and using them on

your website. Google and other search engines will be looking for the common

words or phrases that describe your business.

What is Organic SEO?

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is designed to give you more visibility and

traffic through more prominent rankings when someone searches for keywords on

the internet. Get your keywords right and improve your rankings!

Case Study #2 The importance of keyword meaning

Make sure you are clear about what you are providing in your center and what differentiates your center from your competition.

Answer the questions:

• Who is important at our center?

• What makes our center unique?

• When are activities scheduled at your center?

• Where are you located?

• What is your contact information?

• Why is your center the right choice for a child?

• How does a family enroll in your center?

• Is there a waitlist? Can they visit?

What is Paid Search or Pay Per Click (PPC) and how does it work?

Paid Search or Pay Per Click (PPC) is advertising that appears on a Google or Bing

Search page. It’s noted with a little “ad” next to the text.

PPC drives traffic quickly for launches and important seasonality peaks with a

Google AdWords / GoogleAds advertisement on line. Consider using a certified professional to create, place, and purchase ads.

If you do PPC, make sure you are filtering out “negative” keywords and that you are

tracking conversions so you will know if you are getting your money’s worth.

A conversion occurs when someone responds or clicks on your ad. The ad may take

them to your website or a landing page that you can track. Over time, you will see

what ads attract your prospects.

A landing page is a page set up with a distinct URL web address that receives

visitors. If someone clicks that URL web address, it takes them to your page that may

ask for more information in a form, or it might just thank them.

In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a “lead capture page”,

“static page”, or a “destination page”, is a single web page that appears in response

to clicking on a search engine optimized search result, marketing promotion,

marketing email, or an online advertisement.

The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension

of the advertisement, search result or link. Landing pages are used for lead

generation. The actions that a visitor takes on a landing page is what determines an

advertiser’s conversion rate.

A landing page is a perfect way to attract a user to your child care center. It allows

for conversion increase through precise messaging about your services that

reaches a potential customer. Using landing pages is one of the most important

tools of a modern marketer—and you, the child care center owner or director.

Case Study #3The importance of tracking PPC

Setting up a thank you landing page helps you track page inquiries.

Watch and Adjust Negative or Incorrect Keywords

Examples: • Homeschool (This is not a child care center term.)

• Cheap (Your center is not “cheap”, it offers “great value”.)

• 24/7 (Are you really there all day, every day?)

• Career / teacher jobs (You aren’t seeking help.)

What is Paid Social Media Advertising?

Paid Social Advertising generates demand by being present and visible where

your prospective families or target market is gathering online to drive more brand

awareness.

This usually means placing ads on Facebook and Instagram.

You can boost your own Facebook posts for a small fee, but you

For Facebook you will need to set up a Facebook Ads account. This is cost effective

and easier than Google Ads. Instagram ads are also available.

What are the latest trends in SEO/PPC/Social?

PEOPLE—specifically your prospective families--need to be able to find you.

Post activities, and advice on how to find great child care and other valuable infor-

mation for parents on YouTube. Consider creating your own YouTube channel for

your child care center.

Use #hashtags to drive people to your topics and brand.

A hashtag is a keyword phrase used in Twitter conversations that is preceded by a

pound (#) sign and written without spaces in between, ie #ilovehashtag. The pri-

mary purpose of a hashtag is to bring conversations on the same topic into a sin-

gle thread to make it convenient for information consumers to view and compare

ideas.

Make sure you are listed on review sites like Yelp, Care.com, and Great Schools as

well as listing with your Child Care Resource and Referral agency’s list.

In addition to attracting interest to your program, links from other sites to your site,

help your site rank higher on search engines.

Google your center to see what comes up. Do this regularly to see who is competing

with you.

What are best practices that we should be following?

1. Use high quality photos that evoke emotion. People are visual and they love

pictures.

2. If you have quality video, post it! People love to watch videos. Be sure

your videos are captioned. Many people scroll without sound.

3. Try not to be too wordy. Facebook sometimes rejects overly wordy ads.

Write short content or use photos that compel prospects to want more informa-

tion.

4. Include a call to action. “Visit us today!” “Sign up for a tour!” “Call us for en-

rollment information.”

5. Make sure you are using Local SEO for your neighborhood. Local SEO

provides additional information about the location of your business. This method

allows your center to be more visible in search engine results when people are

searching for child care.

In order to be displayed in the local results you need to add the city or specif-

ic area of the city where your business is, to your website’s keywords (services/

products).

Local SEO is about how to optimize your website to rank better for a local audi-

ence. A website gives you the opportunity to target the entire (online) world. But

if the target audience for your business is actually located in or near the city you

have your center, you’ll need to practice at least some local SEO as well.

6. Mirror back the language, words and thoughts that your families are

saying. Using their terms helps you to better reach your audience.

7. Capture and share family testimonials. Asking for feedback is also a

way to find out what your customers like best. Testimonials help grow your busi-

ness. Testimonials are just one way to get the customer feedback you need to

help your business thrive.

Customer testimonials are important for your business because they help estab-

lish your credibility and reliability as a business. Customer testimonials help your

child care center develop a network and community of advocate families who

have benefitted from your business.

What is a good monthly budget for SEO and PPC?

That is tough to answer. It depends upon the size of your center and how much

money you have available. Generally, with SEO there is an initial set up and then it is

inexpensive except for updates or changes.

For PPC, you might start with only $200 per month. Big centers/schools may pay up-

wards of $4,000 per month on PPC. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish,

within what time frame, and how much you have to spend.

How do we get started?

1. Make sure you have an understanding of what your center is to your customers.

2. Know your story and how it benefits the families and children in your care.

3. Write content for your website that differentiates you from other nearby centers.

4. You need a website. Even a simple 3-5 page website is better than no internet

presence.

5. Make sure the keywords that your customers use are on your website.

6. Have a Facebook page and an Instagram account and post regularly and build a

following.

7. Learn more about Google Ads and Pay Per Click.

8. Learn more about Facebook and Instagram Ads.

9. Think about when your customers enroll and calendar when you need to adver-

tise online.

Is it easier if I hire a consultant to do my SEO and PPC?

It may be easier to hire a consultant, but DON’T do that until you have some back-

ground information and know what you want.

Just like you wouldn’t hire a plumber to “Help with your toilets,” you need to provide

direction and goals for what you want to achieve.

Don’t be afraid to try this yourself. Just take baby steps. YOU CAN DO IT!