7 Marketing Ideas for Childcare Agencies

If you’re looking for marketing ideas for your childcare agency, you’ve come to the right place. Here are 7 ways to market your business and the tips and tricks to streamlining your marketing process that will save time, money, and resources for your childcare agency.

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7 ways to market your childcare agency 

1. Optimize your Google Business Profile 

Google Business Profiles are an often overlooked marketing channel. Most businesses have one, but few have optimized profiles that are helping to boost local SEO. 

For babysitting businesses, an optimized Google Business Profile is an effective way to attract potential customers without paying for Google Ads. They’re a hotbed of keywords that help put your business in front of potential customers, and unlike website SEO, optimizing your Business Profile takes just a few minutes and has near-instant results. 

Steps to take include

• Filling out every section in detail (you’d be surprised how many businesses skip this step)
• Adding high-quality, descriptive photos and videos 
• Increasing the number of customer reviews
• Creating a Q&A list 

For more ways to boost the power of your Google Business Profile, check out this article on 10 ways to optimize your profile to rank higher in SERPs.  

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2. Encourage word-of-mouth marketing

Your current customers are one of your most powerful marketing tools. A recent study found that 93% of participants said friends and family were their most trusted source of service recommendations and reviews. 

With that in mind, display customer testimonials and reviews on your website and be proactive about collecting reviews across your Google listing, social media pages, etc. Send review requests in your appointment follow-up messages and include a link to the place you’d like customers to leave their ratings.

If you already have many Google or Facebook reviews, consider using a review aggregator like embedsocial to pull these reviews onto your website to boost credibility.

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Start a referral program 

Launching a referral program is one of the best ways to encourage word-of-mouth marketing for your childcare agency. 83% of customers are willing to refer after a positive experience, yet only 29% actually do — unless they’re prompted. 

There are multiple incentives you could consider, and depending on your aim, several events that would trigger the reward. For example

• Both parties get a dollar amount credited to their account (or a discount code) when the referee books for the first time
• The customer gets a custom discount code to share with friends and family (which could also reward them every time it gets used) 

If you have a strong email marketing process, you might even consider rewards for each new email subscriber your customer brings in. 

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3. Overhaul your website 

Another effective marketing idea for your childcare agency is to optimize (and overhaul, if necessary) your website. Or, if you fall under the 1 in 4 small businesses that don’t have a website, create and then optimize your website!

We go over ways to increase organic website traffic here, but some initial steps to take include

• Make sure your website is easy to navigate — This includes adding a navigation bar that makes it easy to find pages, naming your pages with clear titles, and making sure buttons are easy to access.
• Display pricing — If your pricing is location dependent, consider adding “starts at…” with an easy way to get in touch to find out specifics.
• Add online booking options — 97% of customers want to book and manage appointments online, so offering online booking is an easy way to upgrade your website.  (Don’t worry, integrating online booking is easy. Talk to the MarketBox team to find out more.)
• Ensure contact details are easy to find.
• Optimize for relevant keywords relating to the various services you offer.

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4. Boost your email marketing efforts 

According to a report by Hubspot, email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses. If you’re looking for marketing ideas for your childcare agency, don’t overlook the humble email.

Here are 3 ways to boost your email marketing efforts 

1. Only send high-quality, relevant content — If you want to keep people engaged (and away from the unsubscribe button), only send emails that add value.
2. Personalize your emails — Using the person’s name in the subject line increases email open rates by 26%. When you’re collecting people’s contact information, include a field for their first and last names and add personalization tokens to the email where appropriate. 
3. Make sure customers have opted-in — Unless you want to fall foul of anti-spam regulation (which, trust me, you don’t!), never send a marketing email to someone who hasn’t opted-in to receive them. If you have forms on your website that automatically enroll them in emails, make sure to include a consent disclaimer letting them know. 

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Related: Advantages of Using Email Marketing for Service Businesses

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5. Consider running paid ad campaigns 

If you have the budget, running a paid ad campaign on either Google or social media can be an effective way to market your childcare agency. Just be wary of relying on them too much to drive traffic to your website — organic traffic is always best. 

When running a paid ad campaign, it’s important to set parameters and target specific demographics, areas, etc., to ensure you’re not paying to display ads to people who aren’t the right fit for your business (or in the right location!).

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Related: How to Create Targeted Local Facebook Ads: A Beginner's Guide for Service Businesses 

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6. Launch an introductory offer 

Another effective marketing idea for babysitting businesses is to create introductory offers. This marketing strategy works best with other tips on this list to convert leads into customers once you’ve got them on your website or signed up for your mailing list. 

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7. Don’t ignore physical marketing channels 

Lastly, for babysitting businesses, it’s important not to ignore physical marketing channels such as

• Signwriting company vehicles 
• Local bulletin boards (real or virtual)
• Local newspaper ads
• Local preschools or kindergarten groups 
• Flyering local neighborhoods or parks

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Tips for effective marketing 

Effective marketing can be time-consuming, but there are plenty of ways you can automate the process to make things easier on your team. Consider the following

1. Batch-create social media content and use a scheduling tool to post it throughout the month. 
2. Set up automated appointment follow-ups that ask for reviews from customers. (Just make sure to set a trigger that cancels this once a customer has left a review, so you’re not asking for a new one every time!)
3. Use email workflows to automate your lead nurture emails.

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