What is the best way to promote a business in the child care industry and ultimately grow? Well there are many ways in which a nursery, pre school, kindergarten or other day care establishment can do this including advertising in local media such as radio, television, newspapers or magazines. These are all perfectly valid ways in which to put the name of your day care facility in front of the parents of children who you want to become your customers.

 

 

The trouble with promotion that involves advertising on any scale is that it is very often expensive and unless it is done extremely well, it can prove to be a costly and ultimately, unsuccessful way to promote your nursery. When times are tough and money is tight, using advertising as a way to promote your nursery or day care might not even be a viable option even if you can haggle with the media on their often extremely high rate card rates.

 

 

So what can a nursery do to make sure their name stays in front of potential customers without having to spend money they simply might not have? Well the first thing that a child care provider could do is look close to home by focusing on their existing customers and parents of their existing children. Word of mouth, recommendations and referrals are perhaps the very best way in which nursery schools can spread news about their facilities for little or no cost.

 

 

A customer that comes your way via a referral is very often the best type of customer as the fact that someone has already used you and recommended you is a highly valuable third party endorsement of your facilities. And the beauty of referrals and recommendations is that so few nurseries and kindergartens actually ask for them. Therefore is you have no or a limited budget in which to market your day care facility then make sure you and your staff ask existing parents if they are happy with the child care their kids are receiving. And when they hopefully come back with a resounding yes, make sure you ask the magic question. The magic question being, who else do you know whose children would benefit from receiving first class child care?

 

 

All parents want the best for their children so if you own, manage or work at a day care facility with a good reputation and that you are proud of, your existing customers will most likely be more than happy to recommend you to other people they know. In many cases they will actually be flattered that you have gone to the trouble of asking them.

 

 

Promoting a nursery can sometimes be tricky due to the lack of money in which to dedicating to marketing which is why starting with the simplest method can often be the most effective. If you want your nursery to grow in 2009 and beyond then get your staff to ask the magic question and there is every chance referrals, recommendations and new children will come your way. Give it go, it really works.

 

 

Date: 15/04/2009