- Know what families in your community value most about your program—talk to parents and find out what they think your strengths are and how they benefit their children. Then continue to improve those features, and use them as a focal point in your marketing.
- Encourage parents to spread the word. You could even offer parents a discount on the next month’s tuition when someone the parent has referred enrolls.
- Follow up with parents who’ve expressed interest, and encourage them to schedule a tour or attend an open house. It’s easy to send interested parents a group email or text message through Procare.
- Examine your waitlist. Maybe it’s time to switch up classroom age groups to better fit the needs of your community. In Procare you can print an enrollment/waitlist report, or if you’re keeping your waitlist online, you can view and filter families waiting to be imported from MyProcare (see the New Family Registration section in the MyProcare Overview).
- Maintain an online presence, be it a full website or a social media account or two. And don’t forget to consider how to optimize your site for search engines so parents looking online can easily find you. One of the first places parents start their search for child care centers is a search engine like Google or Bing, and the higher in the results you are, the more likely parents are to find you.
- Use the address information of current families in your program to map out where they live and find common neighborhoods—then market more in those areas. Hint: Use the Map It button on the Person Address/Person Information screen in Procare.
