OK you can probably guess our answer - Magpie is a marketing specialist. But that doesn’t make our answer wrong. When we fly we’re always well looked after by the cabin crew. But we still want the captain to do the flying!
Your childcare center may be struggling to find potential customers. Maybe you’re having difficulty converting customers into enrollments. Or perhaps you’re doing not too badly but you just think things could be better or easier. The reasons may be different for any center but the question remains: is it time to consider independent marketing help? Even if it’s just to get you over a hump. And in any case do you consider a childcare marketing specialist or a general marketing company?
It’s an important question and distinction. If you compare a high-quality childcare marketing firm with a high-quality general marketing firm – either should be able to achieve results. But the childcare marketing specialist company should always achieve better and more sustainable results.
Blinded by science!
Yes, there is science to this. The terminology, technological experience and sheer volume of analytical data can look impressive and can also be daunting. Don’t get us wrong: we dive deep for our data too but the data has to be aimed at gaining real insights into your business in your market: child care. Your childcare specialist will know where to focus attention and will design integrated approaches focused on your specific childcare needs.
Focus means faster results
You shouldn’t have to teach your marketing consultant about your market. That costs you time and money and it can be very frustrating. The childcare specialist works on child care marketing day in day out. They experience differing markets, with different centers, client customer bases and goals. A good specialist will quickly understand and assess your market and needs, propose tried and tested solutions and start work with you to produce results rapidly. It’s only natural.
Competitive advantage
You want your center to have clearly defined and visible competitive advantages. Do you, could you, should you occupy a particular niche? Here too, based on experience and being in the market all day every day, your specialist child care marketer should be able to work with you to identify clearly your competitive advantages.
Or, having assessed your business, propose steps that will lead to acquiring such advantages. In parallel the specialist will work with to build this critical advantage into customers and conversions.
Clarity leading to better focus
Childcare can be a challenging business with margins squeezed by a variety of factors and where management of all aspects of costs can be time consuming or difficult. In some businesses, when costs get tight, marketing is the first thing to go. In a business such as childcare, where 100% of your customers will leave you sooner or later, marketing (and sales) are constantly needed. So, marketing needs to be strong just to keep pace with requirements but also needs to clearly justify itself operationally and financially. For these reasons, the marketing actions need to be focused and in close cooperation with the center operations so each complements the other. Typically, money is tight and marketing money has to be spent wisely and metrics prepared to show clearly the effects and benefits of each marketing dollar. Marketing needs to show it is needed and successful. All these factors point to the need to use specialists in the child care industry.
Conclusion
There are excellent generalists that do marketing and digital marketing in a variety of industries. But with the best will in the world it is difficult for them to be expert in all aspects of marketing in all industries. Of course, some generalist marketers would do a good job with a child care client. But playing the odds, there seems little doubt that a specialist child care marketer should be able to work with the client more closely, quickly and effectively.