Proven Success Strategies for Early Childhood Leaders

We all know that word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising. So why do so many child care centers lack a customer referral program? Maybe we figure that if people love us, the referrals will come naturally, without us having to ask for them.

This might be the case, but there’s one problem: unless you reward existing customers for their hard-earned referrals, they’re unlikely to help you get new customers.

So what is the simplest, easiest way to create a customer referral program? Follow a simple three-step acronym: EAR. Earn-Ask-Reward.

Step 1: Earn . Do what you do so well that others can’t resist telling people about you. A great example is Disney. Ask yourself “how can we provide child care so well that people will be amazed at our service and how great we are…and they won’t be able to resist telling other parents about it”. In other words, provide a “WOW” experience.

Make a list of what’s special, unique, and different about your center. When prospects call and then visit for the first time, what “WOW” reactions will they have? Or will they have a ho-hum reaction? If they visit you along with two other competitors in the same day, what will make them remember YOU as opposed to the other two centers? If you want others to rave about you, you’ll need to refine your “WOW” experience.

Step 2: Ask . Create an easy-to-follow process for you and your staff to ask happy customers to refer you to friends and family. This could be a simple flyer that spells out the details of your program, including the reward for providing a referral. You can go further by communicating your Referral Program throughout your center materials, in your newsletter, via email to your customer list, on your website, and in flyers posted on the Parent Communication boards.

Step 3: Reward . Make sure you’ve identified a valued prize that will reward your customers for their hard work. Don’t appear “cheap” and don’t give a discount related to your child care business. One of the best gifts that parents can receive is a complimentary “date night” including dinner and a movie, or perhaps even free child care for the evening. Another idea is a $100 gift card to a popular retail outlet, or a generic $100 cash gift card.

Typically, the reward is given when the enrolling family names the referring family. For example, on the Enrollment Form you should have a field for “Please Let Us Know Who Referred You to Our Center So We May Thank Them”.

Using these three simple steps, you’ll soon find yourself with many prospective families interested in enrolling in your center, courtesy of your current customer base.

Why do you need a business plan? First and foremost, a business plan is a basic requirement to getting government grant and loans, as well as bank loans. It is also a great way to focus the complete picture of your daycare, get it out of your head and down on paper.

There is something about writing a plan down on paper that brings it into reality, and requires greater precision. This is what a business plan will do for you and your child care business. It does not matter if you’ve been open for years or just starting out – you will gain tremendous value from writing it down.

Preparing a business plan can be a long and daunting task, but I recommend using a daycare business plan template to give you a head-start and save you hours of time. If you’re not already convinced, here are 10 big reasons why should have a business plan:

1. Sets specific objectives for your daycare. Good owners set specific objective that can be measured. This allows you to keep track of how you are doing and make changes if needed.
2. Helps define your strengths. A major part of any plan is learning what your strengths are in a business both personal, professional and as a business. Knowing your strengths will allow you to play to them.
3. Helps uncover your weaknesses. Just like with your strengths, knowing your weaknesses can be a massive advantage for you. If you know where you are weak, you can focus more energy on this area, or find somebody else who can help you. Or best of all, delegate this area to someone else completely! An example is my friend Christine who runs her own daycare, and she is weak at keeping track of her business paperwork and finances. Luckily, her husband Robert is an accountant. He handles ALL the paperwork, receipt tracking, payments, and accounting for her. Sounds like a perfect marriage!
4. Helps you know and understand your competition. In developing your plan, you will get to know your competition, what their unique benefits are, and what their weaknesses are. From this you should be able to determine where you can compete with the greatest success.
5. Enables you to deal with professionals. Having a business plan will allow you to deal with other professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, and consultants, in a confident manner.
6. Understand who your customers are and what they want. To be successful in child care you need to give the customer what they want, not always what they need or what you are best at. The business plan process will help you to find out more about your customers.
7. Determine how much money you will make. Knowing your customers, your competition and your strengths, you will be much better able to make an accurate projection about how much money you will make, how much you may need to pay out in expenses and how much you get to keep!
8. Understand how much it will cost to start your daycare. If you haven’t yet started your daycare you will learn how much money you will need to get started. Depending on the size of your center this may be almost nothing to 6 figures for a new child care center. Knowing the costs will help you figure out where you can save some money too.
9. Help you sell your daycare. Right now you may not be thinking about selling the business you are just starting but down the road you may decide to. It is always good to get paid a large amount for all the hard work you put into your daycare. A good business plan that has made you successful goes a long way in receiving a good sales price.
10. You simply must have one to apply for grants and loans. To get any money from the government or banks you need to have a business plan. Not having a plan is one of the biggest reasons people don’t apply for government grants and loans and why that money goes unused. The money is out there for the asking, but you must have a business plan to get any of it.

Yes, preparing a business plan can be a daunting process. And if you take it on from the beginning alone it will be. But luckily you have several great options. There are several business software programs on the market you can use. These are good and they walk you through the process with examples for each section.

Another option is to have a business plan created for you by a professional. This is the easiest but also the most expensive route. Search the web and you should find several companies willing to do all the work for you and send you a professional plan.
A third option is a “done for you” child care business plan template. I’ve have a couple of these for you, (daycare center business plan, home daycare business plan), with just about everything already done. I’ve helped enough child cares to know what 90% of the business plan should be. I find from coast to coast the same information in just about every business plan.

It’s up to you how you go about writing your business plan, but you should strongly consider getting started today writing one. Success is just so much easier with a good business plan for your daycare.

A recent report by independent research firm eMarketer.com (September 2009) provided some great insights into how people are searching online for local products & services. Here are some of the major findings of the study:

• 37% of people who conducted an online local search ended up visiting the store in person.
• People were 46% more likely to go to the store after finding them in a local online search, when compared to other ways of finding a business.
• Even more local searchers contacted the business by phone after finding them online.
• The top 2 business categories for local searches were child care and hotels.

All in all, the days of the phone book are gone. People now search online (primarily Google) for a business when they need them, and child care is one of the TOP business categories that people are searching for online.

When you search for anything, who do you contact first? The top few results, maybe the top five. If you are like most people, you start with the top two results and only if they don’t work out do you continue down the page. Moreover, page two might as well be the moon – only the few diehard searchers get that far.

Based on these findings, your child care center needs to be high up in search results for your area (preferably in the Top 5), in order to increase the number of prospects contacting your about future enrollment. Now you don’t need to be number one, although you should be trying, but you should be “above the fold” so nobody needs to scroll down to find you.

The first thing you need to do is some keyword research. What terms are people typing into Google and Yahoo search to find child care in your area? For my area, here are the keywords I came up with. Feel free to adapt this list to your local town or region:

• Child care, Hudson, OH
• Childcare Hudson Ohio
• Child care centers in Hudson OH
• Best child care centers, Northeast ohio
• Daycare in Hudson Ohio

When choosing keywords, do not forget about the areas and towns surrounding you. Far too often child care centers focus only on the city they’re in, but you likely have customers from other towns. Would you fit with a surrounding town, or neighborhood? How about big employers nearby? Target all of these too, not with as much effort as your main term, but still with some effort.

(By the way, the techniques that I’m going to teach you in this article are not being used by many centers, so by taking action on these tips, you’ll come out ahead of your competition!)

After you take action on these tips, it won’t take much time at all to see some results. Here’s an example I did the other day just for illustration purposes. These results took less than 5 hours to achieve.

I targeted Aurora, Ohio, the town next to ours for this example. Here you can see the results for “child care” and “daycare” in Aurora.

You can do this with any location. Now I did my example quickly and I would get even better results if I had let this run for more than 5 hours. However, I followed the techniques I will teach you and here are the results.

Yep, there I am number 5 for child care, and number 2 for daycare!

Do you think I would get some calls and customers off being that high up? Yes, I would. In addition, if I gave it more time I would be higher, and on the map section. It can take a couple of days to get there, which is still a relatively short amount of time to get a huge amount of online traffic.

I took the whole thing down after 5 hours, because I didn’t want to confuse parents actually trying to find child care. I just didn’t think that was right to do to them. Try this for yourself and you will be amazed at the results you get, and how little time it takes.

Here are the 7 steps to getting your child care web site to rank high in local search results. To get the most out of your work I suggest you do things in this order, but I would rather see you get as many items done as possible rather than delay while earlier stuff was completed.

• On-page keywords. I know this should sound obvious but I see it missed repeatedly. Make sure the exact words people are using to search for you (also known as keywords) are on your home page. i.e. “Aurora Ohio child care” or “child care centers Aurora, OH”. You also want the name of your business and the full address and telephone number on every page, so people don’t have to search for the phone number on your site.

• Behind-the-scene coding. This is all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the programming the actually makes up your web site. There’s a lot of information passed between your site and the search engine, which is vital to the search engine finding your site. Things like what your site is about, and what items are important. You can do most of this yourself or have your webmaster person do it for you. But you want to:

• • Make sure your “title tag” has the terms you want to rank for in it. This is what shows up at the top of a page in blue on search results. i.e. “Aurora, OH child care – Daycare Aurora, Ohio – child care centers”. I usually recommend 3 or 4 keyword phrases in the title tag, separated by hyphens.
  • Make sure the “description tag” contains the words you want and encourages people to click on your site. This is the text you see about your site. I.e. “take a look inside our child care and daycare center in Aurora, OH.”
  • Have your “keywords tag” include your main words and other areas. This helps tell the search engines what words you think are important and is a great place to add other area to your site. I.e. child care aurora Ohio, child care Hudson Ohio, Murray’s daycare…
  • Make sure your address is included inside an “address tag”. You don’t see this on you page but this tells the search engines this is your address and should be used.
  • Try to have your keywords include in an “H1 tag”. This generally shows larger and in bold but also tells the engines this is the most important set of word on this page. I.e. Murray’s child care and daycare in aurora Ohio offers award winning care.

• Get in the local and main directories. Directories are the new phonebooks. They contain lists of sites organized by topic. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all have an option that allows you to submit to their directories for free and indicate you are a local business. Also, look for local or regional directories. Care.com is a big one but Aurora, Ohio also has a small local only directory. Get in as many of these as you can. Most are free but even if they cost a couple of bucks, it is well worth it.

You will find these directories very helpful because Google and Yahoo will list local results first in searches if it appears people are looking for local information like child care. Search engines gain this information from you telling them, and from looking in the local directories.

• Make a video or two of your child care center. A simple 2-4 minute video showing people your daycare, just as you would new parents is an amazingly powerful tool. Take these videos and put them up in YouTube, Viddler, Yahoo! Video, Metacare, Tube Mogul, and other video sharing sites. You will be amazed at the number of people who find you through these videos.

• Create a Facebook Fan Page for your Center. This is a great place for people to talk about how much they like your daycare, and form a community. This will take 5 minutes and the search engines do notice. Go to Facebook.com, and click on the small link at the bottom that says “Advertising”. Then click on “Pages”, then “Create a Page”. Add a main photo of your staff or the outside of your center, and start adding content. Be sure to communicate your new Fan Page to your currently enrolled parents and staff, and ask them to become a “fan”. Also, if you’re planning on adding photos of the kids in your care, make sure you get a signed release from parents authorizing you to do so.

• Make sure if you are paying for advertising online, it includes a link back to you. If you are paying to be in the online Yellow Pages or BBB, make sure they have a link back to your site and it is correct. Also, try to get your keywords into the link. I.e. “Murray’s child care and daycare in Aurora Ohio.” This will help with people clicking on your link and help you show up higher in search results.

• Get into the social scene. Social bookmarking is big right now so use it to your advantage. Encourage parents, friends and coworkers to reference your site on social networks. Have people join your Facebook fan page, Digg your videos and any informational articles you put out, have people bookmark you site, have people comment about your site and your business online. To show you the importance of this look at this:

I know this all may appear to be a lot of work, and somewhat overwhelming, but really, it isn’t. Most of this you can do in a couple of hours and what you can’t do a webmaster should be able to do for you. If you would like some help, contact us and we will see what we can do to get you up to the top of your search results.

As you can see, it is very important to be at the top of the search results and it doesn’t take much time at all. I’ve shown you how to get it all done and be near the top in less than 5 hours. Now it’s your turn to give it a go.

I came across a great article in the paper this week. The article is about which volunteer jobs are the most helpful to kids. Here’s the article: http://online.wsj.com/article

I like the information of where to volunteer and think parents may like it (i.e. something for your newsletter:-)). I found this section to be very relevant to those of us in child care as well as parents:

“Throughout school, the most important parental role of all is to shape your child’s attitude toward learning and school, communicate high expectations, and help him or her set goals and solve learning problems.

And setting expectations doesn’t mean telling kids, “We are bound and determined that you are going to get into Harvard,” Dr. Hoover-Dempsey says; it means sending a message that “doing the best you can is important for all the things you’re going to be able to do in life.” In elementary school, such coaching has roughly twice as big an impact on children’s grades and test scores as volunteering.”

As caregivers we have a massive impact on the kids in our care. We owe it to them and ourselves to do the best we can for them. Teach them to love learning, have fun with it, to do their best in everything they do, and to set meaningful goals in life.

These days, it’s tough being a Cleveland Browns fan, especially when you’re surrounded by Steelers fans.  But as you can see from this photo, I don’t mind being surrounded by the competition. 

Nevertheless, what should you do if your child care is surrounded by the competition?

In my child care consulting practice, I’m seeing more and more centers with increasing levels of competition.  Whether from in-home daycares or new centers that were built recently, more centers are competing for fewer new clients.  This can be a problem because the new competition tends to drive down the price customers will pay, drive up costs, and overwhelm new parents.

However, you don’t have to roll over and give in.  With the right strategies, you can beat the other child care centers in your market.  The greatest tool for doing this is a strong marketing program that clearly states how you are UNIQUE and different than your competitors.  Can you honestly say that your marketing answers this all-important question:

“Why should I choose to enroll my child at your center rather than any other child care center in town?”

Average marketing will only get you average results.  To be highly successful, you need to use a marketing plan that enables you to stand out.  Effective marketing will:

• Make sure your center’s name comes up when parents are looking for child care.
• Enter the conversation already going on in parent’s heads.
• Make the competition a non-issue.
• Return to you $2, $5, $10 or more dollars for every dollar you spend on marketing.
• Allow you to charge higher rates than average.
• Have a system that allows you to fill vacancies at will.
• Provide better care for the kids under your care.
• Have a waiting list of parents.
• Hire the best staff.
• And best of all, improve your profitability (or financial health if you’re a non-profit).

As you can see, great marketing is important regardless of your situation, whether you are surrounded by competition or not.  An effective marketing plan simply has too much to offer.

As you may know, I have been helping child care centers with their marketing and enrollment-building challenges for a while now, as a coach and teacher, doing just what I have shown above.  I love doing it and helping centers grow…but I also understand many child cares can’t yet afford this level of personal coaching  and consulting (I regularly charge $150 an hour plus).

So to make this available to everyone and help you beat your competition, I have put together the Child Care Business Success System.  With this one-of-a-kind training program, you will be able to win against all the other centers in your area – I guarantee it!

Most business owners put very little thought into the most powerful marketing tool they have – testimonials from current and past customers. Customer testimonials are an often-untapped source of marketing power in your child care business, because they offer “social proof” to others that you provide a quality child care experience. What others say about you is MUCH stronger than anything you say about yourself.

I’m not talking about a few simple quotes scattered here and there on your website or brochure. You must have a strategic SYSTEM in place for gathering lots of testimonials that contain the right messages you need to get new enrollments. Your testimonial system needs to address these factors:

• Quantity. Simply put, you can NEVER have too many testimonials. When prospective families look at your marketing materials, they should be blown away by the amount of people saying great things about you. In this case, more is always better.
• Quality. You want testimonials that mention specific BENEFITS of your program, such as “they helped my child overcome a behavioral issue”, or “they were directly responsible for preparing my child to excel in Kindergarten.” These benefit-driven testimonials are much stronger than just the generic “this center provides great child care.”
• Variety. It’s also good to have testimonials that address possible objections in your prospect’s head. Identify the biggest weakness of your center, and use a testimonial to diffuse it. For example, if you have small rooms and an older facility, use a testimonial to say “the facility may be older than the fancy new franchises across town, but the quality of care was superb and my children’s development was more important to me than a new building.”
• Multi-media. One of the most powerful ways to use testimonials on your website is to add an audio or video component. An inexpensive and easy way to add audio testimonials to your website is a service called Audio Acrobat, which hosts your testimonials for a small monthly fee. Your customers simply call the toll-free number set up just for you, they record their testimonial, and it’s saved for you with a special link that you add to your website. Video testimonials are even more powerful, and can be captured & uploaded easily using a small Flip video cam.

So how do you go about gathering these testimonials? Each time a customer praises your center, simply ask them “could you do me a favor?” Then pause. They will almost always say “Sure”. Have a short, easy “Feedback Form” ready for them to fill out on the spot. Another great way to get lots of testimonials is to hold a testimonial contest, and offer a nice prize (like a $100 dinner for two, or a gift card) for the best testimonial. Or you can randomly draw the winner from everyone who enters the contest. Guide your customers on how to provide a benefit-driven testimonial by giving them some examples of what you’re looking for.

Using these simple strategies, you’ll soon find yourself with tons of high-quality testimonials, and more prospective families contacting you.

I’ve been getting lots of questions from my readers lately about child care grants, so I thought I’d share some tips with you about daycare grants and how to find them.

Tip #1:  It is very hard to find grants to cover start-up costs, especially for an in-home family daycare.  The reasons for this are:

-          Most grant providers want to give funds to a child care business that is already stable and running successfully, but needs funds to improve their operations and/or take on more children.  That way, they can be sure that the funds will be used wisely.

-          It costs very little to start an in-home child care business (typically $1,000 or less).  Most grant providers are looking for bigger opportunities to make a difference with their dollars.

Many child care grants are reserved for expansion of existing facilities, or non-capital improvements to an existing facility, such as training, better outdoor spaces, and the like.

Tip #2: The best place to start looking for your daycare grant is with your local Childcare Resource & Referral Agency.  To find yours, simply go to www.childcareaware.com and enter your ZIP code in the field on the right-hand side of the page.  You’ll get the contact information for your local CCR&R.  Call the number provided and introduce yourself, and ask to speak with the person who handles local grants and low-interest funding programs.  If your region or state does not have any grant programs, they may be able to refer you to some non-profit foundations in your area that do (such as your local United Way chapter).

Tip #3:  Non-profit child care centers qualify for grants to a much greater degree than for-profit centers.  If you want to start a child care center, but you have little to no funds of your own saved, you may want to consider opening up a non-profit child care center.  You can still earn a nice salary, and your likelihood of finding a start-up daycare grant is much greater if you set yourself up as a non-profit.  I recommend finding other non-profit child care centers in your region or state, and contacting them with questions on how to get started.  Most people in child care are very friendly and eager to help!

I go way more in-depth on this topic in my Child Care Business Success System, so if you want more information, be sure to check it out!

More than $5 billion was set aside for early education in the stimulus package signed by President Obama last month.

In California, $210 million will go toward improving Head Start and Early Head Start programs for low-income toddlers and students, while more than $220 million would enhance child care for infants and toddlers.

Stimulus money would also pay for more funding for in-depth training for current preschool educators.

“There are long waiting lists – 55,000 students in the state waiting for preschool,” said Scott Moore, senior policy adviser for Preschool California.

“We don’t have enough funding to provide publicly funded preschool to low-income kids, and we are not even including middle- and upper-income children,” he said.

Increased funding would help resolve those issues and make preschool or other early education more available to families.

Most other states are also receiving funding, in addition to California.

So you see, this is the PERFECT time to start your own child care business, and/or get funding to expand your services to more children.

The demand for quality care is high, the funds are increasing at the state & local level, and you are getting geared up to meet that demand by owning your own child care business. So let’s get started. If you want to know the very first step you should take, listen to this audio class that I gave back in November:

I look forward to your feedback, and to helping you get started.