Prepared by - Family Day Care Australia
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Prepared by: Marketing theory and strategy may seem overwhelming but when you put it in context, it is really quite simple. You provide a service that many people need; marketing is the process of bringing the two together. This workshop is designed to guide you through the thought processes required to develop an effective marketing plan. The process starts with researching and understanding your market and your environment; with this knowledge you can then develop sound strategies that will maximise the effectiveness of your marketing investment. 2 | P a g e MARKETING THEORY ... IN PRACTICE One of the key things to remember, especially in services marketing where the need is not always immediate, is that you need to build and maintain awareness of your service and its benefits so that when the need does arise, you are first to mind. Consider the following example: Marketing Concepts Imagine a young woman on maternity leave, expecting her first child. Having had limited exposure to children and child care, she considers long day care for her return to work. Will she see a family day care flyer at the hospital when she has her baby or when she visits her paediatrician? What about at pre-natal classes? It’s early days no doubt but it doesn’t hurt! Baby is born, and mum is out walking her newborn one day with a friend in a neighbouring suburb, she sees a mini-van drive past with a family day care logo on the rear window. She ponders for a moment; excellent child care ... at home. She doesn’t require care at the time and that thought is quickly replaced by the crying child in the pram ... but a seed is planted! Two months later, she takes her newborn to the supermarket in a mercy dash for nappies. She sees a stall set up promoting family day care; she remembers the logo, although it has a different name on it, she remembers the colours, the stars and the house and that familiar strap line; excellent child care ... at home. She willingly accepts a flyer from the friendly staff member from the local coordination unit and puts it into the depths of her handbag. Two weeks later, in her spare 30 mins between her babies ‘micro sleeps’ she sits down with a coffee and flicks through the local paper. A story about a local educator celebrating 15 years of service catches her eye ... why wouldn’t it; childcare is now an issue for her. She reads with interest about the wonderful bonds the educator has had with children and parents over the years and the joy she gets from playing an important role in the lives of the children she cares for; it sounds great. At six-months, our mum is getting her child immunised and sees your poster at the doctor’s surgery, then again at the baby health clinic. Around the same time, she joins the local playgroup, six more months and she’ll be back to work ... it’s time to talk child care! She asks another mum; do you know about family day care? Sure, talk to Alecia’s mum, her older daughter goes to family day care. Alecia’s mum gives a glowing review of the virtues of family day care as if scripted from our website; she tells of the caring home like environment, the small group and the wonderful connection with the educator. When she gets home our mum ‘Googles’ family day care, she clicks through to the FDCA website ... she knows it’s the right website because she recognises the logo. She finds her local scheme and arranges to visit; it is easy to find because of the familiar sign out the front. Mum is impressed with the professionalism and the caring environment when she visits the scheme; they talk about her child, her objectives for her care, and the type of educator that might best suit. Mum arranges two educator meetings. Both are excellent, consistent, professional, well presented and show a genuine interest in mums needs and the needs of her child. Day 1 comes, mum and bub are both a bit apprehensive but mum received an email a few days earlier about managing your first day, so she is well prepared. Saying goodbye was tough but at lunch time mum is delighted to receive a text message to say that all’s well, it even had a photo of her daughter playing in the sand pit and confirmed her pick up time. When mum arrives, her daughter is happy and has had a great day. Mum is super impressed and tells all of her friends! 3 | P a g e Becoming ‘top of mind’ is about building strong brand awareness; this requires time. But time alone will not achieve brand awareness; each ‘contact’ with your market must present consistent, professional presentation and messages. Each ‘touch-point’ builds on the last so that when ‘decision-time’ eventually comes around, your brand is the first to mind. That’s why marketing must be planned and executed in a logical, sustained and strategic way; this requires good information and the gathering and application of knowledge about your market. Can you write a similar scenario for the recruitment of educators? _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ 4 | P a g e Section 1 Information Gathering 5 | P a g e 1.1 Understanding your marketing objectives Growth trends, demand and supply: The growth phase of your scheme and any specific growth objectives will influence the volume and intensity of your marketing efforts. What is the growth phase of your scheme: incline, static, decline? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Are you experiencing a static or steady (systematic) decline (you may require ongoing marketing to offset attrition) or are you experiencing a steep (situational) decline? (you may need to take marketing and operational action around a specific issue) ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Is there a demand problem: unfilled capacity (child recruitment) or is there a supply problem: unserviceable capacity (educator recruitment)? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you have other specific growth objectives? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ The consumer environment: Your consumer environment refers to your target market and any changes that may affect your scheme. A changing consumer environment will have a dramatic affect on your marketing objectives. Have the demographics changed: o Is the market shrinking or expanding? o Is your population ageing: do you need to look at new suburbs? o Are more families moving to your area, perhaps you need to target specific growth areas or recruit educators? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you need to create the “need for care”? Pitching to those who don’t need care but may choose care. This may require a specific campaign message? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 | P a g e The competitive environment: Has the competitive environment changed? Have competitors dropped out of the market? (You may need to target their parents or recruit new educators) or have new competitors entered the market? (You may need a more aggressive marketing program and/or to work on retention). ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT)? Do you need to promote your strengths and work on your weaknesses? S: __________________________________________________________________________________________ W: _________________________________________________________________________________________ O: _________________________________________________________________________________________ T: _________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Use the information you have collected above to make some general observations about your marketing objectives and requirements. This information will be used in developing your plan. How aggressive / intensive will your marketing program need to be? Do you need a lot of ongoing marketing to maintain your market share? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you require any specific / targeted marketing campaigns to address specific changes to your environment or to meet specific growth objectives? List any specific campaigns you may need to run in the next 12 months: eg Educator recruitment in a specific suburb? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 7 | P a g e 1.2 Understanding your audience To be effective in your marketing you need to understand your audience; this will help you to target your channels and messaging to reach and resonate with your audience. What is the ‘profile’ of the people using your service? What do you know about them? o People ‘like’ those who use your service will most likely also be interested in your service. o Are there any characteristics or similarities about the people who use your service that you can use to assist in targeting your marketing? Things like: age, occupation, location, income, education, work, marital status, and their reasons for needing care. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Where can you communicate with them? o What do they do, where do they go, what are their interests, where & when do they shop, what websites do they look at, what do they read, what else do we know? List them. _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ o What sources currently generate the most enquiries and where (geographically) do most enquiries come from? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ Why (specifically) do they choose family day care? o What are their key drivers for choice; what about family day care ‘pushes their buttons’ o Does your messaging reflect this? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: The information you have collected herein will assist in detailing the places and channels you use to communicate with your target market. This information will be used in developing your plan. In addition to the information collected above are there any other specific actions you need to action based on your findings: ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 8 | P a g e 1.3 Understanding time relevance / seasonality Marketing has ‘time and situational’ relevance; messages should reach their audience when they are most receptive. That’s why gyms promote in spring, why cold and flu remedies are promoted through winter, why tax services are promoted in June. Consider how time and situational relevance affect your marketing? Do enquiries fluctuate at certain times of the year? What influences this? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Are there times when people are more receptive to advertising? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Are there any community events you can leverage to promote family day care throughout the year? Make a list of major external key dates and local events, etc that you can leverage or be involved with as a channel to market your service: ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Are there any other time relevant or season factors that can help guide your marketing? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: This information will assist us in scheduling your marketing activity so that the messages reach your audience when they are most receptive. 9 | P a g e Section 2 Marketing Mix Review 10 | P a g e Basic marketing theory talks about the 4 Ps: product, place, price promotion. It is essential to understand that effective long term marketing goes well beyond the misconception of marketing as purely promotion or advertising. 2.1 Product At the end of the day, successful marketing starts and finishes with a quality product. Our tag line is excellent child care ... at home. To be truly successful we need to be truly excellent. Ever heard of the Disney Pancake? Disney is a model of success built through a commitment to their philosophy “we make happiness” ... order a pancake in Disneyland and this is what you get! How excellent is your product? Put yourself in the shoes of a potential new parent; from their first contact with you to their first visits, to their first day, their first week, their first year ... is each point excellent every time? Refer back to our ‘marketing theory in practice’ scenario. First contact: do you have a highly effective enquiries handling process? Do you have consistent phone scripts, do you capture every enquiry, do you talk the ‘why’, do you have training, do you ever mystery shop? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Scheme meeting: how does your scheme office present, is it well signed, branded, professional, does it reflect your product, how professional is your parent documentation, how is your educator / child matching process, what else can you do to improve? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Educator visit: presentation and preparation, consistency, standards, training, support, confirmation, 3 way communication and follow up, parent documentation, Disney Pancake? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ First Day: pre-email / tips / special considerations, confirmation, special process or effort, send mum a text at midday, Disney Pancake? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 11 | P a g e First week, first month, annually, etc. What else can you do to make your product excellent? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ How excellent are your educators? Are you targeting the right people, is your screening process effective, are there educators you may need to move on or retrain? Do you have a high turnover? How is your educator / EFT ratio? Are you targeting ‘career educators’? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ How good is your induction process? Are educators well equipped to begin? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you have a shared commitment to ongoing professional development? Do you have clear and measurable standards for your scheme (outside ‘minimum’ regs)? Do you expect measure and report on being excellent? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Diversification: Can you apply the skills and resources you have within your service to deliver new services and generate new revenue streams? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Identify key aspects of your product that make you excellent and others that require work. Develop a project plan for the important ones and work through them systematically with all stakeholders in your scheme. Also consider opportunities to diversify and create new revenue streams. 12 | P a g e 2.2 Place In a retail context, ‘place’ refers to shelf space and distribution networks; is the product readily available and can you get it to the people? The online revolution has dramatically altered this element of the marketing mix for consumer goods. In services marketing ‘place’ is more about: The physical space: ie the educators home Does the home reflect a good learning environment; does it represent your scheme and the educator in a way that is consistent with how you want to be represented? Are there ways to manage any issues or to improve: ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ The geographic location: Is care available where it is required? Are there unserviced locations? Is there scope to expand your reach? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Identify key aspects related to ‘place’ that make you excellent and others that require work. Develop a project plan for the important ones and work through them systematically with all stakeholders in your scheme. 13 | P a g e 2.3 Price People evaluate price based on ‘value’. Cheapest is not always preferable, neither does expensive necessarily mean quality. Your service must represent good value. Do you work with your educators to support pricing strategy and analysis? Is there a competitive analysis available to your educators to help them assess their ‘value’? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you have an understanding of your ‘price elasticity’? Perhaps small, incremental price increases will not affect demand? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Being excellent reduces price elasticity. Do you talk about the things that make you ‘excellent’ or do you focus on price? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Consider whether you need to work with your educators on pricing strategy and competitor analysis. Also work with your educators on consistent messaging about the benefits of family day care and their service, make them confident in their pricing decisions. 14 | P a g e 2.4 Promotion Too many people believe marketing starts with promotion. Ideally, promotion begins after each of the other elements of the marketing mix are in place. Notwithstanding, many of the other elements take time to perfect, promotion can start today. The 3 R’s of promotion: recruitment, retention, and referral. Recruitment: Recruitment is the process of bringing new business to your scheme and is the most common form of promotion but is also the most expensive. Good ‘recruitment’ is cost effective and targeted; hopefully the work we did in section 1 of this workshop has provided guidance around planning your marketing recruitment activities. Retention: Retention involves keeping your existing clients and hopefully, actually increasing your ‘share of wallet’ (ie they spend more with you). Retention is most often driven by a high quality product. Is there any pattern of children leaving your service to go elsewhere? If so, why and what can you do about this? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Can / do your educators offer before and after school care to older siblings or to children approaching school age? Do they offer vacation care and is this promoted to local primary schools? Are there other ways to increase ‘share of wallet’ and how will you support your educators in this area? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Do you / your educators communicate regularly with parents and remind them about how great family day care is and the great things you are doing? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Consider whether there are things that you can do to support retention in your scheme. Work with your educators to identify a couple of key strategies, develop a project plan and initiate change. 15 | P a g e Referral: Referral is the process of engaging your existing clients in the process of promoting your business. Referral also starts with a high level of customer satisfaction however sometimes people need to be encouraged to tell people how much they love you! Referrals will generally be your most effective source of new business. Existing educators will generally know people like them who may also be great potential educators. Do you encourage or remind your educators to refer new educators to you? Have you considered providing an incentive? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Current parents will also have the greatest network of potential other parents who may be interested in your services. Do you currently remind parents to refer a friend? This could be a simple quarterly letter to all parents? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY / ACTIONS: Identify some referral strategies and schedule ongoing referral activity into your marketing calendar. You may do a specific ‘campaign’ or you may just periodically remind parents and educators to provide referrals but this should be an active, not a passive process. 16 | P a g e Section 3 Develop Your Plan 17 | P a g e Once you have gathered all of the information you need, you are ready to start developing your marketing plan. Your marketing plan will have two main components; a number of ‘business objectives’ and a 12 month marketing calendar. These will both guide the development of your marketing budget. Business Objectives Your research and review of your marketing mix will uncover things within your business that will need to be managed and addressed with a systematic, project management approach and which fall outside of what can be scheduled into a 12 month marketing calendar. You may need to review policies and procedures such as phone enquiries handling procedures, first visit procedures, educator inductions, etc. You should make a list of all of the ‘projects’ or business objectives for the year. Prioritise them and make the S.M.A.R.T (specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, timely). A simple project plan for such strategies could look like this: Project: Project Owner Objective: Phone enquiry procedure <name> To improve phone enquiry procedures to capture information and improve follow up and conversion Strategy: Develop a phone enquiry script and follow up procedure Actions By Who By When Review existing procedures and document good/bad practice ID key data to capture & research phone scripts Develop draft script etc etc etc ACTION: 1. Go back through your workshop notes from Sections 1 and 2 and make a list of potential business objectives / projects. 2. Prioritise these projects from highest to lowest bearing in mind your resources and capacity to complete them. 3. Develop project plans for your highest priority items. 4. Enter these projects into your marketing calendar dashboard Refer to these sections specifically for business objectives: Page 6: Pages 9-10: Pages 11-12: Page 13: Page 14: ‘SWOT’ analysis ‘Product’ review ‘Place’ and ‘Price’ review Retention strategies Referral strategies 18 | P a g e 12 Month Marketing Calendar Remember our scenario of marketing in practice; your marketing needs to be ongoing. You should conduct some type of marketing activity every week of every month. A 12 month calendar will ensure that your marketing efforts are continuous, consistent and coordinated ... and not sporadic. Overview The template marketing calendar provides you with a format for an effective management tool. The 12 month excel calendar comprises two main sections: Dashboard: The dashboard is a snapshot view of your marketing activity for the year. At a glance, it provides you with a visual guide as to when you need to allocate time and resources to marketing. The dashboard, once completed should be printed and sit above the desk of all of your key staff, it is also a reference tool for weekly and monthly meetings and should be shared with your educators. Detailed Planning Tabs: Each of the main sections of the dashboard has a ‘workings’ tab. The workings tab is where you will develop the ‘bones’ of you plan, it contains the details of what actual marketing activity is planned. Step 1: Ongoing Promotions Tab You marketing state of mind should be one of ‘perpetual promotion’. You need to market your service year-round to build momentum. Some weeks it may be as simple replenishing you flyers that you have in brochure holders around your community, other weeks you may be at the local shopping centre, kids sporting fields, or at a local event ... whatever it is, you should have some form of marketing activity almost every other week. You will refer to your ongoing promotions tab on an almost weekly basis. It forms an important part of regular planning and resourcing because these are the things that keep business ticking over from month to month and help manage attrition. ACTION: Use the information below and that collected throughout the workshop to help you populate this detailed planning tab. There are suggestions included in the template but we recommend you apply the ideas developed as part of your own brainstorming. Tradeshows/Exhibitions/Events: this type of promotion is known as ‘outreach’ and involves physically putting yourself/your organisation at places where the target audience will gather. Refer to your notes from Page 8 of the workshop. Make a list of events, tradeshows, etc within your catchment and schedule these into your calendar. You may not attend them all but having a comprehensive list will allow you to plan where you will and won’t invest your time and energy. Plan what resources you will take and who you will send, staff need to be bubbly and outgoing and you need to represent your organisation professionally. 19 | P a g e Flyers and posters: another form of outreach includes leaving flyers and posters in places where your target audience may ‘gather’ or go and / or physically attending specific locations on a regular basis to distribute your flyers. Refer to your notes from Section 1.2 to develop and insert into your calendar a comprehensive list of possible locations. Shopping Centres and Kids sport are great places to interact with your target audience. Think about the best times and places to go and schedule these into your marketing activity. You will need to build a relationship with some outlets so that they provide you space to display your material. Make sure that you schedule time to restock any brochure holders and replace any damaged posters. Also make sure you foster your relationships with the places that display your material; invite them to an event, send them a Christmas card, maybe buy them a small gift now and then? Press ads & radio: Advertising is expensive but there are some community papers and radio that may be cost effective. If you have the budget, ads do offer good exposure but see if you can negotiate editorial also. If you have good relationships with other schemes within the newspaper and radio catchment, consider sharing some advertising expense. Use your notes from Section 1 of the workshop to help you to plan your advertising schedule and to get your messaging right. Consider different types of ads like business opportunity classifieds for new educators. There are numerous press ready ads available free of charge on the Family Day care Australia online print centre. Community Service Announcements: Although dated, FDCA has Community Service Announcements for TV and radio that can be used by your scheme to seek free advertising in your local region. We hope to update these in the near future. Request a copy of the commercials from FDCA. Contact your local media and ‘pitch’ your case for them to be aired Focus on the not for profit community service you provide. Schedule periodic reminders / requests with your local media to reactivate your commercials Online: the fastest growing way people find out information about your service. Parents search your site, related websites, blogs, parenting sites etc for information. Does your own website reflect the image you want to portray? Is it up to date? Schedule fortnightly updates into your calendar and make it someone’s responsibility? Remember what gets measured gets done!). Do some research to find out what business in your area service the same target audience as you but who are not in competition. Consider sharing links to each other’s websites or advertising on their site. If they have a quality site they will be able to give you stats on the usage so you can evaluate the potential effectiveness and you should be able to measure traffic through to your site from theirs. 20 | P a g e Refer a friend: although you may have a major referral campaign each year schedule a periodic reminder to parents about referrals. Do a quarterly reminder to parents to refer a friend. Maybe just slip a flyer into children’s bags? School Holiday Care: Speak with local schools about promoting your service, they will have numerous, low cost channels available to you. Emphasise your ‘not for profit’ community/parent service position. Schedule the various marketing activities into your calendar so you don’t forget and so that you can plan ahead. Don’ forget to promote internally ie. To existing parents who may have older children Real estate agents: They deal with a lot of new members of your ‘target audience’ ie new residents. Speak with them about including your material in any information they give out or at least include them in your flyers/posters list. Industry based promotions: Family day care offers some unique benefits over long day care in particular, flexible hours and the ability to support shift-working parents. As such, industries with a significant employee base who work shifts are a great target audience for family day care. Make a list of all of the industries / organisations in your region that have a large employee base that works shifts. Prioritise them and schedule on your calendar a systematic roll out of marketing activities specifically targeted to this audience. Speak to the HR manager at the organisation about what opportunities exist to promote family day care to their employees. Be sure to ‘pitch’ yourself as a community based not for profit and that you are offering an important ‘solution’ to the problem of childcare for shift workers; this could be a significant issue for their employees and as such they should be keen to assist you. Ideas for promotion might include: o Attaching a flyer to each person’s payslip o Presenting at a staff meeting or event o Getting the HR manager to send a pre-drafted email to all employees o Getting a piece in their staff newsletter or noticeboards o They may have an employee intranet o Speak to them about what other opportunities might exist. Sponsorship: Sponsorship can be an effective way to gain exposure and to build relationships but you need to do your research: Does the organisation, team, event, etc align with your values? Does the sponsorship give you exposure to your target audience? Will people see you brand? Through the sponsorship can you communicate directly with the target audience; does it offer a website, newsletter, regular flyers, an event, etc where you can promote your business. If you do choose to sponsor, details here the various activities you will undertake to leverage (take full advantage of) your sponsorship investment. 21 | P a g e Step 2: Major Campaigns Tab Major campaigns are generally when you will invest the most resources into promoting a particular product, service or concept. Major campaigns should be scheduled and executed at a time when you know the audience / market are most receptive. Each major campaign must be planned and budgeted individually and this is done in the ‘major campaigns’ tab. A major campaign may also be a launch or when you roll out a new product, service or similar. Marketing needs to occur throughout the year but your major campaigns are when you throw all of your resources behind your promotion and you engage everyone involved in the process. Ideally, you will ‘dovetail’ local area major campaigns with ‘global’ campaigns being executed by FDCA. In doing so, our collaborative efforts multiply the awareness and impact of the campaign. ACTION: Go back through your workshop notes and identify anything you highlighted as requiring a more targeted or intensive marketing effort. Things like: o A major downturn in child or educator numbers o A change in your consumer or competitive environment. o A specific growth objective o New suburbs to target Make a list and prioritise and then choose which campaigns are manageable. Schedule the campaigns into your calendar using the information you have developed about timing and seasonality and from your understanding of your target audience. Once you have listed and scheduled the campaigns, use the additional information you have gathered on your target audiences to details of the specific activities that will support the campaign. 22 | P a g e Step 3: Communications and PR Tab In addition to your regular communications, leveraging the media is a great opportunity to promote your business and family day care has lots of great stories to share. FDCA’s PR has a scheduled PR piece every month. Scheduling of the various PR topics is built around seasonal and/or community events from which FDC can leverage. The PR piece will include a customisable media release for schemes and where appropriate, programming activities and/or suggestions that align with the PR piece and which deliver components of the EYLF. Remember, local papers especially love photo opportunities so the activities that support the media releases are great content for local media, but make it EASY for the paper; have your event well organised and give them plenty of notice, know your educators and their children so you can propose locations that suit their needs and are convenient. Also, where possible, have media release forms signed in advance. You may also have opportunities to be proactive in the media at a local level, around local stories. A photo release form is available in the media section of the FDCA website. FDCA requests that you review in detail our media guide prior to any communications with the media. ACTION: Review the media schedule a month in advance to plan around what’s coming up from FDCA. Download and share the activity planning resources with your educators and chose an educator as a suggested photo opportunity. Download, customise and share with the FDCA release with your local media. Make a list of local events and goings on you may be able to generate media from. Consider what other ‘news’ you may be able to schedule into your media plan generated from local goings on. There are several examples to prompt ideas in the media guide. Step 4: Develop Your Dashboard From each of the detailed planning tabs you have developed, take the main headings / activities and transpose them onto the dashboard. Remember the dashboard is a summary of activities so keep it as a snapshot view that you can place above your desk and use in planning meetings. Add External Key Dates It is a good idea to include external key dates, relevant to your organisation or sector as they help you in your marketing planning and scheduling and, they can often be ‘leveraged’ to generate marketing and media opportunities. 23 | P a g e Step 5: Integrated Marketing It is important to engage and involve your educators in your marketing efforts and support and guide them in how they can contribute to the overall growth of your scheme. Below is a simple educator marketing calendar, you should integrate this calendar with your marketing activities so that your promotions work together to build momentum. This plan template is available on the FDCA Online Print Centre. 24 | P a g e Step 6: Implement the Plan Any plan is only as good as its implementation, so once you have written your plan, you need to work it! Once completed, print several copies of the dashboard and share them with key staff to put on their wall in their office or above their desk. Schedule a monthly meeting with key staff to review each of the sections of the plan in details and to plan ahead. Also review the marketing activities you have done in the last month. Have a longer, more in depth meeting each quarter to review the plan and make any adjustments. There may also be some activities in the plan that have a long lead time and required additional planning. 25 | P a g e Appendices and Additional Resources 26 | P a g e IDEAS & RESOURCES Promotional Ideas Children & Parents Recruitment: o Website: do you have one, can people find it, how are your keywords, is it up to date, does it “sell” the benefits o Google adwords o Parenting websites o Website parents visit in your location o Social media o In shopping centres when mums are shopping or in the street o At places that mums with young children visit: chemists, Dr surgery, baby health clinic, playgroup, swim class, o Print magazines and local publications, coffee shop magazine o Newspaper ads, or inserts o Via real estate agents: new residents / new estates o Local events where parents might go: markets, baby expos, community events, etc: research a list of what is on and when. o Editorials and PR. Build a relationship and tell your story. o Schools o Signage & posters: vehicles, uniforms, locations, banners, community noticeboards o Kids sporting events o Offer/sponsor parent/community training sessions eg Child Protection o Parks, coffee shops, gyms (with crèche), kid friendly movies, school fetes Retention: o Driven by a quality product o Consistent parent communication: newsletter. Sing your praises o Plan for turnover: develop a plan to ‘replace’ children approaching school age o Promote OOSH to parents of children approaching school age o Promote OOSH and vaccare to parents of children in care Referrals: o Also driven by a quality product o Consistent parent communication: newsletter. Sing your praises o Referral business cards o Referral incentive 27 | P a g e Other Ideas & Resources The Local Competition Understanding the competition in your local market and the services, fees and value ads they offer plays an important role in how you position your service within that locale. It will help clarify where your service sits and can offer you ideas on how you can counteract the impact they might have on your target audience/consumers. Prepare a list of questions to ask each competitive child care service, make copies and then arrange for someone to sit and call all these services in your area seeking answers to your questions – the information gathered will be valuable in assessing your own service provision. There are a few avenues that you can use to search your local area/region for other child care services. Yellow Pages www.yellowpages.com.au Search for types of child care in your suburb/region. Care for Kids www.careforkids.com.au Care for Kids is a great website to search for all forms of child care. Use your postcode to search your area/region. It provides information on all various forms of child care and services. Media Sources Identifying and building a database of all your local mediums and media vehicles will ensure you have ready access for any editorial, promotional or story opportunities. As is often the case with most media, time is of the essence and deadlines are protected. Save time by having an updated list of your local media contacts. Try and build a relationship with them, invite editors to any award ceremonies or special events. MediaBay www.mediabay.com.au MediaBay offers a comprehensive index for all print, radio and television stations nationally. Use this site to find out exactly what media vehicle is in your area. Contact details for each medium are provided on this site. In addition, there is information on other forms of advertising from cinema to outdoor. Upcoming Local Events It is important to know what events, expos, sporting carnivals and festivals are planned in your region. These represent an opportunity to become involved with booths, information tables, brochure hand outs and also present promotional opportunities for your service. Our Kidz www.ourkidz.com.au This website has family oriented event information. It also advertises events free, so if you have an event on your calendar then list the details on this site free of charge. Regional Events Calendar – various websites Most regions have dedicated websites that index upcoming events, simply type in the region’s name then events calendar. In addition, most councils have an events guide. Our Community www.ourcommunity.com.au This site offers useful information regarding what’s on, when and where. It has a range of topics. Well worth a browse. 28 | P a g e Free Online Business Listing Sites There are any number of business listing sites that advertise your services free of charge. Listed below are just a few that you can start with – create a spreadsheet listing all the sites you have registered on and spend a bit of time each week adding to this list. The more sites you are on the better for your business. Remember, it is very important to have one consistent message or tag line. Consistent branding and a consistent message will keep family day care top of mind in the market. www.localbusinessguide.com.au www.webfind.com.au www.hotfrog.com.au www.truelocal.com.au www.aussieweb.com.au Marketing Resources and Tools of Trade Organise all of your marketing materials; ensure you have ample stock to market your service. Prepared kits and information folders save time. Do a stock take and top up any marketing material you need. Keep abreast of new marketing material available from Family Day Care Australia. Ordering in bulk saves you money and time. Visit www.familydaycare.com.au for marketing material updates. Conference / Expo Kits Using a large hard plastic storage box (with a lid) or a large sturdy suitcase on wheels put together a kit for any expos, conferences or fetes you may attend. Having these expo kits ready to go reduces the last minute rush to ensure you have all that you need. It also keeps your information, presentations and image consistent at each expo. Remember to refill your conference kit after each expo. Below are the basic recommended contents for an expo kit. Add or reduce these according to your needs. large red oblong tablecloth educator and family recruitment posters (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre) family day care brochures (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre) educator and family recruitment DL flyers (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre) logo polo shirt for each person working at booth plenty of business cards (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre)and x2 plastic business card holders Pull up family day care banner (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre) Information handouts about your particular scheme and the service you provide blue tack, scissors, string, sticky tape, x6 pens, x6 small note pads, x4 manila folders, x2 permanent markers, rubber bands, double sided tape Promotion items to give away such as balloons, emery boards, tattoos (available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre) Plastic document holders/stands for flyers and/or brochures. These holders keep your booth or stand looking neat – making sourcing information simple and allowing information to be seen easily 29 | P a g e Create Recruitment and Family Information Kits Recruitment Kit: The artwork for the family day care presentation folders is available through the Family Day Care Online Print Centre. These presentation folders have been designed to reinforce and strengthen the family day care brand nationally. How you present and prepare for interviewing potential educators will be an immediate reflection on the level of professionalism you expect from them. If you are not already doing so, include testimonials from other educators on the benefits of being an educator, this is the best form of credibility you can give a potential new educator. Family Information Kit: Aside from the official documents and information you provide to families, once again, include testimonials from other families. These are very powerful persuasive tools. Presentation and image Whilst it would be agreed that appearances do not impede how well you perform your job the reality is that you and/or your services are initially judged and will continue to be judged on your appearance, image and presentation. For this reason, it is important for your business to ensure you convey a professional and well presented impression to new families and/or educators. Educators also need to appreciate the value to ‘their’ business by being aware of how they present to the families. Everyone is encouraged to have a standard uniform. This also keeps it very simple for educators and staff alike to get ready each morning and present a consistent appearance to the families. Newspaper editorial support All newspapers rely on the public providing them with topical/interesting stories. Every editor will always look for the ‘hook’ or ‘angle’ of a story. If you have an event or a milestone has been reached in your scheme then when preparing your submission to an editor always include a hook of some sort. Make the story interesting, funny, heart warming, unique or unusual. The most common mistake people make when sending a story to their local newspapers is the story sounds bland to the editor. While you might be passionate about family day care, many readers are not! Get them interested with a great story. Radio community service announcements Many regions have radio stations that run community service announcements for free. These can be used for promoting an event, announcing vacancies etc. Use these free resources – it’s another way to get the family day care brand into the market. Below is a link to radio and TVC’s produced by Family Day Care Australia for your use. http://www.familydaycare.com.au/index.php/main/Marketing%20and%20Media#S141 30 | P a g e Posters Using the Family Day Care Online Print Centre you can purchased professionally designed posters and personalise them with your information. This saves schemes and educators the expense and time of designing, ordering and paying for a small print run. Put these posters up in as many local positions as you can – Doctors’ surgeries, local hospitals, play groups, health centres, dentists, grocery stores, local corner stores, recruitment agencies, toy stores, Centrelink offices and local businesses. There is no limit to the number of places you can put these around your area. Ask your educators to give some to the parents to put up at their place of employment. The more posters you put up the more exposure you are bringing to your service. 31 | P a g e DL Flyers/brochures Put these into many of the drop sites as per posters; remember that flyers can end up on the floor, be blown away etc so place them indoor where people have to wait around (ie Doctors’ surgeries, dentists, specialist health services, hospital emergency rooms, hospital maternity rooms etc). Front Back Front Back 32 | P a g e Annual event Host one for your scheme. Whether it’s a fete, an open date, a variety sale, a book fair, a plant sale or all of the above. The important thing is to remain committed to the event, many other national associations have special annual days (red nose day, pink ribbon day etc) and it can take a couple of years for these events to gather momentum. Each year your annual event will grow and gather more recognition and support from local media and businesses. Ask coordination unit staff, educators and families to help out with the event. Try and gather as much local business support as you can. Sell stalls to the local trade on the day of your event. Create as much hype as you can. Invite your local radio station to do live crosses or broadcast direct from your event. Stand by your commitment to run it as an annual event, it will bring in huge numbers of people both within your targeted demographic and those outside it. Either way, you are reaching a broad range of people in your community. Select a suitable but ‘catchy’ name for the event and stick with it. Have plenty of activities going on to increase the time visitors spend there. Visit www.fetesandfestivals.com.au/ for helpful site for fetes, stalls or activity ideas. Information Sessions Consider running an information session one Saturday inviting the community along to find out exactly what family day care does for the local community through the services it provides. Use this information session as a branding tool, have the family day care logo positioned everywhere. Encourage current educators and families to join in and ask a few of them to give a spoken testimonial about your service. Consider holding this in your local shopping centre where you will be exposed to more families and members of the public. Local external events Find out what events, galas, fetes and sporting days are planned for your area. Get involved through a booth, a stall or handing out flyers. The more you’re seen out in your community the higher the recognition for your business. Website If you have a website then keep it updated regularly. Make your site informative and fun. Keep your home page ‘user friendly’. Many websites make the mistake of trying to cram too much information on their home page. Your home page should be clear and easy to navigate, include your family day care logo. Use your web site to post event information, what’s on, tributes, milestones, staff profiles and educator profiles to name a few. 33 | P a g e Paid Advertising No media, whether it is TV, radio or print will ever offer you discounted rates initially. You really need to push them for a discount. If you need to advertise your scheme through one of these mediums then work out exactly what your budget is then take 20% off and quote that amount as your total spend. Remember that most media rates are ex GST. Explain your services to them and push the whole community assistance side of your business. Explain that you would need ROS (run of station) no charge spots included in their proposal. It is vital that you get the sales person on side when discussing your needs as they have the ability to schedule in a lot of free spots, the flip side to that is if they don’t particularly get on well with you they can axe any free spots. Family Day Care Australia have two TV commercials that are rated G that you can have access to any time you wish to book ads on TV. In addition we also have two radio commercials that can be made available for you to use locally. Recording a TV and/or radio commercial costs big money so why not use what Family Day Care Australia already has. All commercials are generic and include the family day care hotline. Enquiries are directed to the appropriate scheme/schemes for the postcode area supplied. Vehicles & other signage If you have a scheme motor vehicle then why not consider having it branded with the family day care logo and your scheme name. A few schemes have already done this and the vehicles look brilliant. This is a great marketing resource and a true stand out mobile billboard. Educators Encourage educators to get involved in the marketing of their business. Consider running a competition for the most creative branded letterbox or the most creative marketing concept. Even though there might seem to be only one winner, in fact each educator is a winner by becoming involved in marketing their own business. Ask your educators if they can keep a lookout for any locations that would suit the posters or flyers. This lets them know you are also working hard to help build their business as well as your own. 34 | P a g e Everyone works in marketing: Engage and Embrace The greatest resource or marketing tools any business can have are its ‘people’. One of the main ingredients to any successful business is involving, empowering and exciting its staff and all those involved. It is difficult to become excited and passionate about something you don’t understand. Keep your staff updated, organise think tanks for any problems you might be having. Involve them in the organising of upcoming events. Ask your staff to take responsibility for a certain task and recognise the work they are doing. Nearly everyone thrives on positive feedback. In addition to your staff, you have access to a huge number of people in your community that can be of assistance to you. Educators, families, volunteer groups. If you are planning an event and you need help then put the word out. Let the families know you need their support ask them if they know of anyone who can help out. Whether you’re repainting walls, having a big clean up or organising a fete – they can’t help if they don’t know you need them. Rules of Engagement Encourage everyone to visit Family Day Care Australia’s website for the latest information on child care issues. Build and maintain a database of parents’ contact details and email them with upcoming events etc. It is important to ensure the integrity of the data you have. Don’t overload them with irrelevant information. Ensure the information and updates you email to parents is relevant to them, be mindful to keep your information to the point and keep it simple. You need to get your message across in less than 30 seconds of reading time. Recognise milestones for educators in your service; I, 5, 10, 15 or 20 years in family day care etc. Send media releases to your local newspapers about the particular milestone. If possible always try and include an emotional ‘hook’ – does the educator have a high dependency child in care? Has the educator made a significant difference to a family? These are just some angles that you can look for when preparing a media release. Remember, an editor will not run a story they consider dull. Always base the correspondence to your families around the benefits for the children. If you are planning a special event always include how the success of the event will benefit the children in your service. Recognise the efforts by individuals or companies after an event. Prepare certificates of appreciation and think about organising a gratitude ceremony for select participants. This does not have to be a gala event, maybe have it on a Saturday afternoon with afternoon tea or a BBQ. It can take as little as an hour and will ensure your helpers return for more next time. The collective experience and abilities within your scheme’s families is diverse, if you need professional assistance or work done – contact your families first for a referral. They certainly have a vested interest in the outcome. 35 | P a g e Business partnerships Building relationships with the local businesses in your area and engaging them in the benefits your service offers to the working community is very important. Family day care is in a great position to form beneficial partnerships with local businesses because of the very service you offer. Your business is not considered competition and if pitched correctly can actually be seen as a supportive service the employer can offer their staff. The support the company can offer ranges from flyers in reception, posters in lunchrooms, emails to staff from the managing Director, stories in company newsletters or even co-branded advertising: eg ‘Bunnings – proud supporters of (scheme’s name) Family Day Care’. Family day care is an emotional sell, pull at their heart strings with some warm and happy stories. Do you have any local call centres, major shopping centres, manufacturing plants, hospitals or any companies that has shift work? If so, they represent a great opportunity to promote your service to employees resulting in a more cohesive and productive workplace with employees who are confident with a reliable, consistent, flexible child care service. Local Schools This is the ideal area to target potential new educator and families. Build a database list of every school in your scheme’s area and try to make an appointment to meet with the principal to discuss the services you offer and how it can help the families of their students. Point out how that particular school can help family day care distribute important information to all the local families through school newsletters, canteen posters etc. Do this with all the schools. VIP Community Members Invite you local Member of Parliament or any person of prominence to any/all of your presentation dinners, award nights or special events, let them see the importance of your service to their community. Build relationships with editors and include them in any important events or awards planned. Ask them to be the special guest speaker or announce any award winners, just get them involved in who you are and what you do. 36 | P a g e Capture the Caller at all Cost Even if you had a million dollar budget, no marketing will ever be successful unless it is backed up with excellent customer service. How you answer your phone, or greet and interact with others is probably the most neglected part of marketing. Treat every enquiry with the utmost respect – if not, you won’t hear from them again! always answer your phone with a pleasant, consistent and professional greeting speak clearly and don’t rush the caller keep all information readily at hand always explain yourself properly, if you have no vacancies then offer them an alternative or possibly ask them to contact you at a given time in the future ensure whoever answers the telephone understands the important role it plays in your business and tell them how you expect any phone calls to be handled Return your calls. The greatest complaint in business is messages not being returned. Try setting aside an allocated amount of time each day and dedicate it to returning missed calls. Keep a notebook beside the telephone and take a brief note about the caller enquiry. This notebook should never leave the phone and can be invaluable for finding lost numbers or names. follow up and deliver on any promises made – sending out information or contacting the caller again treat your business telephone with absolute respect, studies have shown that a customer can and will be lost within the first 45 seconds of a phone call if their enquiry is not handled efficiently and professionally word of mouth is the most powerful advertising around – whether it is positive or negative is up to you Your telephone is a direct link to your market and continued success. Make the most of every opportunity that comes in through this communication channel. 37 | P a g e
