Back-to-school season is right around the corner! Now’s the time to prepare your childcare center for the new school year. By improving your marketing efforts, hiring new staff, increasing enrollment, and more you can ensure you’re setting your center up for success.
There’s a variety of ways to prepare and improve your center using simple, effective, and budget-friendly strategies. By implementing new techniques, you can build a solid foundation for your center’s future growth. Utilizing free templates and software features from Kangarootime will help you prepare and organize your center for the upcoming year.
Keep reading to learn more about tips, tricks, and tools that can help prepare your childcare center for the back to school season in 2021.
Improving Marketing Techniques
Marketing is essential to growing your center and increasing enrollment. There’s a range of ways to improve your marketing efforts using the simple strategies and free tools listed below.
Utilize social media
Cover your bases by creating and utilizing accounts on all social media platforms. Post about upcoming center events, fun happenings, new offerings, special promotions and more. Social media is the easiest way to reach your target audience without having to spend money.
Optimize your website
Make sure your website is up to date with all of your current information. This includes proper photos, correct hours, program offerings, etc. It’s also important to have multiple areas on your website where parents can submit a form. This is how you’ll capture leads and connect with families looking to enroll.
Utilize a CRM
A CRM will help you boost enrollment by automating the enrollment process. A CRM will allow you to capture lead information through phone calls, emails, website inquiries, and walk-ins. It will also allow you to stay organized and keep track of follow-up tasks like scheduling tours and sending emails. To get started with a CRM made specifically for childcare centers, check out ChildcareCRM.com.
Build a brand
A key part of marketing your center is understanding what you stand for and what you want to be known for. This is identified through your brand. Build a brand for your center by highlighting your mission, vision, and values. This will help potential families identify with your center and want to enroll. For more information on building a brand for your center, click here.
Increasing Enrollment
While improving your marketing efforts will increase enrollment, other techniques can help as well.
Ask for Reviews
Happy families will be willing to promote your center by writing a positive review. You can even offer an incentive such as a tuition discount or a gift card to get more people involved. The best place to request a review is on Google. Simply register your business with Google My Business to get started.
Offer a Promotion
Get more families to enroll in your center by offering a special promotion on tuition. This could be reduced tuition, waived registration fees, one month free, etc.
Host a Meet and Greet or Open House
Allow prospective families to get to know your center. Hosting an event is a great way to get them familiar with your center and boost enrollment. You can even host this event virtually to cut down on costs and maximize efficiency while prioritizing safety.
Extend Program Offerings
Look into offering after school or school-age programs to reach as many families as possible. Whether that’s an in-person class or virtual tutoring, there’s ways to get creative and open up your center to more families.
Reduce Tour No-Shows
Reduce tour no-shows at your center with these tips from ChildcareCRM. Start by reminding parents about their upcoming tour through their preferred contact method and manage your scheduling process through ChildcareCRM! Learn more here.
For more information on increasing enrollment and retention rates at your center, click here.
Hiring Quality Staff Members
Hiring staff for your childcare center can seem like an impossible task right now. Using the right techniques can help increase your number of applicants and, more importantly, get new hires to stay.
Create In-Depth Job Descriptions
Make sure your job descriptions are accurate and in-depth. These should highlight day-to-day job responsibilities and also showcase why your center is a great place to work. For more information and free job description templates, download Kangarootime’s Hiring Guide here.
Redefine Your Hiring Process
Revamp your hiring process to attract and hire the right candidates. Consider setting up an email drip campaign to continue following up with candidates. You can also host a call-back night for prospective and previous employees and host group interviews to make the process easier and less time-consuming.
For more hiring tips and insight, check out these tips for hiring and retaining staff members.
Implementing Technology
Technology can help you boost enrollment at your childcare center by saving you valuable time and resources while also increasing efficiency and organization.
A childcare management system like Kangarootime will give you the features to automate and optimize your center. Using this technology you can save time and money through:
- Automatic Billing and Invoicing
- Increased Parent Engagement and Communication
- Seamless Classroom Management
- Improved Staff Scheduling
- Subsidy Billing Management
- And more!
To request more information about Kangarootime, click here.
Utilize Free Templates
Kangarootime has a plethora of free templates to help you keep your teachers organized, track developmental milestones, report incidents, track registration information, and more.
They can be downloaded by submitting the forms within our posts. You will then receive the free template in your email. Find all of our free templates here.
We hope these tips help you get your center ready for back-to-school season 2021!
Kangarootime is the leading all-in-one childcare management software for daycares and preschools. With billing and invoicing capabilities, parent communication and staff management tools and classroom automation, Kangarootime helps childcare centers grow and scale. To learn more about optimizing your center with Kangarootime, visit kangarootime.com
