Why you should be thinking like a Marketer?
Your preschool is not just a place of education but also a business that requires a sustainable marketing plan. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to start thinking like a marketer and provide you with practical and effective preschool marketing ideas, templates, and tools to help you create a successful marketing plan. Marketing helps us put our customers first and think about how we can gain and keep the right customers – and deliver better service!
“Marketing is the activities a business does to get the right customers to buy its products and services to solve customer needs”
Head and Heart: You need both to run a sustainable preschool
Mind shifts: How to start thinking like a practical preschool Marketer
As a preschool owner, you must think like a marketer to develop a successful marketing plan that will help you gain and keep quality paying customers.
If you want to run a great preschool that can serve the community for many years, you need to start applying business principles. Your preschool is a business, providing a valuable service. The parents are your customers who are willing to pay as long as your service remains valuable to them.
The Marketing Process for Preschools
This guide will help you walk through the marketing process step-by-step and create practical and low-cost action plans which you can start to implement immediately.
By understanding your ideal customer, providing solutions to their wants and needs, setting marketing goals, choosing the best time of year to market your preschool, and using preschool marketing ideas, templates, and tools, you can create a marketing plan that is tailored to your specific needs and goals.
Understand Your Ideal Customer
To develop a successful marketing plan, you must first understand your customer. This means understanding the problems they face when it comes to childcare and early learning education. When you understand your customer’s specific needs, you can make sure your marketing message speaks directly to them.
Some questions to ask yourself:
- What problem does your customer face when it comes to childcare?
- What is important to her when looking for a preschool?
- Where does she look for preschool services or information on preschools?
People Buy Solutions to Their Wants and Needs
As a preschool, you need to provide a solution to parents’ needs for quality education, healthy meals, a safe learning space, and qualified teachers. When you speak directly to your customer’s specific needs or problems, you are more likely to get their attention and gain their business.
Top Tip!
- Create a list of all the wants and needs your ideal customer has (specific to childcare and early learning).
- Are some of the problems more important than others? Rank them so that you can speak about the most important wants and needs first.
Example of customers problems and how you can solve them:
| Customer Problem | Your Solution |
|---|---|
| 🙁I don’t have time to take my child to a preschool far from home. | 😁Our school conveniently opens at 06:45 and closes at 18:15 every workday. |
| 🙁I don’t have money for a fancy, expensive school, but I want the best for my child. | 😁We provide a very good service that includes breakfast, lunch and afternoon activities at a reasonable rate – it’s value for your money. You get what you pay for. |
| 🙁I want my child to eat healthily and be healthy. | 😁We have a weekly meal plan with a variety of healthy meals. We cook daily. Children may only pack healthy snacks (No sweets or cool drinks are allowed). The only exception is birthdays. |
| 🙁I want my child to be safe and happy. | 😁Our building has a good security gate. Children are always supervised. |
| 🙁I want my child to be ready for big school. | 😁We offer an approved ECD programme aligned to NCF. We assess learners twice a year against development milestones. |
Set Marketing Goals for your Preschool
Decide on your most important marketing goals, which are usually to gain and keep your customers. You can focus on each goal at different times of the year, depending on the season or the current needs of your business. Setting marketing goals will help you create a marketing plan that is tailored to your specific needs.
Best Time of Year for Marketing Your Preschool
The best time of year to market your preschool is during the enrolment season, when parents are searching for new opportunities and placements for their children. However, you should also consider marketing during other times of the year when parents may be looking for alternative childcare options.
Marketing Templates and Resources
Marketing templates can help you easily create marketing materials specific to your school. For example, having a professional POPI compliant enrolment form or creating a beautiful digital flyer you can share on WhatsApp increases your school’s credibility.
Best Preschool Marketing Tools
Using technology shows that you operate a modern, professional school. With the free ECD App, you, your teachers and your parents can stay connected around everything important to your customer: enrolment, payment records, attendance records, the school calendar, daily observations and learner assessment results. The best part? The app is free for any ECD Centre in South Africa. Download the app here.
Get our free step by step marketing guidebook
GROW exists to empower the people who are educating the next generation. We hope that this guide will inspire and assist you with your marketing, helping you get back to what matters most: quality education for children and sustainable preschool businesses.
GET OUR FREE STEP BY STEP MARKETING GUIDEBOOK. Includes 10 tips on how to gain new customers AND 10 tips on how to keep existing customers happy.