Family Child Care Marketing Guide, Second Edition

The Profession of Family Child Care

Family child care is a unique profession that requires a wide variety of skills: teaching, cooking, mediating, chauffeuring, bookkeeping, organizing, and much, much more. It is a job that hundreds of thousands of women and men perform because they love children and want to support their own families. A family child care professional is not a babysitter. A babysitter is someone who watches children (usually from just one family) for a few hours in the evening while the parents are away from home at a movie or social event. A professional family child care provider is someone who is in the business of teaching and nurturing young children to reach their highest potential, often for more than fifty hours a week year-round. A provider is intentional about planning activities to meet the individual and changing needs of the children in care. This is not an easy job.

At its heart, family child care is about the very personal relationship between a caregiver, a child, and the child’s family. This home-centered, personal relationship is what makes family child care so special. At the same time, providers must care for their own physical and emotional needs in order to continue to offer this important service. In the long run, providers must learn to balance the personal and business sides of their profession to be successful.

Being a family child care professional means being in control of your business. You are responsible for setting your own rates and hours, deciding who your customers will be, and choosing what type of curriculum you will offer. Before you care for your first child, you should decide what kind of business you want to have. This is one of the best parts of being self-employed. You are the boss! You are free to set your own rules (as long as they don’t violate antidiscrimination laws) and change them whenever you want. Because of this, you should make choices that will make you happy. It doesn’t make sense to set up your business, successfully market it to customers, and then quit a year later because you are unhappy with your income or the fact that you didn’t have a paid vacation. If you have been in business for a few years and haven’t thought carefully about what you want, it is never too late to do so. Once you have defined what you want for your business, marketing becomes a very powerful ally. If you are not in control of your business, marketing it will not make things better. See the Family Child Care Business Planning Guide for more information on how to put your business on a solid footing.

This book focuses on family child care marketing. Although I use business terminology when discussing marketing concepts—referring to finder’s fees, promotions, and competition, for example—you should understand that offering a high-quality home-based program and marketing it as a business are not contradictory actions. In fact, a comprehensive national study about the quality of family child care concluded that providers are more likely to rank higher on objective measures of quality if they follow standard business practices and charge higher rates! (See The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care, cited in appendix M.)

Being a successful marketer of your business does not mean you must adopt negative business trappings, such as cutthroat competition, high-pressure sales tactics, profit worship, or a win-lose mentality. All providers can achieve success in marketing their business while keeping the casual, homey, friendly, warm, and professional aspects of their program.

For some providers, marketing presents special challenges. We live in a society where discrimination based on race, sex, religion, class, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnic background still exists. In addition, limited educational background or a lack of support agencies and community services can sometimes, but not always, create barriers to success for providers. This book does not attempt to answer how providers can overcome these barriers of discrimination and opportunity, but all family child care providers can improve the amount of pride and control they have in running their own business by following some of the ideas it contains.

What Is Family Child Care Marketing?

Simply stated, family child care marketing is the ongoing communication about your program’s benefits to your marketing audience:

•parents who might use your services

•parents who are currently using your services

•parents who formerly used your services

The goal of marketing is to reach parents and compel them to purchase your services. To do this, you need to focus on meeting the needs of both parents and their children. Parents want a safety-conscious, well-trained provider who offers a positive learning environment and learning activities for their children. This book will help you keep the needs of parents and children foremost in your mind.

Many providers think about marketing only when they have an opening to fill. Marketing is not something to do only when you’re starting your business or when you have an opening. It is not something to stop once you have a waiting list, because one or more families could leave your program without notice. Successful marketing is about keeping your current clients happy and offering the kind of care your future clients will want. You should be conducting some type of marketing activity every month you are in business.

Marketing your child care program is a never-ending process. As time passes, the needs of parents change. Thirty years ago, few parents sought care for their infants because they stayed home to care for them. Today infant care is in great demand because of the tremendous increase in single-parent and dual-career families. Try to keep up with changing needs in the child care field so your program will be successful in the future. This means asking individuals and organizations a lot of questions about what can help you market your program. For a discussion of how to work with organizations and individuals such as child care resource and referral (CCR&R) agencies, child care regulators, competitors, and employers, see chapter 8.

Marketing and the Quality of Child Care

Operating a high-quality child care program is the foundation of all your marketing efforts. You may be able to attract parents to your program through your promotional efforts, but without a quality program, you won’t be able to keep them. Many family child care providers go out of business each year, in large part because they aren’t offering high-quality care. Always keep in mind that what you are marketing is your high-quality program, not your house, backyard, or computer. A high-quality program means having child-centered activities, nutritious meals, individual care, and a safe, homey environment run by a trained caregiver. Part of your marketing job is to educate parents about what high-quality child care looks like. Chapter 2 describes how to identify and communicate the benefits of your program so parents will understand why they should enroll their child with you. See appendix E, Skills Children Learn in Family Child Care, for another helpful resource.

Maintaining a high-quality program also means paying attention to your work environment and identifying what you need to run a stable business that offers consistent care to children. Work-environment issues include income, paid vacations, holidays, sick days, backup help, regular professional-development training, written contracts and policies, and more. See Family Child Care Contracts and Policies for details on how to improve your work environment.

About This Book

This book contains a wealth of marketing tips and suggestions, but not all family child care providers have the same needs. If you are just starting out, you may need to fill four to six openings, whereas if you have been in business awhile, you probably need to fill only one or two openings at a time. You do not need to try all of the marketing ideas in this book or make extraordinary efforts at marketing. If you are looking to fill one opening, start small. See Top Ten Low-Cost Marketing Tips and Estimated Costs on page 173 for some examples. Many providers gain new clients solely through word-of-mouth recommendations from current clients (see chapter 4). Other providers need to spend much more time and money on marketing and will want to use more of the ideas in this book. Some of the marketing ideas presented here may be best carried out by family child care associations and other support networks. You may want to present some of these ideas to your local organizations for them to implement on behalf of their members. This book is meant to be used selectively over a long period of time.

This book can help you whether you are just starting or have many years of experience. It discusses how to market to prospective clients (chapter 3), current clients (chapter 4), and past clients (chapter 5). It includes many ideas about how to promote your program whether you have a little money or a lot of money (chapter 6). This edition of the book contains a new chapter on how to market using the Internet (chapter 7). You will find information about key organizations that can help you market your family child care program (chapter 8) and a discussion of how to set your rates (chapter 9). This book also answers questions about how to compete against a fancy new child care center as well as unregulated providers (chapter 10). Finally, the appendixes contain sample forms and checklists you can use as part of your marketing program.

Not every idea in this book will appeal to every provider. I encourage you to think carefully about how much marketing is necessary for your business. I do not encourage you to adopt dozens of new marketing tips at the expense of spending less time caring for children. Not every idea will work in your community. Sometimes the same marketing idea that failed this year will succeed next year. This book does not offer an in-depth marketing plan for your business, but it will give you practical tools for developing your own marketing plan based on your own needs. Marketing does not involve science as much as it involves common sense that everyone can apply. The lists of ideas in this book may seem overwhelming at first glance. While I do not expect you to follow every idea presented in this book, I hope you will be open to trying something new. After trying out several ideas, evaluate their impact so you can refocus your next marketing effort (see chapter 11). To help you sort through all the ideas in this book, see appendix A, Annual Marketing Calendar, which can help you plan your marketing efforts over an entire year.

Throughout this book I often use the words customer and client to describe the parents who use your services. Some providers are uncomfortable using these terms in their business, but for the purposes of this guide, I will use them to help keep the focus on parent needs. I am not suggesting that all providers must market their program in the same way—far from it! It is up to you to run your business however you want; follow the suggestions in this book that make the most sense to you and your program. The time to start marketing your program is now. You may find out that it can also be fun!

Getting Started in Marketing as a New Provider

What if you are a new family child care provider and know absolutely nothing about how to market your family child care business? How will you begin? Here are the first five steps you should probably take:

1Find out what parents want from their child care provider. Talk to parents who are using child care now or are looking for child care. Call your local CCR&R agency and talk to a counselor about what parents are looking for in child care programs in your area.

2Learn from your competition. Contact local child care centers and other family child care providers about their program, curriculum, and any special services they offer parents. Join your local family child care association to connect with other providers. Identify the best providers in your area, and meet with them to learn how they became successful. Ask a provider to be your mentor. Volunteer to work in another provider’s home for a few days. Ask your child care licensor and Food Program representative about what other providers offer to parents.

3Identify the benefits of your program. What do you and your program offer parents and children that would make them want to enroll in your program? Prepare a list of three or four benefits and start communicating them to prospective parents. Include the benefits on your flyers, website, business cards, newsletters, e-mail signature, Craigslist ads, and so on.

4Set your rates. Get rate information from your local CCR&R agency. Collect rate information by visiting local child care centers and looking at rates posted by other child care programs on the Internet. You cannot discuss rates directly with a competitor, but if the other person doesn’t know that you are a family child care provider, you can ask about their rates. See page 170 for further information about when it’s appropriate and legal to talk to other child care programs about their rates.

5Pick two or three marketing activities from this book and start promoting your program! Prepare an annual calendar and schedule one or two activities each month. Share your results (both positive and negative) with other providers, and then try out new ideas.

I hope that this book will help you take these steps for your new business. Whether you are just starting out or have been in business for many years, this book should take you a long way toward filling spaces in your program.

Book Updates

Chapter 7 contains many links to websites where you can find information to help you promote your business. Because website content tends to change frequently, some of the links may be out of date by the time you read this book. Therefore, I have created a page on my blog (www.tomcopelandblog.com/family-child-care-marketing-guide.html) where I will post updated links to the Internet resources mentioned in this book. On a regular basis, you will also find articles about new marketing ideas on my blog. If you have any ideas you would like to share or suggestions for where to find other marketing information, please let me know. Contact me at [email protected].

Tax Tips

The costs of all marketing ideas listed in this book are tax-deductible expenses for your business. This includes the cost of the following:

•putting up a sign in your front yard

•paying for an online classified ad

•taking pictures of the children in your care

•purchasing business cards

•buying an answering machine or subscribing to a voice mail service

•and much more

This book identifies over a hundred business expenses. Keep the receipt for any item you buy to help market your business. Such marketing expenses should be entered on your IRS Schedule C Profit or Loss from Business, on the line for advertising expenses. You can claim these deductions if you are a regulated provider or are exempt from regulations. For more information about what you can deduct as a business expense, see the Family Child Care Record-Keeping Guide, published by Redleaf Press, www.redleafpress.org.

Future Trends in the Child Care Field

The child care field has experienced tremendous change in the last thirty years, and it will likely undergo significant changes in the future. What are some trends providers might expect to see? Although largely a matter of guesswork, here are some possible trends that may affect your program:

•Competition from other child care programs will continue to increase. There will be more regulated family child care homes, child care centers, nursery schools, employer-sponsored centers, school-age programs, and preschools, among other competitors.

•Competition from providers who are exempt from state regulations will increase. These providers tend to charge lower fees.

•Competition from large child care centers will increase. These centers—often a part of larger corporations or for-profit chains—will have money to spend on mass-media advertising and expensive facilities.

•With expanded child care choices, parents will demand more and more from their caregivers, such as longer hours, more flexible schedules, more individual attention for their child, or access to the newest technologies. If one program won’t meet their needs, parents will be more likely to leave and enroll in another program.

•Providers will notice a greater demand for more specialized child care services: sick care, drop-in care, weekend and evening care, and care for children with a wide range of physical and mental abilities. It will become harder and harder to operate a program that serves only preschoolers, Monday through Friday, from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

•As competition grows, more child care programs will close down because of financial pressures. Most family child care providers operate with a very small profit. With few expenses to cut, any loss of enrollment will quickly create a financial emergency. Providers will have to learn how to plan for the ups and downs of enrollment.

•Child care openings will take longer to fill. This means providers will have to spend more time and money on advertising and promoting their program.

•Child care providers that have good business skills and the ability to communicate with parents will be more likely to succeed.

•Although the overall demand for child care will continue to grow slowly, the greatest growth in the population of children under the age of six will be from nonwhite children.

•More children in child care will be from single-parent households.

•The number of family child care associations, networks, and support groups will increase. Providers who are not a part of these groups will find it more difficult to be visible to potential customers.

•With an increasing number of states offering Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS) (see page 48), more parents will look for objective standards of quality when choosing a child care program. They will want programs that can demonstrate that they are educationally sound.

•The percentage of children enrolled in regulated family child care homes will continue to decline. This percentage has been on the decline for a number of years. This trend will likely continue unless child care providers use the power of marketing to promote their profession.

How can you compete in this competitive environment of the future? When professionals in other industries experience increased competition, they try to lower expenses by reducing the number of their employees or by cutting other expenses. These options are not available to you. Are you going to lay off