Hayley Barnett from Noah’s Ark Childcare, Narberth recently completed the free Business online course Effective Marketing and Promotion, and this is what she told us.
I completed the online training, which took me about an hour, but I did skip a couple of bits as I felt these were obvious, and it covered elements that I already knew. However, if you’re new to marketing childcare then they are important to be in there.
Within the course, it focused on involving staff within the marketing planning, this was something I hadn’t previously thought about. I would ask them to promote our nursery to friends and family, word of mouth and give out leaflets. Going forward I will now be asking for their opinions on the Unique Selling Point (USP) from their perspective.
In the past, I haven’t written a marketing strategy or put a budget aside for this, but I am going to trial this, alongside my business plan, as mentioned within the course. It covered local research, which I had previously undertaken, looking into population, other childcare etc. I am now considering redoing this when I am planning for increasing fees due to the massive rise in minimum wage / living wage and to ensure we remain competitive in the local market.
I have recently updated our website, however, following the course it made me realise I need to make this a more regular focus, along with positing on the website, social media and recognising PR opportunities. This is something I have done in the past and will be reintroducing.
When parents/carers would enquire about a place for their child, I used to have an enquiry form but for some reason stopped using it, however the course reminded me, so I will be putting this back into practice. It also focused on ‘following up’ as to why they did or didn’t take the place up, therefore going forward I will be introducing this too.
In summary, the course is online, was laid out well and it was good that there was a check in at the end of each module. The course reminded me to put those processes back into place, and it gave me some new ideas too.
https://ndna.org.uk/product/effective-financial-planning-and-management