Marketing in 2020 has been shaped by the influx of time customers have had staying at home. Search queries have become question-generated as customers spend less time browsing stores. Although many companies have pivoted their marketing goals to align with digitalization, just being online will not be enough to see positive numbers in 2021.
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The digitalization of advertising platforms has never been more important to increase traffic, connect with target audiences, build brand awareness and strengthen customer loyalty during a time that e-commerce is experiencing exponential growth. According to Statistics Canada (2020), as more Canadians stayed home, 41% experienced increased screen time attributed to social media scrolling.
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If someone has clicked one of your ads or submitted their email for free content, make sure you continually follow up with emails if they haven’t decided to make a purchase. Here are some examples.
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We are not heroes, doctors or anyone else at the front line. But we want to help how we can. We’ve created some communication support assets that can be shared online. Most of these were created by other artists, repurposed by us for socials.
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Creating a website for your daycare centre can seem like a very big and very complicated task. Between promoting SEO, ensuring that it is visually appealing all while being accessible, it is a big project. First impressions hold the same effect when parents open your website as they would if visiting your daycare. Is it organized? Does it portray the quality they are looking for? Make sure your website has all of the information parents are looking for, but don’t get lost in it. Parents don’t want to read walls of text about your values, pages about what your programs include or paragraphs about the kinds of toys you have. Keep your website modern and relevant by providing:
Daycare is fun for children and your website should display that. Websites are an investment in lasting ROI, customer interactions, and increased awareness. Utilize colours, bright images and interactive technology to elevate your website and include all information in a summarized manner. A website is the impression of your daycare, therefore it is a good idea to invest in a marketing and design agency to create your daycare’s inviting and competitive website. So you’ve finally opened the doors to your daycare…now what? Gone are the days of a sign and a good location being enough for people to start knocking. Parents are used to researching all their purchasing decisions online; they want the highest quality childcare and they’re putting in the work to find it. You need to stay fresh on their minds from the start of their search process right up to the point of decision making.
Childcare marketing can be very affordable if done correctly, but maintaining a near-capacity attendance requires consistent effort through content creation, social media, SEO and even paid digital ads. The easy part is parents in your vicinity are always in need of your services; the tricky part is making sure you show up when they’re looking.
Parents want to see and visualize how your daycare center is different from others. They want to be able to visualize their child in your daycare. Getting photos that show it off well is the foundation of all your other marketing materials. These photos will be on your website, social media posts and any other advertisements. They will be the first thing to seize a parent’s attention. Capture all aspects of the children’s day – where they will play, learn and eat.
Here is a guide of the different areas of your facility to showcase:
Consider hiring a professional photographer who will excel at capturing these concepts from an outsider’s perspective. These types of photos are universal when it comes to digital marketing. Written content is just as essential to attracting parents to your daycare, yet nothing will allow them to retain necessary information as easily as photos.
With 2.41 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the world’s third most visited website. With this, it is easy to say that Facebook is the most used social network. Ripe with the opportunity for daycares to post targeted ads, Facebook advertising caters to parents.
Make sure your cover photo represents your daycare brand well, and that all your daycare’s contact information is accurate. Facebook’s demographic skews heavily toward adults. The best for this age group by far, statistics show that 71% of adults and 74% of high-income earners use Facebook.
Organic content creation on Facebook is getting harder and harder to generate traction. But surprisingly, Facebook has become popular for community engagement in other ways. For example, the use of Facebook messenger has increased steadily in the last few years, projected to grow to three billion users in 2022. People are used to being able to connect with businesses and ask questions to get quicker responses than email or phone. With the close customer contact that Facebook marketing provides, parents will stick to Facebook, and if your daycare centre doesn’t have an account, you’re missing out.
Photo focused Instagram is a great opportunity to tell different stories, show interesting content and provide value to parents. Instagram offers a platform to get ahead of parents’ decision making time and stay top of mind when it comes time to picking a childcare center. Here are some ideas for types of posts:
Instagram marketing allows your daycare to participate in customer conversations and regularly post how happy the children in your daycare are. More crucial than with other businesses, parents will want to ensure that a daycare’s values are in line with theirs. The more posts they see about why your childcare centre is right for their family, the increased opportunity for your daycare to remain top of mind.
Having various social media platforms and a website is nothing if you don’t stay engaged. Like, follow and comment actively with potential customers and community partners in order to softly push them to check out your page and become aware of your company.
When a follower emotionally connects to what your social media profile boasts after finding you through comments, ads or follows, they’ll take a look at your profile. Digital word of mouth and being actively engaged increases chances of your page being shared with other parents within the community – the bonus? You didn’t have to put any extra effort to find them.
When your business is active through social media with potential customers and community partners, the number of leads towards your profile and website clicks increases. According to a study, 71% of consumers having positively experienced a brand’s social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family. Think of how this helps when users happen upon a daycare they know someone in their family needs. Think of online engagement as “social proof.” Parents lean towards accredited daycares as they automatically place more trust in them and their standard of quality. Online, customers trust the opinions of celebrity endorsement or a customer testimonial. Social media engagement offers these forms of social proof for your daycare; you’re in the know, you prove that you want to be an active part of your community, and parents follow you.
With digital ads designed to target parents throughout the web and social media with a plethora of written content, video creation, infographics, and photos, it is important in your daycare centre’s marketing strategy that you vary your types of digital ads. Parents won’t all be in the same places online, searching the same keywords, and following the same social media accounts. If you want to target all potentially interested parents within your community to fill your daycare close to maximum capacity, you’ll want to vary your digital ads. Daycare centres that have waitlists or are filled near-maximum capacity have gained the social proof of their community, built from the connections formed on various platforms.
Instagram continues to provide the most popular influencer marketing, as their posts are within the top three most effective content formats at 78%. Micro-influencers have turned into a sought after commodity for Instagram marketing, they are your community’s “social proof.” Micro-influencers post content coordinated to a specific theme. Parents you want to reach will be following accounts like mommy influencers.
Mommy influencers have strong, loyal followers who are actively engaged with their content. Parents and customers are looking for quality insights, their followers follow their leads as trust authority has already been established. In 2018, 49% of consumers depended on influencer recommendations on social media, a necessity that has only increased.
Remember mommy bloggers? Before social media became such a popular platform to a variety of influencers, blogs written by moms were the most trusted and viewed outlet to receive social proof of products and services. The idea of mommy bloggers combined storytelling and advertising. Credible as ever, mommy bloggers began the revolutionary marketing idea of social media influencers. Influencer marketing is expected to grow to a $10 billion industry by 2020, and it is all thanks to mommy bloggers.
On the large social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, mommy influencers retain strong social proof amongst communities of customers looking for the best daycare centres and innovative products. This credibility is transferred to your daycare when recommended by influencers. With the kind of following your daycare seeks to target, influencers engage new parents, generate high-quality leads, and build trust with your daycare.
Local long-tail niche keywords are the new trend in how Google chooses to prioritize search results. Long-tail keywords are three to four keyword sentences very specific to your daycare centre. These keywords reflect the kinds of searches parents will be inputting into Google, and you’ll want your daycare to pop up at the top of the search list.
“Daycare centres near me” is a perfect example of a long-tail keyword parents will be inputting into their mobile devices. “Near me” organic searches have witnessed a 900% increase from 2013 to 2017, as keywords such as these continue to become more popular and more necessary to a local daycare’s marketing strategy.
Search Engine Optimization is at the heart of a daycare successfully being able to attract parents to their childcare centre. Organic search equates to 95% of all web traffic. Including long-tail keywords within your website and written content allows your website to rank higher with the decrease of keyword competition. Including long-tail keywords with highly competitive short-tail keywords boosts the website’s standing.
Long term SEO inputs keywords that are relevant all the time to your daycare centre as the search volume remains consistent. To be beneficial, Search Engine Optimization takes time curating regular, quality content including short-tail, long-tail, and long term keywords. Google rewards those websites which have more quality, educational content surrounding keywords, with higher ranking positions. Therefore, the more quality content your daycare site uploads, the more Google will reward it in organic search rankings.
Create specific service pages targeting specific keywords. Invest in a digital marketing company that regularly publishes keywords through content that displays your daycare centre as a thought leader with the valuable content parents are searching for.
Nothing beats the reviews of satisfied parents whose children have been or are enrolled in your daycare centre. Parents know best, and it is definitive that they will be a powerful reason potential customers choose your daycare. Spiegel Research Centre (2017) shows that 95% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. Daycare is a major stepping stone in a child’s life and if such a high percentage of shoppers so avidly read reviews for products, parents are definitely combing through the reviews of your daycare centre.
The more reviews, the more informed opinion potential customers can form about your daycare centre. Whenever possible, ask for reviews; it doesn’t require much and the benefits are endless. Easy ways to ask current parents enrolling their children in your daycare revolve around:
Remember to thank those who leave positive feedback in your reviews. Should there be a negative review posted, you cannot delete it, but the speed and professionalism of your responses redeem any wary opinions formed by parents reading through them. Parents will be attracted to daycares that care and replying to reviews will prove that you do.
Whether it be for booking tours or to register, your daycare’s website needs to include a form that is easy to find for signups. Embed a customizable signup form in your website that pops up after your homepage has been loaded. Should parents be thinking about potentially enrolling their child into your daycare, or wanted to look into your daycare centre further, they won’t need to decide whether or not to make this decision when the form is presented to them. Popup forms perform almost three times better than the option to click on a signup form within the website. Provide the pop-up form as a way for parents to sign up to book a tour. Within the dropdown menu of your website, ensure that “register” and “book a tour” is an option.
For the leads, awareness and reputable reviews that digital marketing can provide your daycare, the return on investment is worth the initial costs. Once you’ve attracted parents, word of mouth will spread and with consistent, effective marketing to reach communities, your daycare centre will definitely maintain near-capacity enrolment. Digital marketing isn’t just for big businesses; take advantage of the web’s opportunities to market your daycare and grow your strategy in 2020.
Content marketing is the type of business activity that collects dust on the to do list shelves until business owners look back six months later, in regret over lost leads and forgotten potential. We often hear that productivity gets lost with the push and pull of marketers vs those that know the business internally. Whereas a content marketing company is held accountable for the monthly deliverables and knows how to get it done.
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Digital marketing professionals know the frustration of chasing the latest developments or alterations with the way the major social media companies run their platforms. From pushing organic content, to hyping videos, to the rush for Stories to influencers, the market changes fast and is unrepentant when it leaves you behind. What worked in 2018 won’t work as well now, and it’s up to us marketing professionals to be on top of the ball, to provide our clients with the services and results they expect from us.
With that in mind, here are some social media marketing tips that will work in 2020:
During the good ol’ days of Instagram and Facebook, you could put up great content, attract eyeballs, grow your brand and reach them with every new post. Those of us who keep track of these metrics have noticed a decided decline in the ability to reach new people. Even more troubling is the almost complete inability of hashtags to garner new followers. Oh sure, the content is still shown in the feed of #sundayfunday, but with 48 million+ hits on that particular tag at the time of writing, your post will get swallowed up in the deluge. What you can do at this point is, buy some likes and shares from themarketingheaven.com. Doing so has helped many businesses from shutting down.
Instagram, through its parent company Facebook, will say it’s a function of so many users that the sheer amount of content makes it impossible to have the same engagement per post as when the user base was 10% of what it is now. And they’re not wrong, but their other newest change has exacerbated this trend: not displaying likes.
The concept of Instagram has been that the more likes a post gets the higher up the hashtag feed it is, the more eyeballs it attracts, the more engagement you achieve, the more followers you gain, the more likes you get for subsequent posts, lather, rinse, repeat. But with Instagram’s new policy of hiding likes, ostensibly to push for quality content over “like bait”, engagement has plummeted and it becomes rare for posts other than those with massive followings to gain traction.
Why on earth would a social media company purposefully limit the engagement of users on its platform? They say it’s meant to “remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive”; however, the real, obvious reason is…
The reality is that Facebook is a publicly traded corporation with a market cap value approaching $600 billion. To keep growing that market cap and profitability, they need to keep finding new revenue streams. If companies or brands get “free” market exposure, Facebook is missing out on revenue streams on their platform. Therefore, you will not get free market exposure any longer.
The good news is that both Facebook and Instagram have developed excellent paid ad platforms. With over a billion people on each site allowing access to their user data, various algorithms have been developed that can precisely target users down to minute characteristics. Therefore, whatever product, service or brand you’re marketing, you will be able to target the exact people who would be most interested in what you’re selling. And the even more encouraging news is that depending on the target geographical area, the cost is quite reasonable.
The Zuck taketh and the Zuck giveth.
For now, the influencer play is still a bubble that’s growing. They’re being hit with declining engagement too, but they’ve built up enough of a user base previously, that in relative terms, influencers are still as good a bet to reach an authentic audience as paid ads. But, all good things will come to an end, and– to refer back to new revenue streams– Facebook will find a way to tap into the influencer revenues which will either raise the cost for marketers or limit the engagement and reach of influencers.
The answer is yes, just not as much as before. The strategy in the way back past of 2017-18 was to post everyday to build followers and gain customers for free. While that’s a relic, the new paradigm is to think of your social media feed as your social media website. We market your website as your 24/7 marketing tool, and your social media feeds should take the same approach. Instead of posting everyday, post the best quality content that is most reflective of the brand, services or products. That way, when your paid ads or influencer campaigns are sending users to your profile, they’re greeted with your best representation of the business.
Social media spend should be focused more on quality rather than quantity, with marketers adding value by being able to produce precisely targeted ads, with re-marketing thrown in, and producing content that will light up an influencer’s page. The answer then is that social media spend hasn’t so much declined as it’s shifted. Businesses used to pay for a marketer’s time (posting everyday), now they’re paying for a marketer’s skill in navigating paid ads, as well as the ability to come up with catchy taglines.
Social media marketing is an ever changing landscape, which requires digital marketing professionals who will never rest on their laurels. It’s tempting to put it in autopilot and do what we’ve always done, but the competitive landscape requires effective digital marketers to know what changes have happened, how those changes will affect a business and, more importantly, how to best make those changes work for a business.
Blogging is often put aside by businesses. With what seems to be much more pressing digital marketing platforms to take care of, blogging is viewed as a time-consuming commitment that requires an innovative creative output and therefore lacks the desire to fulfill. Websites are the heart of many businesses, so it makes sense that blogs allow businesses to gain 67% more leads than those who don’t utilize them and should be apart of any companies digital marketing strategy.
It is normalized that with blogging comes consistency. Each published blog is a new opportunity for your company’s website to contain more keywords. When using Search Engine Optimization, we want to ensure that all of our important keywords are found within our website. However, our actual website cannot be crowded with an oversupply of keywords, or Google will rank your website lower. Blogs provide the solution to this new era of authentic content with minimal keywords.
Blogs are where your words go. There will always be new keywords – 15% of searches made on Google every day are new. There is always new questions to answer, information to provide and keywords to acquire. Blogging is the hub for all of this. Write content that answers a question and provide content that you know readers will want to see. Once you base your blogs around quality information you can include these keywords, increasing your potential to become an authority site.
Google loves content. Its algorithm heavily focuses on a website’s content and how frequently posts and updates are made to it. What clients want when searching for websites align comparatively to how Google’s algorithm now works. Keeping Google happy will keep your clients happy.
Both users and search engines are looking for a website with fresh content. You do not always need to update your service or product, but keeping clients in the loop about industry events, developments, news and tips is a perfect way to regulate content flow. The more updated your website content with valuable information in blogs is, Google will rank your site higher with each of its updates.
Raises Your Link Authority Links are the currency of the internet, you can buy backlinks online to better market your business. Writing about quality, need-to-know and insightful information increase your chances of receiving links to your blog and raising brand awareness. Additionally, blogs are a great way to input relevant inbound links that will direct readers to the main parts of your website. Increasing the length of time that potential customers spend on your site can allow readers to become loyal customers. Within your blogs, attach one or two external links to quality and trustworthy websites. These links should be relative or expand on the information within your blog. When you promote great content to your readers, Google promotes you.
Businesses need to take any avenue open to them to prove to their current customers why they deserve their loyalty and show potential customers why their business is worthwhile. Consistently posting articles that show your knowledge and how well you understand your customers displays your company as a thought leader. Many customers will only choose business with companies they trust and feel are accredited. You want readers to view you as the place to go for information. The more you prove to readers through your blogs how reliable you are, you will earn their trust. When the time comes, this trust will turn into a return on investment when your product or service is chosen against other competition.
Your company thrives because it has clients and customers. Whether it’s struggling due to no marketing or you’re wanting to ride out a wave of success, it’s always a great time to invest in your own brand. Every company needs marketing. But should you hire in-house or contract externally? Let us argue the case for when it’s a great idea to consult an external agency.
1. When you’re budget conscious but still looking for a level of expertise
Most small and medium businesses have enough budget to hire 1-2 individuals to do all of their marketing. They’re going to need a full time workload to complete so many different tasks. Let’s price it out.
Entry Level Marketer
Senior Level Marketer
2. When your marketing requires a varied skillset
When writing out your job listing, does it include many, if not all, of the following required skillsets?
Are these sounding like a lot of different areas of expertise? They are. They come from different sides of the brain (creative/analytical). More likely, you will find someone who is good at one aspect and just dabbles in the other areas, where your business image will suffer.
3. When you just don’t have time for training and managing your internal team
You’re looking for marketing because you don’t know much about it, you’re hoping to run your business and look to a person that does. Training is costly, and agencies have scouted and invested in finding talent. They’ve also streamlined management, operations and production processes that takes time and energy to build.
4. When you can’t be held accountable and liable towards employees
When working with individuals, you are liable for providing them adequate hours and benefits. It is also harder to fire people one they are fired. Many companies like us don’t require you to be locked down into a contract, we want to earn your business month to month. The responsibility falls on US to make sure your marketing works. We analyze campaigns, then create deliverable reports (impressions, reach, clicks, etc.) for you to make sure they align up with your profits. This makes sure you are getting your return on investment and that our collaborative marketing efforts are worth it every month.
5. When you have sporadic projects, not a full-time workload
Marketing isn’t always a 24/7 endeavor. For most small to medium sized businesses, campaigns are launched selectively according to what is needed seasonally. Or maybe you need a one-off project completed like a website design, then maintenance requirements will taper off.
6. When marketing needs to ramp up fast
Maybe you’re launching a new product, or had a profitable year, odds are you need your campaign to launch and amplify, fast. You don’t have time to think of strategies or embark on a hiring journey, you need a team you can trust who live and breathe marketing, right away.
Of course there are times it’s better to hire an employee. For example:
1. If you want someone dedicated to your brand 24/7
2. Maybe you need a multipurpose employee who is also an admin or receptionist
3. If you’re on a super strict budget and are willing to work with someone with lower expertise
With ever-changing algorithms and intangible tech forces at play, business owners are coming to us confused at why posting content on a regular basis just isn’t enough anymore. The game has changed, and it will change again. But we work tirelessly to crack the codes of exactly what works, how to reach valuable conversions and soft sell in an ad aversive world.
Our digital marketing services offer a specialized consultation and discussion on how best to present your business effectively.