Create your website

So, let’s get started the first thing you need to do in order to market a nursery is to create your own website.

I know this can be daunting especially if you do not have much experience on the internet but it is a must!

Almost every parent, when looking for you, will search online and attempt to go to your website.  Surely, you do it yourself. whenever you hear about a new company, you straight away look online and try to search the website to find out more information about them.

This is exactly what your parents will be doing so if you don’t have one your parents are likely to just forget about you so make sure to create a website.

Paying someone to do this for you can usually cost around £500 or more depending on the amount of information and pages you want on the website.

Some can cost up to ten thousand pounds.

Though, there are some drawbacks to paying someone to do it for you, like what happens if you need to edit the website.

That’s why I challenge you to do it yourself.

Here is a five day challenge to create your own website.

On the challenge you’ll spend roughly 30 minutes to an hour a day where you’ll be guided on how to create your own website which will include:

1. creating your own design images and the pages you need to get you started
2. you will be taught what to put on your website
3. how to design it

The challenge contains videos to guide you through the steps needed to create your website and it explains simply so anyone can understand and do so.

At the end of the challenge you will have your own fully functioning live website which you can use to start getting customers.

So, go sign up for the challenge now well after you finish this video obviously and in five days you will have your own website. (you don’t have to do everything all in the five days though).

Regardless of whether you create your own website or you pay someone to do it having a website is so important.

Some reasons why you need a website are because:

1. firstly it gives you an online presence – it enables people to find you anytime and from anywhere.  Unlike your actual nursery which is only open a certain time.  Even outside of your nursery hours your website can continue to find and secure new customers. Someone who may be moving to your area can find out about you from where they currently live before having to visit you.
2. It offers parents convenience as they can access the information they need in the comfort of their own home with no pressure to buy plus most nurseries in your area probably already have a website so you are likely to lose customers to your competitors by not having one
3. It provides a quick and easy way to communicate information to parents.  You can put your opening time, your contact information, show images of your nursery and use contact forms to facilitate inquiries.  Plus, you have full control on what goes on there and what is said about you
4. It provides credibility and trust.  There is an expectation for any reputable nursery or any reputable business to have some kind of online presence.  Potential parents are likely to be distrusting of any nursery that didn’t have a telephone number or physical address and the same can be said for not having a website and email address.  These are useful tools to share crucial information about your nursery and answer the what’s and whys that they may have.  What’s more having a good quality easy to use website makes parents feel more comfortable about using your nursery as they will assume they can expect the same positive experience in all areas of your business.

You need to keep people coming back to your website too.  This can be difficult for a nursery website as there’s not a great reason to keep coming back to it but it is important for many reasons including SEO and keeping your nursery in the forefront of people’s minds.

One way to do this is to start a blog, where you post advice for parents to read.

Another way you can do this is through using social media.

Social Media

This is the next way you can use to market and promote your nursery.  Utilise social media.

I myself have always used Facebook to promote my nursery.  Though, I did naively start with just Facebook and no website as I didn’t know how to create a website and thought a Facebook page alone would be sufficient to advertise to parents.

I made this mistake at the start of my business and enrolment was so slow. I couldn’t afford the cost of paying someone to create a website for me but knew I needed one.

So, I spent ages researching how to create one and after a few years I am now happy with how the website looks.

If I’m honest the first draft of the website was embarrassing, I wish I still had pictures of it but even then it still allowed me to get more customers than using Facebook alone.

Since then I’ve learned so much which I teach on the five day challenge.

I’ve recently started using Instagram too which has helped promote as well.  Though, I hope I’ve stressed enough the importance of creating a website and I hope I can support you on the challenge by helping you create a website

Having Facebook and Instagram has been useful for me as very easy to post on both as they’re both owned by Facebook.

Though I do recommend only using two forms of social media, as when you’re running a nursery especially when you’re starting up you won’t have a lot of support with your social media campaigns.

Until recently it was only me posing on my social media.

Though, I have now tried to encourage other staff members to post too I have tried other platforms and I encourage you to do the same. Especially, at the start to see which one works for you.

In the end after testing different platforms, for me I stuck with Facebook and Instagram. I wouldn’t recommend you doing more than two forms of social media as I said it can be difficult to manage all the different platforms yourself.

I found that when I had more than two, I found myself neglecting most of them and not posting regularly enough to really get any use out of the social media.

You can have a look at my twitter and see how scarce it is.

I end up not posting on twitter for years and then post randomly and then forget about it again.

Don’t do this!

It’s not effective, stick with ones that you can manage regularly and consistently.

One of my Instagram’s I’ve managed to amass over 30 000 followers by using this technique by just posting regular and consistent content.

With the nursery page I’ve got into a habit of posting at least once a week on Facebook and Instagram and this will usually be an activity that a staff have done with the children.

Some social medias that you can use are:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Google plus (if that still exists)
• Pinterest
• Tic Toc
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Any blogging sites
• Your own personal blog on your website

Now I said Instagram and Facebook work for me, but you really have to figure out what works for you.  Your area might be slightly different and you might be targeting a slightly different demographic.

So, do experiment with different forms of social media and see what really gets your parents engaging.

Some of the nurseries I work with have had good success pairing one the shorter quick access type of social medias like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, where you post short content, with one where you post longer form content where you can give more information and show off your expertise and knowledge.

This is one of my biggest tips for you to do the same, post short content on the likes of Twitter or Facebook weekly or more frequently than that of activities you’ve done, any events stuff you’ve made etc and have more high value content on your website like your blog or your YouTube.  This can be done weekly or monthly depending on how much you feel you can keep up with it.

You can post content going into more details of the activities you’ve done that month example saying why they were done and the benefits to the children or post content that parents might be interested in for example teaching parents how to potty train.

With the long-form content, the good thing is you can then post the content back onto your short form social media and direct people from there to your blogs.  This is all good for SEO, as well and getting ranked on google which is all very important in promoting your nursery.

Although, I don’t cover it in this video if you did want to learn more about SEO and how to get to the top of google which will get you a lot more parents signing up then do enrol in the full course which you can find here.

With your social media you have to try and create content that really stands out.

You may have heard people say or you may have even said yourself that social media is too crowded.  There’s too many businesses and they’re all trying to fight for our attention and all fighting for the same space.  So, how do you stand out?

One way to stand out is to really show your story.

Show your business’s personality whether that be you who brings that through showing your bubbly and approachable nature or through your business.  People love a story they can relate to flaws and all.

So you can post things that aren’t going well as well as your successes for example did you spend ages setting up an activity that the children didn’t engage with.  People love things they can relate to.

You should also try to post content with depth.  Post higher value content that people can actually learn from and find useful.  If posting an activity try to say how you done it, to enable others to do the same.

This will get people to share and save your content and ultimately engage more.

Another way to stand out is to give your opinion and expertise on topics.

Let people know you’re qualified in areas like child development, behaviour management and SEN.  Whatever you’re qualified in, give your perspective on certain things.  This will lead to people coming back to you to learn from you and also helps you to stand out.

The final tip with social media is to mix up your content.  Use it sometimes to promote your nursery places, telling people to sign up but mostly use it to post content that you think your parents will find useful and entertaining.

I could go further into depth of social media and I could probably make this into its own video.  Though, I do hope you found this useful and have got a better plan on how to manage your social media.

If you have found it useful make sure you click that like button below do it now to support the channel I’ll give you five seconds to do so…

Support the channel so that I can continue to put out useful videos for you and if you haven’t done already make sure you subscribe support me to help support you and if you want to go a step further you can share the video and encourage others to view and subscribe too.

Before we move on to the next thing to do and end on social media.

I want to add a tip to do social media that’s not technically linked to your business which is to make sure your personal profile is what you want to represent your business as well.

So either make it private or make it suitable.

Naturally parents will be snooping around checking your profile and old pictures, they will want to find out what sort of person will be looking after their kids.

So if there’s anything in the profile that you don’t want to be seen or represent your business – purge it delete it or hide it.

This is for everyone really, this is the main way people use to find out more about you.  Even when going for a job or potential relationship.  So make sure there’s nothing on there that you wouldn’t want to be seen by a parent.

I don’t strictly follow this myself as I’ve stopped caring, I’m at a point where you take me as I am.  Being a male in child care and a black male as well, I’ve always had both racist and sexist comments about me looking after people’s children.  I’ve also had parents not sign up because of it.

It used to affect me before, but now having the success of running a nursery for a long period and the success of helping others it has made me more want to be a representative of a minority of people in the field to both encourage others to join the nursery field and to normalize it to parents.

But it is important to make sure that your personal profile is suitable.

One final thing on social media is, I want to support you to get enrolment quick so when you open you have loads of children knocking on your door but I will be creating an enrolment challenge based around social media this will challenge you to enrol seven children in your first seven days.

It will set your tasks to do on your seven days to promote your new setting.

This challenge should give you a quick boost in enrolment and can be done, whether you already have your nursery open and just need more children or you’re just starting out.

But as I said I haven’t created the challenge yet as I’ve been busy supporting those enrolled on the full course.

Though, it is on my to-do list and by mentioning it in this video it will force me to do it.  If this is something you would be interested in I’ve created a sign up page where you’ll be notified when this challenge comes out.  This can be found here.

As I’ve mentioned a few things that you can do after this video you don’t have to worry about remembering all now.

At the end of the video, I will do a little recap and remind you of the things you can do after this video to continue working on opening your nursery.

Create your flyers

Now moving on to the third thing you should do to sell your places fast is to create your flyers.

A lot of people don’t see the value in flyering, either because they find it dated or feel that people just throw them away.

As we’ve already mentioned competing online can be very difficult this is why flyers are a great tool to use to promote your nursery.  One statistic states that 45% of flyers are actually kept so it’s definitely something you should use.

They are something people who are interested in will keep and store them for when they need it.

I remember when I first opened I planned an open day and distributed around two to three hundred flyers to houses around me a few days before the open day letting people know about it.

Having dropped them from people’s doors I was all excited, expecting a good turnout but unfortunately only a few people turned up. I was so disappointed and thought flyer distribution was not worth it.

I had wasted so much energy spending hours walking around posting through people’s houses.  Whilst handing out, one person actually screwed up the flyer and threw it in my direction.  The whole experience was very disheartening.

Though within the next few weeks I had lots of parents contacting me saying they saw my flyer and they wanted to book a viewing.  This was before I had a website and I still managed to get a decent amount of enrolment on my opening day.

So, it gave me a boost and I realized the time spent handing out flyers wasn’t a waste.  That’s when I looked up how effective flyer distribution was and I found the statistic that I mentioned earlier.

I then evaluated what I had done wrong and put the lack of attendance down to the fact that I distributed the flyers too close to the actual open day, which meant that people did not have enough time to prepare to attend.

I now send my flyers roughly a month to two weeks before and have had much better success.

Though, I also have flyers that I have just to promote the nursery which I hand out periodically.

You can put flyers through people’s doors, at local schools, at local libraries, banks children’s centres, local businesses, anywhere where you think parents might go.

Just don’t be afraid to ask anyone to hand them out or to store them.

Some things to include on your flyer are:

• bright pictures preferably of your nursery and or of happy children
• your contact details
• your website
• opening time
• address
• the age range that you look after
• you should also have something that shows why people should choose you over your competitors
• stress your unique selling points
• something that’s important is to have something on the flyer that encourages the reader to keep the flyer for example we put a 10% discount of the first week when using the flyer

If you do need a graphic designer, then one that I use to design the logo and for my flyers is genesis creative group.  You can see their Instagram page on the screen now.

The owner is very good and professional and has done work for people like Dwell, DFS, McDonald’s and Vodafone.  She’s great value for money, though she does get booked up quite quickly.  So, do ask her early if you want any work done.

As previously mentioned, this topic is part of the course open a nursery in just six months without a massive budget. If you wanted to open your nursery and complete the full thing and learn how to put these things into practice make sure you enrol by clicking the link here. on the course you will learn everything you need to know in order to open your own nursery. You will:

1. start off by researching your chosen area – to make sure there’s sufficient demand in order to make sure your nursery is successful
2. you will then start looking for your building – learning how to find your building and what legal requirements you need to stick to
3. then you will learn about running the business – how to pay tax register as a sole trader partnership or company as well as how to secure funding and write your business plan
4. next you’ll learn how to do HMRC and recruit and pay staff – including ratio requirements
5. then you will learn how to register with Ofsted
6. finally you will learn how to market to children – including how to create your own website and about search engine optimization

So, if you need support in any of this make sure you enrol.

At the moment the course is discounted from £997 to just £249.99 though you can get an extra 10% discount using code youtube1.  So, if you do plan to open a nursery enrol now before the discount expires.

Also, if you have any questions about opening nursery or about the course you can email me at nurserycourseuk@gmail.com.

So onto the fourth thing you should do if you want to sell places fast is:

Plan an open day

I mentioned this briefly when talking about flyers but another way you can promote your nursery is through nursery open days.

This is where you invite parents in your local area to come and view the nursery all at once.

On the day, make it like an event have games for children and try to make it as enjoyable as possible for the children like if you are planning a children’s party.

It is more relaxed than a viewing or show around that you might do at your nursery.  As parents can look around at their own pace and you can have relaxed conversations with them.  This is a good opportunity to get to know people in the local area and for people to get to know you and your nursery.

During the general working week it is difficult to have these relaxed conversations with parents and even during show arounds it’s mostly about getting your children enrolled.

But by having an open day you can support the community and create bonds with other people and local businesses.

Other ways you can do this is by having events on like weekends or after your working day.  You can do stay and play sessions and allow someone to use the building for parent related activities.

This is just another way of getting parents aware of your nursery whilst also supporting them and the local community.

Word of mouth

The fifth way to market your nursery and sell places fast is through word of mouth.

This is probably the best and most effective way to promote your nursery.  The nursery industry is all about trust.  Parents need to be able to trust that you are able to look after their children and are capable of educating their children.

All of your other forms of marketing is you telling them that they should trust you and why they should trust you.

It may be by having loads of followers on social media, which says look these other people follow me so they trust me you should trust me too or by having a website with loads of reasons why they should trust you for example pictures of yourself and children that come to the nursery.

This is all you shouting at them saying look trust me but there’s no better way to market your nursery and have them trust you when you don’t know them and they don’t know you than by having someone they do know and trust recommend you.

Most parents I’ve got this way don’t require me telling them much about the nursery the person that recommended them has always sold the nursery to them and the fact that they know someone that goes there that is happy and already trusts me they automatically trust me too and they end up signing up with very little effort.

You get parents to recommend you by offering an amazing service.

Some nurseries offer a referral fee to parents who recommend them but I always find that unnatural I personally don’t feel that it’s a true recommendation and feels disingenuous and I always feel being genuine is the most important thing.

That’s why I always say if you like this video then hit a like I would never say hit a like and I’ll give you this free gift but I don’t begrudge people that do.

If you want to offer referral fees then feel free to do so. 

You can ask parents if they know anyone looking for childcare and it is important to have these conversations with parents in order to get them to recommend someone.

Though most of our recommendations have come without doing this.

One way to get parents to talk about you is to offer them gifts with your logo on it.  Now this isn’t a bribe to get them to talk about you or refer you like a referral fee is.  It merely helps start a conversation.  One of their friends may see your logo on a bag or pen or magnet for example and be like oh your child goes to that nursery what is it like then they tell them.

This just helps to create a natural conversation about your nursery as opposed to parents going to all their friends saying you have to come to my nursery which is less likely to happen.

Though, don’t be afraid to ask people to recommend you.  It is one of the easiest ways to get parents to enrol.

BONUS TIP

One final tip I want to give though when it comes to enrolling parents is do not be desperate and do not offer the world.

When I first started off I offered hundreds of different unique selling points.  I offered school drop-offs, early collections, specific sessions and lots more which helped encourage a few more parents to enrol and it did help certain parents but I fully regret it.

It was so much extra work which didn’t make financial sense.

I was so desperate to cater to anybody and everybody that I allowed lots of extras which just put a strain on the business.  At the time it felt great people were interested it got people involved but in the long run it just wasn’t feasible or workable.

In reality we were just desperate.

When we changed and were more patient about our enrolment, we stopped being desperate and set out what exactly we offer for example set sessions and timings for everybody this helped the business a lot and most parents were happy to do this.

Once you set boundaries early it helps things moving forward.

Do your sessions based on what you want to do, if your sessions are from 8 a.m. till 6 pm I personally won’t let a parent who only wants to pay until 3pm do so they would need to pay for the full session as it will cost you as you won’t be able to find someone to come in for those final three hours to make up the amount.

You have to think of it like this, you wouldn’t be able to go to your landlord for example and say I don’t use my house on weekends so I only pay for weekdays or you wouldn’t be able to go to a restaurant and say I’m only going to eat three quarters of the meal so I only want to pay three quarters of the price.  They have set prices and so should you.