Helping childcare business owners build successful, sustainable businesses through practical strategies, real-life experience, leadership, faith, and encouragement.

Posts tagged ‘enrollment building’

7 Marketing Strategies That I Gained From My Garage Sale!

Enrollment building tips…inspired by my Garage sale!

I love to go to garage sales and have my very own garage sale at least twice a year. Garage sales are a great way to find great bargains, shop for items that you need for home or for your business and garage sales have taught me so much about how to market a business or a sale.

On Friday May 24, 2013, I displayed my garage sale signs at the most traveled intersections in my neighbor hood. In fact,  I posted the signs shortly before rush hour, so that my neighbors would see my signs and plan to stop by my garage sale on Saturday morning.

After displaying my signs, I went home to get organized for my sale; I prepared my pricing stickers, created signs for my tables and my entire family was involved in the process; after all they will benefit from the proceeds of the garage sale.

On Saturday May 25, 2013 at 6:30am, we let up our garage door so that we could bring out all of the items for the garage sale and there was a man waiting in his car for my garage sale! I thought…Oh wow! Maybe he saw my Signs that I displayed on Friday night!!

This really caused me to think about the importance of signage when you are trying to build enrollment or simply market your business.

About 2-hours into the sale, 2 of my garage sale customers told me that, they could hardly see my signs and they began to give me suggestions to buy larger signs for my next garage sale.

Then I thought..Signage is important, however, if you want clients or your customers to find you; be sure that you have BIG SIGNS!

So in summary, my garage sale was a success, however, I wonder how many customers I missed, because my signs were small?

Moreover, my sale was 4-hours long and I had lots of time to reflect on the importance of marketing your business. Today I am going to share with you seven marketing strategies that I  gained from my Garage Sale!

1. Create signs that has large print with bright colors. BIG IS BETTER!!

2. Display large signs (in your yard or windows)

3. Place signs and ads where a high volume of people will see them

4. If they know that you are there..they will come

5. People do business with friendly people

6. Listen to your customers, they just may teach you how to market your business

7.  Add balloons to your signs…its a great way to stand out!

Home Providers: Many municipalities may not allow signs in yards, however, creating a festive home, with children decor is a great way to cause your home to stand out and attract parents to you. Also, when marketing your business online, skip the small ads and go big.

You can never market your business too much! After all…your enrollment depends on your ability to market your business.

I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments about this post. Talk with you soon!

Shiketa

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Category:

Enrollment Building, Marketing

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Is Your Website SEO Friendly?

According to Christian Arno, “There is a saying, “build it and they will come,” but this definitely doesn’t always apply to websites. The best way to get people to your website is to make sure it’s search engine optimized.”

I Discovered That My Child care Business Website Was Not SEO Friendly

Every Wednesday  I plan to add new content to my childcare center website, update the calendar of events and upload new photos. After reviewing my website, I was compelled to look into upgrading my website, So I called my web hosting company.

I was not happy with the news that I received about my website. In fact, my web hosting representative told me that my website was not SEO Friendly and that’s why I was not seeing the traffic that I desired. JUST WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR!!

Moreover, the representative told me that my website template was phased out and he was surprised that I was still using that plan. Well, I know why….It’s because I was only paying $5 a month for web hosting.  In other words, I was being cheap and trying to save my business money!

However, after our conversation, I realized that creating a SEO Friendly website was more important than saving money on webs hosting. In fact, I asked the representative for the best package available, so that I can upgrade my website with 7-days, create an SEO Friendly website and begin to attract more parents to my site!

I love adding content to my websites and sharing business tips via blogging, however, I will be the first to admit that I did not know what SEO meant. So I did a little research and I want to share what I discovered with you. (Just in case you didn’t know)

Wikipedia defines SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search,[1] news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Now that you have the facts about SEO, I hope that you have been compelled to find out if your website is SEO friendly, because your enrollment and online visibility depends on it!

If you feel that it is time to upgrade your website, I found a great web hosting package with 1 & 1 Web hosting for only $29.95! The first month is Free and the plan is loaded!

I can hardly believe that I waited this long to upgrade my website! Better hosting doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg! Check out—-> 1&1 Web Hosting Plans ON OFFER!

Shiketa

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Quality Care

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