Inspirational and Empowering Child Care Business Owners To Build Successful Child Care Businesses

Posts tagged ‘marketing’

7 Ways To Establish And Improve Your Brand

rock your brand

My husband and I just got back in town from a trip to beautiful Destin, Florida.  We stayed at the Hilton Resort and it was gorgeous.

In fact, I picked the Hilton because for their Brand and I can always expect excellence from the Hilton Brand.

In fact, as I was on vacation; I was inspired to reflect on my very own Child Care Business Brand and make necessary changes when I returned to the Business.

My experience was excellent and a time to remember. Furthermore, I believe that every Business Brand should provide an experience that customers will never forget!

Let’s take a look at how your brand affects your Child Care Business….

Your Brand is Everything that you do in Business and the experience that you give to your customers!

If your business practices or the experience that you offer to parents is in question at any time, during any transaction, with any person interacting with your  business, your brand is both in question and in jeopardy!

Just in case you are wondering, what does your Brand have to do with Marketing;

Your Brand has everything to do with marketing of your Child Care Business. In fact, how you carry yourself and the practices in your childcare business is a great marketing tool.

I have discovered this: It takes years to build a trusted Business brand and only a moment to destroy it!

 

Here are seven ways to Establish and  Improve your Brand:

  1. Always be polite to your parents and their family members.
  2. Strive to improve any practices that are not satisfactory.
  3. Get your parents feedback on a regular basis, because if parents are not happy, this could affect your brand.
  4. Ask your parents the following question: When you think of my daycare; what words come to mind? This is a great indicator of what type of brand you have established for your business.
  5. If you have encountered  a negative situation with a parent, be sure that your last conversation with the parent is on a positive note.
  6. Be sure that you have a logo on any literature that goes home, on your website and on marketing brochures
  7. Require that you employees always look nice from their uniform to their hair.

That was only a few branding tips, however, I want you to know that you are your Business Brand, so be sure that you reflect your brand with your appearance, how you answer the phone, be mindful of what you post on social media, etc.

Be sure that your behavior and business practices reflect your Business Brand!

To Your Success,

Shiketa

For more Marketing or Branding ideas, check out my Marketing 101 toolkit.

 

Category:

Family Connections, Marketing, parent communication

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5 Steps to a Great Website!

 Your Website Just Can’t be Good It has to be Great!!~ Shama Kabani

 

I created my first website for my childcare business in 1999. The website provided basic information about my program including: the location, hours, rates and photos of my program. In fact, the website was free, but I didn’t get much business from the site. There were many reasons why this site did not work for me, however, I prefer to tell you about the site that did work for me.

In 2003, I registered the domain name www.learningdays.com  for $19.00. It was a great investment for my business and is still paying off. I also signed up for web hosting with www.samsclub.com for only $5.00 a month.

After setting up my site, I was clueless about how to create a site that would attract visitors. Over time, I learned how to add content, how to structure the site, make it a very informative site and most of all attract more families to enroll their children in my program.

For online marketing or website building tips, be sure to check our my a e-book titled, ” An Online Marketing Plan.” One of the resources that I quoted in the book includes a book written by Shama Kabani, titled: “The Zen of Social Marketing.”

The ebook is loaded with great social media marketing tips that will drive traffic to your business. In the second chapter of the  book Kabani wrote: ” Why Your Website Can’t Just Be Good- it has to be Great!” She also includes the five elements of a Great website and they are as follows:

1.Design-When a website looks great, it sends the impression that the company or product is great. Keep in mind that your website may be your first chance to make an impression upon your site visitors, so make it a great one!

2.Structure– Have you ever been to a website and didn’t know where to start or how to check out? While structuring or restructuring your website, be sure that your visitors can easily  navigate through your website.  A confused consumer may easily say no to your service or product.

3.Content-According to Shama Kabani, Content is King!  More over, it is the heart of your website. The first purpose of a blog or website is to educate and build expertise. A really great site offers content in the following forms: written articles, audio and video. This is a great way to meet the learning preferences of your site visitors.

4.Optimization-  is a marketing tool that allows any online user to get more clicks in their web copy writing efforts for their website by improving the search engine results in the Web. Moreover, make sure that search engines can read your website. This is a great way to attract website visitors from major search engines such as Google.

5.Maintenance Your website needs to be maintained the same way that we maintain our physical building. Content needs to be changed, design needs to be updated and items may need to be moved around. I suggest that a website be reviewed 2-3 times a week to track visitors with a scheduled monthly maintenance plan that includes:  website visitors feedback.

I hope that you have been inspired to create a great website that will attract visitor, turn them into consumers and eventually transform them into customers. I wish you much success with your website!

For more marketing tips, check out my Marketing 101 toolkit!

Source:

2010. Kabani, Shama. The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Pages, 21-22

Category:

Administration, Marketing, social media, Website

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