Nursery Marketing: How to Fill Your Places and Keep Them Full

Nursery marketing

Marketing a nursery comes down to one number

Occupancy. Not followers, not likes, not how many people saw a post. The job of nursery marketing is to keep enough enquiries coming through the door that your rooms stay full as children leave for school, and to keep them coming in the quieter months when nobody is thinking about childcare.

That reframing matters, because it changes what is worth doing. A post that thirty local parents see and remember is worth more than a post that three hundred strangers scroll past. A well handled phone call is worth more than a month of scheduled content. Most settings do not have a marketing problem so much as a follow-up problem, and that is much cheaper to fix.

Know your numbers before you spend anything

You cannot tell whether marketing is working without a baseline, and the baseline is four numbers you probably already have somewhere.

• Occupancy by room, not just overall. A full preschool room hides an empty baby room, and they need different marketing.
• Enquiries a month. Every phone call, email, form and walk-in.
• How many of those enquiries came to look round.
• How many of those visits became a start.

Then add the one number almost nobody collects: where each enquiry came from. Ask every single person. "Can I ask how you heard about us?" takes four seconds and it is the most valuable marketing data a nursery can own. Within three months you will know whether your places are being filled by word of mouth, by Google, by the sign on the fence or by the local parents’ group on Facebook, and you can stop guessing.

Word of mouth is your biggest channel, and it can be managed

In most settings, more than half of new families arrive because somebody recommended you. That is not luck and it is not outside your control. It is the product of parents having a good experience and being given an easy moment to pass it on.

• Ask at the right time. A parent is most likely to recommend you a few weeks after their child has settled, and again after a warm conversation about their child’s progress. Not on day one, and not in a newsletter to everybody.
• Make it easy. A sibling policy, a simple "tell a friend" card at the door, or a line on the end of a settling-in email is enough.
• Include your staff. Practitioners talk to parents all day and they are far more persuasive than any advert.
• Be careful with incentives. If you offer anything in return for a recommendation, the offer has to be clear and honest, and the rules that govern advertising apply to a nursery exactly as they do to anyone else.

Reviews, because parents read them before they ring

For a lot of families the review page is the real front door. A setting with nine recent, specific reviews will get the call ahead of one with two reviews from 2021, almost regardless of what the websites say.

• Ask in person, at a good moment, and ask for a specific comment rather than a star rating. "Would you mind mentioning the settling-in?" produces a far more useful review.
• Reply to every review, including the difficult ones. Calm, brief and never defensive. Prospective parents read the replies more closely than the reviews.
• Never offer anything in exchange for a review. Google’s own guidelines prohibit it and parents can usually tell.
• Keep it steady. A handful of reviews every term is worth more than thirty in one week.

Open days are marketing, and the follow-up is where they are won or lost

An open day is the one time you can show the thing that actually sells a nursery, which is the feeling of the room. Run them properly and they fill places.

• Pick a Saturday morning, when both parents can come.
• Invite your waiting list and your current families first, and ask current families to bring a friend.
• Put it on your Google Business Profile and on your website with a date and a booking link, not just a poster in the window.
• Have someone available who can answer fees and funding questions confidently on the spot.
• Follow up within forty-eight hours, by name, referring to the child. This is the step most settings skip, and it is the step that converts.

A parent who visited and never heard from you again has not decided against you. They have simply moved on to the setting that rang them back.

Social media, in the time you actually have

One platform done consistently beats four done occasionally. For most settings that is the local parent audience on Facebook, with Instagram second if somebody genuinely enjoys it.

What works is ordinary: the tray activity that went well, the new practitioner introducing herself, this week’s menu, the garden in the rain, a parent notice about an INSET day. What does not work is stock imagery and inspirational quotes about childhood.

One rule matters more than every marketing consideration put together: never post an image of a child without current written parental consent, and check the consent register before every post, not once a year. One misjudged photograph will undo more goodwill than a year of good content will build.

Your unique selling point, in words a parent would use

Most nursery websites say the same things: caring staff, stimulating environment, outstanding provision. None of it distinguishes anybody, because every setting says it.

A real unique selling point is something a rival could not honestly claim. A forest school session every week. Meals cooked on site by a chef. Open from half past seven. No extra charges for nappies, wipes or sun cream. A garden the children use in all weather. Staff who have been with you nine years.

Write down three. Test each one by asking whether the nursery down the road could say it too. If they could, it is a description, not a difference. Then put the survivors where parents actually look, which is the top of your home page, your Google Business Profile description, and the first thing you say when you pick up the phone.

Being findable when a parent searches

Most parents start with a search, and most of those searches are local and practical: the town, the ages, the hours and the funding. There are two places to appear, your Google Business Profile in the map results and your own pages underneath, and the work to get into both is a subject of its own.

We have covered it properly in our guide to getting found by local parents, which goes through the Google Business Profile, the pages parents search for and how to measure it. This guide is about everything around it.

Where the enquiry journey leaks

Marketing brings a parent to the point of getting in touch. What happens next decides whether you fill the place, and the leaks are nearly always the same five.

• Nobody answers the phone between nine and half past three, and there is no alternative. An online enquiry form fixes most of this.
• Fees are not published, so a parent has to ring to find out whether you are even in their budget. Many will not. Our guide to fees and funded childcare online covers what to show.
• Policies are not available, so a cautious parent cannot do their homework before calling. See which policies to publish.
• The website does not say the basics: ages taken, opening hours, term or all year, where you are. Our guide to what a nursery website should include is the checklist.
• The reply is slow. A same-day answer, even a short one, converts far better than a considered one three days later.

What to measure, and how often

Monthly, in a single line on a spreadsheet: enquiries, visits, starts, occupancy by room, and the source of every enquiry. Each term: your review count, and whether your Google Business Profile views are rising. That is genuinely all. If the enquiry number is rising and the source mix is broadening, the marketing is working. If enquiries are steady but visits are not converting, the problem is the visit or the follow-up, not the marketing.

A 90-day nursery marketing plan

Then keep going. One useful post a week, reviews every term, an open day twice a year, and a look at the numbers each month.

Doing it yourself, or having it done

Almost everything above should be done by the setting, because you have the relationships, the photographs and the parents. Nobody can outsource a good open day.

The part that quietly slips is the website: new pages, updated fees, a policy that changed in September, photographs from two years ago. That is what Little Fruitcakes is for. At £79 a month inc VAT, nothing upfront, you get the website built and hosted and we make the changes for you, so the marketing you do in person is not let down by a page that is out of date.

If you want the search and content side handled as well, the Accelerate package adds ongoing SEO, monthly content, managed social posting and a plain-English monthly report at £199 a month. It is entirely optional and it sits on top. We do not promise rankings or enquiry numbers, and we would be wary of anyone who does. We promise the work, written down every month.

Common questions

More nursery website guides

• What a nursery website should include
• Nursery website requirements: Ofsted and EYFS
• Early years policies and procedures online
• Nursery fees and funded childcare online
• Nursery website accessibility
• Nursery SEO: getting found by local parents
• Little Fruitcakes: nursery website design

Sources

• Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help
• The UK advertising codes, Advertising Standards Authority
• CAP Code section 1: compliance, Committee of Advertising Practice
• National Day Nurseries Association