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THE ULTIMATE HOW-TO GUIDE

5 Ways Childcare Leaders Are Transforming the Brand Experience  Right 


Branding is about so much more than fonts and colors. We’ll share practical tips to help you elevate and standardize the brand experience across all your franchise locations to attract the right franchisees, scale successfully, and ultimately - win families’ trust.
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Why brand loyalty is essential in childcare

Between rising costs and information overwhelm, it’s getting harder to win parents over.

According to our annual research, brand consistency and enrollment are two of the top priorities for childcare leaders. But if you’re responsible for dozens of locations, gaps from the franchisor to the center level can lead to slow responses, offkey messaging, and missed opportunities.

Let’s explore further how closing the gaps in your family enrollment and engagement systems can help you deliver a consistent experience across the entire network.

 

1. Elevate your online image

Family engagement starts with the initial inquiry and extends all the way to the day a child ages out of your school. Whether your current marketing is focused on social media ads or organic search engine optimization (SEO), it should be clear from each and every interaction that your brand places an emphasis on quality care and community.

For a streamlined experience for every family, every time, let’s take a closer look at how the team at New Horizon Academy (NHA) presents their brand online:

  • Front-and-center accreditations: Don’t make parents go down a rabbit hole to find out if you're certified by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and other key organizations. Present a trustworthy brand from the beginning by clearly stating your accreditations on your home page.
  • Clear value prop on website: The New Horizon Academy website features their logo along with an opening statement that emphasizes their overarching mission to provide the “best child care and preschool on the planet.
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  • Easy ‘find a location’ feature: With a clear call to action (CTA) to “find a school”, the team at NHA doesn’t have to worry about parents accidentally selecting the wrong center. With the click of a button, they can see a list of all New Horizon branches, plus a map to help them choose the location that suits their lifestyle.
  • Consistent logos and branding across center websites: Each branch website features a picture of the local center as its hero image, as well as the NHA logo, for a unified experience across local center websites.
  • User-friendly tour options: Families visiting any of NHA’s center websites can self-schedule tours by picking a date and filling out a simple form. They even have the option to take a virtual tour, with a click in and out of each center’s rooms.
  • Dedicated landing pages: NHA features a landing page for all eight learning programs they offer, making it easy for prospective parents to find what they need.
  • Social proof: NHA’s corporate site and location-specific websites feature testimonials from real families, reinforcing the brand’s mission, while making the experience feel friendlier and more trustworthy for inquiring parents.

No matter where they come from, or which website a family lands on, they’re met with the same high-quality brand experience, including user-friendly features to help them find the right location.

2. Centralize the enrollment experience

According to our research, more than a quarter of childcare teams spend at least one day per week on lead follow-up and nearly 30% spend 7-9 hours per week on tour scheduling.

The result is a process that is slow, messy, and not reflective of your brand. By centralizing the enrollment journey, you can pave a path toward a streamlined process that saves your staff time, while ensuring consistent communication and better reporting at every level.

Here are some tips to help you centralize your enrollment operations, without cutting corners on customer experience:

  • Offer tailored communication options
  • Use personalized texts and emails
  • Keep communication timely
  • Customize tour talking points
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3. Lean into your “points of pride”

If you ask Lisa Henkel, our VP of Education & Training here at LineLeader, she’ll tell you every center has something to brag about. She calls these bragging rights “points of pride.”

During her tenure as the Chief Operating Officer at a multi-site childcare franchise with 50 locations across the Eastern United States, she witnessed the power of a strong brand experience firsthand.

Whether your points of pride are awards, teacher tenure, or innovative tools and technology, use them to nurture trust and engagement with families. Here are some tips to get you started:

  • Highlight program offerings: For example, Sunshine House breaks down its three core programs in clear language for parents: its Creative Curriculum® focuses on exploration and discovery, the Brain Connect Infant Curriculum is designed around the 5 building blocks of brain development, and Seeds of Literacy uses children’s literature to nurture character development.
  • Communicate clear values: By letting parents know that all Sunshine House classrooms are equipped with electronic keypads and security cameras that are accessible to families any time, the brand’s commitment to security is one of many core values that is communicated from a parent’s very first visit to the website and beyond.
  • Spotlight each center’s points of pride: Does this location have teacher’s that have been there for more than a decade? Has it won an award for #1 center in the city? No matter what it is that sets each center apart, make sure those differentiators are clearly communicated, both online and during the tour.

With a centralized mission that spans the entire organization and unique points of pride for each center, you can increase the effectiveness of your tours and help families find a center that meets their needs — even in cases where their first choice is at capacity.

4. Add more organic marketing channels

In an environment where digital ads are getting more expensive by the minute, leading childcare brands, like Sunshine House, New Horizon Academy, and more, are leveraging inbound marketing to deepen their connection with prospective families.

Here are some proven strategies to improve your organic marketing at both the center and corporate level:

  • Localize your landing pages
  • Start a referral program
  • Tap into the power of video
  • Revamp your email marketing
  • Launch a blog
  • Start a podcast
  • Use a branded family engagement app
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Whether you’re offering parents an easy-to-use app or free advice via your podcast, reinforcing your organic presence is a great way to bolster your childcare brand, while reducing your dependence on ad spend!

5. Use data to Iterate and Improve

With a streamlined system for reporting, you can forecast enrollment ratios, key trends, and annual profit, and use that data to deliver an outstanding family experience at every center.

Here are some tips to help you use your data to continually improve the customer experience:

  • Use hierarchical reporting: By automating your manual data aggregation processes, you can generate detailed reports tracking performance across programs, regions, and brands, in a fraction of the time that it would normally take.
  • Make data-driven decisions: With the ability to identify key performance drivers at both the individual center and organizational level, you can make data-informed decisions to streamline lead management, enhance operational efficiency, and drive increased revenue across the franchise.
  • Test and scale your marketing: With standardized enrollment processes across regions, locations and brands, you can use your data to see which discounts, scripts, and templates work best and do more of what works to increase enrollments at each location.
  • Provide ongoing staff training and support: Set up scorecards to help keep team members accountable. For example, if one of your expectations is for a staff member to connect with every lead within 24 hours, you can create a scorecard to see how many untouched leads are left at the end of the week and use that data to help keep team members on track.

Everyone in your organization wants to see enrollment grow. Make it easy with targeted performance goals for each role and function, and centralized reporting to guide your coaching discussions.

Simplify and streamline your multicenter branding

Getting a vast network of centers on the same page with your branding can feel like an impossible task. But with the right tools and processes, you can deliver consistent and tailored messaging across all customer interactions, both at the corporate and local level.

In LineLeader, childcare franchises can store all key branding elements, like logos, colors, templates and more, in one central place where all team members can access the resources they need to maintain a professional image.

As childcare’s leading configurable platform, LineLeader makes sure that even the largest ECE networks have the tools they need to ensure that every text and email reflects who you are as a brand.

Demo LineLeader today to see its multisite features in action, or explore our resources for more best practices from leading childcare organizations.

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Download the guide to stay up to date on the latest industry news, trends and best practices for growing and managing your childcare business.

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