Before developing a digital marketing plan for your child care services, you need to know who your advertising will be speaking to. The group of people you want to see your ads and become clients of your center is your target market.
Primary Target Market
If you’re an established daycare, it will be easy to create a profile for your target market. Assess the features of the families currently enrolled at your center. Perhaps your best clients are families with parents of infants, ages 35 to 44, making a combined income of over $120,000, and living and working within a 5-mile radius of your business.
This becomes your primary target market and your ads will be designed to appeal to parents with similar characteristics. One of digital marketing’s strengths is how precisely you can target specific types of people based on demographics, psychographics and online behavior.
Secondary Target Market
You may have families at your child care center that don’t fall into a group of your “best” customers. These families still make up a portion of your business’ revenue and are worth advertising to. Maybe these parents are younger, have fewer or older children, live further away or have a lower household income.
This less desirable, but still profitable, group of potential clients makes up your secondary target market. You may have more than one of these secondary groups. It makes sense to advertise to these parents using modified methods. You could change wording or imagery, use different digital platforms or decrease the amount you’re willing to pay to acquire a lead.
Keep in mind that every family is unique, so your target markets are more suggestions than hard and fast rules. It’s helpful to picture your target market when creating ads to appeal to potential clients. However, you can’t predict completely how a parent will respond to a specific ad. Testing and optimization will help you find the best messages to drive enrollment of profitable customers.
