Welcome to the Family Day Care Australia marketing website.
Is your marketing strategy delivering all it should?
Marketing to attract families to your family day care service is probably something you’ve always done. This site offers a health check on marketing strategies and a range of tools customised for family day care.
Family day care – the context
Childcare is a critical issue for Australian families right now. The media reports over supply in some areas and not enough places in others; long waiting lists and high prices. But most of this commentary focuses on centre-based long day care – inadvertently reinforcing the myth that ‘childcare = centre’.
Family day care has been operating in Australia for over thirty years. In 2007 more than 90,000 children aged from birth to twelve years are enrolled through 340 schemes servicing over 12,000 carers in almost every region of Australia.
So what are our key messages in this regard? We’re big, we’re established and we’re everywhere!
The Government’s policy changes of 2006, particularly the uncapping of places and removal of scheme boundaries, gave family day care the ability to compete with other childcare services on a more level playing field. Without these constraints family day care can now move to more significantly address the childcare needs of Australian families.
The keys to success
In 2006 Family Day Care Australia developed a nationally consistent logo (the red star house), branded promotional products and stationery, and a five star standard which underpins what we mean when we say ‘family day care’. We know that children thrive in small groups, in a familiar environment with individual attention from one consistent person who truly cares about their interests, learning and development. With this as our central message, and commitment of the entire family day care community to one consistent, national and identifiable brand for family day care, we have the keys to increase awareness of our quality childcare service.
Only through a commitment to gaining greater market share through effective marketing and promotion will more Australian children and their families have the opportunity to experience the unique childcare option that is family day care – unable to be duplicated by any other service.
Well coordinated marketing strategies at the national level, together with complementary local marketing activities will raise the profile and status of family day care and attract both workers and families. We can do this together. We know that our resources to achieve these goals are limited. However with one brand, a national coordinated marketing framework and your committed local efforts we can make best use of those resources to meet our shared goals.
The challenges
Childcare is a competitive marketplace – private centres invest heavily in marketing, and corporate childcare operations have access to massive advertising and marketing resources.
It is important for us to remember the significant competitive advantage family day care has over other forms of childcare – there is literally nothing else like it!
The challenge then is to get the message out there so that all Australian families come to know about family day care and are better able to make informed choices about the childcare option that best suits their child.
What is marketing?
For family day care, marketing is both about attracting families to use your service and about attracting carers to provide the service. This website focuses on marketing to families.
Marketing is a matching process between a buyer and a seller. Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist, suggests that:
‘The aim of marketing is to know and understand customers so well that the product or service fits them and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in customers who are ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.’
Marketing is more than selling and advertising. It is finding out who your customers are, how many of them there are, working out how to reach them and letting them know about your service. It’s also about understanding your environment and your competitors and to find that point of difference that will attract customers to your service over a competitor’s.
No business, not even a not-for-profit, sets out merely to break even. Profits, or surplus funds, are used by not-for-profit business to sustain and build value for your customers – the families using your service.
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