How big is your territory? This is a vital question when it comes to creating a marketing strategy to maximise the potential of your nursery locally. Our benchmark survey, based on returns from more than 2,800 parents, gives insight into parents' travel patterns and is designed to assist nursery businesses in measuring parent satisfaction, planning new investment and targeting marketing for existing services.
The survey shows some interesting trends. For example, it highlights that families travel an average distance of 1.60 miles to their day nursery. The shortest trip recorded by the survey is 0.01 miles and the longest is over 30 miles. One in four parents (24 per cent) prefer to use childcare nearer to work than home - showing the importance of understanding local travel-to-work patterns when planning marketing strategies.
The survey also indicates that while word of mouth is still key to generating new enquiries, more than one in ten parents now first find out about their chosen nursery via the internet. Clearly it is a resource that many nurseries are still not using to its full potential.
It is also important to consider issues such as the profile of the community that you will serve. For example, there are cultures which prefer to use networks of family and friends rather than formal childcare. In areas where informal childcare is more common, families may expect their nursery to be within easy walking distance.
Research should be carried out on a regular basis to keep up to speed with any services or new patterns of care that existing parents may welcome. Or it might be the case that there are new businesses or housing developments that can be targeted to raise occupancy.
Part of Ceeda's service includes providing commissioned market appraisals for those looking to expand or enter the market. These include data on local population trends and forecasts, local employment patterns, social profiles of target neighbourhoods and local population surveys to measure demand.
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