Too busy? Start here
Families in any catchment are finite, and a falling occupancy percentage isn't always a marketing problem. Ray's advice is to start with retention, because every family you keep is a vacancy you don't have to fill. Then look at the numbers behind occupancy, which are enquiries, tours, retention and competitors. Finally, know what makes your centre different from the one down the road, and make sure your marketing keeps saying it.
A hard truth: there are only a finite number of families in your catchment.
Add in lowering birth rates, cost of living pressures and what seems like an infinite supply of new centres, and you have the perfect recipe for declining utilisation.
I can summarise this article in one sentence: we need to do more, with less.
Here’s three areas I’d put a magnifying glass over…
Retention is Revenue
One could be forgiven for assuming that the first thing we’d discuss in a marketing article would be leads, when in actuality, successful centres understand that occupancy is built from the inside out.
Retention is revenue.
Nurturing your existing families is one of the most important things an operator can do to support operational stability and ongoing performance. It also gives you something incredibly valuable in a difficult market: predictability.
Let’s be real, we all know families don’t withdraw because “they’re moving area” – there, I said it.
If you understand how many families are leaving, when they are leaving and, most importantly, why they are leaving, you are in a much stronger position to forecast occupancy, plan your labour costs accordingly and make decisions about the future. After all, the point of all of this is to remain commercially viable.
On the theme of easy to remember one liners: Retention is marketing. It’s something you should consider, budget for and invest into.
Sometimes it can be as simple as improving the family communication loop because the centre down the road provides lots of photos. Sometimes it means addressing a concern before it becomes a reason to leave. Sometimes it means looking at how your team handles conflict or whether families feel genuinely heard when they raise an issue.
It can also mean helping families navigate the financial side of childcare. Do they understand their CCS entitlements? Are they aware of how their enrolment pattern affects their out-of-pocket costs? Are there legitimate ways your service can structure things — such as multi-day or sibling arrangements — that make remaining enrolled more sustainable for that family?
In a tough market, every family you retain is one less vacancy you need to replace.
That's not just good customer service. That's good business.
More than just a number
On that note, we need to get used to pulling back the veil on that magical percentage that we allow to dictate so much of our decision making.
Your occupancy percentage is the last number that matters.
There is a plethora of numbers that come together to ultimately define that golden number. And, in this current climate, an operator should be mindful of all of the different elements much earlier on in the piece, rather than being fixated on the final number at the end.
Here are four foundational areas to consider, which inadvertently contribute to that final figure of occupancy:
- Enquiries: How many leads came through? Where did they come from? What worked well and what didn’t work well?
- Tours: How many of those leads turned up for a tour? How many of those tours converted to enrolments? How many of those enrolments commenced? Were they followed up, how often and through what medium?
- Retention: What is your family churn rate? Are there patterns? Are families leaving after a particular period of time? Are they leaving because something about their experience with your service isn't meeting expectations?
- Competitors: Whose around you? What do they offer? What do they charge? Are there new centres opening up? Are your existing families leaving to go there? What do you have to offer in comparison?
Those are very different problems, and they require very different responses.
Perhaps the harsh reality for some is that marketing isn’t the fix. Sure, we can talk to optimising ads on Meta and ensuring you’re spending plenty on Google. It’s all stuff that you know already and I would be doing you disservice by repackaging more of the same into this article and calling it a day.
On the contrary, we can continue to push all those things but if some of the critical holes don’t get plugged, we’re only going to wind up spending more money on marketing and not shift the dial at all.
Plug the holes.
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Look, I totally get it, when that golden percentage starts to drop, it’s very tempting to look sideways.
The centre down the road has just renovated their outdoor area. Better renovate ours.
Another one started offering incursions every week. We need more incursions.
Then another starts posting five times a week on Instagram. Better get the camera out.
Before you know it, you're focused on trying to become a slightly different version of your competitor(s) — without ever stopping to ask whether that's what your families actually want or why they’re there in the first place.
Families are seeing the same thing every single day.
See it from their point of view, every single time they scroll, they’re being fed more of the same content, same prompts, the same offers – enrol now, book a tour, 2 weeks free…it goes on and on.
The question is "What makes us authentically different to any of those?"
That answer is your point of difference — and it needs to be more meaningful than having a nice playground or a slightly better Instagram feed.
Perhaps you're smaller and can genuinely offer a more personal, familiar experience. Or your educators have exceptionally strong relationships with families. Maybe your educational program is a genuine strength. Perhaps it's your food, your school readiness offering, your communication, your flexibility, your community or simply the culture you've built within the service.
Whatever it is, understand it.
Your catchment needs to understand what makes you different, your team needs to be able to articulate it, and your marketing needs to consistently reinforce it.
This is also where knowing your local market becomes important. Your point of difference doesn't exist in isolation. It exists in relation to the families you're trying to attract and the services competing for those families.
Case in point: some families will want a big centre or a new centre or a small one or an old one or basically the exact opposite of what you offer, and that’s ok.
You don’t need to be everything to everyone. You need to be the right fit for the right people.
A final, heartfelt note.
At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to make it work.
To keep our families happy. To support our educators. To provide a great experience for children. To keep the doors open and the business sustainable.
And in a tough market, it’s easy to feel like you need to do more of everything.
More marketing. More content. More offers. More. More. More.
But perhaps the answer isn’t more.
Perhaps it’s better.
Better understanding. Better decisions. Better use of our time. Better support.
And sometimes, that means recognising that we don’t have to be experts in everything. There is real value in bringing people around you who understand all the nuances above and can help you see things from a different perspective.
And yes, this is the part where I give a shameless plug, but that’s because I legitimately use them, know plenty of other operators who do and see incredible value in doing so. That’s what I see as the role of an agency like Playground Digital.
Aside from spending more efficiently, running everything more optimally and being on all the necessary platforms, I’m able to win back my time to focus on what matters.
Because, one thing we can all agree on, is that we have enough on our plates already.
Ray Sedrak is an early childhood education and care professional who has worked across both marketing and operations. He has led marketing and operations for an early learning provider, and his campaign work has ranged from hyper-local to state and national. Ray is a Playground Digital client and wrote this article himself.