The next 30 days decide your January enrollment
Parents who need care in January start touring in late October and November. A 30-day plan to fill your January openings before the holidays stop the calls.
If you have openings for January, the families who will fill them are deciding in the next few weeks. Once Thanksgiving week hits, tour requests slow down, and by mid-December most parents have either signed somewhere or pushed the decision to after New Year's, when you are competing with every other center at once.
January openings come from a few predictable groups. Parents finishing parental leave around the new year. Families moving over the holidays. Parents whose current arrangement with a grandparent or a nanny ends in December. And families whose infant ages into your toddler room. Each of them is searching now. This is a 30-day plan to be the center they find.
Week one: count, then tell people
Know your real number. Sit down with your director and write out every opening for January by room and age: two infant spots, one toddler spot, three in preschool. Check it against your staffing. If you cannot staff a spot in January, do not market it. As we wrote before, your openings are capped by your ratios, not your ads.
Tell your current families first. Send a short note home and by text: "We have a few openings for January in our toddler and preschool rooms. If you know a family looking, send them our way." Current parents are your best source of new families. Siblings, neighbors, coworkers.
Update your Google profile. Add a Google post: "Now enrolling for January. Openings in toddler and preschool. Book a tour this week." Make sure your profile says what ages you take and your hours. In our data, 18.4% of child care centers list no hours on Google, which is a strange gap for a business whose whole product is hours.
Week two: make touring easy
Open more tour slots. Working parents cannot tour at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Add two evening slots a week and one Saturday morning slot for the next month. Only 7.5% of centers in our data show any Saturday hours, so even one Saturday tour window sets you apart.
Put a tour button everywhere. Website home page, Google profile, Facebook page. One click to book a time. If your booking is "call us during business hours," parents who are at work all day will not get to it. The tours and enrollment guide covers what to show during the tour and how to talk about tuition.
Answer every inquiry the same day. A parent who emails three centers on her lunch break will tour the first one that replies. If inquiries sit until the next morning, you are often too late. Set up a text-back for missed calls and a same-day rule for emails.
Week three: follow up and ask for reviews
Follow up every tour within a day. A short text from the director: "It was great meeting you and Maya today. If you have any questions about the toddler room, I am here. We are holding the January spot until Friday." A real deadline helps parents decide. Only use one if it is true.
Ask your happy families for reviews. Parents read reviews closely for child care, and most centers have few. The median center in our data has 6 Google reviews, and 58.6% have fewer than ten. A handful of new, specific reviews before the holidays can move you ahead of the centers nearby. The reviews guide has the exact words to use at pickup.
Week four: a small, local push
Run a small Facebook ad if you still have spots. Target parents within a few miles of your center, with a photo of a real classroom and a plain offer: "January openings for toddlers and preschoolers. Tour this week." A modest budget for two weeks is enough to test it. Point the ad to a tour booking page, not your home page. The Facebook and Instagram ads guide has more on what to show and what to avoid.
Call your old waitlist. Families who were on your waitlist last spring and never enrolled may still need care. A short call or text: "We have a toddler spot opening in January. Are you still looking?" Some will have found care. Some will say yes.
Check employers nearby. If there is a hospital, a school district or a large employer within a few miles, ask if they have a parent resource page or newsletter. Many will add a local center for free.
What to skip this month
- Do not drop tuition to fill a spot. A January discount trains families to wait for the next one, and it is hard to raise later.
- Do not build a new website now. Fix the tour button and the hours, and leave the rebuild for spring.
- Do not market openings you cannot staff.
How to know it worked
By mid-November, you should have more tours booked than the same weeks last year. By mid-December, you should know which January spots are filled. Anything still open after the holidays goes into the slow months plan.
You can see how your reviews and profile stack up against other centers in the benchmark report.
If you want help running the January push, the free 14-day trial covers any one service, no card: text or call (385) 213-2802.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, child care centers and daycares among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor