If there’s one thing we hear from providers more than any other, it’s that there are never enough hours in the day. As a small business owner, you have to wear so many different hats: marketing, budgeting, operations, purchasing… And that’s before you’ve even run your classes!
Figuring out ways to save time while still operating your business effectively can make a massive difference to your reach, your revenue, and – ultimately – how much joy you get from your work.
Here are some time-saving strategies for you to try.
1. Schedule Your Marketing
Try putting aside a quiet few hours to sit down with a calendar (and a cuppa!) and sketch out a marketing plan for the term. You don’t need to write up every social post, but you can decide which days of the week you’ll aim to post on, and brainstorm a few repeatable content types which you can draw on when things get busy.
Enter your key dates onto the calendar, like when you’ll launch your classes for the new term, and what you need to do – e.g. run a pre-sale, contact your mailing list – to promote them. Then you’ll have plenty of advance warning as the key dates approach, beating the last-minute rush/panic!
Looking for free and cheap marketing tools? Here’s our recommendations
2. Reward Your Regulars
According to marketing platform Optimove, the cost (and time) of acquiring a new customer can be up to five times greater than keeping an existing one. Ouch! Just a little bit of effort to nurture your loyal families can go a long way, and save you tons of time in promoting your classes to a new audience.
If you have your customers’ email addresses, regular newsletters are a lovely, personal way to stay in touch, and likely to be seen by a much higher percentage of your audience than social media posts. You could share play-at-home ideas, songs and playlists from class, mini-blog posts. Whatever feels natural to you, It will help foster that connection with your families outside of class time.
Another way to reward your existing customers is by running a pre-sale– allowing parents to book terms or blocks of tickets before they go onsale to the general public. This is also a great way to fill spots well before the new term begins!
If you’re listed on Happity, this article has all the details on how to get set-up.
3. Take Bookings Online
‘Drop-off’ is the marketing term for when you capture a potential customer’s interest, but then lose them somewhere along the journey to actually making a sale.
When it comes to your baby and toddler classes, you might be doing all the right things. Getting your brand out there, encouraging word of mouth, capturing tons of attention. But if you don’t offer parents and families a chance to book there and then, you’re always going to have a bigger drop-off. Meaning at least some of the time you spent reaching those families will have been wasted.
As well as making your marketing more effective, taking bookings means you’ll capture your customer’s email addresses, which you can use to build your mailing list, launch pre-sales, and keep your fans coming back to your classes.
Ready to try it out for yourself? We happen to think our Bookings Platform is one of the best in the business, but don’t take our word for it, check out the features here.
Happity: Created with baby class providers in mind!
Reach parents, secure bookings, and breeze through your class admin, all in one place. Happity is the only marketing and booking platform designed specifically for baby and toddler class providers. New parents are using Happity to find baby and toddler classes in their area. Make sure they know about yours.
Get your classes seen by thousands of parents today
If you liked this post, you may also like:
What Is Makaton? (And Why Is It A Useful Skill For Your Baby Classes?)
How To Approach Nurseries As A Baby Or Toddler Class
4 Ways To Get Your Baby Classes Featured In Happity’s Marketing
