315: The Best Branding Strategies to Boost Your Childcare Enrollment with Ruth Ann Rose!

You’re going to love this episode! Kate and Carrie sit down with marketing pro Ruth Ann Rose to chat about how childcare centers can boost enrollment with smart, consistent branding. They swap stories about marketing mishaps (including a cringe-worthy website link fail!), explain why your digital footprint matters, and share easy tips for keeping your online presence polished. 

Ruth Ann’s advice is practical and reassuring. Think of it as a friendly checkup for your center’s marketing health. If you want your program to stand out and attract more families, this episode is a must-listen! 

Learn more about Rose Marketing: 

https://rosemarketingsolutions.net

https://www.facebook.com/RoseMarketingSolutions/

https://www.instagram.com/rosemarketingsolutions/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/rose-marketing-solutions

https://rosemarketingsolutions.net/blog/

Thanks for Listening 🎧

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Transcript

Kate Woodward Young (00:05)
So let's get butts in the seats.

Ruth Ann Rose (00:08)
Absolutely.

Carrie Casey (00:09)
think that's good. think most centers want to get more children enrolled at their program. So we've got a guest today that's gonna help with that, right? So.

Kate Woodward Young (00:17)
Well, that's the goal, I think anyway, right?

Ruth Ann Rose (00:17)
Absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (00:19)
So Ruth Ann Rose with ⁓ Rose Marketing. Did I get that right? Rose Marketing Solutions. like, I feel like there was a word after that. And so Rose Marketing Solutions is our guest today. Ruth Ann, do me a favor. Tell us a little bit about what you do and either broad or specific and why a childcare

Ruth Ann Rose (00:24)
Rose Marketing Solutions.

Kate Woodward Young (00:45)
Center with a single location or multiple locations might think about using your services.

Ruth Ann Rose (00:51)
Absolutely. Well, you've already said it. We help put little bottoms in little seats, right? So basically what we do at Rose Marketing Solutions is work with school owners, early childhood center owners, some K through 12, ⁓ work with those owners and finding ways to attract moms and dads ⁓ to their location, to drive tours, to drive enrollment. It's that easy. We just know it's getting harder and harder to get parents' attention.

when they need childcare for them to find you. And so if they don't find you, they can't tour and enroll, right? So in a nutshell, that's what we're all about. Now we do it through a variety of ways, helping create websites, helping create branding, lots of Google ads, meta ads, but even more importantly now turning again to AI because SEO, search engine optimization isn't dead. It's just got to rebrand, right? So today we have to be sure that answer engines also find you.

It's getting complicated, right? It used to be if you just had a great location, great word of mouth, ran a great company, and you were in the Yellow Pages, remember the Yellow Pages? Yeah, that used to be it. Well, now you've got to layer into it, know, reviews and social media. Now we've got AI. So it's just getting more more complicated to get parents to find you. And that's why we're here to give you that solution.

Kate Woodward Young (02:01)
I do, I do remember the yellow pages. I am that old.

Okay, this sounds like way more

than what I want to try to deal with. whoa, like Ruth Ann just gave us a laundry list and I'm thinking, I don't know about you, Carrie, but aren't you glad we were a Yellow Pages era?

Ruth Ann Rose (02:20)
Yeah!

Hahaha

Carrie Casey (02:32)
I mean, yes, ⁓ it would have been smarter back in the Yellow Pages era if my center, my first center hadn't been called Little People, because that's halfway through the alphabet. It needed to be like Albatross or something like that.

Kate Woodward Young (02:50)
think

that's the reason why there's so many ABC child cares. I mean, I really do. I don't think, you know, I don't see a whole lot of AAA child care. See a lot of AAA plumbing and things like that. But ⁓ absolutely, I totally agree with you, Carrie. mean, we know that there's a reason why Texas director is now all Texas director.

Ruth Ann Rose (02:58)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Carrie Casey (03:12)
Cause there is a listing where it's alphabetical. And

so we went, we'll take the first one. ⁓ But we didn't, yeah, with search engine optimization, with having to be on, you know, at least one social media, if not four, depending on your area and your audience. I mean, that is an awful lot to put on anyone's page.

Ruth Ann Rose (03:16)
Yeah. Yeah, well, those days are gone.

Kate Woodward Young (03:18)
You

Ruth Ann Rose (03:38)
It is, it is, especially for somebody who really went into the industry with that desire to support families, to educate children, that strong desire to make a difference in the world through education. Marketing is usually not what they signed up for. It's not their first love and it feels like a foreign language, right? ⁓ So it can be difficult for owners, absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (04:01)
So as a foreign language speaker, why don't you give us a couple of vocabulary words. You used them as if they were nothing and like everybody should know what they were. But I'd love for you to talk a little bit more because it's one of the things that I notice people often forget is brand. so for somebody who's listening who maybe have been doing their stuff in

Ruth Ann Rose (04:25)
Yes.

Kate Woodward Young (04:31)
Canva or in whatever they want to do. They they're just you know, whatever their mood, you know, or maybe they copy from somebody else. Talk a little bit about brand, the importance of a brand. ⁓ Maybe even kind of what that means, because that really is a word that I would suspect a lot of child care owners and directors may have some disconnects with or may not be really clear and understanding what it is or why it's important.

Ruth Ann Rose (04:58)
Okay.

Well, thanks, Kate. That could be a whole dissertation, but I will try to answer small. ⁓ Yeah, I bet you're famous for that. And so brand is basically your promise to people. It's your brand should signify something to them that where they can they can know what to expect. They see the brand and they know what to expect like a Chick-fil-A. If you

Kate Woodward Young (05:05)
Yeah, I know.

Ruth Ann Rose (05:25)
get something, you know, know they're gonna say my pleasure, right? That's the brand. So branding in a childcare situation has several connotations. One, you need to have a great logo, obviously. ⁓ But you also need to have consistent colors and fonts. And I'm saying this because I see a lot in childcare is you may have a logo on the outside of the building. You may have a different logo on your website. Your social media pages might have a slightly different version.

And then if you have somebody on your staff taking care of your social media, they may be doing whatever they think is pretty in Canva, right, for your post. So where brand really matters for early childhood education is that let's say, you know, you're working with me or somebody and because of our work, a parent finds your school in digital media. Let's say the Google Maps, for instance. And then they click on the link to go to your website. And maybe there's a disconnect, maybe the

branding color fonts logos on the ad don't match what's on your website. Well now you've created this disconnect rather like ⁓ is this not where I was trying to go to is this not where I was being led or let's say they do match but then they get to your social media and again maybe your colors are blue and gold but your staff really likes pink and purple so they're doing your post in pink and purple again that's another disruption parents don't really know who you are

If you're consistent, are they landing in the right place? You're disrupting that journey and you're causing internal questions in their mind. And once they have questions about your consistency, subconsciously it has to start thinking about, if this is the inconsistency and how they present themselves, what is the consistency of care my child is going to get? Does that make sense?

Kate Woodward Young (07:15)
Absolutely. And I know Carrie's dying to ask you another question related to brand inconsistency. I can see it.

Carrie Casey (07:15)
Yeah.

Ruth Ann Rose (07:18)
Yes.

All right, Carrie.

Carrie Casey (07:20)
Well, I

I have this issue because I was raised by a printer. And ⁓ what I was taught as a printer's daughter was that the purpose of a logo was that it is instantly identifiable. And to make it instantly identifiable, it needs to be two or at most three colors. It should not have 12. Is that still what is recommended?

Ruth Ann Rose (07:44)
Correct.

absolutely. And I'll even say, please don't use clip art. I think it's a logo. ⁓

Carrie Casey (07:53)
You can put clip

Kate Woodward Young (07:55)
especially if the clip

Carrie Casey (07:56)
art.

Kate Woodward Young (07:56)
art has 12 colors. Like ⁓ we do a workshop where we often talk about this, but where I thought Carrie was gonna go, and I'm gonna have to you guys have this discussion, is the brand or name or logo or artwork as it relates to the educational philosophy of the program. And so this is a whole other like Carrie will get on a soapbox. And so if you are a mom and pops,

Carrie Casey (08:15)
Well, yes.

Ruth Ann Rose (08:17)
Yeah,

yeah, really does. Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (08:25)
program and you want that homey feel, what should the brand kind of tell them? I mean, again, when you start talking about that disconnect.

Ruth Ann Rose (08:33)
Well, like I said, this could be a huge conversation. I mean, you've already said it, right? The brand should convey something about your personality, the type of care and your education philosophy. That's kind of hard to do in a logo. So it really does take a lot of thought. ⁓ But I want to kind of bypass that a little bit because I've got, if I can make one point on brand specifically that someone could use today. ⁓ Once you've worked with a professional and got your logo,

be sure they put it into at least a one page brand guide for you so that you always have the codes for each color, for print, for digital, all the fonts are identified, the ways you can use your logo, you've got it in several different versions. And that's gonna save you lot of time and money. So whenever you're ordering t-shirts, building a website, doing anything, maybe you've got it all.

Kate Woodward Young (09:19)
And let me just say, somebody gives it to you as a,

and if somebody gives it to you as a Canva kit, this is not still your brand kit. You need to have your logo as a TIF, as a PNG, as all the different formats, vertical, horizontal, black and white, ⁓ or white and black, depending on if you're gonna use it on shirts or whatever, right? So, ⁓ and if you're not really sure what that is, this is a great reason to call

Ruth Ann Rose (09:33)
Yep. Yep.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (09:49)
⁓ Rose marketing solutions and have somebody look at what you have because Carrie and I have ⁓ had people ⁓ do work for us and they gave us the brand kit as a Canva file. so then we had, and again, we have enough background. ⁓ Okay, over 30 years in printing and publishing each, not including our childcare experience. And so.

Ruth Ann Rose (09:52)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (10:19)
When we look, we know how to save that Canva file and why to save it in all those formats. ⁓ Not everybody who's listening to the call will probably know the difference between a TIFF file and a PNG and why you might need different ones and how to resize and why to resize and why black and white and all those things, right? ⁓ So definitely if you've paid to have a brand kit,

Ruth Ann Rose (10:23)
Right.

Yep, Absolutely, absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (10:47)
and maybe it was somebody starting out or maybe it was somebody you just know and you really liked what they've been doing and your logo might be in a dozen colors. Again, somebody like Rose Marketing Solutions can help you take, not change it, but take it in and bring it back down to manageable color loads. Because if you're using embroidery on your shirts, it's a lot cheaper to go with two colors versus 12.

Ruth Ann Rose (11:04)
Yes.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (11:17)
If you're printing your shirts, screen printing one color is always going to be cheaper than having to go to a different type of print process to get a full color artwork. ⁓

Ruth Ann Rose (11:27)
Absolutely.

Right. Well, even

with ⁓ your staff hours, think about it. You probably have assigned somebody in your staff the job of doing social media posts. ⁓ If you will take that guide and put it into Canva, as you mentioned, and lock in that brand guide, then you tell your staff, look, I appreciate you're doing a social media, you're doing a great job, but please only use these colors. Please only use this font and lock it in. Don't let them go rogue. Again, because if you...

have somebody doing a social media post in different colors, it's another disconnect. And we want that journey to be the same, especially when someone like myself, our team is helping you with Google or meta ads. Again, we want that consistency so that people see the brand all the way through, never doubt where they are, that they're in the right place, and understand what you stand for. ⁓ Really, really important. Really, really important.

Kate Woodward Young (12:22)
All right, so go ahead, Kerry.

Carrie Casey (12:23)
Yep.

was just gonna say, is, it's one of those things where we get very, a lot of times we get very tied into, this is so cute, but this is so cute doesn't necessarily convey your values, what you think is important in early education to your customers. And that is an important part of it.

Ruth Ann Rose (12:49)
Right.

Carrie Casey (12:52)
And again, that consistency so that it's the same every time they see you so that they have that feeling that they can trust you. It's not a logical thought. They're not using their prefrontal cortex. This is all midbrain, you know, their reaction that this is the same every time I see it gives them a sense of comfort and trust. Just like a kid coming into the classroom.

Ruth Ann Rose (13:03)
Yes.

Exactly.

Carrie Casey (13:21)
And every day they come in and the routine is the same. It's that same thing that we're doing to settle their midbrain. Okay, so this is.

Ruth Ann Rose (13:25)
Exactly.

Well, and even to the point

of once they come into the school, you know, is the tour packet physical tour packet you're handing to them? Are those fresh copies or they copies of copies? ⁓ Is it the same logo? Is it the same colors, the same fonts? Is your enrollment forms again, color and font? Is your employment application also matching? It's everything because you've got to remember you've you've really got four audiences.

in an early childhood center. You've got your enrolled parents, right? You want them to continue to feel like they have chosen a great place. So your social media content should be reassuring them as well as your internal forms and correspondence to them, right? Should always still be consistent. And then you've got the prospects, right? You want those families who are peeking in your digital windows, you know, to see what you look like and what your culture is. Again, they have to see the consistency. And then enrolled, not enrolled staff.

Employed staff, they want to see that you're consistent because that kind of implies that your paycheck is going to be consistent to them, right? That you are an employer of quality, of loyalty, of consistency. And then for prospective staff, again, they want to see that same culture, continuity, and no disruptions in their employment search. They want to make sure everything looks the same. So there's a lot to be said for that. ⁓ And again, when you start playing into Google Ads and meta ads,

⁓ answer engine optimization. Again, everything needs to be consistent.

Kate Woodward Young (15:00)
Wow, so you've given us a lot of places and things we need to think about, we need to do. And like you said, it could be a dissertation. so since this is a designed to be a 20 minute podcast, we are not going to try to solve everything, but what is something that you're seeing the programs are totally missing right now? And a lot of it has to do with they don't have a clue where to start.

Carrie Casey (15:00)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young (15:28)
or even why, ⁓ why this is something that again to you might be, well, why are you not doing it? ⁓ What are some things that...

Ruth Ann Rose (15:30)
Right.

You know, Kate, I'm glad you asked, because this is a number one thing I see ⁓ when I get on a discovery phone call with people. And we love to give free discovery calls. just a 15 minute, you know, quick look at your what we call digital footprint. But we do screen share with the owners, again, quick 15 minutes. And one of the first things I always do is with them watching, pull up their Google My Business page. You know, this is

one of the footprints you have online, correct? And I've got to tell you, more often than not, ⁓ there is something wrong with that profile. And I don't want to scare anybody, but the most recent thing I found lately was I'm doing the screen share with an owner. We go to their Google Business page. I click on their website link, and a porn site pulls up. So that's what I'm always telling.

Carrie Casey (16:31)
Goodness.

Kate Woodward Young (16:33)
Well, I really hope that this

is not the clip that any of the AI decides to pull.

Carrie Casey (16:39)
Ha!

Ruth Ann Rose (16:39)
Well, you know, you might get a whole other set of viewers, so we can edit that out if you want.

Kate Woodward Young (16:40)
I know I'm like,

⁓ I'm like going mental note must tell producer do not use this AI clip.

Ruth Ann Rose (16:48)
Okay, well,

let's start over then because that I didn't even think about that. Yeah.

Carrie Casey (16:51)
But no, mean, I think it's very valid because people don't go back and check to make sure that their pages, ⁓ Kate had a similar thing in her personal history and it's having that outside person come in and audit and show you maybe one of the reasons why you're not getting enrollment is that this is happening.

Kate Woodward Young (16:51)
No, no, no, no. Yeah.

Ruth Ann Rose (16:59)
Right.

Kate Woodward Young (17:03)
I did.

Ruth Ann Rose (17:18)
Yeah,

Carrie Casey (17:19)
And it could also be that it's.

Kate Woodward Young (17:19)
Yeah, I mean, in my case, it

Ruth Ann Rose (17:19)
yeah, I just yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (17:20)
was a company that I used to work for, ⁓ that the new owner of the domain name is exactly what you mentioned, that kind of site. And so I have to be really careful how I list it on resumes or anything. ⁓ Sometimes I don't. ⁓ I prefer project-based resumes now.

Ruth Ann Rose (17:41)
Yeah, well, exactly.

Carrie Casey (17:44)
You

Ruth Ann Rose (17:45)
Well, and that was a drastic one, right? But just even yesterday I was on a call and I was auditing their social media and one of their posts had, you know, click here to schedule a call. But when we clicked it, we got a security certificate notice came up. And so that meant all this money she'd been putting into her Facebook or meta ads to get people to schedule a tour. People were hitting a wall.

Now, who's going to tell you a prospect is not going to call and say, oh, I couldn't get through your site. They're just going to move on to the next school, right? So again, that was a connection between her CRM. And basically, she got a new website that the page that her schedule tour link used to be on no longer existed on the new site. So it was a disconnect. So that's why I'm always telling people, go audit what you look like online. Click every link. Go create a spreadsheet. Google yourself.

Carrie Casey (18:13)
Right.

Ruth Ann Rose (18:36)
put all the links, the places you appear on and go and check every single link and make sure the NAP is correct. NAP stands for name, address and phone number. If they're not all written exactly the same on every listing, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Google My Business, Facebook, Instagram, ⁓ there's going to be disconnect on the algorithm. So think that's my number one thing is tell people just please audit. Listings are not set it and forget it.

glitches happen, links break, and you don't want to disrupt that parent journey.

Carrie Casey (19:07)
And if this is stressing you out, because it is stressing me out, because Kate and I have like four companies and I'm like, I know we haven't done an audit recently. I'm going to suggest that this is one of those, instead of knowing how to do it, know who can do it. I think this is a go find someone who can do it. know, Rose Marketing will help you with it or marketing solutions, right?

Ruth Ann Rose (19:26)
Right, right, yeah.

Carrie Casey (19:36)
⁓ Can help you with it. Yes. So, you know, find someone to go do this for you and have it as something that they do on at least I would suggest quarterly is that because in my head everything should be done quarterly.

Ruth Ann Rose (19:36)
Yes, because we solve problems.

⁓

it's a simple health routine situation, right? You just had a task reminder, go check. Nine times out of 10, you might not find anything wrong, but gosh, to know that one client couldn't schedule a tour. People just couldn't schedule a tour. That's a lot of money being wasted.

Carrie Casey (20:13)
Yeah, I mean, and I think, you know, when one of the things that we say in our classes is that the last thing you cut in your budget is the marketing. You have to be spending money on paying for the building and on marketing. If you can't pay for the building anymore, then you can consider reducing your marketing, but you reduce staff, you reduce

Kate Woodward Young (20:13)
Absolutely.

Ruth Ann Rose (20:38)
Yeah.

Carrie Casey (20:40)
Your internet, you reduce your supplies, you go down to we're all eating oatmeal three times a day. You you reduce everything else before you reduce marketing because marketing is the lifeblood of your business. And very few of us got into this business because we wanted to be marketers or we wanted to be salespeople. But if you're not doing marketing and if you're not selling your program, you cannot pay your teachers. You cannot

Ruth Ann Rose (20:49)
Yes.

That's right.

Carrie Casey (21:09)
buy the googly eyes. You have to be marketing your program.

Ruth Ann Rose (21:13)
Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately, that's the number one reason sometimes we hear that people, know, most of our relationships are about seven to eight years. So we don't have a lot of churn in our particular business. But when we do, a lot of times it comes back to I've lost so much enrollment, I don't have marketing dollars. And that's what they're choosing to cut. And I understand that you've got payroll. Yeah, I mean, you've got your teachers looking in the face wanting their paycheck.

Carrie Casey (21:13)
And if.

Kate Woodward Young (21:35)
And they don't understand, yeah.

Ruth Ann Rose (21:42)
⁓ And so we just got to be sure, you know, that they, those people get paid. That's where their heart goes, but it's not a long-term good move to cut marketing, especially now with AI and answer engine optimization coming in. And that's a whole nother topic I'd love to cover at some point with you as well.

Carrie Casey (22:00)
Well, we can do that. Not today.

Kate Woodward Young (22:03)
Absolutely. So thank you

for for joining us Ruthanne and ⁓ If you got something that you enjoyed from the show go check us out ⁓ and ⁓ Your podcasting app and with that We will talk to you later this week