345: The Best Marketing Strategies That Actually Fill Your Childcare Center with Pietro of BRIT Childcare

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, the hosts chat with Pietro from BRIT AI about smart marketing strategies for childcare centers. Pietro breaks down why Meta ads (Facebook & Instagram) are often a better investment than Google Ads right now, and introduces the Meta Pixel as a game-changer for targeting the right families. He also gets real about budgeting — think 5-8% of gross revenue for meaningful results. The big takeaway? Marketing isn't a cost, it's an investment with seriously impressive returns. Don't sleep on this one!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Child Care Conversations, the podcast where early childhood leaders like you get real-world strategies, honest talk, and a whole lot of support. Whether you're running one center or many, we're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is brought to you by Center IQ. If you've ever added a child to a classroom, adjusted staffing, or made a quick schedule change, and then spent the next two weeks fixing the ripple effects, you're not alone. Most leaders make decisions and then see what happens. CenterIQ's decision intelligence lets you see what happens before you decide. Start your free trial today at centeriq.io. Now, let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Hard decisions, any decision, all of this is just something that directors and owners deal with every single day. One decision is how do you get in front of other people, parents, potential parents. So today's guest is Pietra with Brit Marketing, Brit Childcare Marketing. And Pietra is going to kind of have a discussion. I don't know, maybe a conversation. What do you think, Carrie? I think he's going to have a conversation with Kate and Carrie about kind of what's changed, why it's changed, and maybe a different perspective for some of you listening on your budget and where we should go with that. So, Pietro, you don't need to give everybody the whole how you ended up in the U.S. because you know you're in Wichita now. So that's a whole story in itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Don't come here.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

But tell folks listening a little bit about you, um, and specifically maybe why you chose to specialize in childcare.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Absolutely, yes. Well, so thank you guys. Thank you, Kate and Carrie. I am so grateful to be here with you guys. Uh yeah, so as uh as Kate was saying, I'm originally from Italy, ended up in the US, and for the last seven years or so, I've been uh, you know, specializing in marketing and for the last three years, about uh specifically in preschool marketing and working with primary preschools. The main reason why um is this, which is working with different industries. I saw two trends in childcare that really attracted me towards this industry. The first one is childcare is one of the only businesses when when talking to owners, you realize that the mission for the owners is not just making money. And yes, that is a thing. We are all in business to make also money, but in some industry, the only driver is cash, and I didn't like that. Uh, you know, where in preschool we're all working towards the greater good as well as making a profit out of it, right? Uh, and then the other thing is working with the different industries, and I'll give you a few. We worked with dentists, lawyers, we worked with solar installers. One day we had this amazing friend who we still work with that owned a preschool, and she needed help. She asked for help, and the return on investment, which is again what we mostly care about in marketing, was maybe 10 times higher than we had ever given in any other industry. And then we got the second preschool, third preschool, fourth preschool. It was always higher ROI that I've ever seen in my life. And I was like, man, this is it. Let's just do that. And that's kind of how we ended up working with preschools.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Okay, so before we get too much farther, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna put Carrie on the spot. So, Carrie, this is this is to see how much you're paying attention. I know you're only like third class into your MBA. However, tell everybody what an ROI is.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Return on investment. But I knew that before going back for my MBA. I've actually the class I just finished uh or am finishing right now is actually the first of the marketing classes in my MBA. But the return on investment and what people want, you know, when they're looking at my in the MBA, they're like, you know, you want at least a 100% ROI. So if you spend $1, you want to earn at least $2 back. So if you spend $1 in advertising, you want $2 in income. Well, in childcare, it is not unusual to spend $300 in marketing, in advertising on online platforms, and get back a lifetime value or even a one-year value of like 20 times that. So you get one family, and that one family is bringing you the dollars because there's a couple of kids, and you spent $300 to get that $20,000. That's massive return on investment. And I think we sometimes get lost in that because we're like, oh, I can't afford to spend money on advertising. I'm not gonna do meta ads, I'm not gonna do Google Ads, I'm not gonna freshen the paint on the outside of my school. It's too expensive. And I go, but if it gets you one more family, you have so much more than paid for it. And yeah. Drives me crazy. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Absolutely. That's uh that's music.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

So so part of the reason, if I if I heard you correctly, that you came in to kind of specialize in childcare outside of helping a friend was that you noticed that the business owners got a better return on investment. What is the one thing that you think that childcare centers ignore or avoid that maybe they shouldn't? In other words, they're like, either they think it's too complicated or it's not necessary, and you're going, but it is the best for our clients, it has been the best ROI. And we all know that algorithms change and nobody can keep track of it. So anybody trying to do it on their own is just silly. Um, hire that done. Hire the experts. So if I'm hiring the expert versus I can do it myself, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

I think look, so there is a lot of things that I could talk about specifically.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

I think just Well, you only got tw 15 more minutes. So don't pick all of them.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Here's the thing. I want to talk specifically about what Carrie said. I think that's kind of the number one thing before we we talk about, you know, what what is the number one thing childcare don't do? It's it's the concept behind it. I love that you said lifetime value, right? Which is if a family is paying you a thousand dollars a month and on average you get a family to stay 24 months with you, two years. Well, you just made $24,000 in gross profit in gross revenue from that family. And then if you have a childcare business that's making you like 10 to 20% profit margins, which is average if you're profitable, uh, well, you just made a lot of money from that family. And again, not to make money off of them, you want to give them an amazing service, but then that's kind of your um way of knowing that marketing is doable, even though the cash is tight, that's gonna produce you more. Now, the the number one thing that if I had to think about something uh that owners don't do and it's like no-brainer, everybody should do it, is stop spending so much money on Google Ads, if you are, and spend it on Meta. And there are a few reasons for it, especially if you have a tight budget. So, first of all, Google ads are amazing. Don't get me wrong, Google Ads are awesome. But uh the the problem with Google ads are are two. First one is they are very pricey because, especially with more and more AI search engines, we do see a trend of Google becoming uh more pricey because Google works on search volume. So the more people look for things on Google, the cheapest the results are for you as the business owner investing into the Google search engine. Now, the more people start to look for information elsewhere, like AI platforms, a lot of people are looking for challenge uh on on cloud, on chat GPT. It's insane, but it's true. Uh and uh and so that takes away search volume from Google. And for Google to keep up with the revenue targets, they increase the the cost of advertising on their platforms. So one platform where that yeah, one platform where that never happens and you can still uh use the benefits of Google, and I'll talk about it in just a minute, it's uh it's Meta. Right. First of all, Meta doesn't work on search volume, is based on how many people use Facebook and Instagram. So if you use Facebook and Instagram, which is basically everybody in the United States, if you think about it, well, you have you're not gonna struggle to uh you know advertise because everybody uses it, and there is no trend that we are seeing right now of people stopping to use social media. It's actually just more people using social media because now Gen Zs are the ones that have the parents enrolling in preschool, right? And so uh we need to target them. And the way you can actually, and they this is the no-brainer part that I was talking about, the way you can use Meta to still get the benefits from Google is this. Meta has a very simple tool. Many people think it's complicated because the word is complicated, but it's called a pixel. Uh, a pixel is a piece of data, it's just a little code that you get from meta when you advertise with them for free. You don't have to pay for it, and you can install that code on the back end of your website. So you can just paste that code on your website, and then automatically your meta account, so your Facebook and Instagram advertising account will start tracking the information of every single person that goes on your website. Now, let me give you an example. Let's say that you are in Houston, Texas, and you have a thousand people going on your website every month. Well, now Facebook and Instagram are gonna learn who goes on your website. That's gonna be your perfect audience in a way, because if people are going there for free without actually get, you know, they're just like looking for you, that's your target audience. You can target those people and people that are similar to them. It's called a look-alike audience on meta. So the same traffic you would have gotten on paid advertising from Google, you can get it a lot cheaper and more traffic on Meta. So that's kind of the no-brainer I would do. Is if you have a budget lower than 2,000 bucks a month for marketing, shift your focus to meta compared to Google.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

So, how do they find that pixel? I'm sitting here going, I remember having seen that at some point in time. Yeah, I don't remember where I saw it.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

This is how you do it. This is how you do it. Ready? It's gonna be funny. You go on YouTube and you look how to find a MetaPixel.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

Can Chat GPT help me? I'll make it really messed up. I'll ask Gemini.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

No, it's so you know, it's very hard to explain where to find it because there is a lot of buttons you have to click. Uh, but it is very self-explanatory. Like it probably a YouTube video that shows you how to do it takes 60 seconds. It's just like a lot of different clicks that you have to uh do to get there. But then when you get there, it's easy. You you there is just a button that says copy, you copy that button, you go on your website and you click on paste, and you're done.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Well, that's pretty complicated. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

So do I paste it on the home page and do I make it the same color as my background? You can tell I have questions.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

No, okay. So this is so the the code is just it's called a uh a data set, if you want to call it like that. So it doesn't really affect your website. Uh it doesn't affect the design of your website or nothing. It's just on on every website there is something called a like the the back end of the website, right? Which is what makes your website. And and usually what makes your website is is is code, right? JavaScript and and other types of code, which nowadays you don't need to know because websites build themselves. But uh, but you can still access that backend. And Meta, whenever you get to that the pixel, will give you simple instructions, will say, like, hey, if click on copy, uh, go on your website. If you are on Squarespace, if you are on WordPress, if you are on Shopify, it will tell you exactly where to go on your website. And it will tell you click on this button, click on paste here, click on save. And then just so you have no way of making a mistake, before before the pixel starts working, meta will not let we will not let you exit the page until it uh it properly is sending data. So Meta will show you how to test that is properly sending data, and until that happens, it will never be installed. So it's gonna be a very easy process. You just have to get there now. But that's also why companies exist and do it for you.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah, I know. I'm like thinking we've got clients and people I know who are listening that are like, okay, so can I get Pietro's contact information? And then where will they find it?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you guys can just go to Britchildcare.com. So that's br-itchhildcare.com. And just funny story, the reason why it's Brit is because the founders of these companies are from uh uh Brazil and Italy, so it's brazilitalychildcare.com.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

I love that. But we also will have it all in the show notes. So if you want to connect with Pietro, it'll be in the show notes. And apparently Carrie didn't get that that was a toss-off to Carrie to tell us about show notes. No, yeah. Um I mean, yeah, there's stuff in the show notes. Carrie's probably over there trying to find our pixel.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, yeah. If she was looking for me, I see her.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Well, I know we have we we have one. We've we've had pixels for decades um on our on our websites, but the the question that a lot of people have, whether you know, directors or owners are well, but how do I make the money? How do I find the money in my budget to do marketing and and how much is that? Because I've seen things where it's you have to spend a thousand dollars a day. So how am I supposed to find a thousand dollars a day to run this ad on meta? Yeah, is that the amount that they need to run? And what percentage of the budget do you think is reasonable for them to put towards marketing?

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Absolutely. So uh true depends on the uh state, actually. Uh, dependent on the state, we usually see different trends, but on average, five to eight percent of gross revenue is what we usually recommend to our clients. We actually have a very simple way to find out. So we work in over 30 states and uh we kind of average out everything. Uh, we like to do numbers uh with everything, right? And so this is what we found. On average, a um school that spends money marketing will spend about $500 to acquire one new family. Every three families in the United States enroll one, uh enrolled two students. So every family enrolled 1.3 students on average. So every three families, one of them is gonna enroll two kids. So that brings the average cost per acquisition for a student to about 350, 400 bucks. Now, if you're in a state like Texas, that is gonna be more because Texas is one of the most competitive states. Plus, you guys have now all these public programs, uh, so you have a lot of competition. Now, if you're in a state like the Carolinas, oh, you're gonna do amazing. So it truly depends uh on the state you're in. But consider the number $350 to $400 on average for a student acquisition cost. So let's say that in a specific month you want to have an additional, I don't know, 20 students. Well, that's gonna cost you $7,000. But of course, nobody can handle 20 students every month. That's not doable. So, you know, an average school usually spends anywhere between $1,500 to $3,500 a month in marketing whenever they're serious about it, right? Because a lot of schools then, you know, they will they will want to spend $200,000, $300 a month in marketing. But this is what I tell them as a joke, but I actually mean it, which is you have a usually a preschool would be anywhere between $500,000 to $3 million a year business, right? It depends, of course, on the side, but that's a good range, usually. Not talking about home providers, of course, that's a different market. Uh but you know, if if someone has, let's say, a $1 million business per year, right? And they're planning on spending $300 a month in marketing to be full, it's kind of like a joke almost. It's it feels like a joke almost. Because I mean, we would all be Jeff Bezos if that was the case, right? If I could spend $300 a month and made a make a million dollars a year, I I I would I would be a billionaire.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

I mean, wouldn't everybody? And and there's that we sometimes get into the mentality of I don't have enough, you know, um, instead of the abundance mentality. And if you are having a tight budget, I will tell you the last place you should cut your budget is your marketing, because you can't do the rest of your business if you do not have families finding your business. You've got to find the right families to come to your program and putting a yard sign in the front of your building, like a garage sale sign, that instead of saying garage sale says toddler openings does not work. It didn't work when I started my school in the early 90s. Like even back then, we had to run an ad if we needed to get an infusion of children. Word of mouth is great, but word of mouth only works if you're in a childcare desert, really, um, in today's day and age. If you're the only childcare center to serve 3,000 families, yes, you can use word of mouth marketing. If you're not in that situation, you're gonna need to spend some money. And you can spend it by buying a big old billboard on the side of the highway, but that's a foolish way to spend your money.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

I I have a question for you, Pietro.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Because I, again, uh, you know, whether it's social media, Google, right, online ads constantly have what they call new algorithms. Yeah. And we also know that in childcare there are enrollment cycles.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

So what are the, you know, what are a couple of tips that you might share with directors and owners? And we have listeners all over the country. Well, we have we're in 123 countries. And if they are thinking today they want to maybe switch some money from Google Ads to meta ads, is this something they should like the same rate all the time? Should they only do it when they need it? Should they do something all like how talk to me a little bit about what that looks like? I know I have a theory, but I don't know if it's currently accurate.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, so of course, generally speaking, it's good to spend money every month. There is no good month to turn it off, right? To turn off your ads. Now, yeah, there is strategic moves you can make where you want to place most of your money towards back to school and January and February, right? Those are the peaks for enrollment for most schools, right? So for most schools, you're gonna see most of your enrollments coming in between starting, you know, late June, early July, and then you know enrolling for August and September. Uh, and then after you're gonna start getting some traction in December for eventually the families that are gonna be converting in January and February. So if I had to give you all a suggestion, uh I would spend most of the money in November and December, because November and December, you're gonna get the tours that eventually are gonna be converting into January and February. Because I like to call, I like to call uh marketing and sales phases in childcare. So you have the marketing, which is in this case January and uh sorry, uh November and December, but then January and February are your sales phases, because then you have to convert all the traffic you just got, right? Because it's not just about the tour, you now have to sell the parent. So that's something else that's super important, is you can't just have amazing marketing, you have to be an amazing salesperson. Now, the next thing I would I would put money towards is if you have a summer camp, put some money starting early March up until uh mid-May towards summer camp because that can be a good uh cash cow, if you want to call it like that, to then spend more money in the summer for that enrollment uh for August and September. Months where I wouldn't spend as much would be January and February if you have done a good job in November and December already getting the interest for the families that now are planning on enrolling in January and February. Uh still spend money, just not as much. And I also wouldn't spend much money in March, April if you don't have a summer camp. If you have a summer camp, disregard. Um, and also starting uh you know mid mid-September and and and October are slow months usually. Um because most time they just just enrolled now.

unknown 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

And so those are the cycles. Now, I'm not talking about huge budget changes though. So uh keep in mind we call we call them awareness type budgets, which is you always want to have an awareness type budget where people still still see you in October, right? It's not like they forget about you. But then in there are many stages to a funnel. Funnel is basically the conversion, the conversion process from a family to know about you to then actually enrolling with you and being a good customer, right? And so the awareness campaigns, which is campaigns that just say, like, hey, ABC Childcare is available in Houston, Texas, that is that is a campaign you should always have. But now, in in in you know, November, December, is like, hey, ABC Childcare has a one week free offer if you enroll by the 31st of the month. And so do it now. That's that's the bottom of the funnel. Those are the moments where people statistically are looking for preschools now, and you want to go hard on those months, maybe spend 10, 20, 30% extra, and then 10, 20, 30% less during the slow months. Now, just to wrap up this point, it's important though that you realize it's not is not all about marketing, right? Because you can have amazing marketing and get a hundred tours over a couple of months, but then there is a big difference here. You can enroll 30 families out of the hundred or sixty families out of the hundred. The concept is how good is your staff, which usually are educators, into selling and so you have to make sure they go through some sort of sales training and sales process.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

Um we agree with you 100% on that. And that you actually are paying attention because if you've got new staff who are now doing the tours and your conversion rates went from 70 or 80% on a tour to 30% on a tour, you need somebody else doing the tours.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's huge. And and and if you think about it, it's so funny that um you can have zero additional marketing spend, but if you double your conversion rate on a tour, you just doubled your enrollment with zero additional dollars. Zero.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Pietro, thank you so much for giving those tips. We know that our audience will absolutely have questions for you. And um, if you've got um a blog or anything that you think might talk about this, that's good for them to know. Um, we will make sure that that link is in the show notes. Uh and Carrie, do you have anything you want to say to folks? Well, I think you should, you know, say gracia.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Um for those of you who are listening today, make sure you share this with the people in your organization who control that budget. If it's not you. If it is you, share it with yourself. Um and make sure that you are spending the money in the right places. Don't buy the billboards. Instead, you know, use meta ads. If you want to have work with someone to help you with that, because you're like, I don't, I don't social media, then find uh a good company that understands a little bit about the industry and a lot about the data of how to read. Is this a good ad? Is it performing well or not? Because I think the reading of the data is the biggest part of making sure that you're you're spending your marketing money wisely. And um, come back and see us in a few days. Make sure you're subscribed or following. Talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.