CHCORG614B: Manage a service organisation

Topic 5

Establish the profile of the organisation and market its services

Contents

CHCORG614B: Manage a service organisation 1

Topic 5 1

Establish the profile of the organisation and market its services1

Contents 2

Why marketing? 3

Establishing a service profile and a marketing plan 4

First impressions 4

Promotional activities 5

References 13

2 Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 © NSW DET 2010

Why marketing?

The Education and Care Services industry is becoming increasingly market-focused. Our services are more and more in the public eye; with ongoing political debate, community sustainability, the demand and competition for high quality and accessible early education and care all affecting the community’s perception of our services.

Your service may possess a healthy ‘waiting list’, families seem happy with the centre, why should you be concerned about marketing?

Look at large conglomerates such as Harvey Norman or Myers. They are extensive and successful businesses. People will always need to buy clothes, cooking implements, white goods and furniture—why bother advertising? Both companies have an established profile, people know who they are, what they sell and what to expect from their products. Yet, Harvey Norman and Myers advertise on a regular basis and not just at sale time, utilizing a variety of media—such as television, radio and those catalogues which creep into your letterboxes on a Sunday morning! Why do they?

The market place has a short and selective memory! We can no longer assume families will come to our ‘nice little centre on the corner’, because people have been coming there for years and years and we have a ‘good reputation’! That may very well be the case, but with the increase in children’s services, the impact of fees on families and, a heightened public awareness of what defines ‘quality education and care’, we have a greater responsibility than ever before to tell people about our service.

The word ‘marketing’ can sometimes conjure images of ‘dodgy’ sales people, telemarketers who ring at dinner time and people who command large salaries and commute to tall air conditioned offices in the city. It can seem a world away from early education and care! Yet an effective and accurate marketing plan, comprising of a service profile, goals and strategies to achieve these goals, can be a decisive tool in regards to the future direction of your service.

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 3© NSW DET 2010

Establishing a service profile and a marketing plan

Your service is unique. Your service philosophy may have similar attributes to a centre down the road or 1000 kilometres away; but it is still your philosophy. The philosophy is a product of the values, beliefs, objectives and aims inherent to your service operation. The staff, families, management and community who utilize your service and impact upon its operation are also unique. The goals and plans of your service tie to your centre specifically, not the services down the road, even if you do share a similar philosophy. It is this information, particular to your service that forms your service profile.

First impressionsWe all quickly form an impression of a person, service or product from an initial contact or meeting. Sometimes this can be entirely incorrect; people we didn’t like initially can become our closest friends! Maybe we just met on a ‘bad’ day or at an inconvenient time, perhaps our ‘first impressions’ were off the mark that particular day!

Regardless of this, first impressions do count and, are extremely important to the successful marketing of the service. How would you feel if you walked into a clothes shop, looking for a new outfit to wear to graduation, and the assistant looked you up and down and said: ‘I don’t think we have anything that would fit you here!’

You would probably never enter that shop again and may also tell more than a few people about your encounter (and, these people will tell other people and so on). Alternatively, you may have asked for a grievance form and headed straight

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to management! Whatever your response, it is doubtful that you would have formed a favourable impression of the service from this encounter!

Education and care services are busy places, with commitments and deadlines to be met, tasks to be organized and all manner of other activities to oversee and co-ordinate. As professionals, having close and ongoing contact with the community, your profile is always on display. You may not always have time to give a telephone query 30 minutes of your time discussing the centre’s program, but remaining polite, friendly, professional and informative (perhaps you can send the querying parent more information, or invite them to come and see the program in action), costs very little and can form an impression which lasts a long, long time.

Activity 1

Promotional activities Activity 2

What is promotion?Promotion is a word that is used to communicate a number of different things. Often people make the mistake of using the term promotion when they really just mean advertising.

Promotion can encompass a whole range of activities such as:

• advertising (in its many forms)• sales promotion• merchandising• public relations and publicity

Publicity, in simple terms, is how we communicate our offer to our potential and existing customers.

Promotion is an important element of the marketing mix. Its goal is to:

• inform • persuade• remind

the market about an organisation and/or its products.

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 5© NSW DET 2010

Forms of promotional activityNow let’s look at each item on the list of promotional activities that we’ve already identified and discuss some of the main forms these activities might take and some considerations about their use.

AdvertisingIf you want a nice textbook definition of advertising, you might choose a classic definition such as: ‘The paid non-personal presentation of a product or service’.

While this may be technically correct it is a risky way to think about advertising. The key words are paid and non-personal.

Advertising certainly has to be paid for and can cost big money.

And advertising is a way of reaching a mass of people at the same time.

But it is a grave error to think of advertising as ‘non-personal’.

Effective advertising is usually very personal. It is seen, heard, read and experienced by individuals. Effective advertising is very much like having a one-to-one conversation with a single person, except that it just happens with a lot of people at the same time.

Choosing the right advertising mediumAn important advertising decision is where to advertise.

There is a bewildering range of advertising media to choose from and it is easy to waste a lot of money advertising to people who are not prospects.

Let’s look briefly at the different media we could use for advertising our early education and care centre and get an idea of the advantages and drawbacks of each one.

Newspapers, for example local newspapers

Advantages Drawbacks

Flexible and timely—ads can be inserted on short notice and can be one column-centimetre, two pages, or just about any other size

Widely read—almost everyone at least glances at a newspaper regularly

Good, but not in the same league as magazines

Short life

Colour is mediocre and expensive

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Magazines

Advantages Drawbacks

Longer life—usually kept for a time or given to someone else

Quality of reproduction is high

Able to be targeted accurately—for example: - To reach organic gardeners you might use

ABC Organic Gardeners Magazine.

- To target ‘high-end’ residential clients you might use Vogue Living, Inside Out etc….

- To reach commercial turf-care prospects you might use Golf and Sports Turf Australia Magazine, and so on.

Costs can be high

Waiting time is long—some magazines require bookings up to four months in advance

Radio, for example, community radio

Advantages Drawbacks

Wide coverage

Some degree of market targeting

Less expensive than television—but to get reach you must have repetition

Flexible—as with newspapers, radio ads can usually be placed, changed or withdrawn very quickly

Can’t show or demonstrate

Short exposure—like television, it is broadcast and is then gone

Attention can be poor—radio can become background sound

Direct mail

Advantages Drawbacks

Can be very closely targeted—many mailing lists are available, allowing you to send your direct mail to exactly the kind of person you are trying to reach

Can be expensive—when posted, any quality piece of direct mail (involving say a colour brochure) can be an expensive way on a per head basis to reach your market

Volume—each week most householders and businesses are bombarded with direct mail advertisements. Yours will have to be very good to be read.

Junk mail image—many people regard direct mail automatically as junk mail and do not trouble to read it.

Check out the website for the Australian Direct Marketing Institute: http://www.adma.com.au/asp/index.asp

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Internet

Advantages Drawbacks

Reaches wide audience (global) if you need it

Sound, movement, visuals can be combined

Easy to email for more information

Quick—technically an advertisement can be placed and instantly seen

People have to find it

Buyers may be concerned about credit card security

Some people do not have access to the Internet

Yellow Pages

Advantages Drawbacks

Available on Internet as well as in print

Reaches wide audience

The audience may have difficulty in differentiating between advertisements

The most important thing with marketing and advertising is to ensure that it is directed at your target market—families with young children and/or people just starting a family, or about to start a family.

Most services now develop brochures or flyers with information about the service, such as operating hours, management and fee structure, staffing levels, service philosophy, the program and special activities and achievements. These are distributed to families who make an enquiry, and are occasionally used as a mass marketing tool by letterbox drops.

Advertising with print mediaA large part of marketing our centres is done in writing, so it’s important to know what makes a ‘good’ advertisement. Below are some tips for producing effective print media.

• Capture the reader’s attention immediately by using headline, layout, graphics or photographs.

• Set out the information in a clear, accessible way and use unambiguous language. (You may produce your brochure, ad or flier in a selection of languages representative of your centre’s community. Interpreter Services or perhaps a parent or staff member may be able to assist here).

• Use a consistent, clear, attractive design, which ensures the message isn’t swallowed by layout and graphics. Use these to enhance, not detract away from the message. Keep it simple, but appealing and accessible.

• If photographs are used ensure they are ethically appropriate and permission has been gained from the child’s family. (A particularly important point when issues of custody may be involved). Also check

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relevant cultural and confidentiality frameworks (such as the Privacy Act). Be sensitive to the fact that some families may not want their children’s photographs appearing in the centre’s publicity material.

• Concentrate what the reader is interested in, the buying points, rather than your viewpoint, the selling points. Survey after survey has found more than anything else parents want their children to be cared for and happy in early education and care. Research your target audience.

• Know your audience. How will the brochure, flier or advertisement reach its target audience? How will it be distributed and circulated?

• Invite a response! Don’t forget to include the centre’s phone number, address and opening hours for easy reference. Let the reader know how you want them to respond to your advertisement.

Activity 3a

Activity 3b

No two brochures or flyers will ever be the same. You may have developed a small flyer that gives the main details of the service, or something more elaborate.

Public relations and publicity‘Public relations’ is a broad overall strategy. Its aim is to cultivate and maintain a favourable image for an organization, product or service with important groups. These groups may include:

• shareholders• employees• customers• unions• government• the local community.

Such ‘good things’ could include:

• supporting charities• sponsoring sporting teams• supporting community events (like a festival)• providing community facilities (such as a establishing a child-care centre

or donating books to the local library)• donating money to the arts.

Publicity is a somewhat more direct method and involves a promotional communication about an organisation, product or service.

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 9© NSW DET 2010

Advertising is paid for. Publicity is not.

Publicity is usually implemented in one of three ways:

1. By preparing a story about the centre and sending it (often with photographs) to the newspapers, radio and/or other media. This is called a news release or press release. If you have prepared it well it may be published. As you can imagine, journalists receive many such releases daily, so very few actually see the columns of a newspaper.

2. Calling a press conference. Here you invite local media representatives to hear about something from you in person. You could express an opinion on a particular change or innovation (e.g. discussion of the possibility of maternity pay) or a general interest story (how children are coping with the heat during water restrictions). However, unless the item is extremely newsworthy they will not come.

3. Lobbying. In this exercise your centre makes personal contact with people in power in the hope of influencing them. Much lobbying takes place around government ministers. Some organisations retain a professional lobbyist in Canberra to act on their behalf.

Other promotional activitiesServices can also promote their profile by participating in community events. Consultation with the media may lead to the service appearing in an article, Community events, such as a fair or cultural festival, also provide a great opportunity for raising the centre’s profile. A children’s service booth could be set up, providing recreational activities for children attending the fair. This would demonstrate some of the activities offered and provide an opportunity to discuss with family members the program and role of your service. The service could organise a food stall, offering culturally diverse food representative of the families attending the service. There are many possibilities and all allow the service to be seen as an integral part of the community. This is particularly relevant if the service is community based and advocates a strong community involvement philosophy

NetworkingNetworking is an excellent tool which will allow you to form both formal and informal networks of communication that may assist in the marketing of your service. You could establish an alliance with the local early-childhood clinic, organising the preschool group to visit for an excursion to see how the newborns are weighed and measured, or for the mother’s group to make use of your outdoor playground or parents' meeting room for their next get-together. This

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places the service within the community and allows first-hand verbal promotion of the service.

The informal impressions that the community forms of you and the service are long lasting. Close and ongoing contact with the community is often an aim of a service, so it is important that when this contact occurs, the profile displayed is a true and positive reflection of the service. Even though there may be conflicting demands, a service should never consider itself too busy to reflect a professional, informative and friendly manner. Enquiries should be dealt with in a courteous and informative manner (even if it is the 100th enquiry you’ve received this week about the waiting list!)

Confidentiality and sensitivity to cultural and individual factors and legal obligationsIt is imperative when promoting the service that we consider the confidentiality and privacy of our families. Permission needs to be gained for the use of any photograph and the printed or verbal disclosure of any families’ names.

Sensitivity to cultural and individual factors also needs to be demonstrated. Written material should be produced in a selection of community languages representative of the centre’s community. The organisation and timing of promotional community events should be checked against major cultural and religious events. For example, it would be insensitive to organise a family or community picnic lunch during Ramadan.

Keeping track of what worksSince advertising can be a very expensive exercise, it is vitally important to keep track of what is working and what isn’t. Always ask customers (and potential customers when they ring to make enquiries on the phone) where they heard about you. If they say they heard about you from a friend, ask where they got the phone number from (e.g. the friend, or did they look it up in the yellow pages). This will tell you where your advertising dollar is best spent as well as which type of advertising should be avoided in the future!

Read what Paula has to say about marketing a service

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Paula: We don’t actually advertise the service anywhere, but… I absolutely stress to everyone (staff) that work there, that every phone call, every family who comes in to enquire about the service, is making a judgement or assessment on how they are greeted, and therefore when a family walks into the place, or a parent or staff staff member looks up and says ‘hi, can I help you’ rather than just look away, that absolutely sells the service to that family. Or on the phone if you take that little bit extra time to actually explain what the service is or even find numbers to help that family because you can’t help them, they will go away and talk about the wonderful reaction they got over the phone. And that is the most marvellous way that you can advertise your place.

I actually encourage staff when they go off to inservices or local network meetings, to talk about Kangas. It’s also how they come across. If they come across in a very professional intelligent way, people have an idea about the centre. If they come across with a commitment and advocate quality care, they have some concept of what Kangas might be like. I also believe it’s really important you join organisations that advocate for quality care. Again your centre’s name comes up if many of you working in that centre are out there in the field with your peers, spreading the word.

12 Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 © NSW DET 2010

References

Children’s Services Central : Are you being served: effective strategies to market children’s services: http://www.cscentral.org.au/Resources/Phone_Link_ups/Are_you_being_served.pdf

Family Day Care Australia marketing website: http://www.familydaycare.com.au/marketing_resources.html

List of early education and care journals in which you could advertise: http://www.mediabiznet.com.au/directories/magazines-b2b-magazines-child-care.do

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCORG614B: Reader LO 9378 13© NSW DET 2010