A daycare marketing plan is one page that decides how your center fills its open spots this year: the target, the channels, the budget, the calendar, and the numbers that tell you whether it worked.
It is the working document under our child care marketing guide: that page covers the channels, this one turns them into decisions you can run from a single sheet.
The same document works as a child care marketing plan, a marketing plan for a daycare or a preschool marketing plan; the rooms and the dates change, the decisions do not.
The size of the job is easy to underestimate: the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counted 82,162 child care services establishments with paid employees in 2023, a count that includes Head Start and school-age sites.
Word of mouth carries more of it than advertising does: in a federally commissioned survey of 2,035 parents of children under 6 (OPRE report #2025-099, fielded March to May 2024), 65.7% got child care information from people they know.
So the plan below spends its lines on decisions, not slogans.
Decision 1: set the enrollment target before anything else
Everything in the plan hangs on one number: how many open spots, in which rooms, the plan has to fill.
Opportunities Exchange, in Louise Stoney's Iron Triangle guidance on child care finance (2019), notes that 100% enrollment is not possible unless a program over-enrolls, which licensing generally prohibits.
The same guidance reports that some experts say a well-run center can run at 95% enrollment, and that others budget at a more achievable rate such as 85%.
Whenever enrollment drops below the budgeted target, the guidance says, the program is losing money, and per-child cost rises when spots sit empty or unpaid fees pile up.
Treat 85% as a budgeting assumption rather than a measured industry break-even, and confirm your room limits with your state licensing agency before planning around them.
Illustrative math: at a licensed capacity of 100 children budgeted at 85%, the plan owes you about 15 filled spots this year, plus replacements for the withdrawals you already expect.
Decision 2: audit where the last year's families came from
Before picking channels, write down where every family who enrolled in the last 12 months first heard about you, and how many inquiries, tours and enrollments each source produced.
If you track inquiries in a CRM or even a spreadsheet, two rates tell you most of the story: the share of inquiries that book a tour, and the share of tours that end with an enrolled child.
No national benchmark is published for either rate at child care centers, so the only honest baseline is your own last year, which is what the plan has to beat.
The arithmetic of inquiry to enrollment rate is its own guide if you want the formulas.
The federal survey's finding belongs here too: when 65.7% of parents get information from people they know, your referral asks, review requests and waitlist follow-ups are marketing work, not office overhead.
Decision 3: run the plan on the enrollment calendar
KinderCare's annual report for fiscal 2025 describes enrollment at its centers and school-age sites as generally higher in the spring and in the fall back-to-school period, and lower in summer and over the year-end holidays, enough that revenue may dip in the third quarter.
That is one large operator's pattern, it includes school-age sites, and no national enrollment seasonality dataset exists, so check it against your own waitlist history before committing money to it.
The enrollment year
The big operators plan this way on purpose: KinderCare's 10-K says it uses seasonal campaigns to drive inquiries and runs continuous outreach to families to increase online reviews, reaching prospective, enrolled and lapsed families through display ads, paid social and email.
Bright Horizons' annual report lists a similar mix: local digital advertising, parent-group partnerships, social media, direct mail and webinars.
A center without a marketing department cannot run all of that, which is exactly why the plan exists: two or three channels on a calendar beat the full list run occasionally.
The month-by-month version, with what to market each month and for which age group, is our child care marketing calendar.
Decision 4: the one-page template
Here is the whole plan as seven steps; if a step will not fit on one page, it is not decided yet.
Write the target
Licensed capacity, current enrollment by room, your budgeted rate, and the number of spots the plan must fill this year.
Name where families come from
Last year's inquiries, tours and enrollments by source, so new effort goes where families actually found you.
Pick three channels
One that controls how you look in local search (your Google Business Profile and your reviews), one that feeds word of mouth (referral asks and waitlist follow-up), and one outreach channel you can sustain weekly; the daycare marketing ideas list ranks the options by effort and cost.
Put them on the calendar
Spring outreach for fall openings, a back-to-school push, and a stated plan for the quiet summer and December weeks.
Set the budget
A monthly number, who does the work, and when it happens, so the plan survives a busy Monday.
Decide what you will measure
Tour requests, tours booked, enrolled children, and open spots by room, reported monthly.
Review it once a quarter
Update the spot count, stop what produced no tours, and move that money to what did.
A preschool marketing plan is the same document with earlier dates, because registration seasons and kindergarten cutoffs move the decisions into late winter.
Decision 5: set a budget you can defend
The nearest public number comes from a chain, not an independent center: KinderCare reported $23.9 million in advertising costs in fiscal 2025 on total revenue of $2.733 billion, which works out to about 0.9% of revenue.
That ratio belongs to a 1,601-center national brand whose advertising line may exclude staff time and agency fees, and whose scale buys brand-name search traffic a single site never sees, so treat it as a data point, not a budget rule.
Marketing money also competes with the largest line in a center's budget: the Center for American Progress' 2018 analysis of early childhood program budgets found the workforce is the largest expense, at 60–80% of total program expenses, with the remaining 20–40% covering occupancy, office and administration, and classroom costs.
The consequence for the plan is simple: spend against specific open rooms, because in a budget dominated by payroll, untargeted spending disappears.
What channels cost, and how to weigh them against what an enrolled family is worth to your center, is our child care marketing cost guide, and our own prices are on the pricing page.
Decision 6: measure tours and enrollments, not clicks
Worked example with illustrative numbers: with 15 spots to fill and 1 of every 3 tours ending in an enrolled child, the year needs about 45 tours, and if 1 of every 3 tour requests becomes a booked tour, the plan owes you about 135 requests.
Those two rates are yours rather than an industry constant, and since no national benchmark for them is published, the plan tracks your trend against your own last year.
- Count open spots by room every month, including children who will age out or change rooms this quarter, which is the classroom-level tracking Opportunities Exchange recommends
- Log every inquiry and every tour with its source, so the audit stays current without a rebuild
- Answer every inquiry the same day, and record whether the tour got booked
- Ask enrolled families for reviews and referrals on a schedule, not when a quiet week reminds you
- Follow up with waitlist and lapsed families by email on a calendar, the habit KinderCare's 10-K describes at chain scale
- Report the month in four numbers: tour requests, tours booked, enrolled children, spots still open
None of this needs software you do not already have: a spreadsheet and your front-desk log carry it.
Decision 7: new centers and business plans
If the plan is for a center that has not opened yet, Bright Horizons' fiscal 2025 annual report says a new center typically reaches break-even in 12 to 24 months and steady-state enrollment in about three years, and cautions the timing may be longer or shorter.
The same filing notes new centers enroll younger children first and fill preschool rooms as children age up, which is why a new center's plan should sell the infant and toddler rooms hardest in year one.
If the plan is for a lender, a landlord or a partner, the narrative version belongs in the marketing section of a daycare business plan; the one-page version above is the one you run the center with.
Where we fit
More Booked Enrollments is a one-person consultancy, Gabe Meierotto, working only with US child care centers and preschools.
The measurement work in Decision 6 is what we do all month: one controlled test a month on your website and landing pages plus local SEO, judged by tours booked and children enrolled, with read access to your CRM or waitlist numbers so a test is judged on enrollments rather than form fills.
We do not answer your inquiries, give your tours or run your front desk; we make the website better at earning them and tell you what the numbers say.
Current prices are on the pricing page, and the free audit shows where your site and listings lose the tour requests you already get.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a daycare marketing plan be?
One page is enough if it forces the decisions that matter: how many spots are open, which channels you will run, what you will spend, and how you will judge it. A longer document usually means the decisions have not been made.
What should a daycare marketing plan include?
An enrollment target by classroom, where last year's families came from, three channels you can actually run each week, a budget, a seasonal calendar, and four numbers reported monthly: tour requests, tours booked, enrolled children and open spots.
How much should a child care center spend on marketing?
No published benchmark exists for independent centers. KinderCare reported $23.9 million of advertising in fiscal 2025, about 0.9% of its $2.733 billion revenue, but a 1,601-center national brand's ratio is not a budget rule for a single site.
When should I start marketing for fall enrollment?
KinderCare's fiscal 2025 annual report says enrollment at its centers is generally higher in spring and at back-to-school and lower in summer and over year-end holidays, so spring is when fall outreach starts. Confirm the pattern against your own waitlist history.
What enrollment rate should a center plan around?
Opportunities Exchange notes some experts say a well-run center can run at 95% enrollment while others budget at a more achievable 85%, and that 100% is not realistic because licensing generally prohibits over-enrolling. Treat 85% as a budgeting assumption, not a measured break-even.
Is a marketing plan the same as the marketing section of a business plan?
The business plan version tells the story for a lender or a partner; the one-page plan is the working version you run the center with. Both start from the same numbers: open spots, sources, budget and conversion rates.