Daycare Video Marketing: What to Film, and What to Skip

Daycare video marketing is the practice of using short films (a room walkthrough, a teacher introduction, a described day) to move a family from "I saw your name somewhere" to "I requested a tour".

The platforms it lives on are covered in our social media marketing guide for daycares.

Why video earns a slot in your month

Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of 5,022 US adults found 84% use YouTube, 71% use Facebook and 50% use Instagram.

Among adults aged 30 to 49, the main parent age group, the shares were 92% YouTube, 80% Facebook, 62% Instagram and 44% TikTok.

Pew measures whether someone has ever used a platform, not daily use.

US adults who use each platform

YouTube84%

Facebook71%

Instagram50%

What makes video worth a center's time is the decision it serves: choosing care is deciding whether to spend an evening at your center, and a film of your rooms is the closest thing to that visit a phone can offer.

The deciding audience is smaller than owners assume: in the 2024 federal survey of parents' child care search (OPRE report #2025-099), 45.8% of parents who made a decision considered no new providers, and another 18.6% considered just one, so being the center a family can actually see matters.

Four videos that move a family toward a tour

The walkthrough is the one to make first, and our daycare virtual tour guide covers it in depth, from where the video sits on the page to how to tell whether it books tours.

Consent comes before the camera

Here is the part most video advice skips: an enrolled child appears in footage only with written parent permission.

Three states' licensing rules show that consent is required: Massachusetts requires written, informed parent consent before children take part in publicity, including photographs and participation in the mass media, and no one may produce or distribute a child's likeness without it (606 CMR 7.04).

Oregon requires certified child care centers to get parental permission before using photographs or recordings of a child publicly, and the rule names social media and advertisements as examples (OAR 414-305-0230).

Illinois day care centers must keep written agreements and consents on file for each child covering the use of photographs, film or video of children, though the rule does not say what a consent must contain (23 Ill. Adm. Code 2008).

These three states do not tell you what yours requires: rules differ and change, so confirm with your state licensing agency before filming children.

The federal rule owners reach for is usually the wrong one: COPPA's definition of children's personal information does include photos, video and audio containing a child's image or voice, plus biometric identifiers such as facial templates since the 2025 amendments (16 CFR 312.2).

But COPPA covers information collected online from children under 13, and the FTC says it does not apply to information about children collected from parents, so filming permission comes from state licensing rules and your center's own policy instead.

Platforms carry their own line: Google's content policy prohibits posting personal information without consent, including a person's face in a photo or video (Google, as of October 2026).

What the written release itself should say, use by use, is the subject of our daycare photo release form guide.

Preschool video marketing and the classic promo video

Preschool video marketing is the same recipe with different emphasis: an infant room film shows where babies sleep and who checks on them, while a preschool film shows the block area, the writing table and a morning's routine.

A daycare promo video is the edited cut of everything above: your best walkthrough shots, a teacher line or two, your program names, and a closing invitation to tour.

A promo is still publicity, so the consent rules above apply in full.

Daycare TikTok, YouTube for child care, and your Google profile

TikTok is the smallest of the four platforms among adults aged 30 to 49 in Pew's 2025 numbers (44%), so treat it as an optional extra once the bigger platforms are covered.

YouTube for child care does double duty: the biggest platform in Pew's data is also a search engine, where a film titled with your city and program can still be found years later.

Your Google Business Profile ties the channels together: Google allows one link each for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X and YouTube where the feature is available, with no click metrics for them (Google, as of October 2026).

Google sometimes asks for video itself: it picks each business's verification method, and a video recording or live video call can be among them, showing signage, equipment and staff-only areas (Google, as of October 2026).

That verification footage shows your space, not your children.

If you ever pay to place a video in front of families, Google Ads' parental-status targeting (Parent, Not a parent, Unknown) exists for Display, Demand Gen and Video campaigns, while Search carries only age, gender and household income; the status is inferred, not verified (Google, as of October 2026).

Read your own numbers, not vendor charts

The video statistics that circulate in sales pitches ("X% of people would rather watch a video") mostly trace back to small vendor surveys: the widely cited Wyzowl Video Marketing Statistics 2026 rests on 266 respondents mixing marketers and consumers, from a company that sells video production.

No credible child care study measures what video does for enrollment, so measure your own: tour requests on the pages a video sits on, before and after it went up, matched for season.

Filming rules for children differ by state and change, so confirm how they apply to your center with your state licensing agency before you hit record.

Frequently asked questions