Refreshing marketing for summer visitors

Summer is here!  Time to pull out the sunscreen and start relaxing!  Or, more likely, you’re busy making business plans that focus on recruiting, marketing, improving processes, and driving engagement with your clients and caregivers.  But that’s fun too, right?  Well have no fear!  We have some easy marketing strategies that you can use to help drive business over the summer and then you can get back to sipping coconut drinks on the beach in no time!

This year, many families are excited to travel, but want to stick to places they are familiar with.  This is a great opportunity for you to email past visiting clients and let them know you’re open for business.  Here are a few things you can focus on in your outreach campaign:

• Put their mind at ease by including information about your safety protocols for COVID-19
• Share examples of care you provide (i.e. new outdoor activities for the kids) and testimonials from clients who have used your services recently
• Share information about what the adults can do in your area while your agency helps with the kids

Attracting vacationers can seem like a big undertaking, but if you target a specific sub-set, you can get more bang for your buck!  

• Start by analyzing your previous vacationers to see if you get a decent proportion from a couple of locations then target those areas. If you don’t have that data, ask the visitors bureau if they have information on where families typically visit from.
• Find an agency you can partner with in those locations and cross-promote each other’s services.
• Create a blog post on traveling to your city with kids.  Include a section on fun local things to do without the kids and a reminder to get a babysitter with a link to your home page.  And if you have one, include a quote from a visiting family about how they were able to enjoy their trip because they were comfortable leaving their kids with your sitters.  With this article, you can then:
  • Email it to your previous vacationers
  • Post it on social media
  • Submit it to family travel blogs as a guest post
  • Create a Google Ad for the post and run the ad in the locations you identified 

By interacting with forums, you can position yourself as a local expert and attract both local and visiting families…for free! Here are a few places where you can engage with forums:

• TripAdvisor and blog post comments
• Local mom groups, listservs, and Nextdoor
• Search for relevant posts to respond to by setting up a Google Alert for content related to your town with kids 

When interacting with forums, be sure to keep a few things in mind:

• Be helpful, answer their question
• Be kind, approachable, and authentic
• Be subtle, not sales-y
• Include your business in your username (ex. sitterpro_stephanie)

Now that you’ve got your marketing campaigns set up, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy a fruity beverage with a tiny umbrella.  At least for a few minutes 😉