Childcare marketing · Multi-centre operators and growing groups
Childcare marketing counted in enrolments, centre by centre and room by room.
A centre with a full preschool room and empty nursery places has a problem a group-wide brand campaign will not fix. We run search, Google Business Profiles and paid ads centre by centre and age group by age group, so the budget goes where the vacancies are. Every enquiry is tracked through the tour to enrolment, and every rating or subsidy claim is checked before an ad runs.
30 min · No pitch · Senior operator on the call
Engagement intake, currently open
Weekly
Budget and bid decisions made every week, with the reasoning written down.
1 day
We reply to an audit request within one business day, with three times to choose from.
Google Partner
Profit Geeks is a Google Partner agency, operating since 2016.
How we run marketing for childcare centres
Four principles for childcare centre marketing.
Principle 01
Vacancies decide the spend
An enquiry for a full room adds to a waitlist. It does not fill a place. Campaigns run against your current vacancies by centre and age group, and spend pulls back from rooms that are full. The numbers we report are tours, enrolments and occupancy, not clicks.
Principle 02
Every centre is its own market
Families look for care near home or work. A group's centres sit in different suburbs with different competitors, fees and ratings, so each one gets its own Google Business Profile, its own page and its own budget line rather than a share of one group campaign.
Principle 03
Track the tour, not just the enquiry
Enquiry, tour booked, tour attended and enrolment are recorded as separate steps, by centre and by source. That shows whether a gap sits in the marketing or in what happens after the phone rings, and stops a channel getting credit for enquiries that never become a tour.
Principle 04
Ratings and subsidy claims, stated exactly
An ad shows a centre's own current NQS rating and nothing more flattering. The Child Care Subsidy is described the way Services Australia describes it, gap fee included, and never dressed up as free care. Photos of children are used only under your service's own policy and with parents' authorisation.
Deliverables
What we run for a childcare group.
01
A Google Business Profile for every centre: categories, hours, age groups, photos cleared under your images policy, and a steady routine for asking enrolled families for reviews.
02
Centre pages built for local search: suburb, age groups, hours, the centre's current NQS rating shown accurately, subsidy wording checked, and a tour booking form on each page.
03
Vacancy-led campaigns: Google Ads and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) budgets set by centre and age group from your weekly vacancy list, and paused when a room fills.
04
Enquiry to enrolment tracking: each enquiry, tour and enrolment recorded against the source that produced it, matched to your childcare management system or CRM.
05
Pre-opening campaigns for new centres: a registration of interest page, ads across the catchment, and a waitlist you can contact when enrolments open.
06
Ongoing management by senior operators: search, profiles and paid media reviewed weekly against vacancies, with every decision logged for the group to keep.
Who this is for
- Multi-centre operators and growing groups with places to fill across more than one centre
- Groups opening new centres that want a waitlist before the doors open
- Single-centre operators planning a second site who want the system in place first
- Able to share a current vacancy list by centre and room each week
Who it isn't
- Every centre full with a long waitlist. More marketing would only lengthen it
- Too little ad spend for the fee to earn its keep. If so, you will hear it on the call
- Looking for daily social posts or photography (that stays with your team or a specialist we recommend)
- Wanting ads that call subsidised care free or show a rating a centre does not hold
How we work with childcare centres
Priced by centres and channels, never by ad spend.
Start with the free audit call. After that, setup is a fixed scope and ongoing management is a fixed fee for an agreed scope, both in one written proposal. The number of centres and channels shapes the scope. How much you spend on ads never changes the fee.
Tier 01 · Diagnostic
The two-week diagnostic
Read-only. We review every centre's Google Business Profile, the website, the tracking, and how an enquiry turns into a tour, then write it up in priority order and walk you through it. The report is yours, whoever does the fixing.
Tier 02 · Setup
Centre-by-centre setup
A fixed scope. A profile and page for each centre, enquiry to enrolment tracking, rating and subsidy wording checked, and campaigns built by centre and age group. If a new website is needed it is quoted separately, and a typical build takes two to three weeks.
Tier 03 · Ongoing
Ongoing management
A fixed fee, set by the number of centres and channels. Senior operators adjust search, profiles and paid media each week against your vacancy list and record why. When a room fills, its spend stops and the budget moves to a centre that still has places.
Opening a new centre? The pre-opening waitlist campaign can be scoped on its own.
Where to go next
Related work and the cities we run it from.
Related services
Google Ads agency →
Search campaigns by centre, for families looking nearby.
Conversion rate optimisation →
More tour bookings from families already on your centre pages.
Tracking audit →
Find out where enquiries go missing between the form and the tour.
Lead generation →
Enquiries followed through to tours and enrolments.
Proof, with the working shown
We'd rather show you the maths than the buzzwords.
“Profit Geeks rebuilt our whole sales engine, and not just the ad accounts. They went after the systems sitting behind them too. Sales are up 140% and we've pushed past $25M. Honestly the bit I didn't see coming was the operation running leaner than it did back when we were half the size.”
“We were quietly bleeding about a thousand dollars a week and had no idea why. They found the leaks, sorted out the measurement and the offer, and now we'll do more than $10K in a single day. Same product. Completely different business.”
“We went from scraping together two installs a week to running four crews and fifteen-plus jobs a week, north of $10M turnover. The clever bit was they tied the scaling to what we could actually deliver, so growth never broke the operation. Booked jobs, not vanity leads.”
“After iOS, our Meta numbers stopped matching the bank, and we'd basically been writing the gap off as “just tracking.” Profit Geeks rebuilt our measurement server-side and reconciled it straight back to the P&L. Turned out about $1.42M of ad spend in year one had been working all along. They're the first team that showed me the maths instead of a dashboard.”
“We didn’t spend a dollar more on ads. What they did was fix how we counted a booked job versus a platform “conversion,” cut the wasted spend, and by week twelve our blended ROAS had more than tripled. Revenue went from $4.8M to $9.1M. Same senior bloke on every call too. No juniors, no relay race.”
Reasonable questions
What you're probably thinking.
01
We've been burned by an agency before.
Most of our intake has. The difference is structural. A senior operator runs your account, not a junior hidden behind a dashboard, and you leave the first call with written findings you own even if we never work together. No relay race, no account manager translating between you and the people doing the work.
02
How do I know it'll actually work for my business?
You don't yet, and neither do we until we've seen your numbers. That's why the first step is a diagnostic, not a contract. We've documented this in DTC and home services (the case studies show the full working) and run the same playbook in professional services. If the maths isn't there for you, we'll tell you on the call.
03
What if there's nothing worth fixing?
Then you've spent thirty minutes and walked away with a second opinion that cost you nothing. We'd rather say no than take on an engagement we can't earn, so we turn away intake that isn't a fit. There's no pitch and no follow-up sales sequence.
04
What does it cost, and what am I signing up for?
A fixed fee for the measurement rebuild, then a fixed fee for ongoing management, both quoted in writing after the call. No per-channel markup and no percentage of your ad spend. The same senior operators handle measurement, media and margin, and scaling is tied to your contribution margin, so spend only climbs when the numbers say it's working.
Frequently asked
Questions childcare operators ask about marketing.
What is the best way to market a daycare?
Follow the path families take. They search for care near home or work, compare map listings and reviews, read a centre's page, then book a tour. So the order is a complete Google Business Profile for each centre, a page per centre that answers the practical questions (age groups, hours, how fees and the subsidy work, the current rating, how to book a tour), a quick reply to every enquiry, and only then paid ads aimed at the age groups with vacancies. Reviews are how word of mouth from enrolled families travels online, so ask for them.
How do childcare centres increase enrolments?
Fix the leaks before buying more enquiries. Track, by centre, how many enquiries become tours and how many tours become enrolments. If enquiries are healthy but tours are low, look at response times and the booking process. If tours are healthy but enrolments are low, look at the tour itself, the fees conversation or the start date on offer. Then point paid campaigns at the age groups with vacancies, and pause them when rooms fill.
Can we advertise our NQS rating?
Yes, accurately. The Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations require a service to display its current rating for each quality area and its overall rating at the centre, using its rating certificate. Regulation 72 makes it an offence for an approved provider to falsely represent a rating, and requires reasonable steps so that people it employs or engages do not either, which includes whoever runs your ads. ACECQA's NQS rating logos are optional, must match the overall rating your regulatory authority gave that service, and on a group website must be clearly and directly tied to the centre that holds the rating. Confirm the detail with ACECQA or your state regulatory authority.
How should we mention the Child Care Subsidy in ads?
The way Services Australia and the Department of Education describe it, without rounding up. CCS is paid directly to the provider to reduce the fees a family pays. How much a family gets depends on family income, the type of care, the child's age and the family's circumstances, and families still pay the gap fee except in certain circumstances. Since 5 January 2026, eligible families can get at least 72 hours of subsidised care a fortnight, which the department calls the 3 Day Guarantee. An ad that says 'up to 90 percent' is quoting the top rate, which applies only below an income threshold, so say so, and point families to the CCS calculator on Starting Blocks rather than calling subsidised care free.
Should childcare centres use Google Ads or Facebook ads?
Usually both, for different jobs. Google Ads reaches families already searching for care near them, so it suits rooms with places available now. Meta reaches parents in the catchment before they start searching, which suits a new centre building a waitlist or a room with places opening later in the year. Either way the budget follows the vacancy list, and both are judged on tours and enrolments, not clicks.
How is marketing different for a group with several centres?
This is who the service is designed for. Each centre gets its own profile, page, budget and reporting line, rolled up into one group view. Budget moves between centres each week as vacancies change, new centres get a pre-opening waitlist campaign, and each ad shows that centre's own rating, because ACECQA's logo terms do not let one centre's rating stand in for the group.
Can we use photos of children in our ads?
Only under your service's own policy. The National Regulations require a service's policies to cover taking, using and storing images and videos of children, and getting parents' authorisation to do so, and ACECQA's National Model Code recommends taking them only on service-issued devices. We use only images the centre has cleared under its policy, and we are just as happy to run ads with no children's faces in them.
How much does childcare marketing cost?
Two separate numbers. Ad spend, which you control and which should rise and fall with vacancies, and the management fee. For comparison, our cost guide puts Google Ads management in Australia at usually 10 to 20 percent of spend, or a flat retainer of about $1,500 to $3,000 a month for small accounts and $3,000 to $8,000 for mid-sized ones. Ours is a fixed fee for an agreed scope, quoted in writing after the free call. The number of centres and channels shapes it. Your ad spend does not, so the fee does not climb when you spend more to fill a room. If the spend is too small for the fee to pay for itself, we will say so on the call.
How much a Google Ads agency costs in AustraliaWhat you actually buy
We fix the measurement, then we run the account. It starts with a free call.
Which of these sounds like your week?
- Meta says one number, Google says another, the CRM says a third, and the bank says something else again.
- The leads come in and most of them are rubbish.
- Traffic is fine. Not enough of them buy.
- You cannot spend more without losing margin.
- Something is wrong and you cannot say what.
All five are the same job. We fix the measurement first, then the same senior operators run the spend against it. The free call is where we work out which part you need first.
00 · Free
Run your own numbers
Six calculators and an attribution reference. Work out your break-even ROAS, your CAC payback, and whether the spend is structurally profitable, before you talk to anyone. The calculators need no signup.
01 · Free · 30 minutes
The profit audit call
A senior operator looks at your real spend, revenue and attribution gap on a call. You leave with a written fix list you keep, whether or not we ever work together. No deck, no follow-up sales sequence. We reply within one business day with three times to choose from.
02 · Optional · Two weeks
The two-week diagnostic
Read-only. We change nothing in your accounts. Every tag, event and consent rule mapped and written up: 20 to 35 pages, every issue rated P0 to P3 with an engineering-day estimate, and a 90-minute walk-through on day twelve. Yours to hand to us, your own team, or your existing agency. About a third of clients run this first, then decide.
03 · The engagement · Ongoing
The rebuild, then we run it
The first twelve weeks rebuild the measurement server-side so the reports reconcile to the bank, and work the funnel where the leak actually is. From there the same senior operators keep running Google Ads, Meta and search, with budget, bids and creative decided weekly against contribution margin and the reasoning written down. If your measurement is already sound, management starts straight away.
What it costs
Four things set the number
- The size of your stack
- How many ad platforms are live
- The state of your CRM integration
- How many service lines and locations you run
Two things do not
- Your industry
- How much you spend on ads
Revenue only matters because a bigger business is usually a bigger scope. We do not price off a percentage of it. We charge for the work, not for what you look like you can afford.
How it is billedThe rebuild is fixed scope, paid in instalments. Ongoing management is a fixed fee for the agreed scope. Both are quoted in one written proposal after the call. No hourly billing and no percentage of ad spend.
Included at no extra costThe written playbook and decision log, yours to keep whether we run the account or your team takes it in-house.
What happens after you book
Three steps. No mystery.
Step 01 · Within 1 business day
30-minute audit call
A senior operator on the call. We look at your real numbers, spend, revenue, attribution gap, and tell you on the call whether the rebuild is worth doing for you and where it would start. No pitch deck.
Step 02 · Within 1 week
Written proposal
Fixed scope, fixed number, written up. The proposal names deliverables, timeline, the people involved, and the price. No hourly billing, no retainer drift.
Step 03 · Within 2 weeks
Engagement starts
Senior operators from day one. The measurement rebuild starts, we take over day-to-day buying on the channels we can measure, and the first working session lands. Inside two weeks of the call.
Next step
Bring this week's vacancy list.
The free 30-minute profit audit is with a senior operator. Bring your current vacancies by centre and room, last quarter's enquiries and tours if you track them, and the centres you most need filled. You keep the written findings either way, and we reply within one business day with three times to choose from.