In today’s topic, we will be talking about mommy bloggers, Facebook groups, and all of that good stuff. This is our multi-part continuation—I believe we’re 17 episodes in for this series on marketing a business from scratch—in this case, we’re marketing a childcare center. So now we’re getting into the tactical elements.
Yesterday’s episode discussed putting together and starting launching your citations. In today’s episode, you’re going to get a little bit guerrilla—you’re going to go and do some guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is basically time, energy, imagination, and outside the box ideas to produce better marketing results.
What I’m aiming for you to do some of the things that are just going to take time versus a lot of your money. But if you’ve got the resources to open up a childcare center, I’m sure that you have the resources to do some marketing.
The question now is, what can you do with mommy bloggers, Facebook groups, and all these little micro-influencers. Influencer marketing has really been gaining traction. A lot of times when people think of influencers they think of like, the crazy Kardashians and thinking they will be paying these Instagram models to do stuff and that surely is not the case. We’re looking for micro-influencers that have a following that you’d want to tap into. So in this case, I want you to look for mommy bloggers and/or some of the mom blogs that are just kind of general to your city. Then from there, I want you to start finding the mom Facebook groups or the Mommy meetups.
I’m looking for you to make a list of what are all of the different places that your potential target personas are hanging out online. And what I found is that regardless of the niche, and again we’re focusing on child care, people are coming together on Facebook groups all the time. So there are mom groups in pretty much every single city—there are mommy bloggers that are pretty much in every city.
Before recording this episode, I already found 11 different blogs that are being written by moms in the Buffalo, New York area, for example. All that I’m looking for you to do is to initially start commenting and just interacting with the admin on the Facebook group a little bit—comment on some of the blog posts that these mom bloggers are putting together. Basically, you just want to get your name out there a little bit. I just want you to be getting a little bit more known in that particular community. And one of the best ways to get known is to just answer questions and/or give feedback.
For example, if people are talking about particular topics, you can chime in and give some feedback if you have some insight into that particular topic. Initially, you don’t have to start talking about the fact that you’ve got a child care center that’s going to be opening up in six months. All that I’m looking for you to do for the first month or so is to just start to become an active participant. Share some of the posts that these local mom bloggers are posting—share them on your social media, comment on their stuff, ask questions, and just start to join some of these different Facebook groups. I’m looking for you to look across all the different digital platforms initially, but you will also look for offline eventually.
Again, meetup groups, Instagram followings, and Pinterest. I have seen the best success with Facebook groups in particular. All that you’re looking to do is start those relationships. That’s all that I want you to do first.
Now as you start to nurture those relationships, you’re going to pivot your strategy a little bit further. What I want you to do is to send a message to the admin on the Facebook group or the Facebook page. I want you to send an email or phone call to that mommy blogger that you have been following for the last month or two and commenting on his or her stuff. I want you to start to move those relationships forward and because you’ve built some goodwill, they should know your name—it shouldn’t be a cold call or a cold email anymore. They should have been seeing your name and even if they don’t know you, personally, they will still recognize you. You’ve been coming in and putting some really good stuff out there. What I’m going to want you to say is something like this, “Thank you ever so much for cultivating this great group of people. It’s been a privilege to be in this group, I’m really enjoying it. So I wanted to reach out and just let you know that I’m actually opening up a childcare center in the next six months. And I didn’t know if you’d be open to a conversation about maybe some fun ways to work together or collaborate. I look forward to hearing from you.”
So what I’m looking for a response to look like is obviously a yes. A lot of times, what you’re going to find is that these bloggers on these Facebook groups are not making any money. They’re just doing it because they like to do it and just kind of the goodness of their heart. And then if you say, well, we can collaborate or do different things like that. You can then steer the conversation, based on how things are going on the phone. You want to get them off of email and on the phone or a Zoom call, which is even better, to be able to do video.
I tend to be very open-ended with my questions and kind of let them take me down the path. Because what you don’t want to do is just start to have the call and you say, “Well, can I throw $100 a month at you and be a sponsored post or something like that? I want you to have them talk a little bit more, what’s your vision for this Facebook group? How can I better help you? And then you start to steer the conversation towards benefiting you a little bit more. And you just bridge the gap. You start to just talk a little bit about, well, maybe we could do this or maybe we could do that. If I gave you a little bit of money, would that help you do some giveaways or you could offer to do some giveaways?” You could offer to produce some more content but, you want to keep it very open so that you’re not coming out and saying, Yeah, I’m going to give you $500 a month for advertising. And they were thinking, “well, geez I just want you to give away some free t-shirts.”
So start those conversations and as you start to do them, you’ll get better. I will tell you that if you can infiltrate, so to speak some of these local mommy Facebook groups, for example, you could fill your center pretty rapidly from just this one traffic source alone. Now, we’re obviously going to do a lot more because I don’t like taking things to chance when your money is at stake. But this is definitely one great asset to have in your arsenal.
You want to make those lists of all the different groups’ pages, blogs, and podcasts. Anyone that’s talking about the kind of going after those moms, for example, for dads, and then you’re gonna stop them for about a month and contribute and just add value. Then after that time, you’re going to reach out personally, and then start to cultivate a relationship over the phone or on zoom to see how you can collaborate a little bit more. This strategy is deadly, effective, and it applies to any niche in any industry.
Get out there, make a change, and take some action.