Childcare Occupancy Case Study: 71% to 84% in Four Months
From declining bookings to 84% occupancy in four months
How a Melbourne Long Day Care centre turned around a shrinking enquiry pipeline and added 13 percentage points of occupancy on roughly $600 a month in ad spend.
Centre details are withheld at the operator’s request and shared with her permission. Every figure on this page is drawn from Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads and the centre’s CRM records.
The challenge
The centre was sliding. Occupancy sat at 71% and tour bookings had slowed to a trickle. Like a lot of established services, it had relied on word of mouth and walk-past visibility for years, and that was no longer enough. Newer centres in surrounding suburbs were opening with bigger marketing budgets, and families researching care online simply were not finding this centre.
Every vacant place was costing the centre money week after week, while wages, rent and compliance costs stayed exactly the same. The director did not need more brand awareness. She needed families walking through the door on tours.
What we did
We treated this as an occupancy problem, not an advertising problem. That distinction shaped everything.
A paid social campaign built on parent psychology.
We launched a targeted Meta campaign designed around how local families actually choose care: the worries that keep them researching at 10pm, what they look for in educators, and what finally makes them book a tour. The creative spoke directly to families in the centre’s catchment rather than running broad brand messaging.
Enquiries captured where parents already are.
Rather than sending families to a website and hoping they filled in a form, enquiries were captured directly within the platform, removing friction at the exact moment a parent decided to act.
Fast, systematic follow-up
Speed is where most centres lose enquiries. Every enquiry triggered an immediate, consistent follow-up sequence rather than relying on whoever happened to be near the front desk that day. This is the single biggest reason 7 in every 10 enquiries became a booked tour, a conversion rate well above what most centres achieve.
The centre team focused on what they do best.
educators concentrated on running great tours and showing families the care environment, not chasing leads.
The results
Over four months, the campaign generated 28 enquiries from families actively looking for care. Twenty of those booked tours, a 71% enquiry-to-tour rate, and 12 families moved to enrol. Occupancy climbed from 71% to 84%.
All of this came from approximately $2,400 in total ad spend, roughly $600 a month. To put that in perspective, the entire four-month campaign cost less than the fees a single enrolled child generates in a month. The centre added twelve.
And the result that matters most: off the back of this turnaround, the operator engaged us across her other two centres. There is no stronger endorsement than a client who has seen the numbers up close and decides to expand.
The expanded engagement, right now
Following the group-wide expansion, Google Ads now runs alongside Meta across all three centres. The snapshot below shows the most recent 30 days of Google performance across the group.
Why it worked
There was no magic creative and no secret targeting hack. The campaign worked because every part of the system pointed at one number: occupancy. Enquiries only mattered if they became tours. Tours only mattered if they became enrolments. When the whole pipeline is built backwards from that outcome, a modest ad budget goes a very long way.
Most centres do not have a marketing problem. They have a gap between enquiry and enrolment that nobody is measuring.
Find out where your occupancy gap is
If your centre has vacant places and your enquiries are not turning into tours, the first step is knowing exactly where families are dropping out of your pipeline. We will show you, with your own numbers, where the enrolments are leaking and what it is costing you each month.
Let’s Talk!
Don’t wait until tomorrow. Talk to us today and learn how to start getting your service to 100%.