10 tips for growing your audience as a baby business.

You’ve ticked off the training and are launching your very own baby classes or courses, supporting people at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives. You do what you think you should: set up the Instagram account, order posters and tell everyone you know about your new venture…

And then you wait. Your first few classes might have some interest – everyone loves to check out the new experience in their local town. But activities relating to pregnancy, birth and babies are unique. If you own one of these businesses, your marketing strategy needs to be unique too.

Parents find themselves in a brand-new world where every new milestone in pregnancy changes their hopes and fears. Babies and their routines change rapidly too. It leaves activity providers and antenatal instructors in a difficult position – we need to be growing our audience constantly to attract new people in. 

Here are some tips to increase your online visibility: 

1. Drill down into when you want to attract attention from your ideal client. This might be earlier than you think! Offer birth prep classes? You want to make people aware of your services early in their pregnancy, so they can get to know, like and trust you. Running baby classes? Don’t forget to tap in to those who are still pregnant and dreaming of what their days will look like when the baby finally arrives. 

   
   

2. Get confident in front of the camera. People want to buy from people they trust and have built up a bond with. It’s impossible to do this on an individual scale but having videos of you talking about relatable topics within your field will help people to see the real you and feel that connection. 

   
   

3. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! Having a social media account is a great way to build up and audience and share what you’re doing. It’s also great for brand awareness and social proofing. You can tell someone’s still active and has availability by looking for recent posts. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that posting on Instagram is the same as marketing your services. It’s most likely not enough unless you are constantly getting new followers who are your ideal client, which most people aren’t! Even with thousands of followers, your posts will only be seen by a selection. And with pregnancy and postnatal being so short lived, you really have to work very hard to have super success using just social media alone. 

   
   

4. Attract them elsewhere. Use your social media platforms to grab attention and offer something useful. This could be a guide to what you do, a mini video lesson or a competition form. Grab their email addresses in exchange for your ‘lead magnet’ and start to build up trust by sending useful, helpful content through to their inbox, with your latest availability and offers attached too!

   
   

5. Create a website! This is my original area of expertise and helped me to launch The Birth Business Growth Club. I now teach pregnancy, birth and baby businesses how to bring loads of traffic to their website and climb to the top spots on Google. Even a basic website means an online presence in front of the people who are actually searching for what you do, not just people who happen to stumble across you on social media. You can learn simple techniques for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), specifically for baby businesses, in The Birth Business Growth Club. 

   
   

6. Get listed everywhere! A great thing about Pebble is the way it acts as a directory for parents to find out what’s happening nearby. Usually, these listings come with a ‘backlink’ – a link to your website from another website. These are really important for ranking higher on Google. It’s almost like a vote of confidence from one website to another to vouch for their authenticity. 

   
   

7. Network as much as you can, whether this is online or in your local area. Practice your 60 second business pitch and know how you want to explain your services to people before they ask! Then tell everyone. Hairdressers are an excellent source of local publicity, as are community midwives and health visitors. Local cafes and libraries might let you put posters up – but stay for a chat whilst you’re sticking them up and they might end up leading you to potential clients too. 

   
   

8. Collaborate! Do not be afraid to approach other small businesses within your niche to collaborate on projects. It could be a shared live video together, a mini workshop in your town (see also: get friendly with the café owner) or a guest blog post on each other’s websites (see also: backlinks!) There are frequent opportunities for this in The Birth Business Growth Club – one week we’ll have a podcast owner asking for guests and the next it will be an online magazine looking to interview people on their own experiences. This is the promotion you need to widen your audience and get your message out to more people!

   
   

9. Consider creating video content. YouTube is on the rise as a search engine and not just a place to watch cute cat vids. Why not dedicate some time each week to creating video content that would be interesting to your ideal client. This doesn’t have to be exactly what your service provides! Branch out to other pregnancy, birth & baby topics and lead people to your website in the caption. 

   
   

10. Tke the positives public. As soon as the reviews start to come through, shout about them from the roof tops. There’s nothing more powerful than other people’s opinions when it comes to convincing newbies to sign up. Make sure they are on your socials and your website!

The Birth Business Growth Club supports all pregnancy, birth and baby businesses with marketing, SEO, strategy and growth. Access 50+ hours of training & resources, as well as our weekly support sessions and experienced community for just £15 per month. You can get your first month for £10 by using the code PEBBLE10 at the checkout! Cancel any time. See https://home.thebirthbusinessgrowthclub.com/ for details. 

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