Prepared for the board of FSC · by TECPION — plan authored by Raisul Islam Russel, Founder · digital marketing & web product agency
A six-engine growth system — website, parent app, SEO, social, paid media and cold outreach — built to turn Washington's child care shortage into a statewide waitlist for FSC.
Every metric below points the same direction: more parents searching than seats existing. In a shortage market, visibility is the business model.
children under age 6 live in Washington (est.) — every one of them belongs to a family making care decisions.
coverage gap. Most counties are structurally under-supplied — filled seats come with waiting parents behind them.
median monthly spend per child across WA counties (est.) — a high-ticket, high-stakes purchase.
monthly Google searches for child care + WA city terms (est.) — parents shop online before they ever call.
licensed providers statewide — a fragmented field where smart marketing wins share fast (est.).
Directional estimates compiled from public DCYF licensing data, ChildCare Aware of Washington cost reports, and Google keyword data. Validate before board sign-off.
Channels run alone waste each other's momentum. Wired together, every engine feeds the next — and the cost per enrollment falls every quarter.
Be found the exact moment a parent searches "child care near me."
Earn trust in under 8 seconds — pricing, teachers, proof.
The 48-hour tour promise. Deposit paid online, same visit.
Daily proof they chose right — photos, reports, milestones.
Every family becomes a salesperson for the next.
As reviews, rankings and referrals stack, CAC drops ~45% by the end of year two (model, est.).
Every channel in this plan ends at the website. It has one job: turn a stranger into a booked tour in a single visit — in English or Spanish.
Live calendar, SMS + email confirmations. No contact-form ping-pong.
Deposit paid online, position visible, auto-alert when a seat opens.
Every competitor hides pricing. Transparency alone will win tours.
Infant · Toddler · Preschool · Pre-K, marked up for rich search results.
One genuinely local page per neighborhood: staff, photos, fees, waits.
DCYF license, Early Achievers rating, ratios, staff bios, health policies.
Real translations, not machine soup — matching Washington's languages.
Happy tours routed to Google; concerns routed to the director, privately.
Acquisition gets headlines, but retention pays the bills. The app turns anxious pickup questions into daily proof that parents chose right.
Naps, meals, milestones — pushed, not requested.
Consent-gated classroom moments parents reshare — free marketing.
Contactless sign-in/out, synced to billing and state attendance rules.
Tuition and add-ons in one tap — fewer chasing emails, fewer late payments.
Closures, events, open seats — 90%+ open vs ~20% for email.
Teachers and directors, threaded and archived. No lost sticky notes.
Live position and open-seat alerts — even before families enroll.
Each child's growth, saved forever. Families keep it — and they keep us.
Covers ~90% of parent needs (reports, photos, billing, push). No app-store friction: staff text a link, families tap, done. Adoption target: 80%.
App-store presence for "FSC" (a trust signal in itself), faster camera, offline mode, richer notifications.
Statewide reach is won neighborhood by neighborhood: a local page, a Google Business Profile, and a review engine in every community we serve.
| Keyword | Vol/mo | Intent |
|---|---|---|
| child care near me (WA metros) | 22K+ (est.) | Tour |
| daycare spokane | 1.3K | Tour |
| preschool bellevue wa | 880 | Enroll |
| infant care seattle | 720 | Waitlist |
| toddler program tacoma | 390 | Enroll |
| working connections child care help | 480 | Support |
The last one is deliberate: families using WA subsidies can pay with them — helping parents navigate Working Connections converts families competitors turn away.
Parents enroll emotionally, then justify rationally. The feed does the emotional work — with an 80/20 rule so it sells without feeling like selling.
Classroom reels, teacher takeovers, milestone moments.
5 posts + daily stories/wk · KPI: 8%+ engagement, tour chats in DMs
Local groups, events, retargeting audiences, lead forms.
3 posts/wk · KPI: $9 CPL lead forms, 20 group referrals/mo
"Day in our toddler room," teacher humor, PNW-family life.
2 clips/wk · KPI: 50K monthly views (est.)
Where "anyone know a good preschool?" actually gets asked.
2 posts/mo · KPI: 20 neighbor referrals/mo
Activity guides and prep checklists that rank for years.
5 pins/wk · KPI: 3K outbound clicks/mo to the site
Both families get one free week. Codes are tracked in the app, so referrals become a measurable revenue channel — not a hope. Target: referrals = 25% of enrollments by month 12.
Rankings take 6–9 months; ads fill seats in week two. Then budget shifts from cold search to retargeting as organic takes over.
| Channel | Budget | CPL (est.) | Job to be done |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search | 40% | $18–35 | "child care + city", "infant care near me" — bottom-funnel bookers |
| Meta (IG + FB) | 30% | $8–20 | 3–8 mi radius, parent-interest & lookalike audiences, lead forms |
| Local Services Ads | 10% | Pay per lead | Google Guaranteed badge; pay only for real, qualified leads |
| YouTube | 10% | $9–14 CPM | 15-second classroom tours in front of local parents |
| Retargeting | 10% | $4–9 | Bring back the ~92% who don't book on their first visit |
Reviewed weekly; reallocated monthly toward whichever channel is producing the cheapest tours — not clicks.
per enrolled family, all channels
22-month stay × $1,250 avg tuition
every $1 of paid media returns $8–13 of Y1 tuition
≈65% of the annual budget lands in the six enrollment-peak months: January moves, spring planning, and the July–August back-to-school rush.
B2C ads fight for attention. B2B outreach builds recurring referral channels: employers, pediatricians, realtors, and community anchors.
Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Providence, school districts — reserved slots + corporate rates as a benefits perk.
Referral kits, fridge cards, quarterly "what's new" updates. New parents ask them first.
Welcome packets for relocating families — families that arrive with no network and urgent need.
Libraries, parent groups, Child Care Aware of WA, Early Achievers coaches — presence where trust already lives.
Dedicated sending domain, 2–3 week warm-up, CAN-SPAM compliant (physical address + one-click unsubscribe).
Name the perk, one sentence of proof, one CTA: a 15-minute call.
Two-sentence result + a parent testimonial screenshot. Still one CTA.
"Worth holding two fall infant slots for your team?" — scarcity, politely.
"Closing the file — one line if this is ever useful." Highest reply rate of the sequence.
Hi Sarah — I direct FSC's campus on Meridian Ave, six minutes from your office. Every quarter we hold four infant slots for partner-employer families: priority waitlist, corporate rate, and a dedicated enrollment contact.
Worth 15 minutes to see if your People team wants a childcare perk that actually gets used?
P.S. 11 of our current families found us through an employer introduction — it's the fastest way for new-to-the-area hires to secure care.
Our competitors describe archetypes from public listings — verify per market. The strategy holds either way: occupy the square nobody else can.
| FSC | KinderCare | Bright Horizons | Goddard | Local indies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuition published online | ~ | ||||
| Same-week tour | ~ | ~ | |||
| Parent app included | ~ | ||||
| Bilingual EN/ES program | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | |
| Subsidy navigation help | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | |
| Neighborhood-level content |
"Tour in 48 hours, decide by Friday." Chains book tours through call centers on 5–10 day lead times. We win the parent before their callback is even scheduled.
Publish tuition, ratios, DCYF license and Early Achievers rating on every page. Whatever competitors hide becomes our billboard.
Thirty neighborhood pages, staff from those neighborhoods, real presence in mom groups and Nextdoor — places no national brand can credibly show up.
A live model, not a vanity chart. Drag tuition, occupancy and campus count — every output below recalculates instantly.
The chalkboard — tune the dials, the board sees the consequence.
steady-state annual tuition
at Year-3 occupancy
all six engines
Year-1 tuition ÷ spend
Tuition revenue vs. marketing spend per year. Marketing stays a thin slice of revenue — the story of this whole deck in one picture.
| Conservative | Base | Stretch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campuses · occupancy · tuition | 1 · 70% · $1,150 | 2 · 82% · $1,250 | 3 · 90% · $1,350 |
| Year-1 revenue | $648K | $1.65M | $2.94M |
| Year-3 run-rate | $811K | $2.07M | $3.67M |
| Blended CAC | $740 | $680 | $610 |
| Y1 marketing ROAS | 9.0× | 11.5× | 13.6× |
Retention is the multiplier. The app, the review engine and the community program all exist to defend this one ratio.
Demand generation starts in month two — before the website is even finished, using a launch page and Local Services Ads. No idle months.
Total year-one investment: $180K — about 11% of base-case Y1 revenue, trending to ~7% by year three. Inside the healthy 7–12% band for local services.
Four weeks from signature to first paid demand. Every week ships something the board can see.
Kickoff within 7 days of approval · month-to-month after month six · FSC owns every asset we build.
Let's fill every classroom in Washington.
Plan by Raisul Islam Russel — Founder, TECPION · for FSC Child Care