Mon Ami Children’s Nurseries

Overview

Mon Ami Children’s Nurseries is a group of four childcare settings in Lincolnshire, all of which are rated outstanding by Ofsted.

The company was founded in 2002 when owners Samantha and Jarrod Britton opened their first nursery in Swineshead. They now have a further three settings in Boston, Alford and Wragby.

Objectives

Mon Ami first employed Shooting Star in 2015 to create a new website for the company. Once the website was online Samantha approached Shooting Star for an ongoing PR strategy which would raise the company’s profile and increase the number of children enrolled across the four sites.

Approach

In 2015 Shooting Star took over management of Mon Ami’s Facebook page and added a Twitter account to boost its social media presence and cross-link between platforms. We also commissioned high-quality photography across all sites for use on the web and in PR activity.

We sat down with Mon Ami to develop a rolling 12-month plan of PR activity, focusing where possible on the activities of the children to highlight the outstanding service provided. We also took responsibility for updating the website on a regular basis with news, events and imagery.

Another successful tactic has been award submissions: Shooting Star now identifies awards schemes and submits entries on behalf of Mon Ami, and the company was shortlisted at three separate awards events in 2017 alone. In November 2017 Mon Ami won two awards at the NMT National Nursery Awards in London.

Results

  • From a standing start (no coverage) we achieved 141 items of media coverage for Mon Ami in our first two years
  • Senior Nursery Manager Kristina Johnson has a regular childcare column in local Johnston Press newspapers
  • We increased Facebook likes from 420 to 908 in under two years
  • In two years Mon Ami was shortlisted for 12 separate awards across five award ceremonies, including the Nursery World Awards, the NMT Nursery Awards and the Boston Business Awards.

Shooting Star know our business well and they understand how to gain positive media coverage in publications and websites that are read by our target market.

They’ve also done a brilliant job with our website and social media and it’s such a relief to be able to focus on the nurseries and let Shooting Star take care of the PR side of things.

They’re a very useful extra member of the team – always on the end of a phone and happy to answer text and emails if an issue crops up.

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