Based in Missoula, Montana, Child Care Resources works to ensure the health and growth of Montana’s young children by supporting their parents, grandparents, guardians and their licensed child care providers. Across three counties, the nonprofit agency serves professional licensed child care professionals with classroom and online training, and facilitates licensing of facilities and professionals; it supports parents, grandparents and guardians with a database of legally operating, licensed child care programs, works to ease the financial burden due to the cost of child care, and maintains a library of information / resources for parents. As part of its resource portfolio, Child Care Resources administers Montana’s Best Beginnings Child Care Scholarship across its three-county service area.

Early in 2021 the state of Montana changed the eligibility rules to receive Best Beginnings financial help to pay for child care. The significant lowering of income thresholds meant that immediately hundreds of families were suddenly eligible for help. Given program application deadlines, and additional financial stress on many families due to the COVID pandemic, time was of the essence.

To reach this audience quickly and clearly, we started the campaign with an all-digital approach highlighting the rule change and encouraging these “new” families to apply. Online banner ads, paid Facebook ads and audio ads upped general awareness and also drove to the reworked landing page. We then added broadcast radio and bus advertising to the campaign as additional funds became available for advertising. The webpage offered background and detailed information, links to the application itself and how/where to contact CCR staff for help with an application.

Over the campaign’s four-month run, the campaign’s analytics tracked 2,500 ad clicks and site visitation increased by 19% compared to the previous four months. Significantly, 99.2% of website visitors were new to the agency site, and they typically visited more than one webpage. In addition, our :30 audio spot posted 402,200 impressions and 93.4% completed listens.