Playcentre Open Week Campaign Results

This year we decided to provide a much greater level of national support for Playcentre Open Week. This was partly to assess how we can better leverage being one national organisation of which each centre is the local expression. With very limited resources, we have managed to achieve a very significant increase in activity across a wide range of measures.

This is despite the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. With over 80 weather related claims, we considered postponing the week but decided to go ahead so that the majority of centres could take advantage of all the marketing activity.

Social Media video competition

That being said, Playcentre Open Week can only be effective when we all work together to make it a success. Thank you to everyone for all the effort you put in to Playcentre Open Week this year. It was great to see centres take up this campaign with such enthusiasm. Thanks especially to all those centres that created videos to show what “a typical day at Playcentre” looks like for our social media competition.

Social media reach

This helped us reach 75,080 people with the public Playcentre Aotearoa Facebook page over the campaign period (12 Feb – 11 Mar), which was a 609.6% increase from the previous period (15 Jan to 11 Feb). We also reached 5,774 people via Instagram, which was a 1.2K% increase from the previous period. We also received 120,751 impressions and reached 36,552 people from our paid Facebook ad. We received 1,506 link clicks to our website, at a cost per click rate of $0.33.

National advertising

At a national level, we advertised using Google display ads, NZHerald.co.nz, Tots to Teens, Family Times and radio. We also had event listings on Eventfinda.co.nz and on several Council websites. Click on the overview below to see the campaign results.

Website traffic

Our advertising resulted in a spike in the traffic to the Playcentre website. In the last 28 days (13 Feb to 11 March 2023) the “Find your centre” page of the Playcentre website received 9,332 page views, compared with 2,776 page views from the same period last year (13 Feb to 11 March 2022), an increase of 236.17%.

Feedback
  • “Takapuna Playcentre have had 20 visitors and still one session to go this week.”
  • “We had a great open week at Park Road Playcentre with 2 or 3 visitors each day some returning from the beginning of the week. We have had 1 new enrolment since. But we had already enrolled 6 new families before our open week started.”
  • Centre unknown “We had 14 visitors across 3 days. Only 1 on our last day but she has enrolled already which is exciting. Two more came for a second visit today. Others will be followed up with to see if they are interested in visiting again. We might invite visitors on trips this term to help promote our centre and include them in our community.”
  • “Gleniti Playcentre only had five new enrolments when I first spoke to them, but now they have 13.” – Anna Steel, Regional Manager.

If you have any feedback regarding Playcentre Open Week that you would like to share, please email [email protected].

View Playcentre Open Week Campaign Summary 

Playcentre Aotearoa social media pages

Playcentre Aotearoa has three main social media pages. These are:

We encourage members to like/follow these pages to keep up to date with what is happening in the Playcentre community.

Our public facing Facebook and Instagram pages will often have posts that you can share to your own centre pages promoting Playcentre (ie. Playcentre Open Week). 

Our private Facebook group is for all past and present members of Playcentre. This group is a great place to discuss play ideas or find out how other centres do things.  Please note, you are not able to share posts from the private Facebook group.

Please remember that social media is not an official communication channel for Playcentre Aotearoa. Always check out the official channels (ie. our website and monthly bulletin) for up-to-date information, policies and procedures, or you can refer to our communication pathway.