Google Ads for Daycares
Google Ads for daycares: more booked tours, full classrooms.
A parent choosing childcare researches for weeks and compares three or four centers before booking a single tour. Google Ads gets your daycare in front of them while they're still comparing. It cannot replace a tour that goes badly or photos that make your classrooms look empty.
- 10% of your ad budget, $600/month minimum
- No contracts, month to month
- 30-day guarantee, you don't pay if it doesn't work
What runs, and why
Campaigns built around how parents choose a daycare.
Search ads for "daycare near me" and age-specific searches
Parents search by age group and proximity, like "infant daycare near me" or "preschool [city]." We bid on those exact phrases so a nearby, comparing parent finds your center instead of scrolling past it.
Call-only ads for parents checking openings
A lot of parents call first to ask if you have an opening before they'll even look at your website. Call-only ads take them straight to your front desk, with every call tracked back to the ad that drove it.
Remarketing to parents who viewed but didn't book a tour
A parent who looked at your program page and left is still shopping. We bring them back with ads that remind them a tour is one click away, before a competing center books their spot first.
Performance Max for classroom photos and reviews
Parents decide on trust, and trust comes from real classroom photos and reviews, not text alone. Performance Max runs your best visuals across Search, Display and YouTube, matched to your fall enrollment push.
What Google Ads costs for daycares.
The average cost per click
For the Education & Instruction category, the average cost per click is $4.81 and the average click-through rate is 7.56%, per 2026 search advertising benchmarks published by LocaliQ with WordStream. Childcare sits inside that category, but every education advertiser from tutoring to trade schools is blended into it.
The average conversion rate and cost per lead
That same benchmark set shows an average conversion rate of 13.14% and an average cost per lead of $77.48 for Education & Instruction. A tour request usually counts as the lead here, which is a smaller ask for a parent than committing to enroll on the spot.
The math at a $2,000 monthly budget
At the category average cost per click, $2,000 buys around 416 clicks a month. At the category average conversion rate, that's roughly 55 tour requests. Our fee is 10% of your ad budget or $600 a month, whichever is higher, so at $2,000 you'd land right at the $600 minimum.
What actually moves that number
The benchmark is a category average, not a promise for your center. A center with a genuine waitlist and strong reviews usually converts above average, while a center with only a phone number and no photos on its site tends to sit below it, no matter how much is spent on clicks.
How we set this up for a daycare.
01
Track every tour request before launch
Before any ad runs, we set up tracking for tour bookings, calls and waitlist form fills, so you can see which age group and which campaign is actually filling your empty slots, not just driving traffic.
02
A page for each age group you enroll
Infant care, toddler rooms and pre-K are different decisions with different price points. Each gets its own page showing real photos, staff ratios and availability, instead of one page trying to sell every age group at once.
03
Negatives and search terms, checked weekly
We review the exact searches triggering your ads every week and remove the ones with no chance of becoming a tour, like job-seeker searches for daycare work or parents searching outside your service area.
Google Ads for daycares, answered.
Most independent daycares and preschools start between $1,500 and $3,000 a month, enough to fill a real waitlist without overspending on clicks you can't seat. We'll size a budget around how many open slots you actually have.
It's worth it when you have real openings and a tour process that turns visits into enrollments, since childcare searches are high-intent and local. It's not worth it if your center is already full, since there's nowhere to put a new family.
Search ads for near-me and age-specific searches, call-only ads for parents checking availability, and remarketing to bring back parents who viewed your program but didn't book a tour. Performance Max helps most during the fall enrollment push, when photos and reviews carry more weight.
Tour requests can start within the first week or two of launch, since childcare searches are urgent and local. Give it 4 to 6 weeks to judge your real cost per tour and per enrollment, since a family may tour two or three centers before deciding.
We charge 10% of the budget, not less than $600 a month, and the ad spend passes through at cost. No setup charge, no term, and our fee is waived if the first 30 days fall short.
See what Google Ads could bring your daycare.
Tell us your open ages, your capacity and your budget. We'll send back a free proposal within one business day, sized to the slots you actually need to fill.