Best Practices for Better Senior Living Referrals

Best Practices for Better Senior Living Referrals

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Best Practices for Better Senior Living Referrals

Professional referrals can be one of the best ways to grow occupancy in senior living communities. In fact, when done well (and consistently), senior living referrals tend to be cost-effective, yield higher conversion rates, and lead to longer stays.

In one of our recent podcasts, SLS’s Debbie Howard chatted with Michael Moye, Senior Account Executive at WelcomeHome CRM. Michael has a unique perspective on community outreach because he used to work as a community relations director.

Here are the key takeaways from his conversation with Debbie, along with best practices to improve your senior living referral program.

Understanding the importance of senior living referrals

Professional referrals play a significant role in driving occupancy, mainly because they tend to convert at higher rates. Michael says approximately 6% of leads come from professional and non-professional referrals. But 75% of those tours will move in. (Michael tracks this data using WelcomeHome CRM.)

The reason behind the high conversion rate is trust. When sources that people trust refer them to a community, decision-making becomes easier and quicker.

Michael acknowledges that building relationships with trusted sources takes effort. However, the payoff can be huge.

“So think about the six months that it takes—you’re laying the foundation,” he says. “It’s really hard work. But then once the framework is there and you start to see the pipeline of referrals coming in, 75% of those are moving in.”

This is because your referral partners have already educated people about your community, so your prospects end up knowing a lot about it before they even set foot inside.

Compared to other lead sources, referral-based leads are the least expensive.

Debbie explains, “The only thing you have to invest is your time and creativity. And when you compare that to how much you’re paying aggregators or paid digital leads or newspaper or direct mail, it really is the most cost-effective as well.”

Developing a referral-based marketing strategy can be wise for communities looking to maximize their marketing budget while achieving high-quality results.

How to build strong relationships with referral sources

Make community outreach part of your community’s DNA.

Referral success doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be ingrained in the community’s culture, something Michael refers to as being part of an operator’s DNA.

He says operators and owners should establish a clear framework for their sales teams and emphasize the importance of engaging with the local community.

Recognize that potential referral sources are everywhere.

It’s easy to focus on the biggest professional referral sources like hospitals. But it’s also important to remember that anyone can be a potential referral. Much benefit can come from simply opening up your community and making it a local destination.

Debbie echoes this sentiment and recalls her experience in senior living sales and how some referrals came from unexpected places.

“I got move-ins from somebody from the Girl Scout troop that we hosted to help them with a baking project,” she explains. “And we got a move-in from somebody who came to a piano recital. We had a grand piano and a beautiful space, and we partnered with a local music school, and we had refreshments. When you open those doors, and you create those opportunities, you never really know who’s going to be there that might have a need that you’re not going to find any other way.”

Outreach strategies that lead to better senior living referrals

Be more than simply a “cupcake marketer.”

It’s easy to fall into the habit of delivering small gifts or baked goods to professional referral sources, but that won’t necessarily help build long-term partnerships. You might look like the hero for a hot minute, but people will quickly forget about you after they gobble down the goods because you’re not delivering substance about the community.

Instead, Michael says to bring cupcakes with a purpose. What can you tell them about your community? Is there something new about your community that could help them?

PRO TIP: If you really want to differentiate yourself, instead of just bringing in cupcakes, bring in your chef with the cupcakes and have the chef talk about their approach to dining and nutrition in your community.

Identify your Trojan horse.

When he worked as a community relations director, Michael turned his community’s health and wellness director (HWD) into a Trojan horse. He had a great relationship with his HWD and would position himself as a tagalong when they made hospital or other outreach visits.

He says referral sources, especially those in hospital or rehab settings, preferred talking to the HWD.

“They would much rather hear about outcomes and [our] care to approach than hearing it from a sales director like myself,” he says. “And so I won a lot of hearts and minds, not because of my wits and my smarts, but because I was smart enough to bring us the smarter person in the room and going in and making sure that they visit the people.”

Debbie notes that this approach is another brilliant way to differentiate your community in the sea of sameness.

“Nobody else has your health and wellness director,” she says. “Nobody else has your outcomes. Nobody else has your stories or your passion or your mission statement or your values or your culture.”

Follow good sales etiquette.

Always add value to your conversations with referral partners.

Michael says there’s a saying in sales: Don’t spill the candy in the lobby.

He explains, “It’s so easy just to get a little bit nervous and then just start pitching and talking their ears off and annoying them.”

Always remember your job is to make their lives easier. What are their biggest problems? What are their biggest headaches? Which patients are they most worried about? How can your community help solve these pain points?

Go into every conversation with a way to help them rather than a sales pitch about another feature/benefit in your community.

Don’t monopolize people’s time.

You can make a big impression in five or ten minutes by focusing on adding value.

Michael says, “I think it’s super important to know that it doesn’t have to be an hour-long conversation. In fact, I don’t think they want you to be there for an hour. I think they’re like, ‘Get out of my office. I’ve got a job.’ But if it’s five valuable minutes that they can be educated about something that your community does and maybe differentiating from other competition—that’s the meat. That’s where you’re going to find a lot of value compared to just dumping everything out.”

Block your calendar to hold yourself accountable.

One of the biggest challenges for sales teams is being consistent with outreach. The best thing you can do is block your calendar specifically for these outreach appointments and drop-ins and stick to it.

Talk less, listen more.

A good way to do this is by asking thoughtful questions, such as what challenges people face, what referrals look like for them, etc. Michael says, “I think there’s a really good 70/30 rule on talking about 30 percent and then allowing them to talk the other 70 percent.”

Give your referral partners updates after someone moves in.

Keeping referral sources updated on the well-being of their referrals can solidify trust and keep the relationship strong.

Michael says you can use automation, like WelcomeHome, to trigger a reminder to thank the referral partner after a referral has become a move-in. “Sometimes, we’re so busy we forget to thank our referral partners, and we forget to update them,” he says.

Debbie agrees. “And that really means a lot to them to be able to say, ‘This is someone you referred 30 days ago when she was just coming out of rehab, and she was having these issues. And now, here’s a picture of her enjoying this activity or on a trip’. That’s going to do more than any cupcake you bring through the door.”

Bottom line: Add referral partner outreach to your sales and marketing mix.

Building a strong referral network is an ongoing process that requires both effort and attention. However, by implementing these best practices, your senior living community can foster meaningful relationships that consistently drive high-quality referrals.

More helpful reading and listening:

How Executive Directors Help the Senior Living Sales Process

How Executive Directors Help the Senior Living Sales Process

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How Executive Directors Help the Senior Living Sales Process

When people think of sales in senior living, the natural assumption is that the sales director leads the charge. However, the executive director (ED) can play an equally crucial role in driving occupancy and creating a culture of sales accountability.

Here’s the thing, though: The ED’s role isn’t just about supporting the sales team—it’s about ensuring the entire community contributes to the sales effort and long-term relationships with residents.

On one of our recent podcasts, Debbie Howard chatted about this topic with Erin Thompson, owner of Aspire for More. Erin coaches senior living sales teams based on her successful ED experience. (Check out her LinkedIn profile.)

Below, we’ve compiled key takeaways from the podcast. But we encourage you to listen to the full episode here.

How EDs can better support the senior living sales process.

1. Remember, your sales director’s success is your success.

Erin acknowledges there were moments earlier in her career when she struggled with her sales director getting all the glory. But she says it’s important to remember that their glory is also your glory since everyone is judged on occupancy.

She explains, “Every executive director needs to realize that the success of your sales director is your success, period.”

2. Be available and present when your sales team needs you, especially during tours.

Executive directors shouldn’t run and hide from tours. “People want to know what the leader thinks, feels, and how they operate,” Erin says. “Be able to tell that in a tour.”

Being present will also help your sales team understand they’re not alone. “The more present you are,” Erin says, “the more people know that you are a part of the sales process.”

3. Become adept at managing your sales director’s big asks with other managers’ needs.

Anyone who’s worked in senior living operations long enough has likely heard about the “demanding” sales director who’s always asking for something. For example, they go to the kitchen and request a special menu for someone coming in for a tour or cookies for professional outreach. Or perhaps they’re famous for telling the facilities director that they need a particular room flipped by a specific time.

One key challenge for executive directors is balancing these so-called urgent requests with the operational needs of other managers. While last-minute requests from the sales director might positively influence a prospective resident’s decision, they can also cause frustration for other departments if handled poorly.

This is where the executive director’s leadership comes into play. Erin says big asks should come from the ED instead of the sales director. She recommends addressing the challenge directly. “You could say, ‘I acknowledge this is a really bad time. I acknowledge that, and I respect that. But we have somebody who wants to move in to take this last room, and this is going to be the goal for all of us. Is there any way you can make this happen?'”

By acknowledging the inconvenience and presenting it as a shared goal, team members are more likely to respond positively, knowing their efforts are valued.

4. Encourage the sales team to share their perspectives with prospects.

Erin says that while sales reps must listen to family members, it’s also important for the reps to share their insights because they inherently have a perspective that the prospects don’t have. “It’s not salesy if you offer advice through your experience,” she says.

For example, when the sales rep hears a common concern or objection, Erin notes that they could share their insights by saying something like, “I’ve seen this before. I’ve heard this before. Let me give you some examples. And then you decide, based on what you want and what success looks like to you and your loved one at that moment.”

Erin says it’s important for the ED to remind the sales team their perspectives matter.

5. Be a model of leadership and sales integrity.

Good executive directors know how to keep the team focused. “It’s more about how can we inspire the team to come together through the sales process,” Erin says. “Because sales is at the beginning of the journey, in the middle of the journey, and at the end of the journey.”

She says the ED should remind the team to help the prospect rather than close the prospect—and that the sales team must be mindful of their role beyond move-in.

“Transitions to higher levels of care is one of the most vulnerable positions a community can be in legally, referral-wise, and just emotional-wise,” Erin explains. “And so we have to be mindful of how we support family members who are leaving our community for the last time, who are moving into memory care or assisted living or who passed away. How we, as a community, support those transitions is very important because what do people remember the most? They remember the way they felt when they walked out of the door the last time. And that is just as valuable as the first time that they walk in.”

Erin notes that when she was an ED, she used to call families after a resident transitioned to a higher level of care or if the resident passed away. She would tell the family, “Thank you for sharing your loved one with me. I wanted to let you know that this is something important. This is the way they impacted my life. This is what I learned from them. ”

Executive directors must teach their teams how to do the same thing. A good time to model this behavior to newer sales reps is when the family comes in for the last time.

Erin explains, “You tell the team, ‘Hey, so-and-so is coming to move the furniture out today. Give them a hug, shake their hand, thank them. And if you think of a really cute, fun story, share it because your relationship meant the world to this family. And even if they’re leaving and they don’t want to, or it’s emotional, do it because you’re worth it, and they’re worth it, and it does change everything. It really does.'”

Need more senior living sales tips?

Check out these helpful resources:

4 Ways to Improve Off-Page SEO for Senior Living Communities

4 Ways to Improve Off-Page SEO for Senior Living Communities

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4 Ways to Improve Off-Page SEO for Senior Living Communities

There’s a saying in senior living SEO that “all search is local search.” It makes sense, right? Most people thinking about senior living probably want to remain in their local community near family, friends, and the organizations they’re active in.

The data supports this theory. Consider the search volume for “senior living near me” phrases. We’re talking thousands of monthly searches.

This is why optimizing your senior living community’s website for local search is a must.

But did you know there are actions you can take outside of your website to help improve your site’s visibility in search results, including local search?

It’s called off-page search engine optimization (SEO), and it’s all about boosting your site’s reputation so that search engines see your community’s site as reputable, trustworthy, and authoritative.

Remember, the more reputable your site seems to Google (and other search engines), the more visibility your site will have in the search results.

Below, we discuss four ways to improve off-page SEO for senior living communities.

1. Become a wiz at managing your community’s online reputation.

People rely on reviews when making purchasing decisions. This is why you must have a plan for soliciting and managing reviews, especially on the all-mighty Google.

The more positive reviews you have (especially on Google), the more reputable and trustworthy your site will seem to search engines, and the more likely your site will be served up, especially on relevant local searches.

Don’t take our word for it, though. Google says, “High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location.”

So, how can you get more reviews? SLS’s Debbie Howard says the key is being “intentional” about your approach to senior living reputation management.

She recommends doing the following:

  • Develop a proactive review strategy. Create opportunities for residents or visitors to leave reviews. For example, in your post-tour follow-ups, include a line like, “Thanks for stopping by for a visit today. We’d love to know about your experience. What did you like best about the tour? Leave a quick review here. It takes only 30 seconds.”
  • Try different delivery methods. Most people have smartphones, so they can easily access email and texts. Experiment with both and see which medium converts better.
  • Re-post positive reviews across multiple channels, especially social media. Share those glowing four- and five-star reviews on your site, in email campaigns, and across all of your social media channels. Experiment with how you present the review snippets. For example, create a video montage and see what it does for engagement.
  • Lather, rinse, repeat. You’re never done asking for reviews because people expect to see recent ones (within the last three months or so) on places like Google.

More helpful reading:

2. Embrace link building.

Earning high-quality backlinks to your community’s website signals to Google that you have a site worth serving up in search results.

Some links will happen organically. For example, a news site might link to one of your guides about funding senior living. But other links require a strategy. Semrush offers some good (but time-consuming) suggestions for generating backlinks.

Here are some other link-building tactics that might be more accessible and that can help with local search.

  • Whenever your community is involved in a sponsorship, request a backlink to your site from the sponsor’s website.
  • Pay attention to local businesses’ websites and collaborate with those that are a good fit and have good Domain Authority. Make sure you cross-promote and cross-link.
  • Create valuable local content that naturally attracts links. For example, highlight local attractions, like museums and theaters, in blog posts or “fun stuff to do” content.
  • Make sure members of your team who appear as guests on podcasts, videos, and blogs get a link back to your site in the show notes or bio blurb.

3. Ensure consistency in local citations and directories.

Building consistent citations across the web helps establish your community’s credibility.

  • Make sure your community’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across all online directories.
  • List your community on relevant local directories and senior living-specific platforms.
  • Claim and verify your listings on major sites.

At SLS, we use BrightLocal to clean up our clients’ online business listings. We usually find that 75% are inaccurate or unclaimed.

4. Optimize your Google Business Profile and continue giving it TLC over the long haul.

We feel like we talk about this tip A LOT. And yet, whenever we think we can ease up on this directive, we come across a Google Business Profile that needs a ton of work. (Or that hasn’t even been claimed yet—yikes!)

Google is still king when it comes to search, and there’s a good chance people will come across your community’s GBP before they make it to your website. Treat it like a microsite that you keep updated with current info, real pics (not stock images), and videos. And as we mentioned earlier, pay attention to reviews, too.

Need help? Check out these resources:

Remember, off-page SEO for senior living is a long game.

SEO is never done, so don’t treat it like a box on a to-do list that you check off once. Instead, include SEO in your ongoing marketing strategy. Need help? Our dedicated SEO team can assist you with all aspects of your senior living search engine optimization.

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How the Silver Tsunami is Changing Senior Living Marketing

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You already know that the senior living industry is undergoing a major shift thanks to the growing number of baby boomers entering the market—a.k.a. the “silver tsunami.”

The question is, how should this affect your approach to senior living marketing?

Below, we discuss the following points:

  • A key difference with the baby boomer persona
  • Two non-negotiables for boomers
  • Why digital marketing is so important

Boomers: A different kind of senior living consumer

The Baby Boomer generation vastly differs from the Greatest Generation. Members of the latter traditionally relied on family support when making senior living decisions. And the decision to move to senior living often resulted from a crisis, like a bad fall or the death of a spouse.

Boomers, however, often make decisions independently and base those decisions on choice rather than crisis. For example, they choose to downsize because they legitimately desire to live a maintenance-free lifestyle.

SLS’s Debbie Howard explains, “It’s no longer solely the adult children leading the charge. We’re seeing more and more boomers directly performing their own research and making decisions for themselves.”

What this means for your senior living marketing

The idea that senior living could be choice-driven vs. needs-driven has been a dream for many senior living marketers because messaging can be more aspirational. And those aspirations can help differentiate communities.

In the past, communities have often struggled to differentiate themselves in the sea of sameness since all communities sell the same “product” more or less. However, because more boomers are making decisions based on choice rather than need, a community can build messaging around its unique vibe rather than the same old features and benefits.

Two non-negotiables: autonomy and transparency

1. Boomers want to self-direct and indicate when they’re ready for a sales interaction.

Boomers are perfectly capable of researching independently, weighing their options, and deciding when they want to talk to sales. If you force them to talk before they’re ready, you’ll annoy them or worse—turn them off your community completely.

What this means for your senior living marketing

Use lead scoring and segmentation to quickly identify which leads have high intent. Nurture the “not ready yet” leads until they naturally advance to sales-qualified status. Send the high-intent leads—the ones who have asked for a sales interaction—to the sales team.

2. Boomers crave clear, reliable info when they want it.

Boomers often want immediate access to information like floor plans, pricing, and details about a community’s amenities and unique features. They don’t want to jump through hoops or interact with sales to get this information.

What this means for your senior living marketing

Senior living communities must shift their approach and cater to boomers. Debbie explains, “Old-school practices like keeping info gated or forcing people to visit the community to get info on pricing will not work with this generation.”

We know this can feel like a daunting shift, especially when it comes to the pricing discussion. For example, you might worry that displaying prices could scare people away before they understand financing resources, like bridge loans or the Veterans Aid & Attendance benefit.

However, not sharing pricing information might mean you lose out on qualified boomers who pursue communities that make it easy for them to shop and compare. Here’s one way you could approach the pricing conundrum.

Digital marketing is where it’s at.

Boomers are the most tech-savvy demographic that senior living communities have ever marketed to (at least, so far). They’re comfortable using search engines, social media, and various digital devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

And this is good news for marketers. Remember, it can take approximately 25 touches to move someone from anonymous search traffic to move-in. Digital channels can help provide these crucial touchpoints.

What this means for your senior living marketing

Effective digital marketing can help your brand score more tours, deposits, and move-ins, but the keyword is “effective.” You need a sound strategy that drives all your digital marketing, and everything should work together.

To that end, here’s some helpful reading:

Is your brand ready for the silver tsunami?

As the silver tsunami continues to change the senior living landscape, communities must adapt their marketing efforts to meet the expectations of this generation. The shift from needs-driven decisions to want-driven ones is profound, and it requires marketers to be more transparent and in tune with the boomers’ independent spirit.

Sales and marketing teams that embrace these changes will be well-positioned to attract and engage boomers, converting more of them from anonymous traffic to tours, deposits, and move-ins.

Do you need help aligning all your digital marketing channels to effectively “speak” to boomers? Contact us, and let’s chat about your boomer marketing efforts.

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9 Buyer Persona Questions for Your Best Residents

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If you’re not spending time talking to your best residents, you’re missing out on valuable marketing and sales intelligence.

Your community’s happiest residents can:

✔    Serve as a living and breathing example of your ideal prospect

✔    Share thoughts about your competitors

✔    Indicate which messages resonated with them and which ones fell flat

This doesn’t need to be a formal sit-down. Have a casual conversation. Write up your notes afterward. Once you have critical mass (meaning notes from five or more conversations with some of your best residents), revisit your existing personas and refine your messaging and engagement strategies as needed.

Below, we dive deeper into these tasks, starting with buyer persona questions we recommend asking and our reasoning behind asking each question.

Let’s get to it.

Nine buyer persona questions for your best residents

  1. What wasyourbiggest concern or fear about our community before you chose it? What helped you overcome these concerns?

Why ask this question? It’s helpful to understand people’s objections about your community and how they overcame them. Was it something your marketing or sales team did to help address their concerns? If yes, you’ll want to know so you can continue doing it.

Or did they somehow convince themselves? In this case, you can focus on having your marketing and sales team better address specific concerns, especially if you note a common theme among the residents you chat with.

Keep in mind that objections can change over time, and they will change from demo to demo. The objections that folks from the Greatest Generation had five years ago likely won’t be the same as the objections boomers have.

Asking this question can also help challenge your own assumptions. For example, one of our clients with an older community worried it would be impossible to compete with the glitzy and glamorous new community down the road.

But once we began talking to the happiest residents, we learned they were turned off by the new place’s glitz and glamour and preferred a more homey and comfortable setting. This intel fueled our marketing and paid ad initiatives so we could attract more people like our happiest residents.

  1. What would you tell someone else considering a move toour communityabout your move-in experience?

Why ask this question? Here’s where you can uncover important gaps, especially between the marketing and sales handoff. Do the residents talk about any issues after they made their deposit? Are they neutral about it? Or did they have a seamless experience from first interaction to move-in (and beyond)? If yes to the latter, what was so great about the experience?

Bottom line: You want to do more of what’s working and fix what isn’t.

  1. What specific amenities or services made the biggest difference in your decision?

Why ask this question? Marketing and sales teams are often too close to the product they’re selling. What sounds exciting to your team might not matter much to the resident.

But there’s another reason to ask this question: Hearing how real residents discuss various services and amenities can help with messaging.

For example, many communities have an on-site hair salon, but only your community has a stylist named Liz with a penchant for color and pin-curls. You get the idea. Having those conversations with residents will surface compelling words and phrases that you can sprinkle throughout your marketing for added authenticity.

  1. How did you first hear aboutourcommunity, and what resources did you use to research us?

Why ask this question? You might think you’re covered if your marketing automation and CRM are integrated properly. Don’t get us wrong: You want your martech platform connected bilaterally to your senior living CRM so you can see when, where, and how a lead first enters your site and their conversion touch points along the way.

But how do you track the conversation that happened at a cookout two summers ago where your now-happy resident first learned about your community from an old friend—and that friend’s testimonial made your resident aware of your senior living brand in the first place?

Asking this question can help you better gauge how much brand awareness residents had before they began their search and how well your brand-building initiatives have and haven’t been working.

  1. What was the most frustrating part of the senior living search process?

Why ask this question? Your residents might not point to any frustrations with your community, which is great if that’s the case. But if they make a general across-the-board statement such as “Everywhere we looked did this negative thing” or “No one did this,” pay attention to what “this” is and see if it’s something you need to address.

Note: Some frustrations that bubble up might be out of the marketing and sales teams’ control. Pass on helpful insights to the appropriate department, whether that’s operations, activities, dining, etc.

  1. What did other communities do better than us, andwhat ultimately convinced you our community was the right fit?

Why ask this question? Understanding the final “tipping point” for residents can offer invaluable insights into what truly resonates with prospects during their decision-making process.

Whether it’s specific amenities, the level of care, or the community’s atmosphere, identifying these factors can ensure you promote them to like-minded prospects (think look-alike audiences).

Knowing what intrigued people about your competitors is also valuable intel. For example, maybe your best residents mentioned a feature about your competitors that they didn’t realize is also available in your community. That suggests you need to better highlight this feature on your site, social media channels, and during tours.

  1. What’s something you wish you knew before moving in that would’ve made the transition easier?

Why ask this question? Too often, marketing thinks their job is done once they hand off a sales-qualified lead (SQL) to the sales team. And too often, the sales team thinks their job is done once an SQL makes a deposit. But what about that precious time between deposit and move-in? And those critical 30 days after move-in?

We’re not trying to make more work for people, but the reality is that there’s a gap that needs closing. If you make a person’s move-in experience seamless and their first month as wonderful as possible, you’re positioning the resident for ultimate success in your community, which can lead to fabulous five-star reviews and excellent referrals.

The good news? This gap doesn’t require a heavy lift. Just as marketing automation helps nurture not-ready-yet leads to sales-qualified status, marketing automation can help guide soon-to-be-new residents through the transition with a friendly welcome letter, helpful resources (such as local movers), and the like.

For example, we’ve created a turnkey program called “Countdown to Move-in Day” that our clients can customize.

  1. How has living here impacted your daily routine or quality of life compared to your previous living situation?

Why ask this question? This question gives you a direct window into how your community has improved residents’ lives. Identifying the tangible benefits of living in your community is crucial, such as increased socialization, improved wellness, or a better sense of security.

You can then leverage these real-life benefits to create more compelling, value-driven messaging and stories that align with the prospect’s ultimate goal: enhancing their lifestyle. By focusing on the positive transformations, you’re showing prospects what they have to gain by moving in.

  1. How do you define “feeling at home” in a community, and what aspects ofourcommunity helped create that feeling?

Why ask this question? A sense of home is deeply personal and often subjective, but it’s also a powerful driver in senior living decisions. Asking this question helps you pinpoint the specific elements—whether it’s staff interactions, social opportunities, or even the physical environment—that make residents feel truly at home.

These insights allow your marketing team to highlight those emotional and environmental aspects in your campaigns, making your messaging resonate more deeply with prospects searching for a comfortable and welcoming community.

How to use the insights that you gather from these conversations

Once you’ve gathered responses to these questions, revisiting and refining your buyer personas is essential. Use the insights to update key persona traits, such as motivations, pain points, and decision-making triggers. From there, adjust messaging and other engagement strategies accordingly.

For example, if many residents cite specific amenities or a strong sense of community as top reasons for choosing your community, your marketing should emphasize those elements more.

Additionally, note any behavior shifts, such as the increased use of a particular digital channel, and rethink how you’re using that channel. For example, if you’re finding that your happiest residents are big Instagram users, you might want to look into how you can leverage the platform more, whether encouraging user-generated content to promote your brand or experimenting with paid ads.

By updating your personas with honest resident feedback and the messaging you use to engage them, your marketing will align better with your target audience’s evolving preferences and expectations.

Need help perfecting your personas and messaging?

We understand the customer journey in senior living and can help you fine-tune your personas and messaging. Get in touch, and let’s chat.

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Aspirational Marketing for Senior Living: Pitfalls to Avoid

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Moving into senior living doesn’t have to be needs-driven only; it can also be desire-driven.

If you agree with this statement, you’ll likely be a fan of aspirational marketing, which involves positioning senior living as a desirable choice rather than a decision made out of crisis.

With aspirational marketing, the goal is to motivate potential residents to view moving into your community as a positive, forward-thinking decision while ensuring that all messaging remains authentic.

However, it’s this “authentic messaging” part that can cause even the best-intentioned marketers to stumble.

Below, we address this challenge by discussing the following:

  • Why authenticity matters in aspirational marketing
  • How to balance reality with aspirations
  • Pitfalls to avoid with aspirational marketing

Why authenticity matters in aspirational marketing for senior living

No one likes a bait-and-switch. That’s the sort of thing that gives marketing a bad name.

For example, if your website promotes a “vibrant community” and the images show people in their sixties dancing in the pub, but the reality is the median age in your community is 81 and there’s no dance floor (or even a pub), well . . . you know how this movie ends, right?

People coming on tours are going to be super disappointed. You’ve wasted their time and your reps’ time. Not to mention, you’ve eroded trust.

On a recent podcast, Debbie Howard, SLS’s president and co-founder, discusses the challenges with aspirational marketing.

Debbie says, “I think most of our clients want to have younger, healthier, less acute residents who are going to stay longer and have a great experience. These clients will ask us to attract a younger, healthier, more aspirational resident who sees senior living as a choice, not a crisis. And yet, when this person comes for a tour, they don’t necessarily see a community filled with younger, healthier people.”

She adds that many clients often want to use stock images that feature younger seniors or represent more diversity, even if the community doesn’t have a diverse population.

“So it becomes a balancing act from a marketing perspective,” she says, “trying to attract that audience while also remaining authentic.”

How to balance reality with aspirations. (Hint: This isn’t just marketing’s burden.)

Doug DeMaio, SLS’s director of client success, says it’s imperative that the marketing team works with people from the community’s operational side to understand what’s truly real.

“We have to understand what initiatives they’re taking on the operational side so we can speak to their vision and mission and make sure that we’re speaking about things that are actually happening,” he explains. “They may be aspirational for the community at this point, and that’s OK, but real initiatives must be in the works.”

For example, let’s say you’re promoting that your community is an incredibly fun place to live. “Is it legitimately a fun place to be?” Doug asks. “Or are we just trying to pay lip service to it being a fun place to be?”

How a partnership between marketing and operations should work

To create an authentic aspirational marketing strategy, the marketing and operations teams must collaborate.

Doug highlights the importance of aligning the community’s actual offerings with the vision marketing promotes. This collaboration ensures the community is actively working toward the lifestyle it wants to portray.

“It’s not about sugarcoating, but about making sure that marketing is based on what’s actually happening or in the works,” he says.

Even if specific programs and initiatives don’t exist yet but plans for them are firmly in place, your marketing can promote them and provide timelines, launch dates, and the like.

For example, if your community is building a pub with a dance floor, you can highlight this information on the website and point out the construction during the tour.

Think of it like the colleges that constantly improve the grounds, dorms, and dining halls—it’s the same concept. People can appreciate the investment and the initiative (and that certain initiatives take longer than others) and envision what life will be like in the community once the initiative is fully launched or completed.

Doug adds, “It’s really about working with the community to balance the desire for aspirational marketing with the need for authenticity by ensuring operational changes back up the messaging.”

Through this collaboration, marketing can promote an aspirational future grounded in reality, creating a truthful and attractive narrative for potential residents.

Pitfalls communities should avoid when attempting aspirational marketing for senior living:

Over-promising and under-delivering: If the marketing portrays a vibrant, youthful community, but prospects see a different reality during a tour, it creates distrust.

Ignoring authenticity: Aspirational messaging should align with actual offerings. Misrepresenting the community’s services, diversity, or lifestyle can lead to disappointment.

Neglecting the current resident base: Focusing too much on attracting younger residents or the needs of your “future” demographic can alienate or undervalue the current resident population—and the prospects who would fit nicely within that population.

Over-reliance on stock photos: We’re not fans of stock images. Using real-life photography builds credibility and ensures there won’t be a disconnect when someone comes in for a tour.

Not collaborating with operations: Aspirational marketing should reflect genuine, ongoing efforts within the community. Without operational backing, marketing messages will fall flat.

Disregarding emotional drivers: Moving to senior living is an emotional decision. While marketing should be aspirational, it must also acknowledge prospects’ fears and concerns when considering senior living. (And yes, younger seniors also have legitimate fears and worries.)

Ignoring long-term prospects: While aspiring to attract younger, healthier residents might be essential to your community’s long-term goals, it’s equally important that your marketing still addresses the needs of those who may require higher levels of care in the future.

Do you need help striking the right balance with aspirational marketing for senior living?

Our content strategists can help you align your messaging with reality and future plans. Get in touch and let’s discuss your messaging needs.

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Senior Living Sales Tips: 3 Faulty Mindsets to Avoid

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Since our founding, we’ve partnered with senior living operators all over the U.S., from start-ups to Top 30 providers. Our most successful clients have scaled from two to thirty-plus locations, while others have doubled in size in just a few years.

One of the biggest takeaways from these client engagements is that successfully growing occupancy often involves dismantling faulty mindsets, especially around senior living sales and marketing and how (and if) they align.

Below, we outline those faulty mindsets and how to reset them for good.

Faulty mindset #1: Thinking that marketing serves sales.

A better way to think about it: Marketing and sales teams serve the prospect.

How the marketing team serves the prospect

In the awareness and early consideration stages, marketing guides prospects until they raise their hand and indicate they want to engage with sales. Marketing also creates effective personas based on leads (and their corresponding demographics) who have already advanced to tours, deposits, and move-ins. The marketing team can use these personas to attract prospects with similar wants, needs, and motivations.

By providing a blend of educational and emotional content, marketing positions the brand as a trusted resource. It also empowers prospects to self-qualify through transparent information like pricing and reviews.

Ultimately, marketing attracts the right prospect, meets them where they are in their decision journey, and segments marketing qualified leads (MQLs) from sales-qualified leads (SQLs). The sales team will pursue the high-intent, ready-to-advance SQLs, while the marketing team will continue to nurture the not-ready-yet MQLs.

How the sales team serves the prospect 

First, let’s back up for a moment. What exactly is a “sales-qualified lead” anyway?

It’s when a prospect takes an action that indicates they want to interact with sales, typically by booking a tour or calling the community directly to speak with sales. This can be a first action or a transition from MQL to SQL, where the prospect advances through lead nurturing via marketing automation emails and text message campaigns.

Once the prospect becomes an SQL, the sales team serves the prospect by building rapport, showing empathy, answering questions, and providing personalized guidance.

Sales will also spend time building a relationship, nurturing and advancing the prospect with creative follow-ups, and overcoming objections.

How the prospect fits in

Prospects determine their status, not marketing or sales. The prospect’s intent (evidenced by their actions) drives their designation (MQL vs. SQL).

Keep in mind that being sales-qualified has nothing to do with being financially qualified, health-qualified, or the right fit. The sales team is responsible for performing the final level of qualification during the discovery process.

The best way for marketing and sales teams to ensure that the marketing budget generates the most qualified leads is to use accurate dispositions in closing leads so the team can quickly identify which channels produce the best leads.

Faulty mindset #2: Thinking quick move-ins are the only answer.

Stop the madness! Quick move-ins are often your most urgent cases. And spoiler: They don’t stay as long as prospects who make decisions based on choice rather than crisis.

Don’t believe me? Consider this.

The 2023 Aline Sales and Marketing Benchmark Report for Senior Housing revealed a strong link between sales cycle length and duration of stay in the community. Short sales cycles (under 30 days) led to significantly shorter stays, often due to high-acuity, urgent cases.

Conversely, prospects nurtured over longer sales cycles, especially those lasting a year or more, resulted in much longer stays, nearly doubling from 18 months to 39 months.

This extended stay translates to more revenue per resident, highlighting the financial benefits of nurturing prospects over a longer sales cycle.

This is precisely why the sales team shouldn’t nag the marketing team about generating only urgent, crisis-driven leads. Doing so is expensive, self-defeating, and unsustainable.

Can you imagine being an airline that only advertises to people wanting to fly a few weeks out? Or a hotel chain that only advertises rooms for same-day booking? Of course not. And yet we still hear from sales teams all the time, “Just get us sales-qualified leads. We only want tours and phone calls.”

Shift your mindset! Building a robust pipeline of prospects in every decision-making stage is much more cost-effective overall and will deliver better ROI.

Faulty mindset #3: Thinking more leads automatically equates to more tours and move-ins.

If you’re bringing in more leads, but they’re not sales-qualified or even marketing-qualified, what’s the point? You’ve wasted money attracting people with little to no chance of converting or advancing to a tour, deposit, or move-in.

When you have an effective digital marketing strategy in place, lead volume often goes down, but lead quality and conversions go up. Conversions are what matter most.

Senior living sales tips: How to reset your mindset by focusing on the following

Quality over quantity. Spend time evaluating uncontacted and lost leads to identify the lead sources that are generating quantity but not quality. Most CRMs offer a report that rolls up leads, tours, deposits, and move-ins by lead source. Focus your marketing investment on the sources generating the highest conversions to tours and move-ins.

Conversion KPIs. Look at the gaps between the marketing and sales handoff since this is where many opportunities are lost. Some of the KPIs to dig into include the following:

⮚      Speed to the lead. It’s critical to understand how much time elapses between when the lead hits the CRM and when the salesperson makes the first outreach attempt. Our data shows that 70% of all scheduled tours are booked within the first hour a lead is generated.

⮚      Persistence and cadence. Look at how many attempts are made to contact the new lead. (For context, it typically takes five to eight attempts to make contact.) You should also consider the types of attempts. Aim for a good mix of calls, texts, and emails. We’ve found that making four attempts on day one achieves the highest conversion of lead to tour. Additional attempts should be made on days two through four.

⮚      Dwell time. You should also understand how long a lead lingers in a stage so you can identify when prospects stall in their journey. Have a strategy to re-engage them before they sit too long. This is especially important for post-tour leads that require quick follow-ups to advance prospects to deposits and move-ins. Remember, each stage—pre-tour, post-tour, and waitlist—requires a strategy.

⮚      Call tracking. Without a doubt, the biggest missed opportunities are unanswered and mismanaged calls. Prospects who call the community have the highest intent and best opportunity to convert to a tour. And yet according to WelcomeHome’s Q2 2024 Sales Benchmark Report, less than 30% of prospects’ calls are answered. Ouch! One of the best things you can do is develop a centralized lead management center—either in-house or outsourced (LeadGenie is a great option).

⮚      Lead segmentation. Use marketing automation, such as HubSpot, to triage leads, send SQLs to the sales team, and move MQLs into lead nurturing and advancing campaigns until they are ready to connect with sales. Lead scoring is an additional strategy to identify lead engagement (how often a prospect visits the website, opens an email/ text, downloads content, etc.).

Spend more time developing relationships within the local community. The highest-converting leads are from “word of mouth” sources, such as friend and family referrals, professional referrals, and community sources. Outreach and relationship building should be a top priority.

Don’t forget to work your “bought and paid for” leads. Most communities have hundreds of prospects labeled “cold” or “lost, but not disqualified.” (The reasons can run the gamut for the latter: stayed home, unable to reach, moved in with family.) Yes, new leads always are more exciting. But all of these “cold” or “lost, but not disqualified” prospects were once your coveted new leads. Re-engage them!

Remember, senior living has an exceptionally long sales cycle. Prospects who weren’t ready months ago may be closer to a decision today. Our “Still Thinking?” campaign moved 20% of “stuck” MQLs to SQLs for one client, while our “Stay in Touch” re-engagement campaign delivered 21 move-ins representing $3.7 million in revenue for another client. There is gold in those cold leads.

Shift your mindset and experience the benefits

Operators who put prospects at the center of their marketing strategy, build a system to nurture them through their journey, balance quick move-ins with longer sales cycles, and focus on lead quality instead of quantity will come out winners with consistent and sustainable occupancy growth.

Need a partner who will help get you there? Book a call with us today.

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How to Get Quality Senior Living Leads from Google Ads

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One of the biggest challenges with senior living lead generation is educating prospects who know very little about senior living itself.  This is especially true for leads that convert via paid advertising, like Google Ads.

Prospects tend to search for senior living based on need, like downsizing or helping a parent. But they don’t always know what they can afford.

This lack of knowledge can lead to uninformed inquiries in person, over the phone, or on your website. Specifically, when discovering your community in a search engine, a prospect might engage with an ad for independent living when they really need assisted living. They might find you via an ad for assisted living when their loved one needs memory care. Perhaps they’re even drawn to “luxury” experiences even though their finances put them squarely in the “affordable” category.

In short, uninformed prospects can be frustrating for everyone, including the prospect themselves. However, you can minimize these issues by tweaking your Google Ads campaigns. The idea is to educate prospects so they can qualify or disqualify themselves before engaging with your sales team.

Here’s what we mean and how to do it.

How to Get More Quality Senior Living Leads from Google Ads

More leads don’t always translate to better leads. So how can you create an ad funnel that sends the right prospects to your sales team?

1. Include a “starting at” rate.

Your sales team and your prospects have the same first question: Can they afford your community?

Since Google has strict policies about targeting (and because consumers are inexperienced in researching senior living), communities can start qualifying leads by including clear “starting at” pricing in ads and landing pages.

This helps prospects see if they can afford your community before they engage with an ad.

  • If the answer is no and they don’t click, don’t think of it as a lost lead. Remember, if they can’t afford your lowest-priced option, you don’t want them to talk to your sales team anyway.
  • If they choose to click, then they’re probably confident that they can afford your community. This will make your sales reps’ jobs that much easier.

2. Show what your pricing does for residents.

The goal of the landing page is to deliver on the ad’s promise while getting the prospect to give you their contact information. For some, this call to action (CTA) might be downloading a brochure or guide. For others, it might mean requesting a tour or a call with a sales rep.

Before people take that all-important next step, you can help them self-qualify (or disqualify) once again by:

✔    Reminding them about the starting price

✔    Providing additional financial considerations to help them further qualify or disqualify, like “private pay only” or clarifying whether you accept Medicaid

✔    Defining your community’s levels of care

✔    Listing some amenities that your residents enjoy

Adding pricing to your ads and landing pages will likely help reduce unqualified leads, but it won’t eliminate them entirely. People are still people, after all, and some will pursue things they can’t afford on the off chance that they can get a deal, like a luxury community.

Because of that, qualifying prospects early is still worth the effort. Every unqualified lead that you do prevent gives you the chance to spend more on better leads.

3. Think beyond pricing.

Yep, we just spent the first two points talking about pricing. But here are several other ways to qualify leads beyond listing pricing information.

  • Use structured snippets in ads to list community amenities.
  • Use images, videos, and logos to give visuals of your community.
  • Send automated marketing emails to prospects to qualify them further.
  • Use sitelinks to provide alternative pages for clickers, such as downloading a brochure, requesting a phone call, requesting a tour, viewing floor plans, and / or seeing resident testimonials.
  • Assign a “conversion value” to different actions in Google Ads to help it optimize for lower-funnel, higher-quality leads.

Rock Your Google Ads Even More: Bonus Tips

Here are bonus tips to help reduce the number of unqualified leads from paid ads.

✔    Develop a list of keywords that describe your community (to help Google serve your ad to your ideal prospect).

✔    Develop a list of negative keywords that represent what your community isn’t (our team uses over 300 negative keywords to weed out unqualified clicks).

✔    Do not use “broad match.”

✔    Use each Google Ad campaign to achieve the right goals.

o   Display is for awareness.

o   Search is for lead generation.

o   Re-targeting is to advance existing contacts.

✔    Do not send prospects who click on a Google Ad to a generic contact form or the home page of your community’s website. Always use landing pages with forms and information about your community.

✔    Partner with a senior living call center (like LeadGenie) to conduct the initial discovery and sort out the unqualified leads before they advance to your sales team.

More helpful reading and listening:

Need help with your paid ad campaigns?

Our team is devoted to helping our clients get the most out of their paid ad budgets. Get in touch and let’s discuss your Google Ad campaigns.

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How Google’s AI Overviews Are Affecting Senior Living SEO

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Google began rolling out AI Overviews in May 2024. What are AI Overviews, and how have they affected senior living SEO? Let’s discuss.

What are AI Overviews (AIO)?

When you conduct a search in Google, you’ll sometimes see AI-generated answers and summaries at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). This space has traditionally been reserved for paid ads. When AI Overviews appear, paid ads have less visibility since they’re placed farther down the page. Organic search listings have also been pushed down.

We did a search on “what is senior living.” Below is the screenshot from our desktop.

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Many people are concerned about the length, depth, and breadth of AI’s responses. If all the info a person needs appears on the SERP, why would they click into a website?

Here’s the thing: We’ve been here before. Remember when featured snippets started becoming more prevalent? Google is constantly evolving in terms of how it answers people’s queries. For Google, its number one priority is creating an excellent experience for users (so they don’t go trotting off to a different search engine).

AI Overviews are simply part of this evolution. And yes, businesses and content creators will need to adjust accordingly.

But again, that’s not new.

Do AI Overviews show up on all searches?

Nope. When Google began rolling out AI Overviews, the overviews showed up in 65% of queries, according to Search Engine Land.

However, by July 2024, AI Overviews appeared in only 12% of queries and fell to 7% by the end of the month. Specific industries like education, entertainment, and e-commerce saw the biggest drops.

Why the drops?

AI Overviews are far from perfect. Some embarrassing, incorrect, and downright dangerous results happened early on.

And they’re still proving a bit flaky.

One of our writers conducted a search on August 16, 2024, about who won the Patriots game the previous night. (In real life, the Pats lost.) AIO served up a big fail for a seemingly simple query.

Remember, AI is famous for hallucinating, i.e., making stuff up. (However, Google says AIO doesn’t typically hallucinate like ChatGPT.)

In any event, Google initially let up on the gas a bit as it worked on improving AIO’s output.

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Where do things stand now with AI Overviews?

Honestly? It’s a moving target, and volatility is the name of the game. Google is doing a lot of experimenting with this feature—and not just in response to its own tests. It’s also responding to competition, most notably from OpenAI’s SearchGPT. (OpenAI is the organization that brought us ChatGPT.)

Google appears to be all in with AIO. Over the summer, it announced it was expanding AI Overviews globally.

Have AI Overviews affected site traffic?

Ah, that’s the million-dollar question. Since the roll-out, so many brands have feared the worst—that SEO best practices as we know them are kaput, that they will see their organic traffic nosedive, and that the paid-ad game will become even harder to win.

Interestingly enough, according to Search Engine Land, two large publishers (Ziff Davis and Dotdash Meredith) reported a “negligible” impact in their Q2-2024 shareholder letters. But again, that was Q2.

The jury is still out as to how much of an impact AI Overviews will have over the long term.

But in the short term, here’s some good news. An analysis of 36,000 keywords by seoClarity found that 99.5% of the time, at least one of the top 10 organic search results was included as a source in Google’s AI Overviews.

The takeaway: Ranking highly in Google remains one of the best ways to get featured in AI Overviews.

What should senior living marketers do?

Our recommendation is the same as it ever was: Remain aware, but don’t panic.

Remember, SEO has never been a static “thing.” And while AI Overviews might be one of the biggest disruptors we’ve seen in recent memory, that doesn’t mean the sky is falling all at once. (HubSpot has a great piece on the evolution of search.)

And here’s even more good news: Local search queries are the least likely to trigger AI Overviews, according to Bright Edge, which has been doing extensive research about AIOs.

For example, people searching for “senior living near me” get served “normal” results based on their location. (The monthly search volume for that phrase is a whopping 49,500, according to Semrush.)

That’s why optimizing for local search, which has always been important, is even more critical now, given AIO. (And this includes making sure you have a fabulous Google Business Profile.)

What about those all-important educational queries during the awareness stage?

Currently, the types of searches most likely to trigger AI Overviews are questions (i.e., what is senior living, how much does senior living cost, etc.).

If you’re worried you can’t compete with sites that already rank well for common questions, try taking a broader view of where and how you share educational content:

Do more videos, full stop. We’re always telling clients to focus more on making videos and sharing them widely. YouTube (which Google owns) also acts as a search engine.

For example, according to Vid IQ (which focuses on YouTube search volume), the phrase “what is senior living” has a monthly search volume of nearly 1700 with moderate competition. So, turn that blog post you likely already have about “what is senior living” into a video to maintain visibility and get more traction via YouTube.

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Keep in mind that once you’ve done one video, you can repurpose it across multiple channels:

  • Share across all social media channels where your community has a presence, like Instagram and Facebook.
  • Include on relevant website pages and blog posts
  • Embed in emails

Focus on optimizing for other search engines, including SearchGPT once it launches. We’ll do another post at some point about OpenAI’s SearchGPT, which is one of the biggest threats to Google. Note: As we go to press, SearchGPT isn’t widely available yet, but it’s just a matter of time.

Don’t be afraid of a zero-click world. We’ve been living in it for a while. Here’s an excellent article from SparkToro about our zero-click reality and why marketers should embrace it.

Remember, this too shall pass. Seriously, every time Google does something big—or it says it’s going to—everyone freaks out. Sometimes the freak-out is for good reason. But other times? Not so much. (We’re looking at you, abandoned plans for third-party cookie deprecation.)

Bottom line: Don’t panic about AI Overviews.

Continue following best practices for senior living SEO, and make sure you’ve optimized your site for local search.

Need help? That’s what we’re here for. Get in touch. We’re always happy to jump on a free brainstorming call.

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Senior Living Sales: Creating a Great Schedule-a-Tour Page

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Before we dive into the anatomy of a great “Schedule a Tour” landing page, we have a quick caveat. If your tours suck, it won’t matter how great your “Schedule a Tour” landing page is. (Just keeping it real, folks! 🙂)

Here are some questions to ask:

  • What are people saying about your tours? Check post-tour surveys, online reviews, and other available feedback. Are there any common negative themes that the sales team needs to address?
  • Are the sales reps crushing their tours? It’s easy to become complacent and go through the motions. Investing in training—even if it’s just the occasional half-day session—can have a big ROI.
  • Is there a straightforward tour-day process that everyone understands? For example, each morning, your front desk should receive a list of people who’ll be touring that day. Front desk staff should know what to do and who to call when someone arrives. Do they escort the tour attendees to a warm, inviting room with coffee and tea? Do they offer to take coats or show people where the restroom is? This is where your front desk staff can truly shine as concierges.
  • Do you have a solid post-tour strategy in place? What happens after the tour matters. Some people will be ready to move forward with your community—yay! But what about the others? You must be proactive and develop a plan for prospects who stall or go silent.

You can learn more about creating a red-carpet tour experience here.

OK. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

For this article, we’ll assume your community already gives fabulous tours. (But if it doesn’t, start there. Then, come back to this post.)

Below, we share tips for creating a great “Schedule a Tour” landing page.

Empower prospects by having them choose the day and time for the tour.

If possible, allow people to schedule a tour directly on the page. This doesn’t have to be a hassle from a back-end perspective. Calendar integrations (like Calendly) can make it easy for people to select currently open blocks on your sales reps’ calendars while keeping everything in sync.

The benefits of doing this are many:

  • You’re empowering the prospects. They choose the day and time that’s convenient for them.
  • You eliminate unnecessary back and forth. Nothing is worse than playing phone or email tag.
  • You lose fewer qualified prospects to competitors. While the prospect is waiting for a call back from your community, they can book tours with many of your competitors right online.

PRO TIP: If your website and workflow can’t accommodate a calendar integration, revisit your calls-to-action (CTA). If your CTAs currently say, “Schedule a Tour,” you might want to do A/B testing using the phrase “Request a Tour.”

Sure, “Schedule a Tour” and “Request a Tour” essentially mean the same thing. However, the former suggests someone can book online while the latter prepares the person (even if only subconsciously) that they’re merely “requesting” at this stage.

It’s possible your A/B testing won’t show any noticeable differences in conversions. But you can’t know for sure unless you test and measure.

Don’t treat your “Schedule a tour” landing page as an afterthought.

After the home page, the “Schedule a Tour” landing page is one of the most important pages on your site. What does yours look like? Is it light on copy with simply a calendar or a form and maybe your community’s address?

Talk about a missed opportunity!

While you want to make it super simple to schedule or request a tour, you should also make the entire tour experience special—and it begins with this landing page.

Create a robust “what to expect when you visit” section.

Include the following info:

  • Tour length
  • Who’ll be giving the tour (if you have multiple sales reps, highlight their faces, names, and short bios)
  • Where people should park
  • Where people should enter
  • Where should people go after they enter
  • Tour highlights
  • Any special considerations (how to cancel a tour, what to do if the weather is bad, etc.)

Think videos

For our regular readers, we likely sound like a broken record. But video marketing works, and consumers expect to see brand-related videos.

Here are some ideas:

Community overview: Sharing a short (90 seconds, max) video highlighting the grounds and the community can be a great way to give people a feel for the place before visiting.

What the area has to offer: Create a montage or snapshot of all the cool places in the area and some of the outings that residents go on.

Meet our staff: Create meet-and-greet videos with staff members, especially the folks who residents interact with regularly, like dining staff, housekeeping, etc.

Share user-generated content (UGC): Encourage people who attend tours to take pictures, share on social media, and tag your community. Highlight some of the user-generated content on the Schedule a Tour page (get permission to use the photos, of course).

Add FAQs

People skim pages, so it can’t hurt to reiterate points you’ve made elsewhere (like where to park) in easy-to-read FAQs.

Create solid pre-tour communications. 

We talk a lot about post-tour communications, and for good reason. But the pre-tour communications you send via email are just as important.

After all, you want the person to show up, right?

At a minimum, make sure you have the following workflows set up. (Remember, marketing automation is your friend.)

Tour confirmation email

Automatically send an email confirmation once the tour has been scheduled. This email should include the confirmed date, time, and (ideally) the tour guide’s name. It should also include helpful information, like directions, parking, and other relevant instructions.

Most of all, it should sound warm and friendly. “We can’t wait to meet you, Rose, and show you around our community. Tours typically last 30 minutes, but you’re welcome to stay after the tour to check out things on your own. Some places you might want to visit include our wonderful library, hair and nail salon, and café where you can enjoy a treat on us and experience our chef’s yummy sweets.”

Countdown-to-tour-day emails (a.k.a., reminder emails)

Again, use marketing automation to set up these email workflows. If the tour is a week or less away, you can simply send one email along with a day-of reminder (more on this in a moment). But if the tour is a few weeks away, you can send more reminders, provided these emails deliver value.

Each reminder should have that warm, friendly feel and reiterate vital info (tour date, time, guide, etc.) Then, use the email as another opportunity to share:

  • Resident stories – specifically on why they chose your community
  • Reviews
  • Videos

Remember, people are straddling the consideration and decision stages while waiting for the tour. Give them information that will get them even more excited to see your community.

Day-of-tour reminder email

This email should go out in the early AM hours of the day the tour is scheduled. Again, you want to aim for a warm and friendly tone and remind people where to go when they enter the building.

⮚      PRO TIP: Keep in mind that sending email should be a given, but as more and more Boomers enter the mix, you’ll also want to add text reminders to your marketing mix.

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