Senior Living Content

Content Tips for Better Senior Living Advertising Campaigns

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Advertising remains an important component of effective marketing plans—whether we’re talking print ads, direct mailers, highway billboards, or digital ads. But like any other marketing tactic, you need the right content. So let’s discuss senior living advertising campaigns, specifically the content that will (hopefully) inspire people to act.

Put extra effort into your headlines.

When it comes to advertising, headlines do the heavy lifting. According to Copyblogger, “On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.”

Headlines should be clear, concise, and compelling. Clear means easy to read and easy to understand. Concise means short, but what qualifies as short? It depends on the medium, and not everyone agrees on the right number of words. We usually recommend 5-10 words, but that doesn’t mean a three-word headline couldn’t pack a punch or that a 15-word headline wouldn’t work.

As for compelling . . . you want headlines that capture people’s attention. The headline should inspire the person to keep reading. Common strategies for creating a compelling headline include:

  • Asking relevant questions that your personas are already asking (or should be asking).
  • Being cute, coy, or playful (or some combination of the three).
  • Tapping into people’s pain points (for example, their fears and concerns).

Think through the call-to-action.

After your headline, your call-to-action (CTA) is probably the most important part of your ad. People commonly scan ads (and articles). Their eyes will focus on things that are prominently displayed, like headlines, sub-headlines, anything that’s bolded, and CTAs, provided your CTA jumps out at them. (And it should.)

So how do you develop a good CTA? Ask yourself what you want people to do next. Not all ads are asking people to buy something. Some ads are about brand-building. That said, most senior living advertising campaigns are likely focused on . . .

  • Getting qualified traffic to the website, where the person will be encouraged to take a specific action, like downloading a piece of content
  • Calling and booking a tour or requesting more info, like a brochure

If you send people to a website page, make sure the URL is short and easy to read and remember. Sending people to a unique landing page that’s only associated with that particular ad will help you track results. For example, consider these two URLs:

  • www.yourcommunityname.com/guide
  • www.yourcommunityname.com/free-guide-on-financing-retirement-homes

The first one is easier to read and remember—and much easier to type into a browser.

A word about QR codes: QR codes are those funky black and white squares that promise to send you to a website if you take a picture of them with your phone. They are trendy, so you might be tempted to use them in your senior living advertising campaigns. We recommend avoiding them, at least for now.

Why? Well, QR codes are more popular with younger demos.

According to an article titled “Are QR Codes Leaving Older Americans Behind” from YouGovAmerica, “More than half (54%) of consumers 18-29 have clicked on a marketing-related QR code, followed by 48% of consumers aged 30-44. This percentage declined to 44% among those 45-64 and 31% of consumers 65 and older.” The article goes on to note that 20% of people over 65 find QR codes cumbersome to use, and 18% of this demo say they’ve never even heard of QR codes.

If you do use them, just make sure they’re not your only CTA. You should also display the website address prominently. And like anything else, measure results over time. If you’re working for an active adult community that caters to 55+, QR codes might make more sense. But if your buyers are typically 75 on up, QR codes won’t be as effective. Over time, this reality will likely change. But we’re not there yet—and we probably won’t be any time soon.

Pay attention to your ad’s tone.

Should you go positive or negative? It’s a common question and a big source of debate. And like so many things in life, the answer is “it depends.” It depends on your goals and what the ad is talking about. For example, let’s pretend you run a non-profit life care community. If you’re highlighting all the unique amenities your community offers, a negative tone wouldn’t make sense.

But if you’re talking about financial worries—like the very real concern that people have about outliving their retirement savings—striking a more somber tone would be appropriate. In fact, you might even lead with a headline that sounds a little more negative or troubling: Are concerns about outliving your money stopping you from moving into a senior living community?

A headline like that would create discomfort in the reader. You’d want to quickly follow it up with a sub-headline that reads something along these lines: We’ve got a solution for that! Now, suddenly, you’ve turned that negative into a potential positive.

From there, the body copy could briefly discuss how your life care community guarantees a home and health care for the rest of a person’s life . . . even if their financial situation changes. The call-to-action would be to visit a specific landing page on your site where people could download a fact sheet or guide about life care communities.

Make sure your ad delivers on what it promises.

The last thing you want anyone to accuse your community of is a bait and switch, where your ad promises one thing, but your community doesn’t deliver. If your ad is inviting people to book a free lunch so they can experience the community, make sure your staff delivers on the promise. This includes not only providing an awesome lunch, but also making sure the staff is aware the ad is running in the first place. That way, when people call to book the lunch, the staff knows what’s going on and can take it from there.

The same is true with any landing pages that your advertising sends people to. The spirit of the landing page—both the look and feel and the content itself—should reflect the ad’s content. If not, the person will experience a disconnect, which isn’t the feeling you’re going for.

And, finally, make sure your senior living advertising campaigns reflect your community’s overall brand. Promising puppy dogs and rainbows in your ad—or using stock images that don’t represent what people can expect on your campus—will also create dissonance. The jump from your ad—whether it’s a print ad, direct mailer, or digital ad—to your website or to the community itself needs to be seamless.

Need help launching effective senior living advertising campaigns?

You’re in the right place! We know marketing and advertising. And we know senior living. Get in touch and let’s talk about how to advertise your community.

Senior Living Social Media Marketing

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: Mistakes to Avoid

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We’ve written extensively about the many benefits of senior living social media marketing and why you should include it in your overall marketing plan.

Today, however, we’re going to focus on common mistakes that senior living communities often make with social media—and how you can avoid them.

Mistake #1: You’re focusing on the wrong platforms for your personas.

Do you know what social media platforms your residents use? How about their family members? Never assume! While it’s true older adults do indeed use social media, the phrase “older adult” has a wide spectrum.

Are you catering mostly to seventy-year-olds in independent living? Or are you serving octogenarians who are straddling IL and AL? Or maybe you’re running an active adult community for people 62+? The social media experiences among these audiences will likely differ. But you won’t know for certain unless you regularly ask, survey, and keep track of people’s responses.

Once you start keeping track, it won’t take long before you see the clear platform “winners.” For example, you might learn that your personas spend most of their time on Facebook and YouTube, but hardly any time on Twitter. This is important intel. Because you’re missing your target if you waste time pouring money and resources into Twitter when the people you’re trying to reach aren’t using that platform.

Keep in mind that social media is also a moving target. Preferences will change over time as other platforms enter the playing field (or go in and out of favor) and as younger demographics come of age.

  • How to avoid this senior living social media marketing mistake: Keep track of the social media platforms your residents engage in. This can and should be part of your sales intake—and most definitely part of your new resident welcome campaign. Find out the social media platforms residents and their families frequent. Invite them to follow your community’s profiles on the corresponding platforms.

Mistake #2: You don’t have specific goals.

You need to know your goals so you can measure performance and ROI. Too often, communities “do social media” simply because everyone else is. That’s not a good enough reason!

Ask yourself this question: What’s the purpose of social media for your community? Are you trying to boost brand recognition? Are you mainly using it as a means to communicate with residents and their families? Are you trying to get more qualified traffic to your site?

You’ll likely have different goals for different social media platforms. For example, you might use LinkedIn as a way to connect with current employees and prospective employees. Or maybe you use Pinterest primarily as a way to share recipes from your executive chef.

  • How to avoid this senior living social media marketing mistake: Define your goals. Be specific. For example, your goal with Facebook might be to send a certain amount of traffic from the platform to your website and convert X percent into leads. Revisit your goals every quarter. Have you achieved your goals? If yes, define some new ones. If not, determine if you need to revise your goals or revise your strategy for achieving the goals.

Mistake #3: You don’t have a social media marketing strategy.

Once you know your goals for each platform you use, you can develop a strategy for each one as well. Read that sentence again! Yes, the best way to tackle senior living social media marketing is to have a specific strategy for each platform.

It makes sense when you think about it, right? For example, the way people engage with content on Facebook is quite different from the way folks play on Pinterest—or how they use Instagram or YouTube.

  • How to avoid this senior living social media marketing mistake: Having a content calendar and someone on your team who “owns social” can go a long way in making sure you post consistently—and according to the goals you have for each platform. And yes, we get it: Often the real “magic” of social media is when something is posted on the fly, like those random images or videos that are too good not to share. A social media coordinator can manage these last-minute requests while making sure your overall strategy remains intact.

Mistake #4: You don’t put the same effort into your social media content as you do with other marketing content.

Too often, we see communities get excited when they launch their social media presences, but over time, the content either gets stale, predictable, or worse—it becomes non-existent.

Creating great content for social media takes effort. Having a strong content calendar for each platform helps, but your social media team needs to always be thinking in terms of content creation—taking pics that will resonate with the audience, developing fun videos, coming up with meaningful surveys and contests—and that’s just the beginning.

Social media never takes a break—it’s always going, it’s always on. We’re not suggesting that you post 24/7, but your social media team has to have a 24/7 mentality, meaning that it needs to look for (and post!) awesome content outside of typical business hours. This might involve tasking someone with taking and posting pics from the Mother’s Day Tea that happens on a Sunday. Or capturing the gorgeous full moon as it rises above your property.

  • How to avoid this senior living social media marketing mistake: Make sure you’re not putting one person in charge of all things social media. Even if you have one social media coordinator, that person should have a team—or, at the very least, the freedom to tap helpers, as needed. For example, the social media coordinator can ask the activities assistant to take some pics during the Mother’s Day Tea and send them to the coordinator for posting.

Mistake #5: You don’t analyze the results.

Many communities ignore social media analytics beyond looking at “likes” or the follower count. But again, if you’re investing in senior living social media, you need to figure out if your investment is paying off.

  • How to avoid this senior living social media marketing mistake: Monitor traffic that comes from social media platforms—and determine what percentage of that traffic turns into leads and eventually move-ins. That’s the most important metric to pay attention to, but there are others. And good software like HubSpot can make it easy to see results via dashboards and reports that you set up once, but that continuously populate with info.

Need help avoiding the above mistakes? Let’s talk.

One of the best things you can do to enhance your social media efforts is work with an agency like ours. We can audit your current platforms, guide you on where you should be spending your time and budget, and work with your team on creating content and getting into a good rhythm. Then, your team can take it from there—or you can continue to have us manage your social media (or some combination). Interested? Let’s talk about your social media plans.

Hubspot for senior living

HubSpot for Senior Living: What Is It, Anyway?

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One of the products we often recommend to clients is HubSpot, thanks to its strong marketing automation software. But that’s not all HubSpot can do. In this article, we’re going to provide an overview of HubSpot for senior living—and what you should do next if you’re interested in using it.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot was founded in 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by two MIT graduate students: Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. HubSpot helped develop and spread the concept of inbound marketing.

Over the years, HubSpot has gone through many iterations. In its earliest incarnation, it was a CMS (content management system). Simply put, a CMS allows people without technical experience to create and manage content on a website.

Today, HubSpot describes itself as an internet marketing company that’s in the “growth business.” It offers a powerful CRM platform that “makes it easy for your entire company to work together — from marketing, to sales, to customer service. Each hub is powerful alone, but they’re even better together.”

These “hubs” include the following:

  • Marketing Hub
  • Sales Hub
  • Service Hub
  • CMS Hub
  • Operations Hub

Numerous extensions and integrations are also available.

How should communities approach HubSpot for senior living?

We talk a lot about marketing automation when it comes to HubSpot, so here’s a quick refresher . . .

Marketing automation enables you to deliver the right message (think emails) to the right person at the right time. As its name suggests, with marketing automation, everything happens automatically once you set it up. You’ll also have access to real-time results: Which prospect opened the email, who is most engaged with your content, which content seems to convert best, and so forth.

While we often use the terms “HubSpot” and “marketing automation” interchangeably for simplicity’s sake, marketing automation is only one small piece of HubSpot. In fact, if you were to browse the various “hubs” on HubSpot’s website, it might take a while to find out which hub offers marketing automation (you’ll find it in the Professional and Enterprise levels of the Marketing Hub).

Download our Hubspot for Senior Living Guide

OK, so which “hubs” should a senior living community use?

Ah, this is where it gets complicated. Not every senior living community is going to have the same needs. A small, independent community might have one set of requirements while an operator with ten locations across the country will have another set.

For example, if you already have an effective website on WordPress, you won’t need the full suite of CMS capabilities. If you’re happy with your current senior living CRM, you won’t use HubSpot’s.

Bottom line: Not every senior living community needs HubSpot. We’re also fans of ActiveDEMAND, which has a specific senior living package that’s hyper-focused on marketing automation.

This is why it’s a smart idea to work with a consultant or agency that understands the senior living industry and what products are best suited for the industry. A good consultant/agency can guide you on what makes the most sense for your community and your budget. (That said, you can read more about why we’re such big fans of HubSpot.)

Are you leaning towards HubSpot for senior living? Let us help.

If you’re hot for HubSpot, we can help you figure out which level you need, how to implement it properly, and how to maximize HubSpot so that you get the biggest bang for your marketing buck.

It’s worth noting that Senior Living SMART has achieved the Platinum tier in HubSpot’s Solutions Partner Program. According to HubSpot’s website, the Partner Tier program is designed “to acknowledge those solutions partners who have not only brought the inbound message to the most clients, but also those who executed inbound marketing services to the highest standards.”

Get in touch and let’s discuss HubSpot!

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Senior-Living-Sales-Strategies-for-High-Intent-SQLs

Senior Living Sales Strategies for High-Intent SQLs

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Working with high-intent sales-qualified leads (SQLs) who are close to making a decision can be quite thrilling for a senior living sales director.

No wonder, too. This is the sales director’s job and their source of income. And with the finish line in sight for everyone, it’s natural to get excited. After all, what’s left to do?

Turns out quite a lot. Because at the end of the day, high-intent SQLs are still human, and humans are notoriously unpredictable. Which is why the way sales directors interact with high-intent SQLs will and should be different from the way they interact with other senior living leads.

Head spinning yet? Don’t worry. We’ve got you. Below, we discuss several senior living sales strategies for high-intent SQLs.

1. Senior living sales strategies: Stop selling

OK, we know what you’re thinking: Say what? But here’s the thing: You no longer need to sell to your high-intent SQLs, at least not in the traditional sense. They’re about as “in” as they’re going to get since your community is on their shortlist.

Instead of selling to them, you need to find out if anything’s giving them pause. To do that, ask a version of the following question: “In your mind, what are some of the community’s drawbacks? I can’t promise that I’ll be able to fix or change any of them, but maybe there’s something I forgot to mention that might help alleviate any concerns.”

We can almost guarantee there will be at least one drawback that you can address and genuinely turn into a positive, which might help tip the scale in your community’s favor.

Bottom line: With high-intent SQLs, you don’t need to sell to them anymore . . . you simply need to enable them to buy from you.

2. Senior living sales strategies: If things have stalled, find out if there’s an external factor going on in the SQL’s life.

Sometimes you’re working with a prospect and you’re convinced they’re going to sign papers when—BAM! Everything comes to a screeching halt.

In this scenario, an external factor is often at work.

Some common ones include:

    • Finalizing financial details (for example, the Veterans Aid & Attendance Benefit)
    • Dealing with an unexpected medical issue
    • Stalled by an unrelated family matter (death, wedding, family trip)
    • Selling/downsizing a home

Our point: You need to know what your high-intent SQL is facing in their lives and adjust your conversations and follow-up accordingly.

For example, if your prospect is suddenly in the hospital due to a broken hip, send the person flowers. Don’t do so as a selling tactic, but as a caring tactic. Once they’re back home, stop by for a visit to see how they’re doing. (Call first!) Again, not to push the sales narrative, but to simply demonstrate your humanity.

Once they’re truly back on their feet, then you can ask if recent events have changed their decision or timeline. Some will be ready to move forward. But sometimes external factors might force a downgrade from high-intent SQL to regular SQL or even back to marketing-qualified lead (MQL). This happens. Knowing where your prospect is in their journey, even if there’s been a setback, is important since it will inform how you engage with them going forward.

3. Senior living sales strategies: Think beyond lunch.

More than likely, your high-intent prospect has already vetted the food situation in your community. As food services company Unidine notes in this article, “It is widely acknowledged that food and dining are key aspects of residents’ satisfaction and influence the decision-making of prospective residents.”

If they’ve already done lunch in your community, it’s time to think BEYOND lunch. Hopefully, you took good notes when you chatted with the prospect. (If not, get in the habit of finding out their likes and dislikes when it comes to food—breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, drinks.)

Get creative—here are some ideas:

    • For a prospect with a sweet tooth, have your chef prepare a box of yummy treats that you deliver to the prospect with a note: Sweet times await you in our community. Here’s a sample of what you can expect.
    • Invite the prospect and a few members of their family to a special home-cooked meal in your community’s function/event room. The goal is to show how the room can be used precisely for these family gatherings—and to demonstrate how fabulous the food is.
    • Invite the prospect to a special event that includes refreshments, like wine and appetizers. Maybe it’s an author reading or a musical guest.

The goal is to highlight various types of foods—appetizers, family meals, desserts—along with different activities that involve food and camaraderie. The more you can make your community truly feel like home, the more it will help the prospect “see” themselves living there.

4. Senior living sales strategies: Find out who the competition is.

This strategy is a delicate dance. The goal isn’t to bash another community, and doing so is bad form in our tight-knit industry. But if your prospect is vacillating between your community and a competitor’s community, you need to have a plan for how to approach the conversation.

Our recommendation? Arm yourself with a small asset library on each competitor. We’re talking about a folder that you keep on your PC for each main competitor that your community typically finds itself up against.

In each competitor’s folder, you’ll want to have the following:

A comparison chart. Think of a simple, nicely designed “dot chart” that compares your community to the competitor’s community. Honesty is essential. Your community isn’t perfect for everyone. The fact your community has a yoga studio might not matter to your prospect while the fact the competitor’s community has a dog park does matter.

The goal is to simply have a comprehensive, objective-as-possible chart that prospects can glance at. Sometimes seeing everything laid out side-by-side can be just what someone needs to make a decision.

    • Tips for how to share the chart: Be direct. “I know you’re considering our community and ABC Senior Living. I thought you might find this chart helpful.”

A list of current residents who also considered the competitor’s community. In a perfect world, you’d have a collection of short videos from these residents where they talk about why they chose your community instead of the competitor. These videos don’t have to be professionally shot, either, since you’ll only use them for this purpose. (An iPhone video is fine.)

Note: If the current resident is willing to talk to prospects, you can also offer that option. But simply sharing two or three videos of real residents talking about why they decided to move into your community might be all the prospect needs to hear.

    • Tips for how to share the video: Send an email (or if you’re with the prospect in person, you can pull up the video on your phone or tablet) and say something like, “Gloria, one of our residents, also seriously considered ABC Senior Living as well. I thought you’d find it interesting and potentially helpful to hear why she finally decided on us.”

Earned media that features your community. You might not have info like this for every competitor and that’s OK. But you should absolutely collect any positive media coverage about your community—especially if it also mentions the competitor—and share that with your prospect.

For example, if the town/city your community is in has a “Best of” list and your community comes in first for senior living (but your competitor comes in second or third—or doesn’t place at all), this can be something to share.

    • Tips for how to share this info: This sort of info could be good reading to send along with something else. Like, if you send a box of tasty desserts to your prospect, you could include a couple of articles that talk up your community. (And, of course, this sort of info is stuff you’d want to share on the website, social media, and in lead nurturing emails for marketing-qualified leads.)

5. Senior living sales strategies: Appeal to all influencers.

It’s rare to have only one person involved in the decision-making process. Senior living sales directors should get in the habit of asking who’s involved in the discussions. And frame it exactly like that: Tell me more about the discussions you’ve been having about this decision. Who’s involved? Would it be OK if I get their email addresses?

For example, if an adult daughter and her mother are looking for a local community, but you’ve gotten wind about an adult brother who lives in Florida who’s been participating in the discussions . . . it makes sense to get his email address. You could send him a quick, personal email: “I just had a great visit with your mom and sister and want to introduce myself . . .”

From there, if your prospect evolves into a high-intent SQL, you’ll have easy access to the contact information for all the people who are influencing the decision. So, using the above example, you could suggest a Zoom call with mom, daughter, and son to discuss where things stand, next steps, and so forth.

Bonus: Free eBook!

You likely noticed a theme in our suggested senior living sales strategies above—care more, sell less. One of our fabulous colleagues, Mike Miller for Primo Solutions, has a fabulous ebook called Stop Selling and Start Caring. He wrote it specifically for sales and marketing folks in the senior living industry. You can download it for free here.

Marketing Solutions Must Haves

Senior Living Marketing Solutions: 5 Must-Haves

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You don’t need every marketing solution under the sun for your senior living community to be successful. In fact, sometimes too many bells and whistles can dilute your efforts. That said, there are some must-haves that you shouldn’t skimp on. Below, we discuss five essential senior living marketing solutions that we recommend to all our clients.

1. Senior Living Marketing Solutions: Invest in a Strategy.

Somewhere along the way, the word “strategy” has gotten a bad rap. Probably because strategizing involves stepping back, identifying real objectives, and creating a marketing roadmap for achieving them.

Some might see strategizing as a synonym for slowing down, which is a challenge in our always-on, always-rushed world. And we can certainly appreciate why slowing down can be extremely hard for marketing and sales teams that have a long list of vacancies to fill.

But we’d argue that a sound marketing strategy is needed precisely because it’s so competitive out there. If you approach your marketing willy-nilly—without understanding your buyers or your current website conversions, for example—how can you successfully execute important marketing tasks, like creating content that converts? You can’t measure what you don’t know, right?

The very act of sitting down to create a marketing strategy forces everyone to take a hard look at things like . . .

And that’s just the beginning. No, it’s not “sexy” work. It’s not fast work, either. And it’s not the type of work that will produce results right away since the work itself involves reviewing, compiling, and planning.

But once the work is completed and a plan is in place based on real intelligence? Get ready for turbo-charged marketing that will deliver reliable results over the long haul.

Doesn’t that sound smarter than just winging it?

2. Senior Living Marketing Solutions: Treat Your Website Like the 24/7 Salesforce That It Is.

Sure, every serious business on the planet has a website nowadays. So setting one up might feel like another box you need to check off your endless to-do list. But your community’s website matters. Why? Because it serves as your 24/7 salesforce.

When people are on the hunt for something—new sneakers, a new car, a new home—their search begins online. This is true even among older adults. Consider the following stats:

    • Baby Boomers spend more time online than Millennials, and a staggering 92% of Boomers shop online. [Source: The Shelf]
    • 75% of all Boomers are on Facebook, and 35% use business-focused networking sites, such as LinkedIn. [Source: Kenshoo]
    • Boomers have great attention spans and will read your content! 60% of Boomers regularly read blogs, and 70% percent watch video content online. [Source: The Shelf]
    • Boomers are almost as likely as Millennials to own a tablet. [Source: Marketing Charts]
    • 68% of Boomers own a smartphone. [Source: Pew Research Center]

For most prospects interested in senior living, your website will serve as their first experience with your community. And like it or not, first impressions still matter. Yes, some folks might land on your Google My Business listing first. Or perhaps they’ll see an ad or a billboard or hear about your community from a friend or family member. But they will end up on your site at some point—and usually multiple times.

Bottom line: Don’t treat your senior living website as an afterthought. Don’t treat it like a box you need to check off. And don’t make it look like every other senior living community’s website.

Instead, approach its creation (and its subsequent iterations) with a sound strategy. Pay attention to analytics that give insights into traffic numbers and conversion rates. And if you outsource, choose an agency that knows what it’s doing when it comes to building senior living websites that get results.

3. Senior Living Marketing Solutions: Let Marketing Automation Do the Heavy Lifting

Your community can’t effectively compete if it doesn’t have a seamless method for nurturing marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) over the long haul. Because here’s the reality all communities are facing right now: Prospects require multiple “touches” before making a decision to move into a community. And when we say multiple touches, we’re talking upwards of 20+ for marketing-qualified leads.

Think about that for a second. Let’s use easy math to illustrate. If your site brings in 100 MQLs a month on average, and these MQLs require a minimum of 20 “touches” before making a decision . . . how on earth can your marketing team manually send that many unique emails to that many different people, month after month, year after year?

New MQLs Per MonthTouch Points to ConvertUnique Emails Sent
100202,000

They can’t. At least, they can’t do it efficiently. Things will fall through the cracks, meaning your community will lose great leads to competitors.

Marketing automation solves this problem. Instead of manually sending lead nurturing emails, you’ll program the system to keep track of where the MQLs are in their journey. The automation’s main purpose is to deliver the right content to the right prospect at the right time.

Marketing automation is no longer a “luxury” of national chains, either. Even a small, independently-owned community must use some form of marketing automation to remain competitive.

Luckily, most reputable marketing automation software offers various tiers. So a larger chain might opt for an enterprise license while a smaller community might choose a nimble, budget-friendly option.

The key (beyond choosing the right marketing automation software) is setting it up properly. This takes work, including a deep understanding of your prospects and their buying journeys. But once set up, marketing automation does the heavy lifting so that your marketing team can focus on other things—like creating compelling content, analyzing results, and doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

4. Senior Living Marketing Solutions: Remember to Use Lead Scoring

This goes hand-in-hand with marketing automation. But we find that lots of communities either overlook this point or they don’t take full advantage of lead scoring.

When properly set up and executed, lead scoring provides several benefits:

    • A real-time view of where leads are in the sales funnel. At a glance, you’ll have a solid sense of your overall pipeline and which leads are nearing decision time. This will help improve sales forecasting.
    • Increased efficiency and sales productivity. Sales teams can focus their time on sales-qualified leads.
    • A key input to your marketing automation software. Lead scoring will automatically indicate which lead needs to go where. SQLs will be served up to the sales team. MQLs will enter appropriate nurturing campaigns.

In order to work, however, lead scoring requires . . .

    • Sound strategy. What makes a lead sales-qualified vs. marketing qualified? Do you want to go deeper than simply scoring a lead as an MQL or SQL?
    • Smart implementation. You need to make sure lead scoring is set up properly on the backend. Our biggest tip: This requires more than one set of eyes. And you absolutely must test to ensure the leads are being scored as you envisioned they would be.
    • Revisiting over time. Marketing automation’s biggest advantage—the automation part—can sometimes be its biggest curse. Too often, marketing and sales teams will “set it and forget it”—for good. You do need to occasionally revisit your lead scoring strategy: Has it changed? Have you learned anything new that could affect how you score leads? And you need to occasionally revisit the actual setup to see if anything has broken along the way.

Again, don’t skimp on this process. Lead scoring is a critical component in successful marketing automation.

5. Senior Living Marketing Solutions: Think Analytics.

Practically everything we do as marketers is measurable. While the number that matters most is move-ins, that’s the finish line. Many milestones exist along the way—important milestones that will help deliver leads to the finish line. And all of those milestones have analytics attached to them.

Think about things like . . .

    • Website analytics (traffic, landing pages, calls-to-action, etc.)
    • Google Analytics
    • Social media analytics (specific to each platform)
    • Advertising analytics (print, digital, radio, TV)
    • Lead analytics (such as MQL-to-SQL conversions and SQL-to-move-in conversions)
    • Email marketing analytics (opens, click-through-rates, conversions)
    • Call center analytics
    • Live chat analytics

And the above isn’t an exhaustive list, either.

Some marketers love numbers. Others hate them. If you fall in the latter group, don’t ignore the analytics because you don’t like them. Instead, consider outsourcing the analysis. A good consultant or marketing agency can help you understand what the numbers are telling you so that you can make informed decisions.

Bonus Solution: Work with a Reputable Senior Living Marketing Agency

Because marketing is SO involved, it can be challenging for marketing and sales teams to manage everything on their own. Luckily, there’s a solution for that: outsourcing some of the work to an agency like ours. We know senior living. We know marketing. Let’s talk about your community’s specific marketing needs.

Let's chat!




Why-Leads-Require-Many-More-Touches

Why Senior Living Leads Require MANY More Touches Than Others

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How many touch points does it take to get a senior living lead to move in? While this number will vary from one community to the next, generally speaking, senior living leads require many touches—likely more than your marketing and sales teams even realize.

In the Enquire Solutions white paper, Marketing Automation Templates for Senior Living, they share a chart about the number of touch points a prospect requires, on average, before becoming a resident.

Turns out, leads need a minimum of 22 touches for independent living, assisted living, and memory care and 28 touches for life plan communities. The sales cycle can range from 107 days (for memory care) to a whopping 400 days (for life plan communities). Assisted living and independent living fall in the middle at 145 days and 203 days, respectively.

The question, of course, is why. Why do senior living leads require so many touch points? And what do your marketing and sales teams need to do as a result?

Why Senior Living Leads Require More Touch Points

Moving, in general, is stressful.

A recent OnePoll survey reported that Americans say moving is the most stressful life event (followed by divorce and marriage). While older adults might recognize that it’s time to move into senior living, the act of moving (and all it entails, like selling their current home) might cause them to stall and stutter along the way.

This is why sales and marketing teams need to be patient and provide those regular touch points. You want your community to be top of mind when the person is finally ready.

Moving into a senior living community is a big monetary investment.

The bigger the price tag on a purchase, the more time people need to evaluate their options and crunch numbers. This is true for any pricey purchase, not just senior living.

Even older adults who have financial stability—for example, they own their own home and have retirement savings—might be skittish about moving into senior living. After all, what if their money runs out?

This is a very real concern. In fact, New Retirement cites a study that claims “60% of baby boomers are more afraid of running out of money than dying.” But here’s the rub—older adults should be worried. The same article shares the following:

    • 83 percent of baby boomers in the lowest income quartile will run out of money in retirement
    • 47 percent of boomers in the second lowest quartile will run out
    • 28 percent of boomers in the second highest quartile will run out
    • 13 percent of boomers in the highest income quartile will run out

Providing extra touch points—and including ones that directly address money worries—is a smart way to reassure prospects and move them down the funnel.

Choosing a senior living community is one of the most emotional purchases a person (or family) will ever make.

When a person buys their first home, emotions can run the gamut, but excitement and pride tend to top the list. When a person is shopping around for senior living, the emotions they experience are understandably different. While some people might feel excited about the next chapter, especially if they’re recently retired and entering into independent living, others might have mixed feelings:

    • A sense of loss about leaving their home (often the one where they raised their family)
    • Monetary concerns (will they outlive their funds?)
    • Fears around declining health
    • Existential angst (facing their own mortality)

Given what so many senior living leads are dealing with, it’s no wonder they need time to process, consider their options, and engage numerous times with communities before making a decision.

Our job as senior living marketers is to patiently accompany them on this journey of contemplation and discovery. The goal of ongoing communications shouldn’t be to sell, sell, sell, but rather to give, give, give. Give prospects information that will truly help them.

Strategies for Creating a Multi-Touch Lead Nurturing Campaign

Here’s what you need to keep in mind as you nurture your leads over the long haul.

If you haven’t already, invest in marketing automation. You can’t do effective lead nurturing without quality marketing automation. Full stop. It’s important to choose the right marketing automation for your community’s specific needs and budgets. If you need help selecting software, call us.

Make sure you set up lead scoring. Not all leads are created equal. Some leads will be more sales-qualified than others. The sales-qualified leads (SQLs) will be served up to the sales team for follow-up. The marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) will enter your long-term lead nurturing programs.

Understand your prospective buyers. In addition to the pain points outlined above, your prospects might have other pain points as well. Remember, you’re selling to various people, including older adults, spouses, adult children, and so forth. You need to create lead nurturing for each persona.

Map out different journeys and create content that will be helpful throughout each journey. For example, if your prospects are getting “stuck” because of concerns over money, develop content that acknowledges their fears and that offers potential solutions. Some examples . . .

    • Provide a short guide on the Veterans Aid and Attendance Benefit and a checklist that helps the person self-qualify.
    • Create and share short videos from current residents who had similar money concerns—and what helped them feel good about choosing your community.
    • Give authentic answers to tough questions. You could create a guide called “Retirement Worries: What Happens if Your Money Runs Out?”
    • Offer a complimentary lunch & learn with your community’s financial counselor.

You get the idea. When you approach your lead nurturing from a problem/solution perspective (rather than a sell, sell, sell perspective), developing helpful content for 22+ emails isn’t as challenging as you might think.

That said, if you get stuck with all the touch points, let us help.

Too often, communities simply go through the motions when it comes to creating and sending automated emails. That approach won’t get you the results you want. Reach out and let’s discuss a sound strategy for creating a multi-touch nurturing campaign that turns prospects into move-ins over the long haul.

Let's chat!



Marketing Solutions

2 Senior Living Marketing Solutions for the New Year

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It’s hard to believe 2021 is winding down. We don’t have to tell you that it’s been quite a year. As we look ahead to 2022, we wanted to share two straightforward senior living marketing solutions that’ll help get your community off to a strong start. Order them directly from us and you’ll be well on your way to marketing success in Q1!

Total Online Presence Audit

The beginning of the new year is an excellent time to take stock of what’s working—and what isn’t—with your online marketing strategy. 

Our Total Online Presence Audit takes a deep dive into the following:

Senior living community website. Your website is your virtual storefront and your 24/7 sales team. Is it working for you? Or against you? We review the following:

The above isn’t an exhaustive list, but it gives you the idea.

Social media platforms. Does your social media presence reinforce your brand? Or does it appear you’re simply going through the motions? Or worse—have certain platforms gone dark? 

Google My Business Listing. Local search engine optimization (SEO) matters! Having a strong Google My Business listing is a must. We’ll look to see if yours . . .

  • Has been claimed by your community
  • Includes current information
  • Truly acts as a micro-website that accurately captures the brand

Directory listings. The senior living industry is famous for its directories. It’s impossible for one person to keep up, but we have the tools and a proven strategy to do a high-level review of the most important listings to make sure your community’s info is current and correct.

Online reputation. What other people are saying about your community carries much more weight than what you say about your community. We double-check to make sure the major review sites in our industry have correct info—and we’ll flag anything that needs your immediate attention.

Competitive analysis. We take a look at the competitive landscape—what they’re doing well, and opportunities for your community to shine.

From there, we create an action plan. We don’t just deliver the results of our audit and send you on your way. Instead, we provide an action plan with immediate fixes and other recommendations you can easily and quickly implement. You and your team can take the plan and run with it. (We really do make the tasks super simple!) Or you can have us implement the fixes and recommendations.

Bottom line: What you get is an incredibly comprehensive audit that will position your community for success in Q1. And the best part? The price: a budget-friendly $995. Go here to learn more and to order your online presence audit.

Strategic Marketing Roadmap: The Marketing Plan You Need

It’s hard to start a new quarter—or a fresh new year—without some sort of marketing plan. But it’s easy to get lost in the weeds when putting one together. That’s where this solution comes in. We call it our Strategic Marketing Roadmap. We have a proven formula for putting together a strong plan for you quickly so you can focus on execution. (Or we can help with that as well.)

How it works:

We have an in-depth discovery call (or two or three!). We come prepared with the RIGHT questions. Our goal is to learn about your current marketing efforts, growth goals, and competitors. We’ll also audit your existing marketing and online presence.

We refine your buyer personas. So many communities fail when it comes to developing workable personas that get you the results you’re looking for. Based on this persona work, we’ll create a roadmap of suggested marketing tactics for each phase of your customer’s buying journey.

We develop a smart content strategy. Content isn’t king. It’s emperor. And you need amazing content to get results. Don’t worry—we got you covered here. Based on our keyword research, we’ll build a content strategy that’ll allow you to map out 6-12 months of content as part of your ongoing marketing efforts.

We present the goods—your extremely comprehensive strategic marketing roadmap. We don’t do a fancy presentation and walk away, either. We provide an action plan that’s simple enough for marketing teams to execute—but that still gets results. (And if you need help with the execution, we can do that, too!)

Bottom line: Don’t leave your senior living marketing for 2022 to chance. Learn more about this product and order your strategic marketing roadmap soon.

On the hunt for other senior living marketing solutions?

You’re in the right place. The two products above are just the tip of the iceberg. We have plenty of other marketing services to fit your needs and budget. Get in touch!