Elder woman interacting with clinical caregiver.

Senior Living Marketing: Get More Videos from Your Team

Elder man in interacting with clinical caregiver recording a video. How to use videos in senior living marketing.

Nothing can transform senior living marketing from meh to WOW faster than video. It’s among our top recommendations to our clients, yet the hardest one for them to embrace.

Listen, we get it. Video marketing can sound intimidating. And a decade ago, it was. But today’s smartphones shoot excellent video, and editing apps simplify splicing and dicing.

The best part? You likely already have someone on your marketing team who can take on editing videos. Or you could task an intern with the role. Gen Z knows a thing or two (or a hundred) about shooting compelling videos. And all they need is their phone. (If neither option is viable, we can help, provided you get good raw footage—more on this below.)

Empower people in your community to shoot raw footage.

The key to getting more videos is empowering existing team members within your community to take more videos. We’re not just talking about the senior living marketing and sales teams, either. The activities department, dining services, and even admin folks can all be tasked with taking videos.

Let them know all they need to do is shoot the raw footage and that your team will handle the rest. Easy-peasy!

Make it simple for people to share their footage with the marketing team.

You need an easy way for people to transfer the raw footage from their phones to a place where your marketing team can access it. Many options exist. If you’re unsure, go with Dropbox.

Here’s what you do:

  • Each month, set up a community Dropbox folder for the current month. You’ll have one main Dropbox folder. Within it, you’ll create a new folder each month. Turn off permissions for the other months’ folders as you go along.
  • Create a shareable link to the current month’s folder. Make sure the setting says that anyone with access to the link can edit.
  • Email the Dropbox link to the staff (or the folks you’ve empowered to be on your video team). Alert them that this month’s folder is awaiting their awesome uploads.

In your email, always include a link to instructions on how to download the Dropbox app to their phone and how to upload videos from their phone to Dropbox. We recommend creating an unlisted YouTube video that only people in your organization can view, demonstrating how to do this on iPhones and Androids.

If people have trouble transferring the raw footage to Dropbox, invite them to stop by the marketing team’s office for help.

In the email, you’ll also want to remind people about the types of video footage you’re looking for.

  • Sweet moments between residents
  • Video testimonials from residents and their families during move-in day
  • Shots of the grounds (flower garden, after a snowstorm, a rainbow)
  • Snippets from activities and events
  • “Day in the life” videos of residents and employees
  • Holiday-specific montages (like the activities department decorating for Christmas or the Fourth of July)

You should also provide reminders about video etiquette and resident privacy.

The more specific your suggestions are, the better. For example, if your community is hosting a Kentucky Derby party, ask for footage of all the fabulous hats people are wearing and capture people toasting with their mint juleps.

Now, you might be thinking, “Yeah, this sounds great. And people will likely have good intentions. But what if it doesn’t result in anything?”

That brings us to our next tip—the magic formula for getting people to participate.

Offer incentives for the best footage.

Think of it this way: If you invested in professional video shoots, you’d spend thousands of dollars.

Your monthly incentive program will cost considerably less. Invest $150 per month to use as an incentive. Give $100 to the person who provides the best footage and $50 to the runner-up. (If you can up the ante, even better. The bigger the incentive, the better the footage—and you’ll likely have more options.)

Promote last month’s winner in the email you send out during the current month.

Don’t just send the email only once. Send it at the beginning of the month, the middle, and towards the end with a “last chance to enter this month’s raw video footage contest.”

At the end of the year, you could hold a community-wide contest where people vote on who recorded the best footage used in a video—and the winner gets a substantial prize, like a $100 bonus.

Assign one or two people on your team to edit video footage and create the final videos.

By running all the footage through your marketing department, you’ll have quality control measures to ensure the content is appropriate and on brand. (Bottom line: You don’t have to use all footage that comes in, either.)

This work doesn’t have to be a heavy lift, either. Video editing can happen through a simple phone app like InShot. We recommend upgrading to InShot Pro because it has more features. It costs less than $5 per month. (Or if you want to install editing software on a desktop, that could work, too. But honestly, being able to do everything on a phone makes it easy and fun.)

Remember, people don’t want overly-produced videos—they want authentic videos, especially on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. The goal is to make sure the video is engaging and reflects well on your community.

You can easily create any branded visual assets you need in Canva, like thumbnails.

Don’t forget to share your videos in places other than social media—blog posts, relevant web pages, and emails are excellent places to pop in a video.

But when you do post on social media, give a shout-out to the person who captured the raw footage and remember to tag them. They might share the video with their followers, which means more exposure for your community.

It takes time to build momentum. Don’t give up.

Once word gets out about the incentives and people begin seeing their footage online, you’ll be surprised at how eager people will be to participate and share the video snippets they capture.

And again, if you need assistance editing any of the raw footage that comes in, our team can help.

4 Smart Ways to Use ChatGPT in Senior Living Marketing

Image of a hand extended with AI for ChatGPT in senior living marketing.

It’s been a little over a year since people began buzzing about ChatGPT and other generative AI. Rumors swirled: Massive layoffs will ensue! Robots are poised to take over the world!

None of these doomsday prophecies happened. What did happen: ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history while continuing to evolve rapidly.

At Senior Living SMART, we still recommend treading carefully when using ChatGPT. But we also believe knowledge is power. ChatGPT has made several upgrades that smart marketers should be aware of. Below, we highlight strategies for using these upgrades in your senior living marketing.

Note: As we go to press, the first two items below can be done with a free account. The third and fourth suggestions involve having ChatGPT access the web. For this, you need a paid subscription plan, like ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20/month.

1. Set up “Custom Instructions” about your brand and brand voice.

If you want ChatGPT to produce content that sounds closer to your brand voice, the Custom Instructions section is the place to go because this is where you can teach it how to respond to your prompts.

How to access Custom Instructions in ChatGPT

  • Navigate to your settings by clicking on your username. (If you have the ChatGPT app on your phone, click on the hamburger menu in the upper left and then click on your username at the bottom.)
  • From there, click on “Custom Instructions.” (Or it might say, “Customize ChatGPT.”)
  • You’ll have two boxes to fill in, both with a maximum of 1,500 characters.

Custom instructions for ChatGPT

Custom instructions

respond ChatGPT

Benefits of Using Custom Instructions

  • Save time. You don’t need to rewrite the same instructions over and over.
  • Continuously train (and improve) ChatGPT. You can continue fine-tuning your instructions over time so ChatGPT develops a deeper understanding of your brand.
  • Easily swap in different instructions for different purposes or different communities. For example, let’s say you have four senior living communities under one brand “umbrella.” Each property could have its own set of Custom Instructions that you can swap in when you’re doing work related to that property.

Tips + Tricks

  • Draft your instructions offline first. Create different versions of your brand and tone guidelines. You’ll need to experiment to see which instructions produce the best results.
  • Don’t ditch human oversight. Even with Custom Instructions, ChatGPT likely won’t deliver content that sounds completely on-brand. But it should be closer than what it produced a year ago. Bottom line: You still need human writers to review and revise any ChatGPT-generated content (especially long-form pieces).
  • Keep in mind Custom Instructions will apply to all new chats moving forward. You can update your instructions at any time. When you swap in new instructions, you must start a new chat for the instructions to take effect*.

*NOTE: As we go to press, ChatGPT has announced a new feature called Memory, allowing it to remember things from different chats. It’s currently available to only a few users, but this will likely change quickly.

  • Don’t put in any proprietary brand info. A good rule of thumb with AI right now: Only share content, concepts, and ideas that are already publicly accessible.

2. Train ChatGPT to understand your personas.

You likely already have personas. (If you don’t, you should!)

Open a new chat, copy and paste your persona info into it, and ask ChatGPT to take on the role of this persona. Then, you can prompt it to do things like . . .

    • Have ChatGPT brainstorm blog article topics that it would want to read. Again, it’s important to instruct ChatGPT to take on the role of the persona.
    • Task ChatGPT with brainstorming headlines and subject lines that will likely resonate with the persona. Or give it the headlines/subject lines your team created. Ask ChatGPT to assume the persona’s role and ask which versions it likes best and why.
    • Ask ChatGPT to assume the persona’s role and fetch recent articles, blog posts, and offers it finds interesting. Talk about valuable intel! You’ll better understand what content resonates with the persona. (NOTE: Currently, this task would involve a paid subscription since you’re asking ChatGPT to access the web.)
    • Go a step further with the suggestion above, and ask ChatGPT to tell you what it liked about each piece of content—and where it could be improved or what questions it was left with. Pay attention to any content gaps ChatGPT points out. This will be an opportunity for your brand. You can create content that fills the gaps.

Any time you close a chat, ChatGPT automatically saves it. You can rename it accordingly—for example, “Adult Daughter Debbie Persona.” Then, return to this saved persona and open the chat whenever you want to do further work with ChatGPT about this persona.

See our earlier note above about a possible long-term memory feature in ChatGPT. If this comes to fruition, you won’t have to worry about continuing conversations in the same chat thread. In theory, with long-term memory, ChatGPT will be able to remember separate chats/conversations.

If you don’t have personas, you might be tempted to have ChatGPT craft them. While this could work for certain industries/brands, we don’t recommend doing this for senior living since many human emotions are at play—nuances exist between care levels and the people involved in the decision-making (for example, adult children vs. seniors).

Instead, develop personas based on actual conversations with residents, their families, and lost prospects. Need help? Persona development is one of our many areas of expertise.

  • PRO TIP: If you conduct interviews with real residents, you could take the transcripts from the interviews, feed them to ChatGPT, and ask it to pull out the recurring pain points, etc.

3. Have ChatGPT perform competitor research and analysis.

When it launched, ChatGPT couldn’t access the web and was only trained on data through September 2021. But paid subscribers (ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, and Team Workspaces) can now access the web in real-time (through Microsoft-owned Bing).

Nope, it’s far from perfect. ChatGPT is still prone to hallucinations, and you must triple-check any facts it serves up.

But give it 10 of your competitors’ websites and ask it to analyze things like messaging and on-page calls-to-action? THAT it can do—and lightning fast.

Use the following prompt and see for yourself.

    • PROMPT: Assume the role of an expert in competitor analysis. Please review the following competitor websites. [List URLS] For each one, analyze messaging strengths and weaknesses and share your findings. Then, suggest ways for my community [URL] to differentiate its messaging.

This is one of dozens of prompts you could devise for competitor analysis and research. Remember, the more detailed and specific your prompt, the better. It’s not unusual for effective prompts to be a page long.

Tips for writing effective prompts:

  • Be precise, be specific. The more you can do both, the better your results.
  • Provide context. Pretend ChatGPT is an intern. How much background would you give the intern to get the results you’re looking for? Do the same with ChatGPT. It’s a great tool, but it’s not a mind-reader.
  • Ask ChatGPT to assume a specific role or persona. Studies show that directing ChatGPT to assume a particular role, persona, job description, and so forth will help it produce better results.
  • Approach prompts like an ongoing conversation, not a once-and-done task. Asking follow-up questions is an excellent way to refine ChatGPT’s responses.
  • Practice makes better. You’ll see people claiming to be experts in writing ChatGPT prompts, but remember that ChatGPT has only been around since November of 2022. You can absolutely rock ChatGPT prompts on your own with practice.

4. Have ChatGPT perform data analysis.

Again, this feature is currently available for paid subscriptions.

You’ll notice the little paperclip whenever you open a chat if you have a paid subscription. You can upload docs and ask ChatGPT to analyze the data.

For example, you could have ChatGPT analyze trends and themes in your community’s online reviews.

Here’s what you’d need to do:

  • Copy and paste all your Google reviews into a spreadsheet.
  • Open a new chat in ChatGPT and attach the spreadsheet.
  • Ask ChatGPT to assume the role of a data analyst and to look for messaging themes in the reviews, questions that would make good blog content, and areas that might need further clarification on your website and elsewhere.

You could have it conduct a similar analysis with surveys or even more analytical data that you download from GA4 or YouTube dashboards. You get the idea.

A final note: Don’t ditch your human writers.

Don’t mistake this article as an endorsement for ditching your writers and using AI-generated content. Even with training, ChatGPT still can’t perfectly match a brand’s voice—you still need human writers to bring their judgment, experience, expertise, and ability for nuance. And we don’t see that changing any time soon.

Instead, approach ChatGPT (and other large language models) as another tool in your content marketing toolbox. Don’t be scared of it. Experiment with it. Practice using it. Always double-check any facts or figures it produces (especially if you’re about to go live with something).

In the meantime, we’ll continue to provide helpful tips and strategies for using ChatGPT in your senior living marketing. Subscribe to our blog to make sure you don’t miss any of our articles. And make sure you’re connected with us on LinkedIn.

More great resources about ChatGPT & AI:

Animation of human three different brains to compare using behavioral science in marketing.

Using Behavioral Science in Marketing: What to Keep in Mind

Animation of human three different brains to compare using behavioral science in marketing.

On a recent episode of our Senior Living Marketing Perspectives podcast, Debbie Howard interviewed Nancy Harhut, founder and chief creative officer of HBT Marketing.

Nancy is all about getting prospects to take action, and she accomplishes this through a keen understanding of behavioral science. (We encourage you to read her book: Using Behavioral Science in Marketing: Drive Customer Action and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses.)

Below, we’re highlighting key takeaways from the podcast, including tips for using behavioral science in marketing your senior living community.

What is behavioral science in marketing?

Simply put, behavioral science in marketing involves understanding how people make decisions. And guess what? People rarely make neat and tidy decisions that follow a linear path based solely on logic or rational arguments.

As much as we marketers and sales folks like to think that simply delivering the right message to the right person at the right time is all we need to do, the reality is it’s more nuanced than that.

“Very often there are other factors at play that influence people’s decisions,” Harhut says, “and a lot of times, they’re not even aware of them.”

With significant financial investments—like senior living—you might think prospects are weighing the pros and cons and doing a cost-benefit analysis. But they’re more likely thinking things through with their heart rather than their brain.

“People make decisions for emotional reasons,” Harhut explains, “and then they later justify those decisions with rational reasons. So what that says to us, in marketing and sales, is we need both. We need both of those components. We need the rational reasons and the emotional reasons.”

But the trick is to lead with emotional reasons much earlier in the buyer’s journey.

Fostering an emotional connection also fosters trust.

When you emotionally connect with people, they tend to trust you more.

“And when people begin to trust you more,” Harhut says, “they’re more open to your story. They’re going to absorb what you have to say. They’re more likely to believe you. And, at the end of the day, probably more likely to do business with you.”

This is why you can’t wait until an in-person sales interaction to trot out the emotional components of your senior living marketing efforts. You must speak to people’s emotions from the start, which usually begins on your website.

3 ways to develop an emotional connection with prospects through a screen.

1. Develop messaging that demonstrates empathy.

Too often in senior living marketing, we lead with bright-and-shiny facts rather than honest emotion: You won’t have to do chores like mowing the lawn! You’ll have access to a gazillion activities! You’ll enjoy five-star dining!

What if instead we led with something like this . . .

“We know moving into senior living is a HUGE and often scary, frustrating, anxiety-inducing decision. Not to mention, everyone’s situation is different. You might be excited at the prospect of ditching the honey-do list, while someone else might be sad about leaving their forever home. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and you’re the one feeling unsure and sad. This is precisely why we won’t try “selling” you on senior living. Instead, our goal is to be as transparent as possible about what life is like in our community, how you might fit in, and the steps we take to help new residents transition into their new homes.”

Which one is more honest, authentic, and empathetic? Which speaks to a broader spectrum of emotions that many people experience before moving into senior living? It’s the second one.

Identify with prospects in a very empathetic way to build that all-important emotional connection. (Check out our article on empathetic marketing.)

2. Acknowledge challenging emotions.

When you lead with nothing but positives about your community—great care, great food, great amenities—you’re making it all about you. Not to mention, most communities boast the same things.

Instead, try leading with some of the more challenging emotions your prospects are experiencing, like worries over declining health, concerns about having enough money to finance senior living, sadness over the loss of a spouse, and a whole lot of other hard, ugly, upsetting emotions.

And don’t forget about the emotions the adult children have.

Harhut says, “If you’re hearing people say, ‘Look, I’m afraid my mother’s going to hate me when I do this.’ Or ‘It’s breaking my heart to make this decision,’ use that language because it’s real, it’s authentic, it’s where they are, and they’re going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, you guys understand me.” And you get that bond.”

  • PRO TIP: With smart content, you can adjust the messaging that viewers see based on rules you set, like whether they’re first-time or repeat visitors. So, you could share emotional messages with first-time visitors. During people’s subsequent visits, you can serve up messaging that might hit more of the logical, rational arguments. Smart content is also known as “dynamic” or “adaptive” content. Like anything else, you’ll want to pay attention to the results. Experiment, measure, lather, rinse, and repeat.

3. Brainstorm barriers—and how to overcome them.

Consider why people object to moving into senior living—and remember that those barriers will vary depending on the audience and even the level of care. For example, when an adult child is in urgent need of memory care for their parent, barriers to entry might be pricing, bad reviews, or guilt about putting their parent “in a home.”

However, the barriers to entry for people choosing senior living from a position of strength—think of younger boomers interested in retirement communities—might be, “Is this too indulgent? Do I have the money? Is this really the lifestyle for me?”

Address those barriers in your marketing messages by making an emotional connection and demonstrating empathy first. From there, you can build out the rational reasons.

Harhut says, “A lot of times in marketing and sales, we’re all about why someone should do something. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously, we do want to talk about why you should do this, why it would be good for you, the benefits and advantages that you’ll get from it. But sometimes we need to think about why might someone not want to do what I’m asking them to do? And what’s the smartest thing I can say to overcome that hurdle or that barrier.”

Need help developing the right messages to get your prospects to act?

Our writers and messaging gurus understand how and when to use emotions ethically and responsibly in the marketing assets we create for clients. Get in touch and let’s discuss messaging for your community.

Close up of man in suit reviewing phone for senior living branding.

Oops! 5 Senior Living Branding Blunders to Avoid

Close up of man in suit reviewing phone for senior living branding.

Even if your senior living branding is solid overall, you might still be missing opportunities to share and reinforce it. We see this happen constantly, even when communities have slick websites.

Remember, consistency across all channels and media is critical to successful branding. Check your community’s branding against these often-overlooked spots.

The 5 most common places branding gets overlooked

Thank-you pages

You likely put a ton of effort into your landing pages. Compelling copy. On-brand design. Enticing calls-to-action. But what happens after someone hits that submit button? Do you redirect the prospect to an equally compelling thank-you page? One with as much effort put into it as the landing page?

Too often, marketers get lazy with thank-you pages. Yet people reading thank-you pages are part of a truly captive audience. Now is not the time to let your brand voice whimper or fall silent.

The biggest mistake we see with thank-you pages is that they’re too simple. They serve up whatever the prospect requested: “Click here to download the white paper.” But they don’t often offer anything beyond that.

This is a missed opportunity to reinforce your brand identity.

Items you can add to thank-you pages:

  • Social proof, like a testimonial that reinforces your brand (it’s always more compelling when someone else trumpets your brand values)
  • Related content (keep it ungated). Demonstrate that you’re paying attention to the person’s pain points by offering related content. If the content is typically gated, unlock the gate and make it free and clear. You already have the prospect’s email—and their attention. Don’t make them jump through hoops to access additional info that will help them. (You can use tracking URLs for analytics purposes.)
  • Videos. You might not have a better opportunity to get someone to watch one of your videos. Choose wisely.

Bottom line: Give every thank-you page the same TLC you give your landing pages.

Auto-responders

Listen, we get it. By the time you get to creating the auto-responder email, you just want to be DONE and hit publish since the auto-responder is usually the final step. Don’t let up on the gas! Your brand identity needs to shine through to the end.

We’d argue that auto-responder emails might be even more important than the initial website interaction you had with the prospect since, by this point, the prospect has a vested interest in the email’s contents. They’ve requested something specific, like pricing, a guide, a checklist, a tour, or whatever it is, which means there’s an excellent chance the email will get opened, read, and clicked.

Don’t believe us? Consider this compelling stat from Benchmark Email: Auto responders enjoy a 98% open rate—and 37% click-through rate.

Social media profiles

Facebook turns 20 years old in 2024. And while your community probably hasn’t been on Facebook the whole time, it likely has had a Facebook presence for ten or more years. That’s a lot of time for your brand to evolve—and for things to break on the platform. And the same is true for other channels, too.

When was the last time you audited the “about” section on your Facebook page? YouTube? Instagram, X, Pinterest, you get the idea?

Too many communities don’t keep their profiles updated. Often, a disconnect exists between the brand being represented on the website and the brand being represented on the community’s social media profiles, especially in some of the deeper sections, like the “about” areas.

Get into the habit of auditing your social media profiles yearly (at least).

Email signature lines

Did you know a thoughtful email signature can boost brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and make it easier for people to contact you?

Wise Stamp, an email signature company, says its clients enjoy “22% more clicks, 32% more e-mail replies, 10% growth in their social media reach, and 15% more leads.” Yes, all thanks to email signatures.

Your sales and marketing teams should have email signature lines that reflect your senior living branding: not just your logo, font and colors, but also taglines, social icons, appointment scheduling links, disclaimers, and any extras like an event banner or video link. Remember, consistency is critical. Ensure everyone uses the same email signature format, and ensure the signature looks right across various devices and email clients.

And, ideally, freshen up the signatures every quarter or so.

Google Business Profile and directory listings

Your Google Business Profile is the second-most important online asset for your community after your website. If there’s anywhere online that must reflect your branding, GBP is it.

Any directory listings where your community has a presence must also be kept current. And just like social media platforms, it can be easy to set and forget these listings.

But think of the disconnect someone will experience if they see your old logo on your Google Business Profile or a directory listing before hopping over to your site with the current brand. They might even think they’re on the wrong site. These subtle missteps do matter—and they can add up, even if you can’t directly measure or quantify their impact.

Need help with any of the above? Check out our Total Online Presence Audit.

Our comprehensive audit digs into many things related to your community’s online presence, including brand consistency across channels. We’ll tell you what’s what, and we can even do the heavy lifting and fix everything for you if you want.

Learn more about the audit here. Or reach out directly if you have questions about how to make your senior living branding stand out.

Animation of different peoples personas and amenities that can drive senior living occupancy.

How Personas Can Drive Senior Living Occupancy

Animation of different peoples personas and amenities that can drive senior living occupancy.

Personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers—or, in the case of senior living, your ideal residents and the adult children involved in making decisions.

Armed with a clear picture of your ideal residents, you can better personalize your messaging and marketing to them—and ultimately boost your senior living occupancy.

Below, we’re sharing two case studies demonstrating how personas helped drive occupancy for our clients.

Case study: Using personas to develop a unique selling proposition

The problem: How to differentiate from the big boys in town?

We worked with a community in Ohio stuck at 60% occupancy. This community is in a rural market with two nearby competitors. One competitor is affiliated with the local healthcare system and has rehab, skilled nursing, physicians, and assisted living on one campus. The other competitor is new, with a fancy community that offers a more glamorous experience.

Our client’s marketing team felt their own community came off as old, dated, and too expensive, given what people were paying each month. The team believed their community couldn’t compete with the newer property or the property that offered assisted living and other medical services on a single campus.

The solution: Develop a value proposition based on real experiences, not marketing’s assumptions.

Our goal was to identify the right niche for our client and identify the unique value proposition so we could create messaging to attract prospects who would prefer our client’s community.

To accomplish this, we interviewed families that recently chose our client’s community over the others. What we learned: The prospects who chose our client’s community thought the new fancy-schmancy community in town was too grand for their tastes. And they thought the community with all the medical offerings on one campus was too big and difficult to navigate.

None of the families had a problem with the price of our client’s community. And what seemed like “old and dated” to the marketing team felt “warm and cozy” to the prospects. So, we created a messaging campaign that positioned the community with the following theme: “We’re not too big or too fancy—we’re just right.”

The result: Improved occupancy in the harder-to-sell units.

The refined messaging resonated well with prospects simply because it matched their needs and pain points instead of reflecting the marketing team’s assumptions about those pain points. Occupancy improved as a result. We were finally attracting the right prospects for this community.

Case study: Developing personas to help fill a specific need.

The problem: How to push the right inventory to the right prospect?

A client with a life plan community was in the process of renovating the older, dated property when we came on board. At the time, the community had mostly small one-bedroom units and studios available until the renovation was completed (over a year out). The community had a long waiting list for the larger apartments but no inventory. They did, however, have plenty of studios and smaller one-bedrooms—the problem was the prospects in the pipeline had no interest.

The solution: Develop two new personas that aligned with the available inventory.

Our job was to attract prospects interested in the smaller units. To do so, we had to first understand who those potential buyers were.

We began by hosting focus groups representing residents who had previously selected the smaller units. Through those conversations, we developed two personas that we’d use to guide our messaging and campaigns:

Persona #1: Planner Pam

Planner Pam represents older, single women interested in purposeful planning for their retirement lifestyle. She is vocal about not wanting her children to make decisions on her behalf, and she doesn’t want to become a burden to her kids as she ages. (Almost all the women in our focus group had cared for older loved ones, and they didn’t want their kids going through what they’d endured.)

Planner Pam chose our client’s community because of its life plan promise. The community offers a continuum of care as residents’ needs change. The price point of the smaller units was highly attractive to Planner Pam because it ensures she won’t outlive her assets. This financial security provides peace of mind. Planner Pam also values socialization—she has no interest in spending much time in her apartment. Instead, she enjoys dining with friends in the community and participating in activities.

Persona #2: Simple Sam

Simple Sam doesn’t want to continue maintaining his home, doing chores, and cooking. Several focus group participants had lost a spouse, and they chose our client’s community because they craved a simple life with meals, housekeeping, and maintenance included.

The Simple Sam folks aren’t looking for anything big and fancy, so they aren’t impressed with the larger apartments. Their collective attitude is, “I just need my TV, recliner, and bed. What I really appreciate are the services and amenities.” All the men in the focus group had initially attended a “lunch and learn” in the community before moving in.

We created two different campaigns to attract similar prospects to fill the remaining available units. We purchased qualified mailing lists for single men and women within our client’s geographic market and created a different campaign for each persona.

For Planner Pam, we created a campaign with messaging that spoke to being in control of your retirement plans, the importance of making a decision now so that your kids don’t have to do it later, how living in our client’s community means you’ll never be a burden to your family, and the peace of mind the life plan financial contract and continuum of care offered.

The other campaign for Simple Sam reinforced the idea that it was time to say goodbye to the “honey do” list and enjoy their retirement. The call to action (CTA) was to join us for a “lunch and learn” event where they could experience the fantastic food and learn more about the community.

The results: Increase in qualified prospects and move-ins.

Both campaigns garnered an excellent response and attracted qualified prospects. We filled the smaller apartments, which gave the community breathing room with its renovations. The community brought us on board when its occupancy was 60%, and it has now reached 90%.

We also created a “couples” persona to drive sales for the larger apartments post-renovation. The key motivators for couples include moving into a community when they’re both well enough to enjoy it together, continuing to live together even if their individual needs change over time, and having a supportive community if their spouse dies.

Persona research serves as the foundation upon which you build your marketing strategy.

Too often, communities dismiss persona research because they think it takes too long and costs too much. The communities want something tangible right away to use or share with prospects in return for the investment.

Here’s the thing, though: doing good persona research takes time. Yes, the final “product” is for internal use only. But with it, your marketing and sales teams will better understand what makes their ideal prospects tick. This will empower marketing to create messaging that attracts qualified prospects to your site and digital assets to help convert them at various points on their journey.

Remember, if you don’t know who you want to attract to your community and you try to attract everyone, you’ll waste valuable marketing dollars. Not to mention, you won’t increase your senior living occupancy.

And if you do know who you want to attract, but you don’t take the time to understand them—what their pain points are, what they crave, what they need—you’ll have trouble converting them to move-ins because your messaging won’t resonate with them.

Bottom line: Persona research isn’t a quick fix. Instead, it’s a long-term solution—one that works.

Persona research matters. It’s an investment of time and money that will pay off in the long run. Need help developing yours? Get in touch.

Senior couple going through the move-in process and going through belongings.

How the Move-In Process Can Affect Your Senior Living Marketing

Senior couple going through the move-in process and going through belongings.Too many senior living marketing and sales teams think their work is done once a prospect signs a lease. The problem with this thinking? The teams are missing an opportunity to help residents AND the community at the same time.

Remember, life doesn’t get easier for prospects once they agree to move into your community. It’s just the opposite. The prospect faces a hot mess of stress and anxiety between the lease signing and the actual move-in. Tasks include picking through cherished belongings, deciding what to toss or donate, preparing the house to go on the market, and packing what they want to take with them. Emotions run high—and even more so when adult children are involved.

Sure, the marketing and sales team could say, “Not our problem! We’ll see you when you arrive.”

And yet, it’s in the community’s best interest to make this transition as seamless as possible. And by “seamless,” we mean offering concrete ways to help residents and their families reduce stress and even find joy during the chaos.

Why? Consider the following:

  • Happy residents (and their families) will participate in your referral programs. And guess what? Referrals from current residents and their families are GOLD. They tend to have much better conversion rates while requiring the least heavy lifting. But happy residents don’t just happen. It will be much harder to inspire residents still smarting from a difficult move to get into referral mode.
  • Happy residents (and their families) will write glowing reviews. Reviews are essential to the senior living sales process. Prospects crave current reviews, not ones from three years ago, so you must constantly prime the referral pump. The best time to ask for a review is right after the resident moves in and when everything is still fresh. But what happens if the trauma of a hard move now overshadows the fantastic rapport your sales rep built? Suddenly, your hope for a solid 5-star review is fading.

Remember, moving into your community might feel like a cup of coffee to you. But it’s a big deal for the family facing such a daunting undertaking.

Study after study suggests that moving is the most stressful event in life. When you add in older age, illness, or the recent death of a loved one (like a spouse), the stress grows exponentially.

No wonder people would rather stay in their homes—even if the home is unsafe or lonely. Here’s the thing: If you know that the physical act of moving is the barrier to entry, why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to break down this barrier?

And guess what? If you effectively break down this barrier, you’ll do something awesome for your community while you’re at it: differentiating it from all the other communities that don’t bother with this step.

Develop a helpful post-deposit process for new residents and their families—and differentiate your community in a good way.

Coming up with a compelling marketing differentiator in senior living is challenging since most communities sell the same amenities, the same levels of care, and the same promises about great food and a stellar staff.

So, if your community becomes known for reducing stress during the transition, this can become an excellent point of differentiation.

Below are three ways to accomplish exactly that:

1. Put your marketing automation to good use with helpful workflows.

Thanks to marketing automation, your team can create email workflows to assist the sales team during this post-deposit stretch before the prospect moves in. Workflows can include move-in-day reminders, what residents can expect during their first week or month, and answers to FAQs.

Follow a cadence that makes sense—these email “touches” should correspond to when the new resident is moving in. For example, someone joining your community within 30 days will need an accelerated workflow that surfaces the most critical info, like move-in day protocol: when to arrive, where to go, who will be available to help carry belongings, and what to expect during the first dining experience.

On the other hand, people who are moving into your community 90 days out will follow a different cadence. Mixed in with the “just the facts” messages can be other messages highlighting the lifestyle and upcoming events.

Another smart strategy is digitizing all move-in paperwork. Keep in mind that adult children are often responsible for managing the paper trail for their parents—and many of these adult children are under 65. They expect a digital experience, like a resident portal, not a binder of papers and forms.

2. Encourage (and reward) salespeople who stay in touch with their recently closed prospects.

The new resident and their family likely developed a strong rapport with the salesperson. To have them suddenly disappear will feel disorienting. And yet, this disappearing act is what happens in most communities.

Instead, encourage your salespeople to stay in regular touch with their recently closed customers. Encourage them to serve as the new resident’s primary point of contact during this transition. (Or, if budget allows, a move-in or transition specialist might be a new title to create in your community.)

And we’re not talking about the salesperson simply sending an email or leaving a voice mail just so they can cross the task off their to-do list. Instead, they should:

  • Ask how the soon-to-be resident is doing. Pay attention to what they say—and what they don’t say. Do they seem frazzled? Depressed? Anxious? Are they struggling with a specific task, like finding movers? How can you help? The best senior living salespeople will have a network of trusted vendors that can address myriad issues, from downsizing to moving.
  • Consider making a kind gesture, like bringing the soon-to-be resident some goodies from the community’s dining room (which will serve as a reminder about what the resident has to look forward to in your community).
  • Actively listen. Sometimes offering an empathetic ear is all the future resident (or their family) needs. Even the best salesperson on the planet won’t be able to reduce the stress level to zero. But letting the future resident vent, or the adult daughter, or the adult brother squabbling with the adult daughter can help lighten the load.

Keep in mind that most salespeople won’t be used to having these sorts of interactions with recently closed customers. But if you want your community to become known for helping new residents transition successfully, you must encourage your salespeople to be part of the process. Encourage their involvement and find ways to reward them. What motivates sales folks more than incentives, right?

3. Offer relocation services—and don’t forget to promote the service long before the prospect signs the lease.

Debbie Howard, our CEO and Co-Founder, recently did a podcast with Maureen Longoria, the co-founder of LivNow Relocation, which specializes in senior living relocation services.

Longoria says her team is trained in “empathy and action.” Older adults need big doses of empathy since so many emotions are tied to their personal possessions. Adult children are often more focused on logistics—the action items—like securing good movers.

Longoria says communities shouldn’t underestimate how much the burden of moving can influence a person’s decision about whether to bother moving at all. In the podcast, she discusses a survey where participants considering a move into senior living were asked what they needed the most help with.

“The number one thing was the physical aspect of moving,” Longoria says. “The number two thing was finding the right community. They were very concerned about that. But the number three thing was organizing and downsizing. Number four was selling the home. And then number five was financial.”

Considering the physical act of moving occupies the top position (and relevant tasks occupy other positions in the top five), offering relocation services makes a lot of sense, and doing so can go a long way in differentiating your community from others. This is why the sooner communities inform prospects about this service, the better. Don’t wait until the prospect signs the lease to tell them about the services. Instead, promote that your community takes a proactive approach in helping new residents transition from their home to senior living.

If your senior living community offers relocation services, do the following:

  • Create a dedicated landing page on your site about the relocation services. Ideally, make it available and visible in the top-level navigation. Discuss how this service can benefit your future residents. Share testimonials from residents who’ve used the services. If the service doesn’t cost the resident anything, highlight this point.
  • Promote the services in all pre-tour communications. For example, when someone schedules a tour online, the thank-you page and the auto-responder email should highlight this service and explain how people can contact a counselor for a free consultation.
  • Highlight the service in all post-tour communications. Remind people about this service—and make it easy for someone to contact a relocation counselor.
  • Make virtual intros. If the salesperson senses a once-hot lead is getting cold feet, they should take the initiative and make a virtual introduction between the prospect and a relocation counselor.
  • Promote the service throughout the community’s website, social media platforms, and marketing events. Again, if the process of moving is one of the biggest barriers to entry, BREAK DOWN THIS BARRIER.

Bottom line: the most successful communities think BEYOND the sale.

Need help figuring out post-deposit workflows and how to align your marketing and sales teams so they can help transition new residents without adding more work on anyone’s plates? We can help with this and any other senior living marketing challenges. Get in touch and let’s chat.

Senior man looking at a laptop wondering why he is losing senior living leads.

3 Reasons You’re Losing Senior Living Leads

Did you know you could be losing senior living leads—and you might not even be aware it’s happening? If the sales team is hitting its numbers, you might think everything is operating like a well-oiled machine. And yet your community could be losing out on GREAT senior living leads due to three big culprits: Your website, your conversion points, and your front desk.

Here’s what you need to know.

You might be losing senior living leads if your website is slow, outdated, or both

When was the last time you refreshed your site? Three years ago? Five? Can’t remember? Prospects don’t necessarily need a fancy-schmancy website with tons of bells and whistles. But they do want a modern website that’s easy to navigate, has current information, and renders fast across mobile devices.

If your website is outdated, good prospects might think (even subliminally) that this outdated feel will extend to your community. And people have zero patience for slow sites. Remember, to a new prospect, senior living communities essentially sell the same thing. So if your site doesn’t load quickly, the visitor won’t think twice about finding one that does.

What to do, how to fix:

  • Check the bounce rate for critical pages. If people enter the site but quickly leave, something is amiss. Marketing guru Neil Patel explains how to check bounce rate in Google Analytics 4.
  • Review content. Is any of your content obsolete or incorrect? For example, did you recently revamp your community’s foyer, but pictures of the “old” foyer remain on the site? The old pictures aren’t telling the true story. Not to mention, for folks who DO visit, it will be quite a disconnect from what they were expecting. Even small things, like a copyright notice in the footer that says “2019,” can affect trust.
  • Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) to evaluate your site. As its name suggests, PageSpeed Insights will analyze how fast your site performs across desktops and mobile devices and suggest improvements. That’s the simple definition. Check out this article from Semrush for a deeper dive into how PSI works.
  • Have an objective third-party audit your site. Getting an independent audit, like our Total Online Presence Audit, is an excellent way to know if your site is helping to attract and convert leads.

You might be losing senior living leads if you haven’t thought through your conversion points

Debbie Howard, CEO of Senior Living SMART, was telling us about an experience she recently had on a prospect’s website. “I clicked on ‘Schedule a Tour’ and was redirected to a multi-page survey with a million questions. I thought, what? No. If I want to schedule a tour, I want to pick a date and time to schedule it. Don’t say I can schedule a tour and then bring me to a survey.”

This isn’t an isolated experience, either. Sadly, we see too many convoluted conversion points on senior living community websites. You must be thoughtful in how and where you ask people to act—and what that action is.

What to do, how to fix:

  • Simplify the conversion process. Ensure that actions like scheduling a tour are straightforward and require minimal steps.
  • Audit conversion paths. Regularly check all the conversion paths on your website. Ensure links and forms work correctly and the user is directed to the appropriate confirmation page or next step.
  • Test different approaches. Experiment with different types of conversion points, such as buttons, forms, or chatbots. Use A/B testing to determine which methods are most effective in engaging prospects.
  • Monitor conversion rates. A low conversion rate could indicate a problem with the design or functionality of that particular conversion point.
  • Regularly audit your calls-to-action (CTAs). CTAs must be clear and compelling and communicate precisely what will happen when a user clicks. Avoid misleading CTAs that don’t deliver on their promise.
  • Optimize for mobile devices. Many users will access your site via mobile devices. Ensure your conversion points are easy to use on smartphones and tablets, with responsive design and touch-friendly interfaces.
  • Offer multiple ways to connect. Some prospects might prefer different contact methods like phone calls over emails or texts. Provide various options to cater to different preferences.
  • Analyze user behavior. Use tools like Google Analytics to understand how users interact with your conversion points. Look for patterns like where they drop off or what actions they take before converting.

You might be losing senior living leads due to your front desk

In addition to solid conversion points, you must also ensure you’re scoring website leads correctly so that sales-ready leads receive speedy follow-up and marketing-qualified leads enter nurturing workflows. The communities that consistently win are the ones who follow up on sales-ready leads the fastest.

But here’s the thing that many communities overlook. What happens when a sales-ready lead picks up the phone and calls your community’s main number? Your front desk person is likely warm and friendly, but they are not sales-oriented. They don’t have a sales mentality. They’re also juggling plenty of non-sales calls (e.g., family members trying to reach a resident or a nurse). Sales calls don’t receive priority or any sort of white-glove treatment. The front desk person might place the prospect on hold, dump them into voicemail, or give incorrect or incomplete info.

What to do, how to fix:

We don’t have a bulleted list of suggestions, like training your front desk staff better.

Sure, you could train your front desk team to recognize sales inquiries from general inquiries. But what happens when they transfer the sales inquiries to a salesperson within the community? Unless the sales rep is sitting at their desk and they’re available to answer the call, the prospect will likely go to voicemail.

This is an ongoing problem plaguing senior living communities. Sales reps are busy giving tours, networking, and working closely with prospects preparing to sign a lease. They’re not sitting idly by their phones. Not to mention, sales reps don’t work 24/7.

Recognizing this, our team created a true senior living lead management solution. It’s called LeadGenie. LeadGenie offers virtual sales support to ensure every prospect is responded to, increasing conversions to tours and move-ins. Learn more about LeadGenie here.

Stop losing valuable senior living leads

If you have questions or need help with any of the above, get in touch. We’re passionate about helping our clients attract the right prospects and close more of them. Let’s talk soon.

portrait and close up of Two happy seniors buying a new house holding the key with his hand.

Tips for Better Senior Living Sales & Marketing Alignment Post-Deposit

The biggest myth in senior living sales and marketing is that marketing ends once someone signs on the dotted line and delivers their deposit.

Here’s the reality: Sales and marketing teams must remain aligned post-deposit. Why? Two reasons.

First, happy residents are your best form of advertisement. They write excellent, engaging reviews. They’re also much more likely to participate in your community’s friends/family referral program. (Family and friends referrals enjoy high conversion rates.) However, happy residents don’t just happen. Your community should have a process for ensuring a smooth, branded move-in experience so that all new residents are happy.

But this brings us to the second reason why sales and marketing teams must remain aligned post-deposit: You can’t count on sales counselors to consistently provide a smooth, branded move-in experience. That’s not in their wheelhouse. Plus, the sales counselors are already busy trying to close sales-qualified leads who haven’t reached the deposit point yet.

Luckily, this work doesn’t have to be a heavy lift for your marketing department thanks to the wonders of marketing automation. You can set up post-deposit nurturing campaigns to help create a red-carpet experience for each new resident every time. These campaigns would automatically trigger once the deposit is noted in the CRM.

So, what types of post-deposit nurturing campaigns should you develop? We recommend creating campaigns around these 3 topics:

    • Keeping track of all the paperwork
    • Relocation/moving tips
    • What residents can expect their first week/month

Campaign #1: Say hello to streamlined paperwork

We don’t have to tell you about all the paperwork involved with moving into your community. But the amount of paperwork might surprise the prospective resident—or the person handling it on their behalf, like an adult child.

Creating a post-deposit workflow that helps new residents keep track of and make sense of all the documents will reduce their stress and make it easier for them to access what they need when they need it.

Some tips to keep in mind:

    • If your community has an online resident portal, provide clear instructions on how to access and use it. Include not only written instructions, but also a video walk-through. Audit the instructions—review them yourself and ensure everything makes sense and works as expected. Get feedback from newer residents and their families about their experience with the portal.
    • Make sure you include the right people in this workflow. For example, if a couple is moving in, make sure they’re both included. If family members have been involved in the process, include them. (This goes for all the post-deposit nurturing campaigns, not just this one.)

Campaign #2: Countdown to move-in day

Moving is considered one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. The move can become exponentially harder when you add the emotions of leaving a home you’ve been in for decades.

One of the best post-deposit campaigns you can develop is a countdown to move-in day with practical, actionable steps people can follow. But don’t overwhelm people with too much information in each email.

Things to include:

Start with a welcome email. When we create this campaign for our clients, we immediately send an email from the executive director or CEO thanking the new resident for selecting the community and letting them know how excited they are to welcome them to the family.

    • Downsizing strategies
    • Tips for selling a home
    • What to donate, give to friends and family, sell, and take
    • How to digitize pictures
    • Packing checklists
    • Vetted vendors, like the moving companies you recommend
    • PRO TIP: Speaking of vetted vendors, if you REALLY want to help your new residents transition successfully into your community, connect them with a relocation specialist. Intrigued? Check out our podcast with Maureen Longoria, Co-Founder of LivNow Relocation, which assists older adults and their adult children during this emotionally charged transition.

Campaign #3: What to expect your first week/month

When you sign up for a free 30-day trial of something, you often receive a series of welcome emails that do just that—welcome you to the service, highlight valuable features, and share answers to FAQs.

Model your community’s “what you can expect” campaign accordingly. Send a welcome email that arrives in a new resident’s inbox within 24-48 hours of moving in.

Send follow-up emails over the next 30 days that share info about . . .

    • Dining services. How to order, hours, where to request special meals, etc.
    • Activities for the next month.
    • FAQs. Collect and answer the most common questions new residents have in this email. (Or link to a page on your site with all the answers.)
    • What to do if something’s amiss. Give people a direct line to someone who can help them ASAP if something isn’t right or to their liking. Complaints or minor irritations aren’t unusual during a move into senior living. The key is making sure the new resident feels heard AND that they feel the issue is being addressed.

Need help creating a post-deposit nurturing workflow?

This isn’t a typical workflow that senior living communities implement—or that most senior living marketing agencies offer their clients. But we do! Get in touch and let’s discuss how we can put these workflows to work for your community.

Marketing automation for senior living

Marketing Automation for Senior Living: Real Results

We spend a lot of time on the blog and with our clients discussing the value of marketing automation for senior living. But the proof is in the results. Below, we’re highlighting what two years’ worth of sound marketing strategy and automation achieved for Sinceri Senior Living, which is based out of Vancouver, Washington, and has over 70 communities across the U.S.

But first, let’s have a quick refresher on marketing automation.

Why does marketing automation for senior living matter?

Marketing automation enables you to send the right message to the right person at the right time. As its name suggests, everything happens automatically in the background. A website visitor’s actions enable marketing automation to glean the visitor’s intent and give them a lead score. The score helps determine the next steps.

For example, if someone downloads a guide about retirement planning and indicates they want to move to an independent living community within a couple of years, they would receive a different score than someone who requests a tour next week because their mom needs memory care ASAP.

The former would be considered a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). They’ve indicated intent and interest, but they’re not ready to buy now or any time soon. They’ll enter lead nurturing workflows designed to keep them engaged.

The latter is a sales-qualified lead (SQL). They’ve indicated sales readiness through their actions and the info provided through the tour request.

The marketing automation can keep track of everyone—who they are, their lead score, and what should happen next. The automation also frees up the marketing and sales team from mundane, repetitive processes—and the automation can quickly scale to accommodate multiple communities.

So, instead of keeping track of who’s who and when to send emails, the marketing team can focus on developing engaging content that attracts more qualified traffic to the website—think blog posts, videos, and social media content. Meanwhile, the sales team can focus on high-intent leads instead of wasting time working “all leads,” which has traditionally been the approach in senior living.

OK, so all of this might sound well and good in theory. But how does marketing automation work in practice? Is everything as seamless as we described above? And what about the results?

Below, we’re sharing two years’ worth of results for Sinceri Senior Living: August 2021 to August 2022, and August 2022 to August 2023. Sinceri is a prime example of how automation can enhance marketing efforts, streamline processes, and, most importantly, drive tangible results.

Year one: Building a solid foundation

Sinceri Marketing Numbers

The stories behind the numbers

Sinceri’s blog enjoyed an impressive 20,007 views, a crucial indicator of increasing online engagement. The real success, however, was evident in the conversion rates. The MQLs stood at 6,923, a significant portion of which (3,694) came from guide downloads and 3,229 from brochure downloads.

The SQLs were even more telling of the strategy’s effectiveness, with 5,160 conversions comprising 3,229 tours and 1,931 requests to speak with sales representatives. This successful nurturing of MQLs to SQLs was marked by 3,406 advancements, a testament to the effective combination of email nurturing and lead scoring.

The move-ins may be the most compelling evidence of the automation strategy’s success. Out of 343 total move-ins, 232 were attributed to first-touch SQLs and 111 to first-touch MQLs, translating into a remarkable $24,696,000 in revenue, considering the average resident lifetime value.

Year two: Refining strategy and focusing on quality

 

The stories behind the numbers

The second year (August 2022 to August 2023) showed an interesting trend. Although blog views decreased to 14,400, this wasn’t necessarily a setback. In fact, it highlighted a more targeted and quality-driven approach to traffic acquisition. The MQLs slightly increased to 6,995, indicating more efficient conversions despite lower traffic. The brochure downloads significantly rose to 5,206, showing a shift in user preference and content effectiveness.

The SQLs saw a notable increase to 7,773, underscoring the efficiency of the nurturing process. The number of move-ins also rose to 392, with a higher proportion of first-touch SQLs (251) than first-touch MQLs (141). This translated into a staggering $28,224,000 in revenue, further cementing the effectiveness of marketing automation in driving real financial outcomes.

The value of marketing automation for senior living operators

The above results demonstrate the value of marketing automation for senior living communities. The results include:

  • Enhanced engagement: Automation tools help the right leads receive the right messages at the right time, boosting engagement and conversions to the next steps.
  • Improved conversion rates: The transition from MQLs to SQLs and then to actual move-ins highlights how automation streamlines the lead nurturing process and positively impacts conversions.
  • Increased revenue: The substantial rise in revenue over two years highlights the direct financial benefits of adopting a well-strategized marketing automation system.

Sinceri Senior Living’s experience with marketing automation offers invaluable insights for other senior living communities. It demonstrates that with the correct setup and strategy, marketing automation isn’t simply a tool for efficiency; it’s a pathway to meaningful engagement, better conversions, and significant revenue growth.

Want to turbocharge your community’s marketing? Let’s talk!

We can help you implement marketing automation so that it delivers the ROI you crave. Get in touch and let’s talk about marketing automation.

Senior woman outdoors hiking with backpack.

What Is a Solo Ager & How Do You Market to Them?

You’ve likely been hearing the term “solo ager” more and more. This is yet another demographic you must keep in mind as you market your senior living communities, especially if your levels of care focus on active adult living and independent living.

But what is a solo ager, exactly? Do you need a completely new marketing playbook for them? This article aims to answer those and other relevant questions.

What is a solo ager?

Solo agers are adults in their mid-50s and older who are aging “solo” since they don’t have children or current life partners. Some solo agers might be widowed or divorced—or they never married in the first place. Others might not have any children—or the children they had are deceased. Whatever their circumstances, what solo agers have in common is navigating their senior years on their own.

A synonym for solo agers includes “kinless seniors.” (The New York Times published “Who Will Care for Kinless Seniors” in June 2023, which is worth the read.)

Here are some interesting stats about this demographic:

12% of adults over 50 are aging solo. [Source: AARP]

27% of American adults aged 60 and older are aging solo, and older adults in the U.S. are more likely to live alone than anywhere else in the world. [Source: Pew Research Center]

The percentage of one-person households more than tripled in the U.S. between 1940 and 2020, going from 7.7% to 27.6%. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

In 2019, nearly one million older Americans had no spouse, partner, children, or siblings (approximately 370,000 were women over 75). [Source: The New York Times]

Solo agers aren’t necessarily sad about going it alone

Don’t let any negative connotations with the word “solo” fool you. Many solo agers have chosen this path. For example, some older adults might end a long-term marriage later in life to pursue happiness elsewhere, like Al and Tipper Gore famously did. This is known as “gray divorce,” and it’s been on the rise.

And even if becoming a solo ager wasn’t intentional, that doesn’t mean solo agers are necessarily sad about their position (though some are). As AARP notes in a recent survey, even though solo agers might face challenges, most feel “optimistic about their quality of life as they age,” with only 12% of those surveyed saying they feel pessimistic.

Still, it’s also worth noting that the same AARP article revealed that solo agers haven’t planned for their future living arrangements, even though statistically 70% of people over 65 will need long-term care at some point.

This suggests an opportunity for senior living marketers. The question becomes how to effectively reach this demographic.

How is marketing to solo agers different from marketing to other demographics?

Senior living communities are used to interacting with adult children just as much as older adults. With solo agers, the concept of an adult child (or other family member) is no longer in play. This could make the sales process easier since you won’t have multiple influencers, just the solo ager. The challenge will be piquing the solo ager’s interest to begin with.

The AARP survey revealed that most solo agers haven’t given thought to what’s next: “Among those still living in their own home, the survey shows 95% have not made a reservation at a community for older adults, looked for a cheaper or easier place to live (82%), or modified their home to make it easier to live in as they age (78%).”

This suggests the solo ager sales cycle might be longer than for independent living, which is already long and requires at least 22 touch points.

Developing marketing campaigns for solo agers—starting with educating them on what senior living is and how they can finance it as a single person—is a smart first step communities can take now. You should also produce content about related issues that solo agers are researching and reading online. For example, many solo agers subscribe to AARP publications. Running ads or advertorials with AARP could be a way to begin planting the seed with solo agers that there’s a place for them in senior living.

  • PRO TIP: A great time to engage solo agers is around the holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. You could do a targeted campaign for solo agers in your area, inviting them to a festive event in your community. The fourth quarter is historically slow for senior living sales because potential residents want to spend one last holiday with their families. But most solo agers won’t have this objection. Your marketing and sales teams could create a compelling offer that entices solo agers to move in November or December.

Do you need a new marketing playbook for solo agers?

Good news! Your marketing playbook doesn’t need to change, but the messaging does. You’ll still want to use marketing automation and compelling content, just like you do for other demos. But you’ll need to begin with more education and help solo agers feel like there’s a true place for them in your community and that you’re not simply swapping the words “solo agers” into all of your existing messaging geared toward other personas, like older couples or people with adult children.

Instead, you must offer messaging that will resonate with this demo and reinforce their independence and desire for choice while empowering them to see the value in—and ultimately make the move to—senior living.

  • Develop a solo ager persona. This is an entirely new persona, one that will evolve as everyone begins to better understand the solo ager’s specific wants and needs.
  • Create educational content that will resonate with them. This persona needs educational content that demonstrates you understand who they are.
  • Follow solo-aging trends. Because this persona is so new, no one has it figured out. We’re in unchartered territory. (The name “solo ager” might change, too.) Set up relevant Google Alerts on solo aging and any synonyms that develop. Follow brands that successfully cater to this demo and study their messaging. Experiment with different messaging, see what works, and fine-tune from there.

From a broader organizational perspective, senior living communities might need to rethink what senior living looks like for this demo. (This is true for Boomers, too.) These are incredibly independent personas. Apartments with shared walls won’t be as attractive as stand-alone homes. This shift could impact your existing campus—or plans for new construction. But it’s not an unheard-of idea. (This senior living community in Massachusetts offers spacious two-bedroom standalone cottages with garages on its campus—and all the typical amenities, like dining and housekeeping.)

Bottom line: Start focusing on solo agers NOW

This is a long-term play. Solo agers in their mid-60s won’t be signing leases with your assisted living or independent living community tomorrow—or next year. However, if you prime this persona’s pump now, especially through education and by demonstrating you understand their unique needs, your community will stand a better chance of engaging with them when they are ready.

If you need help with any of this, work with us. We’ve created a bunch of solo aging-specific content, including a guide designed specifically for solo agers, that our clients can customize and use to target this demo. Reach out to learn more.