Archive for category: Marketing Resources

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

Here are some questions to ask:

• What are people saying about your tours? Check post-tour surveys, online reviews, and other available feedback. Are there any common negative themes that the sales team needs to address?

• Are the sales reps crushing their tours? It’s easy to become complacent and go through the motions. Investing in training—even if it’s just the occasional half-day session—can have a big ROI.

• Is there a straightforward tour-day process that everyone understands? For example, each morning, your front desk should receive a list of people who’ll be touring that day. Front desk staff should know what to do and who to call when someone arrives. Do they escort the tour attendees to a warm, inviting room with coffee and tea? Do they offer to take coats or show people where the restroom is? This is where your front desk staff can truly shine as concierges.

• Do you have a solid post-tour strategy in place? What happens after the tour matters. Some people will be ready to move forward with your community—yay! But what about the others? You must be proactive and develop a plan for prospects who stall or go silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The benefits of doing this are many:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about a missed opportunity!

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

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

Include the following info:

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

Think videos

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

Here are some ideas:

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

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

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

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

Add FAQs

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

Create solid pre-tour communications. 

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

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

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

Tour confirmation email

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day-of-tour reminder email

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

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

Need more tours, deposits, and move-ins?

We have a proven system for getting more high-quality leads and turning them into more tours, deposits, and move-ins. Get in touch and we’ll explain how we do it.

Content makes the senior living marketing world go round, but not just any content. You must have strategic content that reaches the right prospect at the right time. Otherwise, what’s the point?

For example, you could have the most fantastic content to go with your sales pitch, but if someone is only in the early stages of learning about senior living, you’ll be wasting your time.

This is why we recommend focusing on the various stages of the sales funnel and matching the best content for each stage.

What’s the sales funnel?

The sales funnel indicates where your prospects are at any point during their buying journey. It is typically segmented into three sections: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

• The Awareness stage happens at the top of the funnel. In this stage, people realize that they or a loved one needs senior living. This stage is education focused. Prospects learn about senior living, how much it costs, how to finance it, and different care levels.

• The Consideration stage happens in the middle of the funnel. As the name suggests, people in this stage are considering their options. Note: Not everyone in this stage will necessarily “buy” senior living. Some might decide to stay in their home or move in with family members, for example. They’re considering all their options.

• The Decision stage happens at the bottom of the funnel. Folks in this stage are poised to buy. But again, not everyone will buy. And even if they buy, it might not be for months or years. (The sales cycle in senior living is notoriously long for certain lifestyle options, like independent living.) And, of course, they might not choose your community.

In senior living marketing, we also discuss three other stages—Whether, Where, and When—that coincide with the Awareness, Consideration, and Decision stages.

For example, during the Whether stage, people often wonder “whether” they should move into senior living, whether they can afford it, and whether they must sell their home before moving. They’ll turn to the Internet for answers to these questions and to educate themselves (which is why this stage coincides nicely with the Awareness stage). Read more about the Whether, Where, and When stages.

Why is it critical to match the right content to the right stage?

As we mentioned, if you give someone good content at the wrong time, you’re essentially wasting good content. You’re also missing an opportunity to deliver content that will resonate better with the prospect.

For example, the divorced woman in her early sixties who is thinking about retirement isn’t interested in reading customer stories about your community or coming in for a tour yet. She’s still in the early Awareness stage, where she’s educating herself about senior living, costs, and so forth.

On the other hand, someone who has already toured your community doesn’t need a guide explaining what senior living is. They are way past that point. And if you send it to them as follow-up content after they tour your community, you’ll not only look silly, but you’ll also waste an opportunity to give them content that could actually be helpful in their decision-making process.

What type of content formats work best for each stage?

What follows isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s a good overview of the types of content that senior living marketers and writers should be planning.

Good senior living marketing content for the Awareness stage

• Blog posts optimized for search
• Infographics
• Videos
• Listicles
• Educational guides (e.g., Senior Living 101, How to Fund Senior Living)
• Educational webinars
• General FAQs (about senior living in general)
• Self-directed surveys (e.g., What senior living lifestyle is best for you?)

Good senior living marketing content for the Consideration stage

• Case studies/customer stories
• Comparison charts (your community compared to others in the area)
• Day-in-the-life videos
• Day-in-the-life blog posts
• Meet the staff videos/blog posts
• Webinars
• Specific FAQs (about your community specifically)
• Decision toolkit
• Interactive elements (like interactive floor plans)
• Lead nurturing emails

Good senior living marketing content for the Decision stage

• Invites to on-site events (book clubs, musical events, lunch & learn series)
• Testimonial videos
• Case studies/customer stories
• Schedule a tour (make sure people can schedule their own)
• Post-tour nurturing emails

Notice that some content will overlap between stages. For example, case studies and customer stories can be used in both the Consideration stage, when people are thinking through their options, and the Decision stage when they have whittled their choices down to your community (hopefully) and one or two others.

When creating the content, make sure your buyer personas are current. Not every community’s ideal resident is the same. For example, a luxury community that caters to high-net-worth people won’t spend money developing content about how to afford senior living.

Content marketing is an investment, but when done right, you’ll enjoy an excellent ROI.

The key is doing it right. Here are more articles to help you write compelling content that converts people in various sales funnel stages.

✔    How to Create Engaging Content for Your Website

✔    Content Offer Ideas for Senior Living Marketing

✔    Content Marketing for Local SEO: What to Write

✔    Best Content for Email Marketing to Baby Boomers

✔    More Bottom-of-the-Funnel Content Ideas for Senior Living

✔    What to Look for in a Content Marketing Agency for Senior Living

Or you can reach out to us and have our team of fabulous writers do the heavy lifting for you.

When it comes to senior living sales, we often discuss best practices, like finding gold in lost or cold leads. But stories are much more compelling, right?

Below, we share results we achieved for a client and the takeaways you can learn and apply to your own community.

Many lost leads aren’t actually lost—they’re simply deferred.

Remember, lost leads were once qualified leads.

Unfortunately, something happened along the way that forced these leads into the dark abyss known as the “lost lead” category in your senior living CRM. Leads in this bucket might also have labels like cold, unable to reach, decided to stay home, chose home care, or moved in with family.

But here’s the secret about these leads. Don’t think of them as lost forever. Think of them as deferred.

• That person the sales team reached out to only once or twice might not have been ready for the sales call then, but they could very well be months later.
• Those who decided to stay home might think about things differently after a snowy winter.
• That person who chose home care might have more needs than the aides can handle—or that the person’s home can accommodate.

Our point: Revisiting lost leads is a smart strategy. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And thanks to marketing automation, you don’t need to put the onus on your senior living sales team to call or manually email hundreds or thousands of lost leads. A turnkey email campaign (we call ours “Stay in Touch“) can do the heavy lifting. If someone bites (i.e., engages), then the sales reps can get involved at that point.

Here’s a recent success story using this approach.

We went through this process with one of our clients, Sinceri Senior Living. They had around 4,300 cold leads that they wanted to re-engage. Our automated “Stay in Touch” email marketing campaign resulted in 20 move-ins, equating to three million dollars in revenue. Not too shabby, right?

Even better: An additional 350 (or so) leads re-engaged (whether it was moving to marketing-qualified or sales-qualified status), so the sales reps then had another 350 engaged leads to work with.

⮚      TAKEAWAY: Don’t ignore lost or cold leads. View them as opportunities. Create a plan for entering them into an automated email campaign that will re-engage and convert at least some of them to tours, deposits, and move-ins.

Most stalled leads won’t stay stalled forever.

Your community likely has a bucket of marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) that have gone through your nurturing workflows, yet they still haven’t advanced to sales-qualified lead (SQL) status.

Stuck MQLs also offer great opportunities. Sure, after they’ve gone through your nurturing workflows, you could simply enroll them in your email newsletter and call it a day. But that likely won’t be enough to nudge them.

That’s why we recommend creating a slow-burn, long-term drip campaign. We call ours “Still thinking?” In it, we offer ways for the person to self-identify where they’re at in the process, if things have changed for them, and so forth.

Again, this is an automated email campaign—no heavy lifting for sales or marketing (once you set it up). The goal is to re-energize some of the stuck leads. It won’t work on all of them, but even if you can get a small portion to move forward, it’s all good.

And for the rest of the leads that truly cool down to the point they enter the “lost” bucket? You can give them a break from emails for a while before entering them into the “Stay in Touch” campaign. And don’t worry: Good marketing automation, like HubSpot, has settings you can enable to ensure people don’t go through the same workflows repeatedly.

Here’s a recent success story using this approach.

We used the “Still thinking?” campaign with Sinceri. The result? Twenty percent of the stalled MQLs advanced to SQL status.

⮚      TAKEAWAY: You have to nudge MQLs along. Yes, even after they’ve been through the initial nurturing workflow. The sales cycle for senior living can be long (especially for independent living).

Would you like to experience similar conversions with your cold or stuck leads?

The results we achieved for Sinceri Senior Living weren’t an isolated experience. We strive to get these results for all of our clients. Get in touch and let’s talk about how to convert cold and stuck leads into move-ins.

The success of your senior living marketing—whether in-house or outsourced—is measured by tours, deposits, and move-ins. While it might be tempting to think your marketing is “working” as long as those three things consistently trend upwards, you could be leaving money on the table and not even realize it.

Budget season is the perfect time for a gut check. Here’s what to do . . .

Review your traffic and conversion sources.

As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Questions to ask:

• Do you have complete visibility into each of your marketing channels, including digital and traditional?
• Are you using UTM tags properly so you know where people are coming from and how, when, and where they convert?
• Do you use centralized marketing technology, like HubSpot or something similar, that empowers you to monitor traffic sources and campaigns throughout the prospect’s journey?
• Does your marketing tech integrate with your CRM? If not, the two systems won’t communicate, leading to disjointed data.

By asking these questions, you can identify areas you need to fix or improve. For example, if you recently launched an email marketing campaign, but the tracking is broken or non-existent, you won’t know if the campaign is working—or how well.

Or maybe your website traffic and conversion sources are not aligned or a historically successful source of qualified leads is trending down.

Again, these things can be subtle and easy to miss, especially if conversions seem good and the sales team appears happy. You must be proactive, pop the hood, and see what’s what. If you don’t, you might lose out on viable leads that could turn into tours, deposits, and move-ins.

Evaluate your content’s performance.

You need content for all phases of the buyer’s journey. However, too many marketing teams fall into the trap of thinking that the most popular content produces the most conversions.

That’s not always the case, which is why it’s essential to understand which pieces of content drive the most tours, deposits, and move-ins.

For example, guides like “How to fund senior living” tend to be top downloads for many communities. But the question is, how many of the people who download the funding guides ultimately convert into move-ins?

With some of our clients, we’ve discovered that when we look at the people who’ve moved in and best reflect the ideal customer profile, another piece of content—like a decision-making toolkit—actually converts more move-ins.

Intel like this can help you adjust and optimize your content marketing strategy. This is why you shouldn’t get hung up on vanity metrics like most downloads. Instead, always consider which content (and which content paths) produce the best conversions to tours, deposits, and move-ins.

Assess your budget allocation, look for wasteful spending, and adjust accordingly.

Here’s a four-step process to follow when developing your budget. Doing this will help ensure you’re putting all of your marketing dollars to good use:

• Consider your current budget for each channel (e.g., organic, paid, social, etc.). Remember, the best way to inform future strategy is through current performance.
• Review each channel’s results. And not just contacts and leads—you must know which channels are producing tours, deposits, and move-ins.
• Identify any gaps. What don’t you have in your marketing stack? For example, if you haven’t launched a new version of your website in three years, you probably need a new one or a significant refresh at the very least.
• From there, reallocate your budget accordingly. Put more dollars toward what’s delivering the most tours, deposits, and move-ins.

Now’s also a good time to audit your martech stack for technology and software you’re still paying for but not using. You’re wasting budget that you could be using somewhere else that actually helps generate more leads—and ultimately tours, deposits, and move-ins.

• PRO TIP: Communities often wonder how to split their budget between digital and traditional marketing. This will depend on various factors, including the care level you’re selling, what type of community you have (rentals vs. life plan communities, for example), and even location. A rule of thumb: for-profit properties, an 80/20 split makes sense. For non-profits, a 70/30 split works (these communities tend to send more direct mail).

Understand and monitor key metrics.

Do you know the lifetime value of a resident? If not, tackle that first. It’s the granddaddy of all metrics.

Make sure you’ve set up clear goals and conversion tracking:

• Define and track specific conversion goals, such as form submissions or phone calls.
• Analyze conversion funnels to identify potential drop-off points. (More on drop-offs below.)
• Implement tracking codes and pixels for accurate measurement.

Analyze demographic and behavioral data:

• Explore demographic insights of website visitors and email subscribers.
• Analyze user engagement based on age, location, and interests.
• Use this data to refine your buyer personas and marketing messages for them.

Pay attention to funnel drop-off points:

• Identify stages in the conversion funnel with high drop-off rates.
• Analyze user behavior, messaging, or design issues causing drop-offs.
• Optimize those specific areas to improve conversion rates.

Remember, the above items still matter if you work with an outside senior living marketing agency.

The primary difference is that you’ll collaborate with the agency about these items.

If you’re questioning whether your agency is the right fit and delivering measurable ROI, you should take a step back and evaluate their work—and your relationship with the account team.

Remember, a good agency will:

• Create custom dashboards that highlight the metrics that matter most in achieving your goals
• Be proactive in delivering reports, analysis, and recommended adjustments
• Not be afraid to make changes based on what the data says
• Act like a partner rather than a vendor

Some communities might find the agency’s results OK, but the customer service is severely lacking. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice one for the other. A good agency will value its relationship with you and promptly respond to emails, calls, and requests.

Still not sure you have the right agency?

Check out eight signs it might be time to fire your senior living marketing agency. Or you can simply contact us! We value our client relationships and love getting great results for them.

If you’re one of our regular blog readers or podcast listeners, you might have heard us talk about the importance of having a marketing system. But what is a marketing system? How is it different from a senior living marketing plan? And do you need both?

Below, we explore this topic by drawing from our podcast with Sarah Nay, the COO of Duct Tape Marketing. (Listen to the full podcast here.)

What is a marketing plan?

A senior living marketing plan outlines specific tactics and actions designed to achieve your marketing objectives. While a marketing plan is crucial for identifying what your team must do daily, weekly, and monthly, it will fall short if it doesn’t integrate into a broader, more dynamic strategy.

The main issue? Too many marketing plans list tactics like blogging, emailing, posting to social media (and so forth) without taking that all-important step back to understand the “why” behind each item.

What is a marketing system?

A marketing system, on the other hand, is a comprehensive, strategic framework that guides all marketing efforts. Before getting into a list of day-to-day or month-to-month tactics (i.e., your marketing plan), the marketing system delves into a cohesive marketing strategy that aligns with your overall business goals.

This strategy work includes things like:

• Analyzing your community’s online presence
• Doing competitor research
• Conducting resident and family interviews
• Defining and creating the prospect-to-resident journey
• Developing buyer personas
• Creating messaging that will resonate with the personas

Once you understand those things, you will have a much better grasp of the “whys” behind your marketing efforts and how those efforts will help the community achieve its business goals (for example, increasing revenue by X percent year over year).

Why your senior living community needs a marketing system and a marketing plan

Here’s why you need both to effectively market your senior living community.

1. Strategic Direction and Tactical Execution

A marketing system provides strategic direction, ensuring your efforts align with your business goals. The marketing plan, on the other hand, outlines the specific tactics and actions needed to execute this strategy. Together, they ensure that every action you take is purposeful and contributes to your long-term objectives.

2. Consistency and Flexibility

A marketing system ensures consistency in messaging and branding across all channels, creating a cohesive experience for your audience. The marketing plan allows for flexibility, detailing the specific actions to be taken and adjusted as needed based on performance metrics.

3. Comprehensive Coverage

While a marketing plan focuses on immediate actions, a marketing system ensures that these actions are part of a larger, integrated strategy. This comprehensive approach covers every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to conversion and retention.

4. Improved ROI

By integrating a marketing system with a well-crafted marketing plan, you can track and measure the ROI of each tactic more effectively. This transparency allows for better resource allocation and more informed decision-making, ultimately driving higher returns on your marketing investments.

Key differences between senior living marketing plans and marketing systems

1. Scope and Depth

• Marketing Plan: Typically more tactical, focusing on specific actions to achieve short-term goals.
• Marketing System: Holistic and strategic, encompassing the entire customer journey and ensuring all marketing activities are interconnected.

2. Approach

• Marketing Plan: Often a static document outlining what needs to be done.
• Marketing System: Dynamic and iterative, adjusting strategies based on ongoing performance metrics and feedback.

3. Integration

• Marketing Plan: Might include isolated tactics without a unifying strategy.
• Marketing System: Ensures all marketing efforts are integrated and support a unified strategic direction.

Bottom line: Think marketing system first, marketing plan second.

Relying solely on a tactical marketing plan will not yield the results you want. To drive occupancy and build a thriving community, you need a smart strategy that informs your marketing plan.

The marketing system provides the strategic backbone, while the marketing plan outlines the specific actions needed to achieve your goals. By integrating these two elements, you can create a cohesive, dynamic marketing approach that delivers consistent, measurable results.

Need help with your community’s marketing strategy, plan, or both? Get in touch.