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

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When it comes to online search, content is still king. The words you use on your senior living website, blog, and social channels matter—big time.

If you’re thinking about working with a content marketing agency, here’s what to look for as you research your options.

Does the content marketing agency offer only writing services? Or can it provide a strategy as well?

Strategy informs the writing. But here’s the thing: A good content strategist doesn’t always translate into being a good writer. And a good writer doesn’t always make for a good strategist. Ideally, look for a content marketing agency that can deliver both.

Questions to ask:

  • How do they conduct their strategy work? How involved are the clients? (You should absolutely have input.)
  • How do they communicate strategy to the writer or writers?
  • How do they monitor the writer’s content to make sure it’s on track with the strategy?
  • How do they measure the content and the strategy’s overall effectiveness? What metrics do they use?

Does the agency have writers in-house? Or does it farm out everything?

It’s perfectly OK if a content marketing agency uses freelance writers. Not all agencies can employ dozens of writers. But a reputable agency should have a core staff and a solid stable filled with good freelancers. Think of it like starting pitchers and bullpens. To have a winning team, you need both.

What you want to avoid, however, is the firm that claims it’s a content marketing agency, but it outsources everything to another firm, or it outsources all writing to cheap resources. The former situation results in marked-up prices. The latter usually results in weak copy.

When it comes to writing, this old chestnut always holds true: You get what you pay for. If you want your content to convert leads into move-ins, then you need capable writers who can write compelling copy.

Do the writers understand the tenets of search engine optimization (SEO)?

Lots of great writers exist out there. But not all of them understand SEO—or how to write optimized content without sounding awkward.

Do the writers and content strategists have experience in senior living?

While this isn’t a must-have, it can be extremely helpful to work with writers and content strategists who already have working knowledge of the senior living industry. If they don’t have any experience, ask the agency how it gets writers up to speed when collaborating with clients in new industries.

What to look for in their answers:

  • Buyer personas. If the content marketing agency asks about your buyer personas and/or recommends starting with this work, that’s a good sign.
  • Keyword research. A good content marketing agency should discuss its approach to keyword research, since this work will shed valuable light on the industry itself. (Keyword research might come up during the SEO discussion as well.)

Can the content marketing agency provide examples of content and strategy that delivered big ROI?

Remember, strategy and copy go together like peanut butter and jelly. Reputable content marketing agencies shouldn’t have any qualms about sharing examples of strategies and content that converted.

If the agency has direct experience in senior living, make sure you ask to see industry-specific examples of blog posts and premium content, like guides and e-books. Ask specifically about conversions: marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads to move-ins. After all, increasing occupancy is the number one goal for senior living communities.

Do you like the agency’s content?

A content marketing agency should be putting its best face forward on its website and in its marketing materials. This means compelling, clear, and clean copy.

  • How does the site read?
  • Does the copy have personality?
  • If the agency has a blog, is it regularly updated with interesting content?
  • Does the agency offer premium content, like e-books and white papers? If yes, what’s the copy “experience” like from landing pages to thank-you emails?
  • How about social media? What do you think of the voice, the content, and the topics being discussed in different social media channels?
  • Does the site have a team page with bios? Do the writers’ bios demonstrate strong experience? (Check out the various writers’ LinkedIn profiles for further insights, including any public endorsements.)

Listen to your gut. If you’re not liking the agency’s own website or you spot errors (like grammar issues), move on.

Let’s Chat!
lead generation ideas for senior living people infographic

Lead Generation Ideas for Senior Living: Revisit Cold Prospects

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When it comes to lead generation ideas for senior living, everyone is always shouting, “We want MORE leads.”

But as we discussed in a previous article about lead quality vs. quantity, more isn’t always better. That’s why we’re big fans of getting our clients to embrace the following strategy:

Clients who follow this proven formula will see the overall quality of leads improve and conversion rates (i.e., lead to MQL, MQL to SQL, SQL to move-in) increase as well. But keep in mind that this is a strategy to implement on a go-forward basis.

What about the existing database we inherit when we start an engagement with a client? The one that’s often filled with thousands of cold prospects? Should we dump them and move on? Or is there any gold in those cold leads? One of the most overlooked lead generation ideas for senior living lies in cold leads.

Some folks might be surprised to learn that we don’t recommend dumping a cold database. Revisiting it can be fruitful, provided you have a smart strategy to re-engage these leads.

How re-engaging your cold database serves two purposes:

  • It will allow you to continue the conversation with prospects who weren’t ready to act previously but are in a better place to do so now.
  • It will help you clean out your senior living CRM of truly “dead” prospects, meaning those who will never become customers. Having a clean and accurate database will also offer a more realistic view of your overall sales pipeline.

Remember, most old/cold leads haven’t received any substantive follow-up. Prospects inquire at various stages of readiness, but salespeople can only work 10 – 12 active leads at a time. Because of this, the reps tend to focus on leads closest to making a decision. All the other leads tend to receive minimal follow-up. If the lead doesn’t advance at that point, it’s labeled cold or dead (when in reality, the lead simply isn’t ready and needs more nurturing).

How does a re-engagement campaign for cold leads work?

  • To start, you’ll send a series of short surveys to gauge interest. For example, if after receiving three surveys, a particular lead does not participate in a survey or even open your emails, you can safely assume the lead is indeed cold. The automation will determine this automatically, removing the lead from your senior living CRM.
  • If a lead does respond to one of the surveys, they will enter an appropriate workflow based on their answers. The workflow will continue to serve them relevant content based on survey answers and/or additional actions they take throughout the campaign.
  • What people download—and when—will determine what communications they receive next. Again, this happens automatically behind the scenes, thanks to marketing automation.

Essentially, re-engaging a cold database works like any other good lead nurturing campaign. Instead of nurturing marketing-qualified leads, you’re marketing to leads that are several steps behind MQLs. The goal is to re-engage those leads and get them back on track to becoming bona fide MQLs.

At the end of the campaign, you’ll have lists with the following:

  • Re-engaged leads ready for sales outreach
  • Re-engaged leads ready for continued nurturing
  • Truly cold leads to remove from the CRM
  • “No action” prospects who can be enrolled in a monthly e-newsletter to continue re-engagement (if you so choose)

Interested in a solution that does everything we describe above?
Use our “Stay in Touch” program.

One of the best lead generation ideas for senior living, our Stay in Touch program, includes a library of ready-to-go emails, downloadable offers (complete with content for the landing pages), and email workflows associated with each offer. These will be templated so you can easily customize and add your community’s branding. You’ll also have a dedicated smart list to track conversions.

Once set up (using marketing automation, like HubSpot), everything will happen automatically. You and your team will simply monitor the activity and follow up with engaged prospects accordingly.

As for whether this program works? It sure does! Read how our Stay in Touch program turned thousands of cold leads into 2.6 million dollars in revenue for LCB Senior Living.

Let’s Chat!
senior living leads business infographic

Senior Living Leads: Think Quality vs. Quantity

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Whenever we deploy lead scoring and marketing automation for a client, we always receive the inevitable panicked call from someone on the sales team: Where did all the leads go?

Here’s the thing: The leads are still there. What’s changed is the way the leads are being handled. And that’s a good thing. Sales-qualified leads (SQLs) move onto the sales team, while the marketing automation nurtures the not-ready-yet leads. (Also known as marketing-qualified leads or MQLs.)

Why do we follow this strategy instead of the old “move all leads to sales no matter what” approach? Simple. Most senior living leads aren’t ready to buy.

Consider the following:

  • 80% of new leads never translate into sales. [Small Biz Genius]
  • 96% of visitors who come to your website aren’t ready to buy. [Small Biz Genius]
  • 50% of the leads you generate are qualified, but not ready to buy right now. [Business.com]
  • 25% of the leads you generate are totally unqualified; they won’t ever buy. [Business.com]
  • 19% of buyers want to connect with a salesperson during the awareness stage. 60% want to connect during the consideration stage. 20% want to talk during the decision stage. [HubSpot]
  • At least 50% of your prospects are not a good fit for what you sell. [HubSpot]

Obviously, mileage will vary depending on a variety of factors, but the overarching theme to keep in mind is this: Since most leads aren’t ready to buy, most won’t be interested in a sales interaction. So why serve up not-ready leads to the sales team?

Doesn’t it make more sense for your sales team to work the leads that have the highest potential of converting while your marketing team nurtures the cooler and warmer leads to turn red-hot? Of course it does!

Still, this can be a hard sell to a sales team that’s used to seeing a big bucket of all leads. So, what can you do to help your sales team embrace the idea that lead quality trumps quantity? Get them to focus on other things.

Instead of fixating on the number of senior living leads, sales reps should focus on the following:

1. Give sales-qualified leads the VIP treatment.

Sales-qualified leads are gold! Treat them as such. In other words, don’t give up on your SQLs after only one or two attempts.

Here’s more compelling stats from our friends at HubSpot:

  • 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes. And yet 48% of salespeople never even make a single follow-up attempt.
  • 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls. And yet 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call.
  • 70% of salespeople stop at one email. Yet if you send more emails, you’ve got a 25% chance to hear back.

2. Revisit buyer personas to ensure a solid understanding of prospects’ pain points.

Revisiting your buyer personas will help ensure the sales reps are familiar with all the relevant details—details that will help the reps ultimately sell better.

Reminder, personas are fictional representations of your ideal prospect. These personas provide important insights into things like challenges the prospect is facing, their financial health, and what they’re looking for in senior living.

Why is persona work so critical? If sales reps are only focusing on sales-qualified leads, the leads will probably closely match a corresponding persona. Now, instead of the sales rep having to rely on a broad one-size-fits-all sales pitch, they can customize their presentations to solve for the lead’s specific challenges, thanks to the intelligence provided by the persona.

Isn’t that a much smarter sales strategy?

3. Audit sales collateral used in follow-up communications with SQLs.

Sales reps might be working fewer leads, but they’ll be working better leads. Once again, you need to consider these your VIP leads and give them the VIP treatment. This most certainly includes how you follow up with them—including the words you use in your emails and the content you provide in brochures and guides.

Audit your existing follow-up materials, especially all emails. Create email templates that cover most scenarios you encounter. For example, create a set of emails for that awesome lead who is on the fence between your community and one of your competitors. Another set of emails for the hot lead who is leaning your way, but just needs a nudge. And so forth.

Doing this legwork now will make it easier to quickly customize when you need to send something out.

4. Offer an array of options for interacting with senior living leads.

If the pandemic taught us anything it’s this: It is possible to sell senior living via virtual methods like Zoom and online tours. And just because the pandemic is winding down doesn’t mean you need to abandon these methods, either.

Providing VIP prospects with multiple ways for them to interact with you will help make it easier for them to do exactly that.

5. Provide input to marketing teams regarding ideas for emails that nurture marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).

The marketing team usually manages the lead nurturing campaigns, but sales should provide input. After all, everyone’s goals are aligned—to convert MQLs to SQLs to move-ins. Sales reps often hear feedback from prospects regarding info that the prospects sought during the buying process but couldn’t find. Share these learnings with your marketing counterparts.

Remember: When it comes to senior living leads, quality beats quantity. Every. Single. Time.

We can help get your marketing and sales teams up to speed with lead scoring, marketing automation, and effective lead nurturing. Get in touch and let’s chat.

Let’s Chat!
marketing senior living communities couple on computer

Marketing Senior Living Communities: 3 Ways to Keep it Real

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One of the biggest challenges when it comes to marketing senior living communities is making sure the community sounds different from all the other ones out there. This is no easy feat since most communities are essentially selling the same thing.

Need some help standing out? Here are three strategies for creating authentic content so that you don’t sound like everyone else.

1. Paint vivid pictures and tell compelling stories.

Most senior living communities talk about the same features and amenities—and in the same boring ways.

  • We have a fitness center and lots of fun activities! (Really? So does the gym down the street.)
  • We have a chef who makes nutritious and delicious meals! (As opposed to all those chefs making unhealthy, yucky meals?)
  • We have the most beautiful grounds and views! (Prove it. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.)

While these features are no doubt relevant, you should recast them in a fresh light if you want to differentiate your community from all the others.

Ask yourself…

  • What makes your fitness center and activities so special?
  • What makes your food so great?
  • What makes your grounds so special?

Dig deep. Find the diamonds. What do we mean by that? Well, consider the following blurbs—and the pictures they paint and the stories they tell.

Fitness is a way of life in our community. One of the first things you’ll notice when you visit our community is our on-site fitness center. It’s near the main entrance, and it’s in a gorgeous building with lots of natural light thanks to all the windows. But that’s not why you’ll notice it. You’re going to notice it because you’re going to FEEL the energy pulsing out of it, thanks to always-full classes in things like yoga, Tai Chi, Zumba.

Life is delicious, and so is our food—just ask Barbara. Barbara likes her eggs sunny side up and her coffee strong and black. She loves Reubens for lunch or our chef’s chicken salad—although she’s been known to opt for freshly made sushi when the mood strikes. For dinner, she loves a good roast or hearty pasta with meat sauce. And don’t forget the wine and charcuterie board beforehand that she has in our on-site pub. And did we mention the after-dinner drinks, cake, and conversation? In the warmer weather, you can find Barbara having her meals outside on our lovely patio. In the winter, she likes sitting by the roaring fire with a hot cuppa. She loves attending bread-making class on Saturday mornings and the gingerbread house-decorating party during the holiday season. (Barbara’s grandkids love this as well). But perhaps what Barbara likes best? “Someone else is doing all the cooking and cleanup!” she says with a laugh. “I just get to enjoy!” Wouldn’t you like to be Barbara?

Welcome to your happy place. We have five miles of gorgeous walking trails. In the spring, our gardens bloom with tulips and daffodils. Our resident bird-watching group keeps everyone up to speed on the various activities—from hummingbird sightings in May to hawk watching in September. Our property is filled with flowering dogwoods, mighty oaks, and maples with leaves so red they rival a sunset. Every window has a view—and offers up something new to see, like a chipmunk skittering over a rock wall, a turkey wandering near the woods, even a fox or two! Nature is so incredibly calming and revitalizing. We have plenty of benches to sit and simply “be.”

We’re riffing here, but you get the idea. Describe all the “usual” things like food, activities, and the property itself, but do it authentically so that no one could ever confuse your community with another one down the road.

2. Don’t use stock photos.

Stock photos can’t adequately capture the essence of your community. Not to mention, we often see the same stock photos showing up on competing websites. Don’t do this! Custom photography is an investment, but a worthwhile one.

With custom photography . . .

  • You can show real people living real lives in a real environment—your community.
  • You won’t have to worry about the same photo showing up on a competitor’s website.
  • You can caption the photos and reinforce the fact these are real residents and real staff in your community.

Update your photo library at least once a year (ideally, once a quarter). Photos can and should be repurposed for blog posts, print collateral, and—perhaps most importantly—social media, like Facebook and Instagram.

3. Give people click-worthy info.

If you’re going to write compelling narratives and paint vivid pictures, you need to do so every step of the way on your website. Entice people with interesting calls-to-action (CTAs) and make sure the content you’re serving up is worthy of a click.

For example, in the food/dining blurb we included in our first point above . . . what if you included two CTAs at the end of it: MEET OUR CHEF and EXPLORE OUR SUMMER MENU.

The “Meet Our Chef” CTA would open a lightbox with a video of your chef talking about their culinary point of view and what they love about creating food in your community. Or perhaps it leads to a Q&A blog post, complete with pictures that help your chef tell their story.

For the “Explore Our Summer Menu” call-to-action, this would open an actual menu that highlights different dishes. Think of nice restaurants and their menus—the way they describe ingredients and techniques as well as the pictures of scrumptious-looking dishes. Think of how you feel after you look at one of these yummy-looking menus. That’s the same feeling you’re trying to achieve here.

Let’s Chat!

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Senior Living Sales Tips: The Problem with Third-Party Leads

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Many senior living sales teams have become dependent on third-party lead aggregators to generate leads, tours, and move-ins. On the surface, a lead-gen aggregator sounds super appealing. You get more leads without lifting a finger, right? But as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

In today’s edition of senior living sales tips, we’re going to discuss the many problems with third-party leads (including how you should approach them if you’ve decided you simply can’t give them up).

1. All third-party leads are SHARED leads.

Unfortunately, it’s easy for senior living sales teams to buy into the illusion that they have plenty of leads if they’re only looking at the total number rather than the quality or the lead source itself.

Keep in mind, however, that lead aggregators aren’t sharing leads with just your community. They’re sharing the leads with five to seven other communities as well. Not to mention, a shared lead actually represents only 1/5 or 1/7 of an organic or exclusive lead. So you can’t consider any shared leads as “full” leads since doing so will artificially inflate your lead database or senior living CRM.

2. Third-party lead generators might provide a high volume of leads, but these leads typically have extremely low conversions.

It is not unusual for communities to attribute 80% of their total leads to third-party sources but only convert three to six percent of those leads to residents.

Think about that for a moment.

Your senior living sales team is spending eighty percent of its time working on leads that convert only three to six percent of the time! Organic leads, professional referrals, and friend and family referral sources all have significantly higher conversions.

3. Being first is the only one way to improve conversions (and that isn’t as easy as it sounds).

By “first,” we mean contacting the lead within 10 minutes of receiving it—and doing this on a regular basis day in and day out with all leads that come in. Talk about adding stress to your sales team!

And even if you are first, that might not get you very far since most marketing leads aren’t sales-ready until after six to eight marketing interactions.

4. You might already have the same lead in your CRM.

The lead the third-party aggregator provided might already exist in your senior living CRM because it came in another way, such as organic search or paid advertising.

And yet if you don’t promptly notify the third-party provider about the duplicate lead, you’ll end up “buying” a lead for a prospect you already have. Talk about a waste of valuable marketing dollars for your senior living sales team.

5. Third-party leads are expensive.

Most communities are paying the equivalent of one full month’s rent and care for third-party leads. Couldn’t you put that money to better use with marketing initiatives that bring in organic leads who are genuinely interested in your community? (Short answer: YES!)

Not ready to give up third-party lead aggregators just yet? At least be SMART about it.

If you’re going to continue with third-party lead aggregators, you need a smart strategy to convert leads faster using marketing automation technology. Luckily for you, we’ve created a solution that can help.

We call it “Speed to The Lead.” This solution will help your community respond quickly to third-party leads, deliver brochures immediately, and follow-up using an automated five-step lead nurturing workflow that nudges people along the sales funnel and encourages them to request a tour. Interested in hearing more about it? Get in touch and let’s chat!

senior living digital marketing man-struggling with bullseye graphic

Senior Living Digital Marketing: 5 Mistakes to Avoid

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What are some of the biggest senior living digital marketing mistakes that we see day in and day out? Keep reading!

Mistake #1: Not having a plan or strategy.

It’s OK to wing some things in life, like creating a soup using whatever is in your fridge. But marketing is not one of those things. Well, we suppose you could try to wing it. But we guarantee you won’t be happy with the results.

Why is this the case? Well, marketing has gotten a lot more complex in the last two decades thanks to search, social media, and smartphones. In the “old days” of marketing, you could get by with an ad in the Yellow Pages (remember those?) and direct mail. That’s not the case now. You need to think about organic search, paid search, your website and blog, social media, and yes—some of those traditional marketing methods, like direct mail and print ads.

Because marketing is so complex, you need to have a senior living digital marketing plan in place. A good plan will make sure you’re implementing tasks that will achieve your goals. It will also keep everyone “honest” in that everyone knows what needs to happen day to day, week to week, and month to month.

Bottom line: Sure, you might be able to get by for a little while if you opt for a haphazard seat-of-your-pants approach. But it will catch up with you. Why wait to fail? Focus on developing a strong senior living marketing strategy now so your community (and marketing and sales teams) can reap the rewards.

Mistake #2: Not being consistent.

Too often we see senior living marketing teams getting psyched once they have a plan, but then the reality of work life interferes, and that awesome plan falls by the wayside or fizzles out over time.

Here’s the thing: effective senior living digital marketing is all about consistency. Lather, rinse, repeat—that’s the name of the game. Marketing guru Seth Godin refers to this as the “Drip, drip, drip” of marketing. You need to show up every day and engage prospects and delight them before you can turn them into residents and—hopefully—raving fans.

Bottom line: If you fall off your marketing horse, be kind to yourself. It happens. And before you get back on, ask yourself and your team a few questions: Was the plan realistic? Do you need to delegate more? Do you need outside help from a digital marketing agency?

Mistake #3: Not paying attention to results.

Why do all the work if it doesn’t deliver the results you’re looking for (i.e., move-ins)? We hate busy work just for the sake of looking busy. That’s where strategy comes into play. But not all strategies are going to be winners, which is why you need to monitor and measure the results.

Bottom line: If one particular marketing activity isn’t generating any leads—or it isn’t moving the marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads—then you need to reconsider and recalibrate. You might want to tweak the activity in question and see if you get better results. Or you might want to put more time and money into the task that is working.

Mistake #4: Not embracing automation.

This one goes hand-in-hand with #2. The biggest reason that communities become inconsistent with their marketing is because they haven’t implemented tools that’ll help them be successful. And the tool we’re talking about here is marketing automation.

It would be impossible for one person or even one team to be responsible for manually doing things like analyzing and scoring leads, serving up and assigning the sales-qualified leads to the sales reps, and sending specific emails with specific content on a specific day and time to the marketing-qualified leads.

The only way to make it all work is through some sort of marketing automation. Any senior living community that shuns the idea is only hurting itself—and its marketing and sales teams. Don’t be this community!

Bottom line: Marketing automation makes life easier for marketing and sales teams while also delivering excellent results. (Provided it’s implemented correctly!) Psst: Need help sourcing and setting up the right marketing automation for your community? We can help!

Mistake #5: Not seeking expert help when you need it.

There’s no shame in outsourcing some of your digital marketing work. Even the most competent teams could use support—or even some strategy guidance from an objective third party. The key is making sure you use a senior living digital marketing agency, one that has experience in both digital marketing and senior living.

Bottom line: Senior Living SMART is the only agency whose team members have experience in digital marketing and senior living. We can help you avoid the big mistakes and get the results you crave. Get in touch!

Let’s Chat!
senior living marketing graphic of filling lead funnel

Senior Living Marketing Channels: Which Ones Matter in 2021?

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Which senior living marketing channels do the majority of your prospects hang out on today? Let’s keep it high level and discuss the big three umbrellas: Search, Social, and Email.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #1: The Search Is Over.

Who would have thunk when Google was founded in 1998 that it would take over in the way it has? Today, “google” is a verb, and it’s the first thing we all do when we’re searching for anything online, whether it’s a new place to eat, a new car to buy, or a new place to live, like a senior living community.

Sure, how your prospects get to you via search might not always be a straight line. Some searchers might come from review sites. Others from directories. Still others from your Google My Business listing or social media. And, of course, some will land on your website first and explore the above after. But it all starts with search.

We’ve shared stats like these before, but they’re worth sharing again:

Over 6000 searches related to senior living communities are made each hour. [Source: Senior Housing News]

Baby Boomers spend more time online than Millennials, and a staggering 92% of Boomers shop online. [Source: The Shelf]

Boomers have great attention spans and will read your content! 60% of Boomers regularly read blogs, and 70% percent watch video content online. [Source: The Shelf]

Boomers are almost as likely as Millennials to own a tablet. [Source: Marketing Charts]

68% of Boomers own a smartphone. [Source: Pew Research Center]

Plenty of senior living marketing tasks come under the search umbrella, including the following:

Bottom line: Whenever you think about senior living marketing, you should always be thinking about it in relation to search. Optimizing your digital marketing for search should drive everything you do.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #2: Let’s get social.

Social media is an important channel to focus on now—for a few reasons.

First, your prospects are already hanging out on various social platforms. Consider the following breakdown for social media usage among Baby Boomers in the U.S. according to Statista.

  • YouTube – 70%
  • Facebook – 68%
  • Pinterest – 27%
  • LinkedIn – 24%
  • Instagram – 23%
  • Twitter – 17%

Second, consider the generations following Boomers—specifically Gen X and older Millennials. They’re even bigger social media users. So investing in social media marketing now makes sense. You’ll capture the Boomers who are active, and you’ll be poised to welcome the next generations as they start thinking about senior living for themselves.

Third, you can be a lot more casual on social media than you can in other places, like your website or Google My Business listing. You can be whimsical. You can even make a typo without anyone walking away thinking you’re unprofessional. Best of all, you can give a real sense of what your community is like.

As we often remind our clients, all senior living communities are selling the same thing. Differentiating yourself from the community down the street or the next town over involves pulling back the curtain and letting people see your community’s true “essence”—those little things that make it different, special, and that might inspire someone to call your community home. Social media is a great way to share your community’s essence.

Senior living marketing activities that fall under the social media umbrella include:

Check out this series we recently completed on senior living social media marketing.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #3: The death of email has been greatly exaggerated.

The adoption of smartphones and tablets is one of the main reasons why email is alive and well—and will remain so for the near future.

This article reports that email is a top three distribution channel for both b2b and b2c marketers, that over 4 billion people around the world used email in 2020, and that email has over a 90% penetration rate among US internet users. The same article notes that email remains the most reliable channel for nurturing and converting marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads to actual customers.

Of course, the key to effective email marketing is making sure you have a smart strategy—and that you have good marketing automation that’ll help you execute that strategy. This involves understanding your prospects’ journeys so you can develop the right content for the right prospect and deliver it to them via email at the right time.

Remember, silo mentalities need not apply.

Don’t approach each senior living marketing channel as if it exists separately from the others. Instead, create one strategy that includes all three channels. Need help? You’ve come to the right place. Our strategic marketing roadmap is an excellent place to start.

Let’s Chat!
Marketing Automation graphic, HubSpot for senior living

Got HubSpot for Senior Living. Now What?

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We’ve had several senior living communities contact us because they recently purchased a license for marketing automation technology, like HubSpot for senior living, only to realize they had no idea what to do next.

We liken this experience to the holiday season when you’ve scored the one thing your child desperately wants, only to discover there are a thousand pieces you need to put together before your kid can play with the thing. And, come to find out, the special little magic wrench that screws everything together is missing.

That’s exactly how it can feel after you’ve signed a license for marketing automation like HubSpot. As you enter your shiny new online portal, you suddenly realize how many moving parts are involved—and how much work it’s going to take to get campaigns and workflows up and running. Not to mention, where the heck is that special little magic wrench anyway?

Our biggest piece of advice to senior living marketing teams is this: First, take a deep breath. Second, ask yourself the following questions. Because the truth is you might need to outsource the onboarding work to an agency partner that has experience in HubSpot for senior living.

1. Do you have existing staff to power your HubSpot for senior living?

Think in terms of immediate onboarding (the first 90 days are important). But consider the long haul as well. Is your marketing department one person? Or do you have a larger department where you can assign someone ownership of HubSpot? Is anyone on your team HubSpot certified? Or do you have someone in-house who’s ready to become a HubSpot master?

What to look for in the answer: First, there’s no right or wrong answer here. People bring different skill sets to their senior living marketing roles, and that’s OK. You might get lucky and have someone who is fluent in HubSpot—or who is a quick learner and willing to put in the time to get there.

If you don’t currently have a HubSpot person on staff—and no one has the bandwidth to take it on—then that’s a good sign it’s time to work with a HubSpot agency partner, like us.

2. Do you know what info you need from prospects—and how to use this info to inform your lead-nurturing workflows?

Good marketing automation helps you give the right person the right piece of content at the right time. But this process doesn’t magically happen on its own. You need to understand your prospective buyers—and their journeys. And you need to configure HubSpot so that you’re asking site visitors for the right info when they fill out a form. And by “right,” we mean information that’s relevant to your prospective buyers, such as their role in the decision, the decision stage, and their motivation.

What to look for in an answer: We love the adage, “You don’t need to know how to build a watch in order to tell time.” The same is true for marketing automation like HubSpot for senior living. It’s OK if you don’t know how to configure it. What’s essential is that you understand what you want it to do—and that you can articulate this to a HubSpot agency partner who can set it up properly for you.

3. Do you have multiple properties that are on your HubSpot portal?

Onboarding one property can be hard enough for a senior living marketing department to do on its own. But when multiple properties are involved? That’s when things can get super complicated super quick.

You need to build templates, create nurturing workflows with branching logic, create a strategy for lead scoring, develop lead distribution lists, and understand how to use personalization tokens so all communities can share the same email, landing page, and newsletter templates. When you successfully do the latter, you won’t have to copy these items over and over again for each property.

What to look for in an answer: Honestly, if multiple properties are involved, you should definitely work with a marketing automation expert. Even if it’s simply to spot check and test the setup your own team did. The only thing worse than no marketing automation is broken automation that sends the wrong piece of info to the wrong person. (Or does silly things like getting the name field wrong, so the email says, “Dear Fred” instead of “Dear Mary.”)

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4. Do you have the right content to keep the right prospects engaged?

When we say the “right” content, we mean content that will move marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads. Think relevant blogs, e-books, videos, infographics, and the like. You’ll be serving up this content to prospects based on their lead score and the email nurturing cadence you assign.

What to look for in an answer: If your content is lacking, it makes sense to work with a digital agency that can provide guidance on HubSpot and produce strong content. Remember, HubSpot can only do so much on its own. HubSpot is powerful, but if your current content offerings are weak, the results will be mediocre at best.

5. Is your HubSpot for senior living aligned with your sales process?

When communities start using marketing automation, the sales teams often panic due to what they perceive as a sudden drop in leads. Sales teams are used to working “all” leads. Yet this approach is inefficient because the majority of leads aren’t ready for a sales interaction.

Marketing automation helps segment leads into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs). Sales teams only need to follow up on the SQLs. The marketing automation will continue to nurture MQLs.

What to look for in the answer: The best way to avoid the panic is to educate the sales teams about this shift before you implement the software. This way you can address concerns. However, it can be hard to educate sales folks on this concept if it’s still a new concept to marketing teams as well. A good HubSpot agency partner can often provide training for both teams and ensure everyone’s goals are aligned.

How’d you do on our little “quiz”?

Did your answers surprise you? Did they make you realize that yes, your community needs assistance with configuring HubSpot? Let us help. We recently achieved the Platinum Tier in HubSpot’s Solutions Partners Program. This tier recognizes our expertise with all things HubSpot. We can help your community get yours up and running in no time. Get in touch and let’s talk HubSpot for senior living.

senior living social media infographic

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: Instagram, LinkedIn, & More

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This month, we’ve done a series on senior living social media marketing. In case you missed any articles and want to catch up, here are the links:

While YouTube and Facebook tend to be the most popular social media channels with Baby Boomers (the usage breakdown is 70% and 68% respectively, according to Statista), we predict that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) will grow quickly in popularity among Boomers. So, we wanted to share some ideas for Instagram and what communities should keep in mind as they experiment with this social media channel.

Then, we’re going to chat about LinkedIn. Nope, it’s not a social channel that you’ll use to attract prospective residents. But it can be a great platform for attracting prospective employees while solidifying your brand’s narrative.

Let’s get to it!

Instagram for senior living communities

First, some impressive stats. As Instagram notes . . .

  • 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
  • 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily.
  • 1/3 of the most viewed stories are from businesses.

Second, let’s talk images. Because that’s what Instagram is ALL about: pictures. In fact, 995 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second.

If you want to have any sort of success with this platform, you need to take great pics and post them regularly.

What sorts of pics should your community post? Have at it, we say! Think people (residents and staff), nature, animals, people, grounds, food, people, different areas of the community at different times of day/different seasons, holidays, events, and oh did we mention PEOPLE? :)

You get the idea. Instagram (IG) is all about capturing moments, and no doubt your community offers up many, many moments every single day. Use IG as a way to truly communicate your community’s essence. You want prospects to be able to browse through your IG feed and picture themselves in your community—or not—Instagram could also serve as a great way to help people disqualify themselves as well.

In a previous post about Facebook tips, we mentioned that you should encourage your entire staff to take pics as they go about their days. To make it easy, set up a Dropbox where people can add pics directly from their phones. Not all photos will make the cut, but it’s great to have options and to get people in the habit of taking and sharing pics.

Pro Tips:

  • Make sure you have a business profile for your community (rather than a personal profile). Business profiles, like business pages on Facebook, have added functionality baked in.
  • Make sure you have a complete bio and a link to your website. Keep in mind that you can’t include links within posts.
  • Be smart about hashtags. Hashtags are the way people share specific content with a wider audience—and the way people find the content. Less is actually more, however. Search Engine Journal reports, “Using more hashtags actually decreases the average engagement rate. It’s likely better to use fewer hashtags (no more than 5) than to use too many. Ultimately, when it comes to hashtags, it’s not about quantity. It’s about relevance.”
  • Take advantage of Instagram features, like IGTV. IGTV is for long-form videos (no more than 60 minutes when uploaded from the web and no more than 15 minutes when uploaded from mobile; go here for specs and here for how to upload). THIS is how you can repurpose your awesome YouTube videos. Talk about a bigger bang for your buck, right?

LinkedIn for senior living communities

As for LinkedIn, only 24% of Boomers use it, which makes sense since it’s a professional networking site. Most older adults are phasing out of full-time work rather than networking and looking for new jobs. That said, even though LinkedIn isn’t a platform you’d use to engage with prospects, it is a platform you’d use to engage with current employees AND prospective employees.

And great employees make for a great senior living community, right?

Pro Tips:

  • Make sure you create a company page. Individuals have personal profiles. Businesses need to create a company page. Just like Instagram business profiles, your LinkedIn company page will have more features. Make sure you have up-to-date imagery and brand narratives about your community. Be sure to talk about the community from an employee perspective as well.
  • Keep your company page up to date. We see too many communities with outdated company pages. While you might not be as active on LinkedIn as you are on Facebook or Instagram, you should still post updates. Sharing blog content is an easy way to do this.
  • Make sure employees follow the company page. If community employees have a presence on LinkedIn (i.e., they have a personal profile), encourage them to follow the company page. And encourage them to list their position with your company on their personal profiles.
  • Make sure key personnel have current personal profiles. For visibility purposes, you want to make sure the C-suite and managers have updated personal LinkedIn profiles that include their current position with your company. (If you have a company page and an employee lists it in the work history, LinkedIn will automatically “pull” the company logo from your business page—this is incredibly important from a consistent branding perspective.)

Don’t rule out other platforms for senior living social media marketing.

Plenty of other social media platforms exist—and popular ones too, relatively speaking, like Twitter and Pinterest. When it comes to social media, you need to think strategically. What’s going to give you the biggest bang for your marketing buck? Right now, that’s probably YouTube and Facebook, so we’d recommend focusing on those first. But absolutely mix in one or two more (and even more than that if you have the staff and budget).

Also keep in mind that what works for your target audience today might not work five years from now. For example, while TikTok is currently a young person’s playground, it might not stay that way. Remember, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, it was geared toward college kids. Today’s college kids are using other platforms, like IG, Snapchat, and TikTok while their parents and grandparents play on Facebook.

Bottom line: Things are fluid, and senior living marketing teams need to remain nimble and be willing to pivot to new platforms when the time is right.

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Creating high converting content ideas for Facebook

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: High-Converting Content Ideas for Facebook

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For the last couple of posts on our blog, we’ve been taking a deeper dive into senior living social media marketing. In case you missed them, here are the links:

In our experience, social media is one of the least understood marketing vehicles in our industry. Sure, we all “get” Facebook, at least from a personal perspective. But these platforms can provide an excellent way to reach prospects and engage with current residents and their families.

So, let’s turn our attention to content ideas for another social media platform popular with older adults: Facebook.

1. Share videos.

According to Social Media Today, video posts on Facebook generate more engagement (59% more!) than other types of posts. The same article offers up several other worthwhile tips. First, focus on shorter videos (90 seconds or less). Provide captions that entice people to watch. Make sure your video has a compelling thumbnail.

  • Pro tip: Try “boosting” posts with videos. This is a form of Facebook advertising that lets you take an existing organic post that you then share with a wider target demo for a budget you set. Boosted posts can give you a good idea regarding which types of videos perform best (for example, a people-focused video vs. a tour video). Pay attention to video metrics (Facebook offers deep analytics known as Insights).

2. Experiment with Facebook Live.

Facebook Live takes videos to a whole new level because you’re sharing video footage in real time as it’s happening. (Thus, the word “Live.”) This isn’t some gimmick, either. Facebook Live works. In fact, HubSpot reports that Facebook lives generate 10 times more engagement than traditional videos.

You might wonder, “Well why should I bother with traditional videos at all then?” Two reasons.

First, you should be creating traditional videos for YouTube since, as we reported in a previous article, YouTube is currently the top social media platform with the Boomer generation (78%). You can’t ignore that stat! If you’re creating videos for YouTube, you’ll get a much bigger banger for your buck if you share that video content across other platforms, like Facebook.

Second, not everyone is comfortable doing something live. Not to mention, Facebook Live videos are often less polished than traditional videos. (Think shaky cameras or people going off “script” or videos simply going longer.)

Like everything else with senior living social media marketing, you want to have a smart strategy in place. And this strategy should include a mix of traditional videos and Facebook Live.

3. Post images.

Facebook is a visual medium. As people scroll through their feed, they’re much more likely to stop on a captivating image rather than a block of text. In our next blog post, we’ll be talking about Instagram, which is ALL about images. The image suggestions we make in that post will most definitely apply to Facebook.

Here’s the overarching theme when it comes to Facebook images.

People, people, people. Think residents and their families. Staff members. Crowds from events like an author visit or Mother’s Day luncheon.

Spaces within your community. The pub, the salon, different room styles, dining areas (inside and out), fitness centers, views from various vantage points.

  • Pro tip: Always include captions, which can help provide context.

4. Share testimonials.

Got a great review, comment from a resident, or sweet anecdote in a letter or email? Share it on Facebook (ideally with a pic for added visual interest).

  • Pro tip: Whenever possible, include a picture of the person who gave the testimonial. And don’t just think in terms of residents and families. Testimonials from staff members can be great to share as well. And, of course, video testimonials are great as well.

5. Post important/relevant announcements.

Facebook can be a great way to get the word out about breaking news or important announcements. During the pandemic, many businesses communicated with people via social media (both through Facebook Live and “static” announcements).

For example, if your community is in the path of a hurricane, Facebook can be an excellent way to provide updates for families who are watching from afar and can’t get through to loved ones due to sketchy cell service and downed power lines.

  • Pro tip: For shorter announcements that you want to stand out, use Facebook’s colorful background feature. It essentially turns your status update into a larger picture-type post (with bigger text and a colorful background—this makes it eye-catching). (Here’s how to do it.)

6. Share content from your community’s other digital assets.

Share your senior living blog posts on Facebook. (Write an engaging caption.) Share resources that followers will find helpful, like a guide for how to downsize a home. Share links to your podcasts. This is the cornerstone of effective senior living social media marketing.

  • Pro tip: Make sure you pay attention to the analytics so that you can measure results. For example, if you share a link to a recent blog post, how much engagement did that Facebook post get (likes, clicks, comments)? And most importantly, how many people clicked FROM Facebook to your blog post? The goal is to get a better feel for what types of content get people to click so that you can post more of it.

7. Share content from relevant and reputable third-party sources.

For example, during the pandemic, linking to CDC and/or state guidelines made sense. Or you could share links to articles where your community or someone from your community is featured.

  • Pro tip: Before sharing third-party content, always ask yourself if it will serve/help your target audience. Always check links. Always make sure you’re sharing accurate, properly vetted info. Avoid content that’s highly polarizing (such as political memes).

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