Inbound marketing is the tool used to meet today’s customer where they spend most of their time – on the internet. Inbound marketing is all about attracting prospects through relevant and helpful content. It allows senior living communities to add value at every stage in your prospective resident’s journey. It pulls together content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more to attract prospects to your website.
Let’s talk awesome marketing strategies for senior living. To start, who remembers that great jingle from the 1970’s: “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”?
For all of us who grew up with that catchy song, we knew it was about the McDonald’s Big Mac. The special sauce was the magic. It was the distinction between a plain old hamburger and a Big Mac.
OK, so what’s this got to do with your senior living community?
Keep reading…
Special sauce is a good way to explain how you’re different from your competitors. In other words, your special sauce is what sets you apart.
For example, consider Walmart. Its special sauce is simple: pricing. Everything that Walmart does is specifically about keeping their prices low. Apple’s special sauce is innovation. Nike focuses on their product line. They are the gold standard in athletic wear.
Not sure? Not to worry. The following marketing strategies for senior living will help you create the perfect special sauce recipe for your community.
1. Operational Excellence
Offering quality services at an affordable price—that’s what everyone wants, right? A great example is our friend McDonald’s. It offers a simple, budget-friendly menu. It also maintains consistency in taste, swift service, and efficiency.
2. Product Leadership
This competitive strategy focuses on bringing superior products to the market. Also, the products should ultimately create great experiences for customers. Consider this from a senior living marketing perspective. For example, is your wellness program outstanding? Do you offer a unique dining experience? Talk about them!
3. Service Quality
Delivering consistently superior customer service is the recipe for this special sauce. The secret ingredient? Service resolution. After all, nobody’s perfect. But being able to listen to the customers’ problems so you can work toward a positive resolution is key. Virgin Airlines is a great example of a company that offers full service flights and outstanding customer service.
4. Relationship Differentiation
This special sauce is all about your associates and team members. Their interactions with the customer demonstrate competence, courtesy, credibility, reliability, and responsiveness. This avenue is closely related to service quality. But where service quality mostly focuses on processes and systems, relationship differentiation is all about the people.
The hiring process at Zappos is a great example of how they maintain their relationship differentiation. The recruitment process is like a courtship. They woo people who fit into their culture and who are good people.
5. Reputation Differentiation
Some companies set themselves apart by their reputation. This can be difficult for newer senior living communities, but even they can succeed in establishing a quality reputation through strategic partnerships. In other words, alliances with hospitals, medical staff, and industry thought leaders can establish a company as an expert.
DuPont, for example, has a strong reputation, employing engineers, scientists, and sales reps with solid technical or educational backgrounds.
We have decades of industry experience, so we know how to create a special sauce that will be unique to your community. Let us help!
Editor’s note: We updated this article on 9/15/20 in an effort to talk about senior living marketing events in the time of COVID-19.
Senior living marketing events can typically go one of two ways. First, well-planned and executed events can generate qualified leads, re-engage existing leads, and create opportunities to develop new professional contacts and nurture existing relationships.
On the other hand, poorly executed events can be a big waste of time and money. Add in a pandemic, and event marketing becomes even more complex!
Don’t worry. We got you covered. Here are some fresh event ideas, most of which you can adapt in a “virtual” way. Popular options include Zoom and Facebook Live. In fact, we’ve written an in-depth post on how to effectively use Facebook Live during COVID-19…and beyond.
Educational senior living marketing events will help position you as a trusted advisor and valued resource. Below are some topics and themes to consider.
Some of the senior living events below work better “in person.” But many can be adapted to a virtual environment. We’ve marked those with asterisks.
In fact, we never missed a beat since we’re a virtual marketing agency. As a result, most of our clients didn’t either. WE CAN HELP YOU. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and take advantage of our free 30-minute brainstorming session. We can help you come up with effective senior living marketing events that will work now.
Access our free resources! Includes tips on senior living events and more. Get started here.
My dad would always tell me, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And when it came to my 1979 beat up Dodge Aspen, his advice made perfect sense. But when it comes to your senior living website, you must anticipate the broken bits (ideally, before they happen or just as they’re happening) so you can nip them in the proverbial bud.
How?
By conducting regular website audits.
Even your website needs a yearly physical to see how the systems are running. A website audit will help you determine your website’s technical performance. Think framework and infrastructure, page speed/load time, and navigation—all of which affects the user experience (UX). When auditing your site, pay close attention to the following:
By conducting an SEO site checkup, you’ll be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any mistakes.
A website audit enables you to re-evaluate your lead generation and conversion funnels.
Ready to find out how your senior living website is doing? Get started here.
Vitality Senior Living wanted to build a senior living website of the future. We worked with them to integrate website design and function to align with their sales culture.
We created buyer personas and mapped the buyer’s journey based on three stages of readiness: Research, Planning, and Action.
First, we created a buyer persona for the adult daughter and the older adult prospect and mapped out motivations, obstacles, priorities, wants, and needs for each. Then, we were able to plan the right content that would be valuable to each persona. In addition, we could organize the blog and resources by stage of readiness.
For example, a prospect in the beginning stages of Awareness and Research usually wants to know where they will live, what they will do, who will take care of them, and if they can afford to live there. Someone in a Planning or Action stage needs to know how they are going to downsize, which community will be the best fit, when to make the move, and how to have the conversation with the family. Once we completed this, we created a blog calendar and the writers got to work. We moved on to the next step – engagement.
Vitality didn’t want to use traditional senior living labels, such as seniors, assisted living, or memory care. Instead, they wanted positive age-neutral descriptions, such as older adult, lifestyles, and choice. As a result, we had to get creative in using keywords to drive search engine optimization.
To engage website visitors, we included several Senior Living SMART partners in the development of the website.
Vitality wanted to automate lead nurturing strategies for all of the leads that are earlier stage. An “earlier stage” lead is a person who is not ready to tour or talk to a sales person, but they’re still expressing interest. Vitality also wanted to be sure that “urgent” leads quickly went to the sales team.
As a result, we recommended integrating the website with HubSpot (for automated nurturing). We also recommended integrating the site with their senior living CRM (they use Sherpa) to connect leads in an Action Stage to the sales team for face-to-face and voice-to-voice relationship building.
The new Vitality website is attracting more of the right traffic, engaging them longer, and speaking to (and converting) them throughout their journey.
Want to take your senior living website to the next level? We’d love to help! Request your free 30-minute brainstorming session or fill out the form below to get a website assessment.
Ready to find out how your website matches up? See how your site is performing with our instant report that you may save and share.
Five seconds. That’s all the time most people spend on a web page before exiting, according to Jason McCloud, now Director of Digital Marketing at Benchmark Senior Living, and presenter at the 2016 Senior Care Marketing Sales Summit (SMASH). Luckily, there are easy ways for senior living websites to effectively capture anonymous site visitors and convert them to leads, McCloud noted.
The most important takeaway from this session is to optimize visitors’ time with a three-step strategy: Design your landing page for conversion rate optimization, add compelling imagery and calls to action, and conduct A/B testing to pick the design that produces the most favorable responses.
Use eye-tracking “heat map” software as a “quick and easy way” to assess where website visitors look. People generally scan web pages in either an “F” or a “Z” pattern. Providers should design their landing pages accordingly.
In addition, consider how folks are going to scan: The right information needs to be in the right place. Place logos in the top left corner, with a prominent call to action and other important information in the web page’s “hot spots,” where people’s eyes—followed by their mouse—are generally drawn. And when it comes to information, less is more. Stick with the basics: Company logo, relevant photos, a phone number, pricing.
Most of the tracking software is affordable, according to McCloud, and some even offer free 30-day trials.
Design should revolve around what shoppers want to see: What the community looks like, and how much it costs. Here is McCloud’s advice for images and design:
If there are two web page designs that you’re having trouble choosing between, test them both. For example, if you’re not sure whether to utilize the F or the Z pattern design, you can experiment to see which one gets better conversion rates.
McCloud also suggested testing each design for one to two weeks, then choosing the data-driven winner. Converting existing web traffic into a lead is more valuable than spending resources on trying to generate more traffic.
If you drive traffic to your page without capturing people’s attention for more than five seconds, you’re flushing money down the drain, McCloud said, advising providers to “work on bettering conversion rates before spending more money to drive traffic.”
We’re experts in marketing and senior living website design. Plus, we have decades of senior living industry experience to boot. Let’s chat about your website.
Football is a great analogy for the sport of senior living sales. Teams need strong offense and defense to succeed. “Coaches” (sales managers) provide strategies and tactical insights. The “players” (sales team) execute the plays.
And, yes—we can go even deeper with this analogy.
We have sales and marketing teams playing offense by moving leads forward with a series of advances. Resident care teams play defense by holding the line on move-outs. Executive directors play the quarterback position, directing team members to execute the down. Department managers represent specialty teams, keeping residents engaged and families happy. Regional and corporate support teams fill coaching roles to round out the team.
This year, resolve to get more out of your stand-up meetings by running it like a football huddle. Here’s how…
Just like a football huddle, your “huddle” should be a quick check-in to make sure that information is exchanged and everyone is on the same page.
Preparation is key to keeping the huddle quick, productive, and on track. Stand-up meetings are opportunities for teams to connect at the start of the day to share relevant and time-sensitive information. Use the Daily Stand-Up Report to communicate everything the team needs to know. (We’ve created a ‘Daily Stand Up Report’ for you. It’s free! Download the template now.)
The most effective football huddles communicate information clearly and quickly. You need to do the same:
In the huddle, the quarterback calls the next play. In your huddle, each person will communicate his or her “plays” (updates). The executive director will use the Stand-Up Report as a way to engage each “player” (director), encouraging him or her to share updates. (Download the FREE ‘Daily Huddle Tools’ Training Guide.)
Keep your huddles quick and focused. Then, step back and watch your players execute their plays during the day, resulting in “touchdowns” (success!). Remember to celebrate these successes at a future huddle (the equivalent of an end-zone dance).
By the way, we work closely with senior living sales teams AND marketing teams to get them working better–and SMARTER. Reach out and let’s talk!
Great senior living sales and marketing talent is hard to come by. It’s one of the only professional jobs with a six-figure income potential (if you’re top talent) with no corresponding college degree. This makes hiring top sales talent challenging on good days. (And a roll of the dice in situations that require a quick decision.)
Talented senior living sales and marketing directors are in short supply. So here are some signs to look for during the interview process:
This is a very difficult role to step into at the regional level without experience at the community level. Since coaching and modeling are two of the most important skills sets required to develop community sales talent, it is important to be able to relate to the various scenarios that happen on a daily basis.
Candidates should also display a comfort level when it comes to meeting with families and professionals. Being successful at a single site level is certainly not the only criteria. It is a huge leap for a sales person to transition from producing results by themselves to producing results through others – especially when they do not have reporting leverage.
I always ask candidates, “What is a successful site visit?” Then, I have them walk me through their entire process. This helps to identify gaps – some of which you can coach for improvement, and others you can’t (usually because of a lack of buy-in).
I ask this because I want to be sure that there is …
It’s never a good sign when I hear that they are going to bring volumes of reports to go over with the team, or that they have a checklist/ audit form, or they are reviewing plans. There are times when all of these should be incorporated into a site visit, but unless there is coaching and hands-on “doing,” they will not be seen as part of the team and a help, but as an auditor and a distraction.
I always include a case study or have a scenario ready that requires the candidate to diagnose the situation to find root cause, identify solutions, and articulate how they would create and execute a strategy and measure the impact.
This can be framed as “if you are working with a community and their biggest challenge is (low lead generation, not converting inquiries to tours, low tour to deposit/ move-in ratio etc.), how would help them improve this?”
Sometimes I do this as a follow-up to the interview to understand how they break down common sales challenges. I email them the case study and an action plan template. This is very helpful when I am down to my final two candidates. Using a case study has saved me from many bad hires!
Asking candidates to explain their perspective on the art & science of selling will provide insight into their coaching style and belief system. You will find out if they like data and reports and can turn them into useable information – or if they hate them (better to find out now!).
You will discover if they are more on the relational side of sales or the analytics. Do they set sales activity standards? Are they the same for each community or customized (based on what)? How will they produce results through others? Are they more on the accountability or cheerleader side of the pendulum? And what’s their view on senior living sales and marketing? Today, the two must align! So look for a sales person who embraces collaboration with marketing (or has experience in marketing).
While there may not be a right or wrong answer for every question, there will be better fits for the community and regional teams, and also for the philosophy of the company.
Sometimes you get all of the first four characteristics and confidently make the offer – Yeah! And then they start and are completely un-coachable! They won’t use the tools & resources (their stuff is always better), won’t buy into the training (so they can’t coach and reinforce it), won’t take feedback – it’s a nightmare, they are not successful and you are back to square one. This is harder to discern, so I have two suggestions.
First, I ask if they have played team sports (always better when they have). And if so, I ask them to describe their best and worst coach (if they were all bad, there may be an issue!). Secondly, I bring in my HR Director – they have radar for this and are always a valued resource.
Silo mentalities need not apply! We work closely with both departments to create an efficient lead generation machine. Ask us how we do it!
87% of all senior housing sales begin online, making websites the #1 sales tool for lead generation. Prospects visit a community website an average of 7.8 times during their buying journey. This webinar will demonstrate how to convert anonymous website visitors into exclusive and unshared qualified leads.
What’s your website already doing well? What can it do better? We start where you are so we can develop a plan to optimize the good while nixing the bad and the ugly.
87% of those looking into senior living options start their search by visiting community websites and 37% of those prospects will eliminate a community from consideration purely based on the quality of the website. When prospects visit your website, they are looking for answer to four key questions:
According to a “Social Silver Surfers” report by Creating Results, the #1 pet peeve of our prospects (The Silent Generation & The Older Boomer) is the lack of pricing transparency. They want to know how much it will cost, what’s included, and how senior living is funded. The problem is that most providers do not provide any pricing information on their website because they want to establish value before quoting price and they do not want their competitors to have that information. The reality is that competitors can get pricing with mystery shopping. The lack of transparency on pricing drives prospects off of your website and over to a paid referral agency/ lead generator online sources who will provide your pricing and the pricing of your competitors (who they may not have even been exploring) and your lead is now shared with 4 -6 competitors. Here are three solutions to keep your website visitors on your site:
According to the same study by Creating Results, the #2 pet peeve about senior living websites is that floor plans are either not available, are illegible or incomplete. According to Jayne Sallerson, COO of Sherpa, the majority of website visitors are in the “planning” or “thinking” stages and are not yet ready to take an action such as calling, completing an online form or scheduling a tour – but they do want a sneak peak before they are ready to tour. Here are three solutions to consider:
The “Social, Silver Surfers” survey reveals that the third pet peeve of senior living prospects is that the information on the website is outdated. Providing information about the community lifestyle is important but must be monitored, maintained and stay current. Posting pictures of residents and families enjoying special events, providing menu and activity calendar samples and posting upcoming events adds value to your website, keeps prospects on your site, reduces “bounce rate” and brings them back to the site as they move through their decision process.
For 18% of website visitors, care considerations are the primary interest. Any reassurance that you can provide about the quality of care, survey results, testimonials, staff training, security & safety specifics and any niche programs offered should be included in your website. One of our Senior Living SMART Members started using a hiring tool that measured job applicants against the attributes of their best performers in each department and scored them according to their “cultural fit” reducing turnover from 70% to 17%. This type of information is compelling and reassuring to families and prospects and should be included on the website!
Members can access the ‘Website Pet Peeves’ survey report, or non-members may download the resource by filling out form below:
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