A panel of senior living marketing professionals will share strategies and tactics for lead generation, nurturing and conversions given current restrictions regarding tours, events and community visits.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
One of the biggest challenges in how to market senior living communities is differentiation. On the surface, most communities look the same. They all promote having the best care, best staff, best dining, best activities, best blah, blah, blah. (Sound familiar?)
If you can’t figure out what makes your community genuinely different and special—in other words, its unique value proposition—prospects will resort to focusing on price and location when deciding. Price wars are a race to the bottom, and you can’t move your community, so get ready to play the “let’s make a deal” game.
That’s the bad news.
But here’s the good news.
Developing a unique value proposition isn’t as hard as you might think. The unique value prop doesn’t need to be sexy or over the top to “win.” It simply needs to be true and resonate with your prospects.
So, how do you create this value prop? Begin by leaning into the things that your happiest residents and families continually say about your community.
If yours is the newest community in your market, lean into that. Be the bright, shiny penny and play up your newness. You likely have the latest technology and modern finishes, and residents can be the first to live in their space. No scuffs, scratches, or stained carpets here.
But remember, the newness won’t last. Claim this position while you can, but behind the scenes, work on developing another value proposition to replace it when the time comes.
OK, so maybe you can’t play the new game, but you can focus on your experience, stability, and years of service to your community. Older communities often have better locations and larger apartments. Promote this. Not to mention, older adults turned off by ultra-modern aesthetics might feel more comfortable in older communities.
Bonus: You might be able to offer a lower price point since competitors are paying significantly more for construction and financing.
Several regional and national brands position their ability to manage high-acuity residents. Their messaging about caring for the “frailest of the frail” attracts their ideal prospects (or their families). These communities don’t try to be all things to all people. Instead, they focus on what they’re great at: serving older adults who need more care.
If this describes your community, focus on your staffing levels, staff training, and the technology that supports better management of frail seniors. Include compelling proof of your community’s excellence by achieving deficiency-free status.
If you are the luxury price leader, your marketing messaging should focus on exclusivity, discernment, and lifestyle.
Here are themes that tend to resonate with people seeking luxury:
The key is focusing on what elevates your brand to luxury status. For example, other communities might have fitness centers, but your community has personal trainers.
The key to marketing an affordable product is positioning your community as a responsible choice for consumers who are planners and don’t want to run out of money. Your community offers everything that your prospects need without making them pay for additional amenities that they’ll never use.
This is an example of an un-sexy but highly effective message for people who can’t afford frills or simply aren’t interested in them.
Maybe you only offer independent living or stand-alone memory care. Your marketing messaging can promote all the advantages of being purpose-built for that lifestyle to sell against competitors offering multiple levels of care.
Specializing in just one lifestyle should give you an advantage to create a unique experience that your competitors can’t provide in a more blended model.
Niche developments often appeal to older adults who want to live with people with similar backgrounds, experiences, and hobbies.
Here are some examples of senior living communities with interesting niches:
The above is a small sample of ideas, but many others exist, like big campuses, small residential homes, buy-ins, rentals, and many more. The key is identifying your authentic value proposition and building your marketing messaging and campaigns around your strengths.
Messaging is one of our core services and specialties. Get in touch, and let’s brainstorm how to market senior living communities like yours.
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 . . .
As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Questions to ask:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Do you know the lifetime value of a resident? If not, tackle that first. It’s the granddaddy of all metrics.
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:
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.
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.
Digital and print can play nicely together in the same senior living advertising sandbox. But like anything else, there are pros and cons to each, which we discuss below.
What it is: When we say “digital” advertising, we’re referring to any paid advertising that happens online. This includes, but isn’t limited to the following:
Digital advertising can be considered inbound or outbound, depending on the medium. For example, PPC ads fall under the inbound marketing umbrella since you’re attracting people who are already doing searches for the product/service you’re selling. Same with remarketing ads.
The Display Network, however, falls under outbound. There’s no guarantee that the ads served up to you will be something you’re even remotely interested in or need. (Granted, your browsing habits will inform what ads get served, but some will most definitely be misses.)
What it is: Print advertising is just that—advertisements for your community that appear in printed formats like newspapers (local, regional, national); magazines (local, regional, national); directory listings; phone books; and billboards. We’re also going to include direct mail and brochures in this category as well. The difference between the two groupings is this: You pay a third party (like a newspaper) to run an ad inside its pages. With direct mail and brochures, you’re usually managing the creation and distribution of that collateral in-house.
Earlier in this article, we shared stats about older adults and print formats, like newspapers. But older adults also spend time on digital devices. They own smartphones. They text. They’re on social media. They buy things off Amazon. They watch Netflix. They know how to use Google.
The American Press Institute backs this up with behaviors it sees between digital and print media subscribers: “Remember, 4 in 10 print subscribers still go to the website; 2 in 10 follow it on social media.”
This is precisely why we recommend to our clients that they use a mix of approaches when it comes to senior living advertising (while keeping in mind that these recommendations will evolve—we might be suggesting different strategies in 2030).
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.)
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.
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:
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).
Here’s why you need both to effectively market your senior living community.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tackling occupancy issues in your community often means finding untapped opportunities within your existing senior living leads, such as those stuck in the pre-tour and post-tour stages.
By effectively re-engaging these segments, you’ll move more pre-tour leads to tours and more post-tour leads to move-ins. Below, we explore strategies for doing exactly that.
People stuck in the pre-tour stage have expressed interest in your community by reaching out, but they haven’t scheduled a tour yet. They need an extra nudge to take the next step.
But first, how do you know if someone is genuinely stuck? The 2023 Aline Annual Sales and Marketing Benchmark Report for Senior Housing provides excellent metrics like the average sales cycle length from inquiry to tour for the following:
Here are some strategies for nudging leads stuck beyond those averages.
Direct is usually best. If prospects are stuck in the pre-tour stage, you could enroll them in an email nurturing campaign that asks if they’re still considering your community.
We’ve had great success with these “Are you still thinking about senior living?” campaigns for our clients. The gist of the correspondence is, “You expressed interest in our community in the past, but we haven’t heard from you in a while. We‘re wondering if you’re still thinking about senior living?”
The campaign gives recipients options for re-engaging. If they opt out, no harm, no foul—at least you know, and you’re not wasting time marketing to them.
If they re-engage, they’ll continue receiving emails that refamiliarize them with your community and gently nudge them to book a tour.
Some people might find the concept of a “tour” too formal or salesy. Instead, avoid the word “tour” and offer something that feels more relaxed, casual, and low-risk.
Gentle reminders are good, but pestering emails and phone calls aren’t. Moving to senior living is a huge decision involving many emotions. Empower prospects to tell you when they’re ready to schedule a tour. Enrolling them in lead nurturing campaigns is a good step, but only if the campaigns are relevant to them.
Remember, these prospects have already expressed an interest in senior living and your community in particular. Brainstorm why the prospect might be reluctant to schedule a tour and use the nurturing campaign to address those issues and demonstrate your empathy.
Common issues include:
o How to address: In your communication, reassure prospects that a tour isn’t binding. Explain that touring several communities is part of the process, and even if they decide your community isn’t “the one,” that’s OK.
o How to address: Acknowledge that having mixed feelings about senior living is normal. Share stories of residents who experienced different emotions before making the move—sadness, fear, anxiety, guilt—and how they successfully overcame those emotions. (If you don’t have this content, create it.)
o How to address: Create a robust “What to expect when you visit” page on your site that talks about tour specifics, like where to park, where to enter, who to ask for, how long the tour will last, etc. If available, sprinkle the page with testimonials or snippets of Google reviews that mention how helpful the tours are. (Not sure your tours are up to snuff? Here’s how to create a red-carpet experience.)
o How to address: Once again, emphasize that they are always in control, that a tour is simply an introduction to your community, and that no one expects them to make such a big decision on the spot.
Nothing is more frustrating—or puzzling—than when a high-intent lead tours the community, seems to love it, and then . . . crickets.
But here’s the thing: Too often, sales teams drop the ball here, thinking the heavy lifting is done once they give someone a tour. Sure, the sales rep might do a perfunctory follow-up. But one follow-up won’t cut it given senior living’s notoriously long sales cycle, especially for independent living and assisted living.
You must continue to actively and creatively engage leads in the post-tour phase.
But again, how do you know if someone is genuinely stuck? The 2023 Aline Annual Sales and Marketing Benchmark Report for Senior Housing provides the average sales cycle length from tour to move-in for the following:
Here are effective strategies to implement if leads get stuck in this stage.
We’ve seen too many senior living CRMs with buckets of leads labeled “cold.” Yet when we dig deeper and ask questions, we discover that these leads once had high intent. (Especially the ones that went on tours.)
Don’t give up on these leads. The senior living sales cycle is long and involves a lot of effort and patience on the part of marketing and sales. If your community needs help re-engaging stalled leads, get in touch and let us help.
Have you ever been in a social situation where you weren’t sure how to behave—should I sit, stand, congregate in one room, avoid another—and you modeled your behavior based on what others around you were doing?
That’s social proof (or social influence) in action.
Psychologist Robert Cialdini coined the phrase social proof in his book Influence: Science and Practice. The term suggests that when people don’t know how to behave or what to do in a situation, they tend to look at what other folks are doing, assuming (rightly or wrongly) that others have more information or insight.
OK, so you might be wondering what social proof has to do with digital marketing for senior living. Turns out, a lot. Below, we discuss what social proof is in terms of marketing, why it matters for your senior living community, and what you can do to foster it.
Social proof in marketing occurs when someone other than the brand says the brand is fabulous, and this stamp of approval influences others to buy from the brand. As noted above, humans tend to be influenced by what other people do and experience.
⮚ Have you ever had a bunch of friends talk up a new show on Netflix or Hulu, and you found yourself watching it over the following weekend? That’s social proof. (This is how The Bear took off last year.)
⮚ Have you ever craved a specific type of food and chosen a restaurant based on its stellar Yelp reviews? That, too, is social proof.
⮚ Have you ever asked for a recommendation in a Facebook group—maybe for a plumber, landscaper, or hair stylist—and eight comments mentioned the same person, which spurred you to call them? Hello, social proof!
Social proof is also closely tied with another concept many of us know: FOMO, or “fear of missing out.” Think of any product that’s gone viral—from the Cabbage Patch dolls of the 80s to the veggie chopper everyone’s talking about on TikTok. These things take off because influencers talk them up, and suddenly, everyone wants to have the product or service.
We don’t have to tell you that people hesitate before making big purchases. Moving to a senior living community is often the last big purchase a person will make in their lifetime—and it’s a pricey one.
Prospective buyers want to be reassured that they’re making a good decision. And that’s precisely where social proof comes into play. They want to hear about people’s experiences in the community: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Were they happy? Was it money well spent? Were they cared for? Was the place as wonderful as the website and marketing materials suggested?
If your community lacks social proof, you’ll have an uphill battle converting marketing-qualified leads into move-ins.
Consider these social proof stats cited by OptIn Monster:
Bottom line: social proof matters!
If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ve likely heard us emphasize the importance of your senior living community’s Google Business Profile, particularly the reviews. At some point, most of your prospects will see your Google reviews.
When it comes to reviews, focus on doing the following:
Regularly solicit reviews. If you don’t have recent reviews, this can lead to questions and diminish trust in your brand. Why are the reviews a year old? What does this mean? Is the community still around? Did something change with management? Does that five-star review from three years ago tell an accurate story of what it’s like in the community today?
⮚ INSIGHT: OptIn Monster reports that eighty-five percent of consumers believe online reviews older than three months are irrelevant.
Maintain an overall positive rating. Most reasonable people don’t expect perfection. In fact, a perfect 5.0 for reviews would likely raise an eyebrow since enough folks have likely heard about fake or paid reviews. At the same time, people will quickly cross off communities with ratings in the threes or lower. We advise our clients to aim for the sweet spot of 4.0 to 4.5. This tends to be a believable score as well as a good score.
⮚ INSIGHT: OptIn Monster reports that fifty-seven percent of consumers will only purchase or use a business’s services if it has a rating of at least four stars.
Provide thoughtful responses to all reviews, especially negative reviews. Are your responses kind and authentic? Or snarky and defensive? People do take note. Demonstrating that you’re listening to people’s critiques will serve your community a lot better than a dismissive response to a negative review.
⮚ INSIGHT: TrustPulse reports that fifty-six percent of consumers alter their view of a business based on the way it responds to reviews.
We mentioned earlier that most people seek recommendations from friends and family before buying something. Having a robust referral program can help you take advantage of this stat.
Referrals can come from residents, family members, and third parties, such as elder law attorneys, financial planners, and geriatric care managers.
RESIDENTS. The best way to get referrals from residents is by creating a seamless move-in experience—and a stellar first month. (We’re not suggesting things should go downhill from there, but the first 30 days are critical.) Marketing, sales, and other departments (like activities) should collaborate. Silo mentalities need-not apply. Learn how to create an epic new resident welcome program.
FAMILY MEMBERS. Adult children can be an excellent megaphone for your community, especially if their mom or dad is having a wonderful experience. Remember that the adult child can continue to be a referral source even after the resident moves out or passes away (provided the experience remains positive until the end). Learn more about the adult child’s journey and why staying in touch with them is critical.
THIRD-PARTY REFERRALS. Sales reps should always nurture these relationships and regularly network. Still, marketers can help by providing compelling collateral and setting up automated email workflows to make it easier for reps to stay in touch with their networking contacts. Learn more about how to engage with senior living referral sources.
There’s no better form of social proof than glowing reviews and a steady stream of referrals. Get in touch if you need help generating more of one or both. We specialize in digital marketing for senior living and know how to prime your community’s social proof engine.
Humans are suckers for a good story, full stop. We love telling stories. We love listening to stories. And thanks to social media, there’s no shortage of ways to consume stories, either.
For the casual scroller, encountering interesting stories on social media can be a fun way to while away the hours. For savvy businesses, however, sharing memorable stories can increase engagement, brand recognition, and even sales.
Consider these compelling storytelling stats:
So, let’s discuss the power of storytelling in senior living social media marketing—and some tips for creating truly memorable stories on three of the biggies: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Along with YouTube, Facebook is still the granddaddy of all social media platforms, with over two billion active daily users globally. According to Hootsuite, it’s also the most used platform in the U.S.
This makes Facebook an ideal platform for senior living communities to connect with prospects, current residents, and their families.
Your residents are an excellent source of compelling stories, so turn to them for ideas. Even better, their stories won’t be the same ones people see on a competitor’s social media accounts.
Here’s how to use their stories on Facebook:
Regarding story length, remember that no one expects a novel or movie. Shorter posts typically get better engagement on Facebook.
What do we mean by short? HubSpot says 40 characters or fewer. If you’re about to say it’s impossible to share a good story at that length, consider the famous six-word short story attributed to Hemingway: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
BOOM. That little story, which weighs in at 33 characters, delivers one heck of an emotional punch. Now, we’re not suggesting that you must stay under 40 characters. But you should aim for no more than a couple of sentences. Do your best to keep your post under 200 characters (at which point the text gets cut off, and people need to click to “see more”).
How can you keep it short and sweet while still delivering a compelling story? Here are some strategies.
Provide a super-short story, like Hemingway’s, but illustrate it with a pic or two.
o Make sure you include a picture of Mary holding up her martini.
Offer a cliffhanger that entices people to click into a longer piece of content.
o Link to a narrative about Mary on your website.
Let videos tell the stories.
o Include a short video where Mary is toasting with her friends.
Videos are incredibly helpful in telling stories. Plus, videos boost engagement. (People spend half their time on Facebook watching videos.) Videos don’t need to be super long (think one to two minutes max), and they don’t need to be professionally shot, either.
Encourage residents and staff to keep their smartphones handy and share raw footage with the marketing department (here’s how to foster and reward this behavior). With an intuitive editing app like InShot, you can edit the raw footage into a compelling video.
Instagram caters to a much younger demographic than Facebook. According to Hootsuite, 85% of IG users are under 45. You might be thinking, why bother? Well, nearly 16% of Instagram users are between 35 and 44, and 8% are between 45 and 54. Many of those users have aging parents and will likely be involved in the decision-making process when Mom and Dad consider moving to senior living.
The bottom line: Instagram is still an excellent place to share content, as long as you remember that you’ll most likely be talking to adult children rather than seniors themselves.
So the question becomes, how do you engage this younger demographic, one that might influence their parents and grandparents?
We recommend turning to time-tested hashtags on Instagram—and reinventing them.
For example, hashtags like #food (and its various synonyms) are among the most popular hashtags on Instagram. Food is also among the most common questions communities receive from prospects and their families. Plus, it’s one of the topics communities like to promote as a differentiator.
You see where we’re going with this, right?
Use #food as the starting point for your storytelling. No, we’re not suggesting you show shots of what’s for dinner and call it a day.
Brainstorm all the stories around food in your community. Questions to ask yourself:
Remember, no other community has your chef, your recipes, or your dining staff. By focusing on a popular hashtag like #food, you’ll gain traction (over time), but you’ll also be able to stand out—in a good way—from the competition.
Note: We’re not suggesting you can’t have content highlighting other areas of your community. But if you create stories around the food in your community, you’ll capture people’s attention and boost engagement. And we’re not just talking about more likes, either. People often share and save food-related content, especially food demonstration videos and recipes.
Here are some more tips for this approach . . .
Your community is only as good as your employees. The most successful communities usually have happy, loyal people who enjoy their profession and love working for your senior living community. If you have a rotating door of staff members coming and going, everyone will feel it (and not in a good way), including residents, families, and fellow employees.
While fixing employment challenges is beyond marketing’s purview, the marketing department can still help attract the right people to open roles within the community. This is where LinkedIn comes in.
The stories you share on LinkedIn can provide a glimpse into what it’s like to work in your community. To get started, revisit your community’s mission and value statements. From there, share content that shows how employees embody these values.
For example, if compassionate care is one of your community’s values—and not just for residents but also employees—you could share the story about an employee who recently had a baby and the amount of parental leave they were given, the flexible “easing” back into their work schedule, and the adorable gift basket the community delivered to the new parent and baby.
Of course, everything you share has to be true, but you get the idea. By sharing a true story demonstrating your community’s values and how they affect employees, you’re showing prospective employees what they can expect. Showing instead of “telling” is the hallmark of good storytelling.
More storytelling ideas for LinkedIn:
By tailoring your storytelling approach to fit each platform’s unique features and audiences, you can maximize engagement and highlight the vibrant life within your senior living community. These tips will help you create compelling content that resonates with current residents, prospective residents, and their families.
Here’s more helpful content on social media marketing in senior living:
We spend a lot of time diving into more advanced digital marketing topics on our blog. But sometimes, it helps to return to a beginner mindset. After all, if you’re new to digital marketing in the senior living space, you’re likely encountering all sorts of acronyms, like MQLs (marketing-qualified leads), TOFU (top of the funnel), and SEO (search engine optimization), all of which can be super overwhelming to newbies.
Today, we’re giving a crash course in senior living search engine optimization (SEO). Why are we focusing on this acronym rather than some of the others? Simple. Your website is the most important element in your senior living marketing efforts. If you don’t optimize your community‘s website for search, you might as well pack up and go home.
Below, we answer common beginner questions:
Simply put, search engine optimization—or SEO—involves enhancing your website’s visibility in online searches. The better visibility your website pages have in search results, the more likely you are to attract prospects to your website.
Today, most senior living prospects will begin their search online. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily searching for a community at the outset. Some people will be in education mode: What is senior living? How can I finance senior living? Others will be checking out review sites or “listening” to conversations friends and family are having on social media.
Eventually, though, serious prospects will venture onto senior living community websites. Some will land on these sites because of paid ads or third-party aggregators (like A Place for Mom), but plenty of others will enter them via organic search, provided the site has been optimized properly.
Note: As a rule of thumb, most of your website traffic should come from organic search (shoot for 70 to 75%).
Effective SEO involves many moving parts, but the big ones to keep in mind are the following:
And let’s not forget:
The above list only scratches the surface. A lot goes into effective SEO and local SEO. And here’s a secret: you’re never “done” optimizing a website. It’s an ongoing process. You must monitor your site’s performance, stay updated on the latest trends, and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Further reading
To gauge how well your SEO efforts are paying off, track key metrics like organic traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rates (anonymous traffic to marketing-qualified lead [MQL] and MQL to sales-qualified lead). Tools like Google Analytics can provide valuable insights.
Don’t try to game the search engines. This won’t end well for you. Always write for humans first, search engines second. Write naturally and avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t underestimate the importance of mobile optimization or user experience. As mentioned above, SEO is an ongoing process—you’re never done.
Follow reputable SEO websites (like Moz and Search Engine Journal), attend webinars, and participate in SEO forums.
Below are some additional resources to check out:
While digging into the ins and outs of SEO is an excellent first step, you might be wondering what your next step should be. We recommend getting an SEO audit like the one we offer. Our team lives and breathes SEO, so we’ll be able to tell you what’s working, what isn’t, and how to address issues.
