How to Manage Senior Living Occupancy Challenges in Q4

How to Manage Senior Living Occupancy Challenges in Q4

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Historically, the fourth quarter has been the most challenging time of year for growing senior living occupancy. Not only are move-ins down, but overall leads are often down as well.

Understandably, many families want to cherish one more holiday season with Mom or Dad (or other older loved ones) in the comfort of their own homes before considering a move. Unless the senior is in some sort of crisis mode—for example, maybe the person fell, and the doctor has indicated it’s unsafe for them to return home—you’ll have difficulty convincing folks to move this time of year.

All that said, there are strategic approaches that your marketing and sales teams can implement now to squeeze out some sales and make sure everyone is ready to hit the ground running on January 1.

5 tips to increase your Q4 occupancy

Tap into “solo agers”

A growing demographic in the senior living landscape is the “solo ager.” Solo agers are single older adults who may not be in crisis mode (yet) but find themselves alone because they don’t have children and are not married (either by choice or because they’re divorced or widowed). According to AARP, 12 percent of the population age 50 and older are solo agers.

Even though solo agers don’t have a medical need for senior living, many have a social need and could benefit from the right independent living community. And the holidays are an excellent time to show them what’s possible if they move into a community like yours.

Continue leveraging your existing leads database

Your senior living CRM is often an untapped gold mine. Now is an excellent time to re-engage with once-hot leads that have since cooled down (for whatever reason). Focus on those who completed tours but haven’t yet committed to a community. These individuals could benefit from a gentle nudge. And, at the very least, you’ll remain prominent on their internal radars.

Invite pre-tour leads to holiday events

The holiday season provides an excellent backdrop for showcasing the warmth and camaraderie within your community. Organize fun events and extend invitations to pre-tour marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

Focus on the MQLs in the middle of the sales funnel (and the ones your sales team expected to book tours but haven’t yet—likely because of the holiday chaos).

Most senior living communities shine during this time of year with gorgeous decorations and a festive atmosphere, making it a great time to extend invitations to these MQLs and their families. While most won’t commit to moving right now, this positive engagement can progress them along the marketing and sales funnel, positioning them as prime prospects for Q1.

  • What to do: Make sure you have plenty of sales reps available during these events to conduct casual, last-minute tours for anyone interested. Send your guests home with something special, like homemade holiday cookies that your pastry chef made and a calendar of upcoming events (including ones that extend into January). Then, follow up with these prospects during the first week of January.

Continue networking with professional referral sources (especially those in urgent care settings)

Forge partnerships with professional referral sources dealing with urgent cases. Hospitals, rehab facilities, and home care agencies often encounter individuals with immediate senior living needs, especially during the holidays and winter months. By establishing solid relationships with these sources, you can position your community as a reliable solution for those facing pressing decisions.

  • What to do: Your urgent-care referral sources often work thankless jobs. Make it your job to thank them. Drop off cookies and cocoa to show your gratitude for the long hours they put in protecting vulnerable older adults. These professionals will appreciate your kindness—and they will remember your name (and your community’s) when they need to make a referral.

Use an incentive like a “rate lock” promotion

Remember, it’s not always about the physical move-in when it comes to senior living occupancy. It’s about a financial move-in, meaning you have a signed lease agreement and you’ve collected some revenue on the unit. The person doesn’t need to be physically in the community to count as occupancy.

Also, keep in mind that many communities are making up for lost revenue from COVID. Yearly rental increases that used to be 2% to 4% are now 5% to 8%.

Capitalize on this by using a rate-lock incentive with prospects who want to move into your community—but who want to push it off until after the holidays.

This initiative allows prospective residents to secure current rates by signing a lease agreement now, even if their physical move-in occurs in Q1. Individuals can shield themselves from potential rate hikes, making acting faster—even during the holiday chaos—much more financially appealing.

  • What to do: Make it feel less like a promotion and more like an exclusive offer you’re extending to them: “Mary, I know you love our community, but you also want one more holiday season in your home. Here’s the thing: I just found out our rents are going up in January by X%. However, if you sign the lease agreement now, I can get you in at this year’s rate—even if you don’t move in until next year. You could save upwards of [THIS MUCH]. Would you like to review the lease agreement?”

Bottom line: When it comes to growing senior living occupancy, don’t let up on the gas just because it’s Q4.

While Q4 often presents challenges for growing senior living occupancy, there are strategies you can take now to possibly encourage move-ins—or, at the very least, to make sure the pipeline is primed for Q1.

Need help implementing any of the above? Get in touch. We’re a senior living marketing agency that knows how to turbocharge a community’s lead gen engine.

Senior Living Social Media Marketing - Our Approach

Senior Living Social Media Marketing – Our Approach

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We asked Kerri-Anne Pendergast, our Director of Social Media Marketing, to pull back the curtain and discuss how she approaches senior living social media marketing for our clients.

Below, we talk about the following:

    • The platforms all communities must maintain a presence on
    • Content types that always work
    • Types of content Kerri-Anne wishes more clients tried
    • The difference between organic social and paid social
    • How to measure social media marketing ROI

Tell readers a little bit about your background.

I started with Senior Living SMART in July 2020 as an intern during the thick of the pandemic. I came on as a general intern and found my niche within social media. Once I graduated college, SLS hired me as an associate. Then, at the beginning of 2021, my direct supervisor left the company. So, I took over his role. And now, three years later, I’m the Director of Social Media Marketing.

Discuss how you work with new clients.

We start by auditing their Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile, provided they have those assets. From there, we identify strengths, weaknesses, goals, and benchmarks. I like collaborating with our content team about the premium content pieces they have planned. I make sure our social efforts align with what they’re developing.

We also make sure we understand all the different levels of care our clients offer. The content team does an excellent job developing personas for our clients. Personas are essential for understanding which messages and social media platforms will resonate best with prospects. For example, the message for a single man seeking an active adult community will look different than our message to an adult daughter looking for memory care for her mother.

How does your approach change when working with a community with multiple locations? For example, do you develop a Facebook page for each location, or is it just one overarching brand Facebook page?

For Facebook, we encourage clients to have a general corporate page and a page for each community. So, if a client has eight communities, we should see nine Facebook pages in total: one for corporate and a page per community. The reasoning behind that is to share the lifestyle and culture of each community.

LinkedIn is a different story since it’s more about connecting potential employees with jobs and sharing industry-related news. One corporate page is usually enough.

With YouTube, the client could have one main YouTube account and use playlists for each community. Or the client can create separate YouTube channels for each community. It depends on the client’s internal marketing teams and their available bandwidth for managing these platforms. We can help, but having that inside person is critical to creating authentic content.

And each community must claim its Google Business Profile since this profile serves as a mini website.

What social media platforms are the most effective for senior living communities? Is there one “must-have” platform that you typically recommend to all clients? Or does it depend?

Right now, senior living communities should be on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn (for a corporate account). Each community should have its own Google Business Profile as well.

We consider Instagram second tier. This is because there’s not much we can do for the client from our end on Instagram. The client must keep their Instagram account engaging and active since it should be all about an inside look at the community, with resident images and videos that tell a story about the lifestyle. It requires more upkeep. The demographic is definitely there, so if the client’s internal team has the bandwidth to take it on, they should. (Need help? Download our free guide to success on Instagram.)

What type of content always works well on senior living social media channels?

Photos and videos always work well, especially short-form videos. Video is the most engaging type of content, even if it’s just taking a blog and turning it into a 30-second video that the audience can consume in a different form.

For Facebook and YouTube, we recommend showing life inside the community. For LinkedIn, we recommend creating posts that demonstrate industry expertise and thought leadership. Check out our free guide on how to effectively use LinkedIn for your senior living community.

What type of content do you wish more clients would do?

Video, especially short-form videos under a minute, are exploding. For example, watching a video recapping an event will be much more engaging than a stock image from the event promotion or a line or two of text about the event. But it’s a challenge getting clients to shoot these quick-hitting videos simply because their teams are already spread thin.

Let’s talk about organic social media vs. paid social media. What’s the difference, and what must communities keep in mind?

Anything that’s organic means that it doesn’t have money behind it. Anything called advertising or “paid” has money behind it. Organic social means people are interacting with your content naturally through search, shared posts, and/or because they’re following your account. With paid social, you’re actively running ads promoting your community or content.

We don’t typically recommend long-term paid social campaigns. Our clients see much better ROI running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google.

All that said, if a client does want to advertise on Facebook (or wherever), we’ll support those efforts. “Boosting” posts can be an effective short-term strategy, especially if you’re promoting an event. Boosting means putting money behind an existing post to gain a more extensive reach. You can boost videos, images, texts, really anything. But videos and images are the sweet spot for paid social.

When it comes to deciding if you should try paid social, it all comes down to your goals. If the goal is to spread your message to a bigger audience and build awareness about your brand, then Facebook ads can work. But the traffic you create will likely be top-of-the-funnel; the leads won’t be converting into tours or move-ins any time soon.

Bottom line: Consider your main goal. You might not convert a lead to a move-in with a Facebook advertisement, but you might get them to download a brochure, which will nudge them farther down the sales funnel.

Note: LinkedIn ads are expensive, so we don’t recommend advertising on LinkedIn, but you could use it for recruitment. And we don’t usually recommend advertising on Instagram since Facebook is more of that sweet spot—plus, Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram. We won’t refuse a client’s request if they want to experiment with ads on Instagram. We’ll guide them with best practices.

Again, it’s all about working through the process, understanding objectives, and creating a strategy that maximizes the budget.

Who on the client side should be involved with contributing social media content? Is it just marketing and sales teams—or should others be tasked with developing content?

Anyone who has the time and interest to get involved should be involved: the activities director, receptionist, really anyone can help contribute content. Most of the time, it’s the activity coordinators, but anyone who is in the community and can snap some photos or video, we want to encourage that.

How do you quantify social media “success” and ROI? What does “successful” social media even look like for organic social? For paid?

We quantify success based on benchmarking. We like to look at where the client is when we first onboard them. Then, quarter to quarter, we report our findings on clicks, impressions, engagements, and the number of posts.

If our optimizations are working—and the client is following our recommendations—we should see a steady increase quarter-to-quarter. For paid social, we look at impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and conversion rate, but goals should be set beforehand so that you have something to measure against.

If there’s ONE thing you wish all communities understood about social media, what would it be?

Social media is so saturated nowadays, which is why quality matters more than quantity. If you’re posting just to post something and it doesn’t make sense to your goals or what your audience is expecting, don’t post it. It’s as simple as that.

Is there anything else you want to make sure we communicate about senior living social media marketing?

You get what you give! If you promote engaging content, you’ll get good engagement. It’s pretty simple.

Have a goal.

Post quality content over quantity.

Also, make sure you respond to comments, messages, and reviews. It’s not just about posting. It’s about being SOCIAL and engaging with people.

Need fresh eyes on your social media marketing strategy?

We can help! Download our free guide to social media best practices for senior living. Or if you want more hands-on help, get in touch, and let’s discuss social media.

Senior Living Leads-5 of the Biggest Lead Scoring Mistakes

Senior Living Leads: 5 of the Biggest Lead Scoring Mistakes to Avoid

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Some visitors to your senior living community website will be in the early stages of their buying journey. Others will be much farther down the sales funnel, giving indications of being “sales qualified,” even though they haven’t reached out to schedule a tour yet.

So, how can you tell the difference? How can you know who’s a marketing-qualified lead vs. a sales-qualified lead? That’s precisely where lead scoring comes into play.

We asked Paul Trusik, our Director of Operational Technology, to share his insights about lead scoring, including how to avoid five of the biggest mistakes he consistently sees communities making.

What is lead scoring, and why should senior living communities implement it?

The goal of lead scoring is simple: to help marketing and sales teams prioritize their website leads by creating a straightforward way to identify which leads are “high intent” and ready for a sales follow-up and which ones need more nurturing.

Even if a site visitor hasn’t directly requested a tour or a sales interaction, their actions might suggest they are sales-ready. For example, maybe the lead is opening every email you send them. Maybe they’re consuming multiple blog posts at once. Maybe they’re interacting with social media posts or clicking on paid ad campaigns. Maybe they indicated on a form that they want to move into senior living within 90 days.

Unlike the websites of two decades ago, we now have tools that provide this level of intelligence on the people who visit your site. With platforms like HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND, we can see exactly where a site visitor is in their journey. We can follow a person as they navigate through your site. We know which calls-to-action they click on. We can see which blog posts they’re reading. We can ask them specific questions on the forms they fill out.

Armed with this intel, we can apply points to different actions and answers. Over time, the numbers accumulate into a score. Once the score passes a specific threshold indicating sales readiness, we can send that lead to the sales team for follow-up.

And by “we,” we mean the marketing automation that is seamlessly doing the work in the background.

If you want to dive deeper, HubSpot has this tutorial on lead scoring. Plus, check out this explainer video, which also provides an excellent visual explanation of how lead scoring works—and how it keeps improving thanks to AI and machine learning.

 

 

How does Senior Living SMART develop lead-scoring parameters for its clients?

Our tech team has developed baseline lead-scoring parameters to use as a starting point. From there, we review the parameters with the client so they can provide feedback. We then customize the lead scoring parameters based on this feedback.

For example, the client might say, “You know what? It’s great that people are opening our newsletters, but let’s not put that high on the priority list. Let’s score that a little bit lower, because, from our experience, these people are still at the top of the sales funnel. They won’t decide any time soon, but it’s good that they’re engaged. Over time, we can nurture them.”

Or, they might point out to us a piece of content that tends to result in people booking tours—so we’d score that higher.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that communities make with their senior living lead scoring?

We regularly encounter the following mistakes:

Mistake #1: Not having enough good content and lead magnets.

You need great content on your website for people to interact with—and a variety of content that satisfies people at every stage of their journey. You must put out fresh content regularly as well. The more content you offer, the more reasons people have to return to your website.

You also need good third-party lead magnets, like live chat, surveys, call tracking, or other interactive elements that help engage people and create a “sticky” site. We can grade those pieces as part of the lead-scoring attributes we compile.

So, the more content and lead magnets you have, the more powerful your lead scoring will be.

Mistake #2: Not having enough referral sources contributing traffic to your site.

People land on websites via multiple ways, such as organic search and referral traffic from third parties, like social media sites or directory listings. All of those pieces are trackable. For example, if someone clicks on a pay-per-click (PPC) ad, we can include the action in lead scoring.

Here’s where the magic comes into play.

Let’s say you’re running a PPC campaign. People click the ad, but when they visit your site, they’re not converting into tour requests as you had hoped. This is often the biggest gripe from marketing and sales teams about PPC campaigns: “We’re running PPC, but we’re not getting any leads! What gives?”

Here’s the thing: Some people who click on the PPC ad might still be at the top of the funnel. But others might indeed be “high intent,” even though they haven’t requested a tour yet. Through lead scoring, we can identify the high-intent leads and serve them to the sales team for follow-up.

Bottom line: If your site doesn’t receive enough organic traffic, running paid campaigns can be a great way to get people to your site so that we can learn about them, score them, and send the high-intent leads to sales while we continue nurturing the ones that aren’t quite ready yet.

We can even score people who come in from more traditional marketing campaigns like direct mailers or print ads, thanks to QR codes which is a trackable element.

Mistake #3: Setting it and forgetting it.

We all love it when something is “set it and forget it.” But lead scoring isn’t one of those things. You must regularly revisit your lead scoring and refine it as needed.

This isn’t just a problem plaguing senior living marketing and sales teams, either. Some agencies can fall victim to the “set it and forget it” mentality. (We know because we’ve inherited some big messes over the years!)

Pro tip: Revisit your lead scoring quarterly, because here’s the thing: Campaigns change. Or new paid ads come into play. Or fresh content is published on the site. It makes sense to revisit your lead scoring and say, “Okay, we set this up three months ago. What’s changed? Maybe there are additions to the website we didn’t consider the first time around.”

You should also seek feedback from your sales team—they’re the boots on the ground and can provide valuable insights on lead quality.

Mistake #4: Yielding to sales pressure.

Sales teams are famous for complaining that they don’t have enough leads, but marketing teams should resist lowering lead scoring thresholds simply to shut them up.

Lowering the lead scoring threshold means you’ll be serving up more leads, not better leads. Many of the leads won’t be ready for a sales call. The sales team will end up spinning its wheels (and possibly alienating prospects turned off by the intrusion).

You must strive to maintain a balance between quantity and quality. While it’s important to keep the sales team happy and well-fed with leads, it’s equally crucial to ensure that the leads you do serve up have indicated their sales readiness based on their actions.

We spend a lot of time educating clients about this—and empowering marketing teams to withstand pressures from sales.

Mistake #5: Ignoring “negative” actions that can influence lead scores.

Just as there can be positive lead scoring, you can also include negative scores. For example, a salesperson could say, “Hey, we’ve talked to this lead before. They are financially or medically unqualified.” We can use that information as negative scoring and include that in the algorithm so the sales team doesn’t see that lead come through again.

The same goes for other actions on the website. Not everyone visiting your site is looking for a senior living community. Vendors and prospective employees will be looking as well. We can include these “negatives” in the lead scoring.

For example, we could assign negative point values if the person inquires about careers or is already in the senior living CRM and has been marked as unqualified. (Note: The latter requires bilateral integration between your marketing automation and CRM. We’re big fans of WelcomeHome CRM because of its ability to do this.)

Including negatives in the overall lead score is a powerful way to ensure that your sales team isn’t wasting valuable time on leads that aren’t going to convert. You create a more nuanced and accurate lead-scoring process by factoring in positive and negative indicators.

How do you know if your senior living lead scoring is effective?

Remember, the key to knowing if your lead scoring is hitting the mark lies in feedback from your sales team. They can share insights regarding lead quality. We can also set up reports to track leads from scoring to contact, pre-tour to post-tour, and deposit to move-in. This can provide tangible evidence of lead-scoring success.

Need help with your lead scoring?

Our marketing agency focuses only on senior living. We know how to help communities attract and convert better senior living leads. Get in touch with our teams, and let’s talk.

Mastering Local SEO: Your Roadmap to Digital Dominance

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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.

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Resident Lifetime Value Calculation Growth Chart

Resident Lifetime Value Calculation & Its Role in Marketing

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In a previous blog post, we discussed the resident lifetime value calculation and its significance in senior living marketing. Today, we’ll take a deeper dive into this critical metric and the insights it delivers.

Below, we’ll discuss how the resident lifetime value calculation . . .

  • Provides better visibility into your community’s overall financial health
  • Empowers you to forecast move-out projections—and to do something about them before they happen
  • Reminds you why it’s essential to develop a pipeline with longer-stay prospects in the awareness stage
  • Inspires your resident retention initiatives

What is the resident lifetime value calculation?

The resident lifetime value is the revenue you can expect the average resident to generate throughout their stay.

You will have different resident lifetime values for different levels of care. For example, maybe your memory care resident stays 24 months on average, while the average resident in your independent living community stays seven years (84 months).

The lifetime value calculation per resident is straightforward: Length of stay (in months) multiplied by the monthly rent (plus the entrance fee, if applicable).

Riffing on the numbers provided above, let’s say your monthly rent for memory care is $7,000. In this case, the resident lifetime value for a memory care resident would be $168,000 (24 months x $7,000/month).

You will also have different resident lifetime values depending on the referral source. Leads from third-party lead aggregators often result in shorter stays than leads from other channels, like organic and paid search.

Not to mention, working with third-party lead aggregators isn’t cheap—you’ll often need to reduce the length-of-stay number in your calculation by a whole month because of the aggregator’s commission.

Why is knowing the lifetime value of a resident vital from a marketing and sales perspective?

1. Knowing the lifetime value of a resident provides better visibility into your community’s overall financial health.

Armed with the resident lifetime value calculation, you’ll gain insight into the long-term financial stability of each community in your portfolio.

This means you can better plan marketing budgets, allocate resources, and make informed decisions about things like capital investments, renovations, and improvements. This knowledge is invaluable for ensuring your senior living portfolio’s continued success and growth.

2. Knowing the lifetime value of a resident empowers you to forecast move-out projections—and to do something about them before they happen.

Let’s face it: The prevailing mentality in our industry is to focus on move-in projections rather than move-out projections. However, the lifetime value calculation can help you anticipate move-outs since one of the calculation’s key components is the average length of stay.

This is empowering intel! Now, you can be proactive. For example, you might say, “Okay, these four residents moved in eight months ago. The average length of stay for this level of care in this community is 14 months. So chances are good that we’ll need to refill those apartments in six months.”

Instead of waiting for the inevitable, you can ramp up marketing tactics to attract and nurture the leads you’ll need to fill those vacancies.

3. Knowing the lifetime value of a resident will remind you why it’s essential to develop a pipeline with longer-stay prospects in the awareness stage.

In most instances, the longer-stay resident has less of an urgent need at the outset—it’s not an illness or some other external event that’s forcing them to move into senior living. As a result, the sales cycle for these prospects is longer. They won’t be high acuity residents that will most likely move out when their care needs exceed the capabilities of your staff.

So, rather than spreading your marketing dollars thinly across all leads, you can invest more in nurturing leads that have the potential for longer stays. This means being intentional about pipeline development, engaging prospects in the early stages of awareness and research, and providing reasons for them to stay connected with your community.

4. Knowing the lifetime value of a resident can inspire your resident retention initiatives.

Knowing the components of the lifetime value calculation—particularly the average length of stay for each level of care—provides an excellent benchmark for resident retention goals. You can work on bolstering programs to maintain this average—and possibly exceed it.

For example, what are the top three reasons your longest-staying residents move out? Is there anything the community can do to address the reasons and encourage an even longer stay?

Bottom line: The resident lifetime value calculation is essential to your senior living marketing.

This metric will help unlock insights that can transform your marketing and sales strategies and provide visibility into your community’s overall financial health, empower you to face move-out projections, help you build a stronger pipeline with longer-stay prospects, and inspire your resident retention initiatives.

Need guidance? Get in touch.

We work closely with marketing and sales teams to help you understand key analytics like resident lifetime value so that you can make smarter decisions about your marketing. Let’s talk!

Marketing Automation for Senior Living HubSpot vs ActiveDEMAND

Marketing Automation for Senior Living: HubSpot vs. ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP

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To remain competitive in an increasingly crowded senior living landscape, you must rely on marketing automation platforms to handle numerous repetitive tasks and report reliable results. Many options exist, but two of the most popular are HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP.

At Senior Living SMART, we work with both, so we thought sharing our insights would be a good idea.

Below, we discuss the following:

  • What is marketing automation for senior living?
  • What is HubSpot? What is ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP?
  • How are HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP similar? How are they different?
  • Does the CRM you use matter?
  • What should you keep in mind when choosing between HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP?
  • What if you need help selecting and setting up marketing automation for senior living?

What is marketing automation for senior living?

Simply put, marketing automation delivers the right message to the right prospect at the right time. As its name suggests, marketing automation does everything automatically in the background, eliminating the need for someone on your marketing or sales staff to perform repetitive tasks, like segmenting leads and sending emails.

For example, suppose an adult daughter visits your website, downloads a free guide on financing senior living, and indicates she has a parent who must move within 90 days. In that case, the marketing automation can automatically enter her into an appropriate workflow of follow-up emails. On the other hand, an adult son who downloads the same guide but whose parents don’t have a timeline in mind will enter a different lead nurturing workflow—all thanks to marketing automation.

Again, the emails are automatically delivered. There’s no need for a marketing person to manually send them (or to remember who should get which emails).

Good marketing automation software will allow you to:

  • Score and segment leads according to the parameters you set.
  • Manage your marketing leads database.
  • Build personal email campaigns to support your lead nurturing efforts.
  • See easy-to-interpret analytics on all related activities.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

What is HubSpot? What is ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP?

HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND are both marketing automation platforms.

  • HubSpot is “a CRM platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.”
  • ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP “enables marketers, agencies and businesses to supercharge their marketing efforts through streamlined campaign management, campaign recipes and attribution reporting while integrating with many other business, sales and marketing applications.”

How are HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND / Enquire MAP similar? How are they different?

When it comes to global functionality, both products are similar.

Jeremiah Rankin, our director of client technology at Senior Living SMART, uses the analogy of car shopping when comparing HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP. All cars will get you from point A to point B. All cars can be driven on the highway. And all cars go through rigorous safety testing. But cars will have different features—maybe one has a sunroof while another boasts a roomy interior. As the consumer, you have to decide which features matter to you. Armed with this knowledge, you can test-drive different options.

Rankin says you can apply this analogy to marketing automation platforms. The core functionality of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time is consistent across ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP. Even their price points are comparable, according to Rankin.

To determine which marketing automation platform to choose, senior living marketers must dig deep and consider their pain points and what they’re trying to accomplish with marketing automation. Another item to consider is your senior living CRM (more on this in a moment) and how (and if) it will integrate with HubSpot or ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP.

From there, it’s a matter of test-driving the two systems and seeing how different features solve your pain points and help you achieve your goals. Rankin says this is where collaborating with Senior Living SMART can help because he and his team can demo the products with you, show you how things work, and ask you questions you might not have thought of—but that will help guide your decision.

He says, “This involves taking that step back and just looking at things holistically in terms of creating that priority list and having that conversation: What are the tools you’re looking to use? What’s most important to you? Is it email development? Is it list segmentation? Is it workflows and lead nurturing? What integrations do you need? Once we understand their priorities, we can walk them through the platforms and see which one makes the most sense.”

Rankin points out that Senior Living SMART remains agnostic regarding the platforms. HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP are excellent choices, and the SLS team has experience in both.

Does the senior living CRM you use matter?

The short answer is yes. Rankin says both HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP. integrate with popular senior living CRMs.

“We love the WelcomeHome CRM integration as it’s a bilateral integration, and that can happen whether it’s with ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP or whether it’s with HubSpot,” Rankin says. “Some clients only need integrations to go one way, but usually, that bilateral integration is important for data to feed between your marketing automation system and your CRM system.”

Rankin notes that Senior Living SMART has a highly collaborative relationship with WelcomeHome and that the two have worked closely on the HubSpot integration in particular. “We’ve had a lot of success with this bilateral integration—it’s seamless at this point.”

HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP also integrate well with Yardi, a popular property management software in the senior living space. However, Rankin offers this caveat: “Although the Yardi integration with HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND can be bilateral (with move-in data flowing back into your marketing automation software), it often depends on what version of Yardi you’re on. You’ll want to inquire about this with your Yardi customer success manager.”

ActiveDEMAND also has a solid relationship with Aline (formerly Enquire, Glennis, and Sherpa CRM). Rankin explains, “If Aline is your CRM, that strong relationship it has with ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP is something to consider when looking at marketing automation.”

What should you keep in mind when choosing between HubSpot and ActiveDEMAND/Enquire MAP?

Remember, global functionality is similar across both products. The differences are in certain features and customizations. As you test-drive both, review your specific needs in each area below and whether you feel the product meets those needs:

    • Automation
    • Email marketing
    • Forms
    • Landing pages
    • Social media
    • Appointment scheduling
    • Integrations
    • Reporting
    • Support
    • User-friendly layouts

When reviewing the above, ask about any limits related to the product tier you’re considering. (For example, differences exist between HubSpot Pro and HubSpot Enterprise.)

Both marketing automation solutions are solid options, so your decision will come down to personal preference and which one you feel best meets your needs.

What if you need help selecting and deploying marketing automation for senior living?

Marketing automation for senior living has gone from “nice to have” to “must have.” You can no longer put your head in the sand and hope the marketing automation problem will disappear.

Instead, reach out to us. We’ve held many marketers’ hands as they’ve gotten their communities up and running on marketing automation. (Check out one customer’s story.) We’ll also train you and your staff. Once you’re acclimated, you can manage things or have us continue managing and overseeing things—it’s up to you and your budget.

But the first step is getting in touch. Let’s have a conversation about marketing automation for your community.

Senior Living SEO Companies

Senior Living SEO Companies: Do You Need One?

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Some readers might think they need a senior living SEO company in addition to (or instead of) a marketing agency. However, other readers might think having a separate SEO company is redundant if you already work with a marketing agency.

Which is it? Who’s right?

Like so many things in life, it depends.

Below, we get into the nitty-gritty by answering the following questions:

  • What is a senior living SEO company?
  • Do senior living SEO companies typically offer marketing services?
  • Why would a community opt to work with a senior living SEO company instead of (or in addition to) a marketing agency?
  • Are there drawbacks to using two agencies—an SEO company and a marketing firm?
  • What are the hallmarks of a good senior living SEO company?
  • Do you need an SEO company if you work with Senior Living SMART?
  • Will Senior Living SMART work with your community if you already have an SEO company?

What is a senior living SEO company?

First, a refresher: SEO stands for search engine optimization. In a nutshell, SEO involves improving your website so that it has greater visibility in Google search results.

You can improve your site for search in various ways, like making sure it renders well across mobile devices and that it’s full of helpful content built around relevant keywords.

As its name suggests, an SEO company delivers services to help your website pages rank higher in Google. A senior living SEO company focuses on a specific niche: senior living.

Do senior living SEO companies typically offer marketing services?

While exceptions certainly exist, any business labeling itself as an SEO company likely focuses only on SEO-related services. Otherwise, it would describe itself as something else, like a marketing or web development agency.

Remember, SEO is a sub-set of digital marketing services. For example, one of the many services we offer at Senior Living SMART is SEO—and we cover it from every conceivable angle: keyword research, optimized content, technical SEO, and on-page/off-page SEO.

Why would a community opt to work with a senior living SEO company instead of (or in addition to) a marketing agency?

Not all marketing agencies offer SEO services. And even those that do might have different levels of expertise. For example, a marketing firm with deep content marketing expertise might be adept at optimizing content for search, but it might come up short regarding technical SEO. In this case, it might make sense for the community to contract a senior living SEO company for all things SEO.

Are there drawbacks to using two agencies—an SEO company and a marketing firm?

The most significant drawbacks of working with an SEO and marketing agency are silo mentalities and overlapping costs.

  • Silo mentalities. It’s easy for silo mentalities to set in if the two agencies don’t communicate or share insights. If you work with two firms, you’ll want to encourage collaboration.
  • Overlapping costs. When you work with one agency that handles everything in-house, you’ll get a comprehensive services package instead of paying two separate fees that are bound to have some overlap.

What are the hallmarks of a good senior living SEO company?

Anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves an SEO company. Unfortunately, plenty of shady characters occupy the space. Always conduct due diligence before signing contracts.

Things to look for in a quality SEO company:

  • Great reviews on Google and positive testimonials from real customers
  • A professional website that highlights team members’ credentials
  • Relevant certifications (such as Google Analytics)
  • Case studies that demonstrate expertise
  • A robust client portfolio (ideally with clients in the senior living space)
  • The ability to provide a clear strategy for achieving your goals, including a local search strategy
  • A clear policy regarding AI (like ChatGPT) and SEO

PRO TIP: Avoid anyone who guarantees high rankings.

Do you need an SEO company if you work with Senior Living SMART?

For over a decade, we’ve been assembling a talented team of SEO specialists—from writers to technical gurus to everything in between. So the short answer is no—you don’t need a separate SEO company if you work with us. We’re truly a one-stop senior living marketing agency.

Will Senior Living SMART work with your community if you already have an SEO company?

Good marketing agencies are flexible. We understand that communities might contact us for marketing help after signing with an SEO company. We’re happy to collaborate with your vendors (and not just SEO specialists, either). We work hard to make sure we’re not duplicating efforts because we don’t want you to pay for things twice.

Get in touch and let’s chat about your senior living SEO and marketing needs.

8 Signs You Should Fire Your Senior Living Marketing Agency

8 Signs You Should Fire Your Senior Living Marketing Agency

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Anyone can hang out a virtual shingle and call themselves a senior living marketing agency. In reality, not all agencies are created equal.

The worst part? Sometimes you won’t recognize the warning signs simply because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Let’s remedy this, OK?

Below, we discuss eight signs that your senior living marketing agency isn’t passing muster. Any one issue alone is worth having a conversation with the agency. Two or more signs, and you’ll likely want to begin looking elsewhere for marketing support… Here are the eight indicators:

  • Your account team has never discussed its strategy with you.
  • You don’t have visibility into your marketing.
  • You don’t receive comprehensive reporting that you understand.
  • You’re spending money on things you don’t understand (like PPC).
  • Your agency treats marketing as a “set it and forget it” task.
  • You only occasionally hear from your account team.
  • You don’t own your marketing assets.
  • Your account team keeps changing.

1. Your account team has never discussed its strategy with you.

Not all senior living marketing agencies take a strategic approach to marketing, which is a huge red flag. A sound strategy drives successful marketing, period. Too often, agencies will apply a one-size-fits-all template to your marketing.

How can you recognize when this happens? The “plan” will often sound like a pre-set formula: four blog posts a month, three Facebook posts a week, one Google Ads campaign, and one new ebook a quarter.

On the surface, the plan might sound reasonable. And yet, it’s the equivalent of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Your strategy should always dictate the campaigns, tactics, and content that you create. Maybe your strategy doesn’t require four blogs per month because you already have an excellent library of blog content. But maybe you do need better landing pages for your pay-per-click ads to increase your ROI.

We’re riffing here, but you likely get the gist. Beware of an agency that slaps together a 90-day plan within hours of a kick-off call with you. This indicates a formula or templated approach rather than a thoughtful strategy.

A thoughtful marketing strategy requires a careful analysis of your online presence, goals, competitors, and many other things before the account team can devise a plan to maximize your marketing budget while achieving your objectives.

2. You don’t have visibility into your marketing.

Marketing should never feel like this loosey-goosey intangible thing that’s impossible to quantify. Effective marketing produces measurable results like marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), sales-qualified leads (SQLs), tours, and move-ins.

It’s possible your marketing team assumes you understand all the various dashboards and charts in your marketing automation and CRM platforms. That’s an unfair assumption—and laziness on the account team’s part.

Yes, it’s good for you to dig into dashboards and review analytics, but it’s the marketing agency’s job to ensure you’re interpreting data correctly and you understand the changes the agency is making based on the data. And they should be making adjustments and tweaks.

3. You don’t receive comprehensive reporting that you understand.

This point aligns with the previous one. In a nutshell, good agencies avoid “dashboard dazzle,” where they deliver impressive-looking marketing dashboards filled with charts, graphs, and senior living marketing analytics that you can’t make heads or tails of—no matter how hard you try.

Your team should deliver regular updates and reports, but they should do so in a way that’s easy for you and other key stakeholders to understand. If you can’t quickly recap what the latest reporting or dashboard is telling you, consider that a troubling sign.

Request that they deliver more user-friendly reports. If they can’t or don’t, that is a sign you should look elsewhere.

4. You’re spending money on things you don’t understand (like PPC).

A good agency will walk you through complex marketing topics and make sure you understand what’s happening—and why. A good agency can also easily justify why it’s taking specific actions (or requesting a certain budget) so that you don’t have to wonder where your marketing dollars are going.

For example, you don’t need to become a PPC expert, but you should understand the basics—particularly the expected and actual ROI. This is true for all marketing campaigns, especially ones that might be out of your wheelhouse, like Google Ad campaigns.

5. Your agency treats marketing as a “set it and forget it” task.

Marketing is dynamic. What worked last quarter might not work next quarter. The social media platform that was hot might be cooling down. Bidding costs for paid ads will fluctuate and affect your budget. Situations out of your control (like a pandemic or natural disaster) might mean you need to rethink your marketing quickly.

Our point: Your senior living marketing agency must be able to pivot, which isn’t easy if the agency is beholden to a formula or is used to setting and forgetting things (like PPC campaigns).

6. You only occasionally hear from your account team (and never with fresh marketing strategies or ideas).

How often do you hear from your account team? Do they check in with you regularly? Or do they only respond when you email or call them?

The best senior living marketing agencies take a proactive rather than reactive approach. The agency stays on top of what’s working (and what isn’t) for your community, and they come to you with recommendations. They also regularly bring you creative marketing ideas and fresh strategies—and not simply when they’re trying to renew their contract.

7. You don’t own your marketing assets.

Your senior living marketing agency should never hold your marketing assets hostage. Your community should own its website, hosting, relevant Google accounts (like Google Business Profile, Google AdSense, Google Analytics), directory listings, collateral materials, etc.

Reputable agencies clarify in their contracts that you retain ownership of everything developed and created during your engagement.

Yes, members of your account team will need access to specific software (like Google products), but these products make it easy to add marketing partners (for this very reason—so that you don’t lose ownership of your assets).

8. Your account team keeps changing.

It’s normal for an occasional change on your account, but if your account team experiences regular turnover, consider it a warning sign.

Your marketing agency’s team is one that you can rely on. Constantly getting new team members up to speed is exhausting and disruptive. Plus, this merry-go-round behavior likely indicates a more significant problem within the agency.

Time to make a switch? Contact our senior living marketing agency.

For over a decade, we’ve helped senior living communities of all sizes rock their marketing. You won’t have to worry about any of the above issues when you choose us. Contact us today and experience the difference.

Assisted Living PPC Management

Assisted Living PPC Management: 3 Reasons You Should Work with an Agency

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You might think, “Assisted living PPC management—how hard can it be?” Below, we provide three compelling reasons why working with an experienced agency like Senior Living SMART makes sense for all your paid advertising needs.

1. We do ppc management every day.

You could try managing your assisted living PPC campaigns on your own. The challenge, of course, is that it’s not the only thing you’re managing, right? If you’re part of your community’s marketing or sales team, you’re already juggling many other things. So PPC would be one more item added to your endless to-do list.

At Senior Living SMART, we have a team devoted to nothing but paid advertising campaigns. That’s the only work they do, day in and day out. This allows them to dive deep into each client’s needs, maximize budgets, and optimize results.

At SLS, our team focuses on all the information that Google is telling them so they can deliver the best results for clients. He and his team also stay current with all things Google and PPC.

This means we can come in with solid recommendations and ideas that are otherwise not considered by people who may be unfamiliar with Google Ads or people who are trying to do it themselves or—in the worst case scenario—people who are doing the “set it and forget it” method of just creating an account, paying for clicks, and moving onto their next checklist item instead of checking ad results.

2. We monitor PPC campaigns every day.

Speaking of setting and forgetting it: That’s NOT a good strategy for assisted living PPC management.

Why? Because pay-per-click advertising is dynamic—and even more so now in the era of Google’s new Search Generative Experience.

If you set up your PPC ads, enter your credit card, and “forget it,” you won’t get insights into . . .

  • Which keywords are bringing in traffic that converts into quality leads
  • Which keywords are bringing in low-quality leads (Hint: You can remove these
    “bad” keywords from your targeting)
  • What changes can you make to landing pages to boost conversions
  • Which leads ultimately become residents

This is because PPC (and Google Ads in particular) requires active maintenance in order to navigate changing market conditions. New competitors can enter your geography, others can leave, and sometimes things can seem to change for no good reason.

Regular, routine maintenance helps ensure a campaign has minimal issues throughout its life, assisting it in earning high-quality leads that make the most of a senior living company’s dollar.

3. We know how much PPC leads should cost.

You don’t have to spend the most to get meaningful results with PPC. When we work with senior living communities, we maximize your budget so you get the biggest bang for your advertising dollar. We’ll undoubtedly make recommendations—but we make these recommendations based on actual data. And we set expectations based on your available budget.

If you tell us you need ten quality leads a month from PPC campaigns with X budget, we might do research that reveals you don’t have enough budget to get those ten leads, but you do have enough to get seven. You can decide whether to increase your budget or work with your intended budget.

Our point: We base everything we recommend on actual data, not pie-in-the-sky dreams.

Here’s a recent example: A senior living community with 15 communities nationwide came to us and asked if we could review their PPC campaigns. They were new to PPC and wondering if they were paying too much per lead.

We audited their data and discovered they were paying thousands of dollars per individual lead, which is extraordinarily high for Google Ads. We came up with recommendations and took over the account.

Since then, we’ve increased their conversions by over a hundred and reduced their cost per lead by 20%.

Would you like to discuss outsourcing your assisted living PPC management?

Get in touch, and let’s discuss how our paid advertising team can help.

How We Saved Our Clients 26000

How We Saved Our Clients $26,000 in 10 Weeks by Focusing on Ad Fraud

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In May 2023, the paid media team at Senior Living SMART first began to hear that a few clients were getting unqualified leads from Google Ads.

This isn’t completely unusual – any marketing strategy will always bring in unqualified leads to some extent, and marketing in the senior living industry is no exception.

But these complaints were different. They were specific. They were unsettling. They told us that something else was happening that we weren’t seeing in our regular work.

By the beginning of June, nearly every client who ran a paid ad campaign with SLS was telling us the same thing – they were getting a huge influx of bizarre leads who didn’t even come close to meeting qualification requirements.

In fact, these leads weren’t even close to what any client was targeting. But they all shared similar criteria. These leads:

  • Wanted senior housing for $300 per month
  • Spoke with accents of different languages
  • Sought employment (even though we weren’t running recruitment ads)
  • Used fake names
  • Didn’t respond to sales follow ups

Who were these leads? How did they find our clients? Most importantly, how were we going to make it stop?

The paid media team at SLS spent months trying to answer these questions, among others. It took over our daily work, and we spent meeting after meeting brainstorming, theory-crafting, implementing, and going back to the drawing board.

But one day, we got it, and once we did, it saved our clients $26,000 in 10 weeks.

Further Reading: “Deceptive ad practices frustrate providers by generating excessive, financially unqualified leads, firm says” – McKnights Senior Living

Here are the steps we took to figure it out.

How we saved our clients $26,000 in 10 weeks by focusing on ad fraud

Step 1. We identified the source of the problem

The first step to stopping any new problem is understanding it. For us, that meant we had to make sure that these leads were, in fact, coming from Google Ads.

We used two main tools for this: Google Ads and HubSpot.

The clients of ours who used HubSpot had access to its treasure drove of data on each and every lead that came through. This meant documenting the lead’s origin from paid search, the name of the search campaign, and the keyword they used to trigger the ads.

Having this data ready for hundreds of leads, we then drilled deeper into keywords, specifically.

Strangely, the keywords credited with earning these leads in HubSpot seemed normal: “assisted living near me,” “find senior living,” and so on. Prior to May, these keywords were powerful drivers of high-quality leads that had strong potential to become move-ins for our clients over time.

But things didn’t get really strange until we compared HubSpot’s data to Google Ads.

“Assisted living near me” and the other keywords in HubSpot didn’t line up with what Google Ads showed us. HubSpot might show that a keyword brought in eight leads last week, but Google Ads would show that it only earned two – or maybe even zero.

Because we use conversion tracking for all of our clients’ paid campaigns, this keyword data – and the number of conversions they drive – should be the same, but this wasn’t the case. In fact, it wasn’t even close.

Even so, it’s not common for Google and HubSpot to simply “not work,” so we double- and triple-checked all of our tracking parameters for both Google and HubSpot. They both passed perfectly.

Something was clearly wrong – and it wasn’t us. That’s a good-news-bad-news situation.

If it were an error we made, we could fix it, but it’d also be a terrible error on our part. Because it’s an external issue, we can’t fix it right away.

We knew our keyword data couldn’t point us in the right direction. Next, we turned to demographic information of the leads themselves.

They shared some elements in common that I already mentioned, the strangest of which were those who came from Google Ads campaigns but told clients they heard about them through TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram — none of which were currently in use for clients experiencing this problem. This was helpful information, nonetheless.

If these leads were credited to Google Ads but said they heard of a community from social media, it meant a person or robot was manually presenting information about a community in one of two ways:

  1. Copying and pasting the link directly from our ad
  2. Linking to a Google Search Partner that presented our ad

Why is that the case? Because those are the only ways that someone could hear about a community on a social platform and have their conversion attributed to paid search.

With that in mind, we formed two hypotheses:

First, someone could be using a robot to swipe our links and re-paste them on a social network. There’s no real reason to do this though, and there’s no well-documented case of ad fraud including copied links.

Second, it could be a search partner. Search partners are third-party companies that white-label Google’s search engine as their own product. Sometimes, that company may present the product as a search engine. Other times, it may appear like a series of buttons or ads.

More importantly, there was a financial incentive for search partners. If they earned clicks for Google Ads, they got a share of the revenue, so in theory, a search partner could create a website, white-label Google Search, use social media (or ads) to send people to their website, and get clicks on ads for a payout.

Is this the most reputable way to make a buck? No, but we couldn’t deny it – all of the pieces in this theory made sense.

We then chose to test this one first by mapping out the flow of how someone went from never hearing about our client to somehow thinking they offered $300 / month senior living.

Step 2. We sought to understand the flow of unqualified leads

Fortunately for us, this process didn’t take long to complete. Almost all of our clients use search campaigns since that’s statistically the strongest method of earning leads through paid media for senior living. One of the reasons this is so strong is the Search Partner Network.

Historically, we used this when our clients were going up against competitors with deep pockets that made competing on paid ads out of the question. The high rollers would buy up the real estate in Google Search, and our clients would pick up leads from the search partner network. They’d even hit lead goals using this strategy, so we made it a part of our strategy for most clients.

There’s a catch, though: Google doesn’t publish the names of its search partners. Unless they’re really big names – like Yahoo! — Google doesn’t tell you who shows your ads. They also don’t tell you how those search partners may get the traffic to engage with your ads.

For SLS, that meant we had to find a search partner in the wild. Fortunately, we knew exactly where to start.

We searched for keywords like “$300 senior living near me” several times, changing our location with VPNs and cookie-blocker options as we worked. Sure enough, we got a few hits every time we tried.

On every website we landed, we learned a few interesting things:

  • The website itself was not a search partner; it was a website serving Google display ads
  • The search partner took out display ads on the host website
  • When someone clicked the ad, they went to the search partner site
  • The search partner then used buttons to navigate users to a new set of ads
  • The new set of ads did not have anything to do with the original ad
  • The user would click an ad and end up on our clients’ websites, still searching for $300 / month senior living because of how the search partner presented their ads

This answered a few questions for us:

First, it proved that search partners were at least part of the problem – if not the entire problem.

Second, it showed how a lead could be credited as coming from paid search and a bizarre keyword to find one of our clients. It wasn’t their fault – they were clicking options that were presented to them.

Third, it explained the disconnect in the keyword data between HubSpot and Google Ads. They were tracking different clicks.

To make matters more complicated, the URL of each search partner had hardcoded UTM parameters in them. These UTM parameters are how Google and HubSpot sort data about where a lead originated. You’ll see them in a webpage’s URL after the domain information after a question mark: “UTM_source” is how they know someone came from paid search, “UTM_campaign” is how they knew the campaign name, etc.

Here’s an example of UTM parameters in action: http://yourwebsite.com/landing-page?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=independent-living&utm_term=independent-living-near-me

In this example, “yourwebsite.com” is the domain and “/landing-page” is the specific page. This is the required portion of the URL so that your browser knows where to take you. The rest of it – after the question mark – is exclusively used for tracking.

In this example, the “source” is Google Ads, the “medium” is paid search, the “campaign” is called Independent Living, and the “term” that drove traffic is independent living near me.

In Google Ads, this information is automatically plugged into a URL after someone clicks to assist in proper attribution. If those parameters change, then the URL sends false information to the CRM, and that causes a discrepancy in the reporting between a CRM and Google Ads.

Because the UTM parameters were being changed on the search partner site, HubSpot & Google Ads had a hard time parsing what went where.

Our clients were feeling confused. If we wanted to help them stop feeling that way, we knew we had to take our fight to the search partner network. But here’s the thing – we couldn’t just turn it off.

Search partner ads still accounted for 90%+ of some of our clients’ leads. They may have been unqualified, but some were also very qualified, so killing the Search Partner extension was out of the question. Instead, we needed a more surgical solution.

Step 3. We took preventative action

At this point, we had spent a few weeks working out exactly what was happening so we could address it. While it took some time, we were happy to have some level of a solution to roll out. Our first step was to make several Google Ads lists for negative keywords. Negative keywords are used to specify who you don’t want to see your ads, just as regular keywords are used to identify who should see your ads.

Our regular keyword suite includes terms like “senior living near me.” We then updated our negative keyword list with terms like “$300” so that we wouldn’t show for “$300 senior living near me.”

Even though these search network partners are using some sketchy tactics to earn clicks, they still have to abide by the rules that Google Ads sets out for them. One of those rules is that they must respect negative keywords. All of those keywords we identified at the start of this investigation went right onto our negative keyword list.

Then, we went back to the search partner websites and looked for other terms they allowed someone to click. If we found one, we added it to the negative keyword list. The only exception to this work was if we found a keyword that simply said “assisted living” or “independent living” or something to that effect. We didn’t want to block those terms because they still drove qualified traffic to clients – even if a few unqualified leads got through every now and again, but for all of the other strange ones – like “seniors independent living facilities usa 2023 best” – they went onto the list.

Then, we waited.

Step 4. We looked for results to validate our methods

It didn’t take long to see results. The very next day showed a drop in conversions across the board, but we don’t take action on a single day of data – it could be an anomaly, and the conditions that caused the drop could change the next day, but the results were consistent for the next several days.

To know whether our changes really worked as intended, we had to talk to our clients’ sales team. It can take weeks for a lead to go from their first conversion to their first conversation with a salesperson in the senior living industry, so we asked our clients to let us know if anything changed with sales team feedback. Most clients were quiet that first week. But by the second week, we started hearing some good results.

In fact, three weeks after we rolled out the changes, one client told us that we eliminated as much as 85% of the unqualified leads they were seeing a month earlier.

We didn’t want to rest on our laurels, so we reviewed the data 10 weeks after we implemented our changes. We learned definitively that we’re going in the right direction. Here’s what we found when we looked at our clients:

  • Cost: -$25,800
  • Impressions: -31.53%
  • Clicks: -16.71%
  • Click-Through Rate: +21.65%
  • Conversions: +8.80%
  • Conversion Rate: +30.63%
  • Cost per Lead: +1.98%

Here’s why we were excited:

First, the cost went down, and we were saving our clients money. This isn’t a great indicator to see long-term because you ideally want to spend all of your Google Ads budget every day, but for a sharp and sudden change, we were happy to see that costs decreased overall.

Next, impressions went down. Because we knew that we were blocking keywords that corresponded to low-quality leads, we wanted to see impressions decrease. This meant fewer people were seeing the ads, and that’s exactly what we set out to do.

Third, clicks decreased. This makes sense – we had fewer impressions, so we were most likely going to have fewer clicks as well.

Despite the fact that we had fewer clicks and impressions, the click-through rate – or the percentage of people who saw an ad and engaged with it – went up by 21.65%. We weren’t reaching as many people, but we were reaching a much more interested audience.

On top of that, overall conversion increased by 8.80%. This was the primary proof that we were engaging a better audience as we shifted the priority to lead quality. We were engaging fewer people, but they were so interested that our conversions actually increased!

We also found that the conversion rate went up by more than 30%, once again proving that we were engaging a highly qualified, highly interested audience even as we intentionally blocked people from seeing ads.

Finally, the cost per lead remained stable, increasing less than 2%.

Our solution worked, but there was still work to do.

Step 5. We continued the work of keeping on top of unqualified leads

We discovered pretty quickly that the search partners sending unqualified leads to our clients have a vested interest in continuing their practice. We now review our clients’ conversion sources (including keywords) on a daily basis. We started blocking new terms like “seniors living” and “senior aprs” (which is almost certainly an intentional misspelling of “senior apts.”) As we continue to block these unqualified leads, we continue to drive stronger results for clients.

Want to learn more about Google Ads and possible fraud?

Download our free guide! In this guide, we dive into the details about different types of fraud and the steps you can take to fight back.


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