Effective Inbound Marketing Tips for Senior Living

Looking for effective inbound marketing tips to attract more traffic to your website, increase conversions, and close qualified leads into happy move-ins? Keep reading.

Inbound Marketing Tips: Tend to Your Website

One of the biggest mistakes communities make with their senior living website is that they treat it like this once-and-done static thing. But an effective website—meaning one that attracts the right traffic and converts the traffic into leads—needs to be dynamic. 

Which is why you need to . . .

• Monitor search performance. Is your site ranking for the right keyword phrases? Are there any gaps? Have new phrases entered the mix since you conducted a deep dive? Note: The answers to those questions will likely be “yes,” and that’s OK (and kind of our point). Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t a once-and-done thing, either.
• Pay attention to underperforming pages. Are people going to the page, but bouncing off quickly? Or maybe they spend time on the page, but they don’t click the call-to-action (CTA)? You might need to adjust the offer, layout, overall content, keyword focus, or all of the above.
• Add fresh custom content. We’re not talking about more stock images or “fluff” content. We’re talking about custom content that reflects the unique experience that your community offers. Think resident photos, stories, videos, seasonal recipes from the chef, the views of the grounds from different vantage points and at various times of the year. You get the idea.

Want an objective opinion about how your site is performing—and what you could do better? Get our website audit.

Inbound Marketing Tips: Get Blogging

Blogging offers so many benefits. As HubSpot notes, blogging can help:

• Drive traffic to your website, especially through long-tail keywords (relevant phrases with less overall search volume, but that still offer solid ranking opportunities)
• Educate people who are in that all-important awareness stage
• Convert anonymous website traffic into leads
• Improve link building, both internally and via backlinks (a must for healthy SEO)

The key with blogging is having a smart strategy that guides your efforts. You also want to blog consistently, create content that people can’t find anywhere else, and promote and repurpose your content across other channels.

Inbound Marketing Tips: Think Beyond Your Website

Sure, your senior living website serves as your digital marketing hub. But it’s not the only player in town. When it comes to inbound marketing, you must consider your entire online presence. And at the top of that list is your community’s Google My Business listing. Note: We did an in-depth post on everything you need to know about GMB. 

From there, you should pay attention to your overall senior living reputation management—think of all the various review sites and directories (like Care.com and A Place for Mom). Your listings need to be accurate, current, and compelling (just like your website). 

Inbound Marketing Tips: Don’t Treat All Leads the Same Way

We know how tempting it is to get a “lead” and for sales to take over and work that lead. But guess what? That’s the old way of doing sales. (Circa 2000.) The digital landscape has changed how people buy—and, as a result, how businesses should sell.

Prospective buyers have access to all the information they need to inform their purchases, thanks to websites, blogs, and, most importantly, other people. (Think friends, family, and review sites.) 

So that anonymous website traffic that comes to your site and converts into leads? Those folks are savvy. They don’t want to be sold to—at least, not until they’re ready. And some most certainly aren’t ready. They might just be getting started and doing their research. They might not be prepared to make a decision for a year or two—and no amount of haranguing from your sales reps is going to change that.

Why would you waste your time calling these people and trying to engage them in a sales discussion? Because that’s exactly what it would be: A waste of everyone’s time.

Instead, doesn’t it make more sense to focus on people who are further along in the sales funnel, like the ones who are truly sales-qualified and a good fit for your community? Of course it does.

And that’s precisely why you shouldn’t treat all leads the same way. What this means is that your sales folks will be working with fewer leads (rather than every lead that comes in). But they’ll be working with better leads while the other leads—the ones who have potential, but who aren’t ready for a sales call—continue to get nurtured over time through email lead nurturing.

Inbound Marketing Tips: Have a Social Media STRATEGY

Facebook will be turning 20 in 2024. LinkedIn, believe it or not, is even older. Social media is no longer this new-fangled thing that people casually play with. Social media has grown up and evolved over the last two decades. As such, you can’t be casual in your approach to social media. 

Like everything else, you need an overall senior living social media strategy, one that . . .

• Defines your goals for each platform (because your objectives for, say, LinkedIn will be different from Facebook)
• Determines who will be in charge of creating content
• Has a plan for deploying content organically and via paid means
• Puts processes in place for monitoring results
• Makes sure the social media plan works in harmony with other content initiatives

Bonus Tip: Take Advantage of Outsourced Marketing Support

Given inbound marketing’s complexity, it can be extremely challenging for senior living marketing and sales teams to manage everything on their own. Outsourcing some of the work to a reputable agency (like ours!) can be an excellent way to make sure that your senior living community is following all the tips we outlined above. 

Get in touch and let’s chat about your digital marketing needs.