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Senior Living Advertising: Digital vs. Print

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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.

Senior Living Advertising: Digital

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:

  • Google AdWords. Typically, people refer to AdWords as pay-per-click (PPC).
  • Social media advertising. Particularly Facebook, but also Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
  • Online banner ads. You tend to see banner ads on sites you browse, like media sites. Sometimes you buy these banner ads directly from the site itself; other times, your ads might rotate in via the Google Display Network.
  • Google Display Network. As Google says, the Google Display Network is “a collection of over two million websites that reach over 90% of Internet users across the globe.”
  • Remarketing. Have you ever browsed a site for a product, and then ads for that product followed you around on other sites? That’s remarketing at work.
  • SMS marketing. In other words, text-based ads. The jury is still out on whether SMS marketing is a smart way to go, especially for our industry. We tend to think it can work better, at least right now, as a way for senior living communities to communicate with current residents and families (rather than as a way to advertise to prospects). But our position could change in the future.

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.)

Senior Living Advertising: Digital Pros

  • Online advertising can often let you get incredibly granular. For example, you could focus your Facebook advertising on certain zip codes around your senior living community and only serve ads to women over 70 who still live in their own homes.
  • You can get started with smaller budgets. Buying full-page color print ads can be incredibly pricey. With PPC, you can get a lot out of smaller budgets.
  • You can change messaging/creative on the fly. Want to test a new message and see how it performs? Maybe switch up the images (“creative”) used in a campaign? No problem.
  • You tend to have much deeper insights into an ad campaign’s effectiveness. Important analytics, like impressions, clicks, and conversions, are baked into the robust reporting.

Senior Living Advertising: Digital Cons

  • It’s noisy out there, and people say they hate ads. In fact, according to this article, click-through rates are declining, more and more people are blocking ads through browser extensions, and for many, the ads have become a sort of background noise.

Senior Living Advertising: Print

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.

Senior Living Advertising: Print Pros

  • Your target market still reads print. Yes, older adults are big consumers of online media, but they’re still big consumers of print. According to this research, “25% of US adults aged 65 and over get their news from print publications.”
  • Older adults think print is easier to read. According to the American Press Institute, “71 percent of those 65 and older like the ease of print.” Print-oriented readers also feel they get more news in print formats.
  • Print could help boost word-of-mouth initiatives. Older adults like to share what they read in print, more so than their younger counterparts. “Sixty-three percent of print subscribers aged 65 and older share content compared with 58 percent of those aged 50-64, 49 percent of those aged 30-49, and 38 percent of those aged 18-34.” (Again, this is from the American Press Institute.)

Senior Living Advertising: Print Cons

  • Ad buys tend to be pricier. If you want to run a full-page print ad, even in your smaller daily, it can add up. Plus, it’s a once-and-done sort of thing.
  • Mistakes can’t be fixed. Oy! Print pieces are extremely unforgiving. If there’s an error, there’s not much you can do about it once it’s out in the world.
  • You can’t easily experiment with messaging and creative. Once you sign off, it’s a done deal.
  • Results can be harder to track. Sure, you can include an ad-specific URL or phone number to your print ad to help you track. But digital ad conversions tend to be more reliable.

Senior Living Advertising: Digital or Print? (Or Both?)

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).

Tips for Successful Senior Living Advertising

  • Know your budget. Make sure you’re not spending too much on any one advertising vehicle. A balanced approach is a smart approach, especially when you’re just getting started. Over time, as you see which ads deliver the biggest ROI, you can adjust your ad spend accordingly.
  • Keep in mind all the “other” costs. The cost to run the ads themselves is just one cost. You also need to keep costs in mind for the creative (copywriting/design) and the cost you might pay to an outside vendor to manage your digital ad campaigns and/or your print media buys.
  • Be honest about what your team can do—and what it can’t. We recommend using an outside consultant or agency (like ours) to manage your paid advertising. Unless you have someone on your team who is skilled (and ideally certified) in using Google’s ads program, it makes sense to hand the reins over to a professional.
  • Track results as much as possible. Review analytics for digital campaigns and make adjustments accordingly. For print ads, offer ad-specific landing page URLs or ad-specific phone numbers with call-tracking software and monitor the results.
  • Be prepared to let go and try new things. If you’ve been in this business a long time, it can be hard to let go of strategies that worked in the past. Trust the analytics and make decisions based on what the numbers are telling you.

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Senior Living Advertising: Paid Search 101

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When it comes to senior living advertising, we know that it can get overwhelming fast, particularly in the area of paid search. This article aims to provide a high-level overview of what you need to know.

What is paid search anyway?

When someone searches in Google on a phrase like “senior living communities Miami,” ads pop up along with organic results. If the person clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged for the click. This is called pay-per-click advertising or PPC. 

Sometimes advertisers pay simply for the honor of having the ad appear. These ads are known as CPM, or cost-per 1000 impressions. They’re great for building brand awareness.

Other types of paid search include ads that show up on other websites. Think of the news websites you visit and the ads that appear. Those are typically part of what’s known as Google’s Display Network. 

Remarketing ads also fall under the paid search umbrella. These ads follow you around after you’ve visited a company’s website. So, for example, if someone visits your senior living website and then bounces over to Facebook, you could have a remarketing campaign that serves up ads about your community to that person who just visited your site. (Remarketing is its own specialty.)

All come under the realm of paid search. Paid search is how companies like Google and Facebook make their billions and billions of dollars.

What’s the goal of paid search in senior living advertising?

For pay-per-click, the goal is to drive highly targeted traffic to your senior living website. Let’s go back to our example above. If a Miami-based senior living community focuses its ad buy on a term like “senior living communities Miami,” meaning its ad gets served up when someone searches on that phrase, you can be fairly confident that people clicking on the ad will be highly targeted traffic. 

And by “highly targeted,” we mean website visitors who are keenly interested in what you’re selling—in this case, your senior living community in Miami. 

Other types of paid search, like CPM and ads that run in the Google Display Network, might have different goals, such as building brand awareness. (The idea being if you see an ad enough times, eventually you’re going to recognize the brand’s name, even if it’s happening in a subliminal manner and even if you never click on the ad.)

How much does paid search cost advertisers?

The range varies widely. Bigger brands might spend thousands and thousands of dollars per day on paid search. Smaller brands might spend a few hundred dollars per day. According to WordStream, “The average small business using Google advertising spends between $9,000 and $10,000 per month on their online advertising campaigns. That’s $100,000 to $120,000 per year.”

WordStream also notes: “The average CPC [cost per click] in AdWords across all industries is $2.32 on the search network and $0.58 on the Google Display Network.” And for Facebook, the average CPC is $1.72.

Keep in mind that the above only describes the cost for the actual ad-clicks. It doesn’t include fees you’d pay to someone to write your ads, set up your accounts, test ads, monitor results, and make changes based on those results. That work would be an additional cost.

Can you control how much you spend?

You can control the ad spend itself. That’s part of the appeal with PPC ads. Advertisers can set daily spend limits. Once you hit that limit, your ads are no longer served up.

But those additional costs we outlined above can vary. You should always make sure you’re clear on how much paid search campaigns will cost in total.

How do you get your ads to show up for the right searches?

Paid search is part science, part art. It’s akin to SEO (search engine optimization). You need to know what your target audience is searching on in places like Google (what keyword phrases they’re plugging into the search bar).

From there, you need to know how competitive the keyword phrase is. The more competitive, the more you’ll need to bid at an “ad auction” for that keyword phrase. (WordStream has a good guide to the ad auction here.) 

The goal is to focus on competitive keyword phrases that bring in targeted traffic—but that are also cost-effective in the grand scheme of things.

Knowing the lifetime value of a customer can be critical in determining if the money that you’re spending on paid search is delivering the return on investment (ROI) you’re looking for. 

Using simple math: Let’s say the lifetime value of a customer is $5,000. If you need to spend $1000 on digital ads (on average) to score one lead that turns into a customer, you’ll probably see that as a good ROI. On the flip side, if you find you need to spend $6000 on advertising to score a customer, then it’s not the wisest of investments (at least, in regard to the way your digital ads are currently set up . . . adjusting your ad strategy could improve the ROI).

In addition to choosing the right keywords, what else goes into effective paid search campaigns?

The creative is incredibly important for senior living advertising —the headline, the ad copy, the design elements. Other things can affect how well the ad campaigns perform, like when the ads are served up (time of day). 

This sounds complicated. Can I manage it on my own?

You probably won’t be able to successfully manage paid search on your own unless you have expertise in this field. There are so many moving parts, which is why PPC agencies exist and why PPC specialists have roles inside digital marketing agencies. What we outlined above only begins to scratch the surface. Paid search is an incredibly dense and complex topic—and it’s fluid, too!

What should I look for in a paid search specialist or agency?

Anyone can claim to be a PPC specialist. And plenty of digital marketing agencies might claim they can manage your paid search. But as we’ve mentioned above, paid search is a specialty area. A good rule of thumb: Only collaborate with people or agencies who boast their Google Ads certifications.

As Google notes, “There are six Google Ads certifications available today: Google Ads Search, Google Ads Display, Google Ads Video, Shopping ads, Google Ads Apps, and Google Ads Measurement.” 

Let’s Chat!

 

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Senior Living Advertising Agencies: Do You Need One?

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Advertising for senior living has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Newspaper print ads and telephone books (remember those?) might have been an effective strategy circa 2000. 

But when’s the last time you consulted the Yellow Pages? And while print ads might still play a role in your ad strategy today, they’re certainly not the only advertising game in town, not when you have Google AdWords and Facebook advertising to consider.

What’s a senior living community to do? Hire an advertising agency on top of an outsourced marketing agency? Or can a good marketing agency handle everything—marketing and advertising?

The short answer is yes. Yes, you could work with two separate agencies—one for advertising and one for marketing. And yes, you could work with one marketing agency that manages everything in-house.

We’re fans of the latter approach—using one agency to do everything—for three important reasons. 

1. Senior living advertising and senior living marketing should work in harmony, not in silos.

When you work with two separate agencies—one focused on advertising and the other focused on marketing—it’s easy for everyone to slip into a silo mentality where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

Too often we see miscommunication or lack of communication altogether when multiple agencies are involved (even despite good intentions). This can result in mistakes like inconsistent messaging between the ads and the actual website that the ads point to. 

The most successful advertising and marketing work together toward the same ultimate goal—attracting more leads that convert into move-ins. And this is much easier to accomplish when everyone is in the same agency.

2. Things are much less likely to fall through the cracks when you work with one agency that oversees everything.

Today’s advertising can be complex because you have to juggle multiple channels, multiple pubs and platforms within each channel, different creative, and various flights. Think print ads in newspapers and magazines. Digital versions for the online versions of those pubs. Radio spots. Google AdWords. Facebook advertising. Remarketing ads. The Google Display Network. And that’s just the beginning.

If your advertising and marketing teams are in separate agencies, it can be easy—too easy—for something important to fall through the cracks, like deadlines or changes to messaging.

For example, if a digital ad promotes a new ad-specific landing page on your website, the marketing agency will typically be in charge of creating the landing page, not the advertising agency. Think of how easy it could be for the ad to go live and yet the landing page doesn’t exist because someone either forgot to inform the marketing agency or forgot to follow up to make sure the landing page was all set.

Collaboration that happens in-house means mistakes and miscommunications like this can easily be avoided.

3. Consolidating everything under the same roof will likely save you money over the long haul.

If you’re working with one agency to handle everything soup to nuts, you’ll get better pricing overall because everything falls under one vendor instead of being spread across two.

Plus, a senior living marketing agency that also offers ad services will already have established relationships with the right advertising partners, which also saves time and money. And the best agencies will pass these savings onto you. 

If you do decide to work with a separate ad agency, follow these tips at the very least:

  • Research and vet different senior living advertising agencies the same way you would any vendor or partner.
  • Make sure the ad agency has experience with ad buys in the senior living space. Ask about other senior living clients they’ve worked with, quiz them on their industry knowledge, and ask them to share a preliminary plan outlining their ideas for ad placements. 
  • Make sure you connect your marketing agency to the senior living advertising agency you ultimately choose. Members from both agencies should be involved in strategy planning and calls—and have access to the same internal documents and calendars.
  • Keep in mind that not all marketing agencies have expertise in advertising. So sometimes you might not have a choice. If you love your marketing agency, but they don’t do ad buys, you’ll need to work with a separate ad agency.
  • Make sure your marketing agency has real advertising experience if you decide to task them with handling your advertising as well. Again, anyone can claim to have this expertise. 

Let’s Chat!

 

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3 Tips for Better Senior Living Advertising Campaigns

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Want to create better senior living advertising campaigns—ones that entice people to click, call, or visit? Here are three tips to keep in mind.

1. Don’t put all your eggs in the same advertising basket.

If you were advertising to, say, twenty-somethings, you’d likely focus most of your advertising efforts online. With older adults, however, you need to spread your advertising dollars across different media—print, radio, direct mail, pay-per-click, and remarketing.

This isn’t surprising, considering the demographic. After all, older adults grew up reading the daily paper and listening to the radio, habits that continue even in this hi-tech age.

  • According to Statista, 23% of adults aged 60 or older read a print newspaper daily, 13% read the paper several days a week, and 18% once a week.
  • According to Statista, older generations are more inclined to listen to the radio regularly.

At the same time, however, older adults are also embracing technology and spending more time online. Consider the following stats:

  • In 2000, 14% of those aged 65 and older were internet users; now 73% are. [Source: Pew Research Center]
  • Baby Boomers spend more time online than Millennials, and a staggering 92% of Boomers shop online. [Source: The Shelf]
  • 75% of all Boomers are on Facebook, and 35% use business-focused networking sites, such as LinkedIn. [Source: Kenshoo]
  • Boomers are almost as likely as Millennials to own a tablet. [Source: Marketing Charts]
  • 68% of Boomers own a smartphone. [Source: Pew Research Center]

So, how should you allocate your advertising budget?

This will depend on a variety of factors. Recent past success is often a good indicator of future success, so you can start by evaluating what has worked best in the recent past (within the last year or two).

For example, if the best ROI has historically come from running spots on your local country radio station, it probably makes sense to allocate a chunk of your budget to a new radio campaign.

But even as you rely on “tried and true” methods, you should continue to experiment with pay-per-click and remarketing ads. (The latter refers to ads that seemingly “follow” people around after they visit your site.)

And you should avoid dismissing an ad vehicle—especially a digital one—simply because it didn’t work in the past. For example, just because Facebook advertising didn’t work well for your community eight years ago, that doesn’t mean it won’t work today. Quite the opposite, in fact. As more Boomers spend time on Facebook, chances are good that Facebook ads will work better now than they did a decade ago.

2. Measure, measure, measure.

The biggest mistake that senior living communities make is that they spend all this money on advertising, but they haven’t built in ways to measure success. Talk about a waste of valuable marketing budget!

Make sure you’re following best practices when it comes to measuring an ad campaign’s effectiveness:

  • For online ads, make sure tracking URLs are set up. Tracking URLs will help you see which online ads are delivering the most traffic and conversions.
  • For any print or radio ads, make sure you include ad-specific phone numbers and/or website addresses. For example, for all the radio ads you run on that country station, you’d use a specific phone number that you only include in those ads. Ditto website URLs. (Companies like CallRail can help with this.)
  • Make sure your website’s backend provides the insight and visibility you need. Ideally, you’ll want to have some sort of “traffic resources” option available in your marketing automation software that easily breaks down the traffic referral sources.
  • Make sure staff always asks the question “How did you hear about us?” And make sure you have a central repository for recording this info.

Allow the metrics to inform your ad-buying decisions.

Complacency can easily take over when it comes to advertising. Not to mention, you might have long-term relationships with sales reps, newspapers, radio stations, and so forth. Still, you need to make decisions based on real data, not relationships.

For example, if you’ve been running radio ads for years on the country station, but the ads are no longer delivering results, ask questions. What’s changed? Is the copy stale? Do you need to adjust the flight schedule/time of day the spots run? Has something changed with the station’s demographics? (Maybe the country station has tweaked its format to a more contemporary feel, rather than classic country tunes. As such, it’s skewing younger.)

Yes, you should resist dumping something the minute it stops working. But be open to moving on if the metrics are indeed telling you something is no longer delivering ROI despite tweaks and fixes. And make sure you’re paying attention to the right metrics. A boatload of website traffic can feel good. But unless that anonymous web traffic is converting into leads and those leads into tours and move-ins, what’s the point?

3. When it comes to the ad’s content, be human.

You’re selling a very personal experience to older adults—the next chapter of their lives. (And, for many, the final chapter of their lives.) This is a BIG deal. Listing a bunch of amenities isn’t going to make your community memorable.

So, what can you do to create personal content? Tell stories. Humans love hearing stories. Stories help us experience another world and another life, which is precisely what you want your ads to do—to help the reader or listener picture themselves living in your community.

For example, imagine coming across this blurb in a nicely designed print piece and/or direct mailer:

Meet Margot Benoit. Margot is 87 years old. She worked as a nurse for thirty years, raised a family of four, and is a proud grandmother to six. Margot loves extra dry martinis, knitting, yoga, collecting lighthouses, and watching The Crown on Netflix. She’s been residing in Maple Grove since 2018 and loves playing bridge with her neighbors, going out for cocktails in our pub, and organizing day trips to New York City with all the friends she’s made in our community.

Margot calls Maple Grove home. You could, too.

Ready to stop by, meet Margot, and learn more about us?

www.MapleGroveCommunities.com/meet-margot

Stories can involve residents, but also staff—your head chef, your groundskeepers, the facilities manager, etc. You could also highlight adult children who helped get Mom or Dad into the community. And the stories could serve as themes. The Margot “story” could work as a print ad and direct mailer. But you could also have Margot voice the radio spot and be part of a video ad that you run on Facebook.

Let’s Chat!

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Senior Living Advertising: The Formula for Pay-Per-Click Success

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Senior living advertising, particularly pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, can be a great strategy to generate leads. Or it can be a complete waste of money.

The success of your PPC senior living advertising hinges on three things:

1. Developing a sound strategy

You need to target the right audience with a compelling message and/or offer. This involves understanding your ideal prospect. It also involves developing engaging content that appeals to your ideal prospect. Finally, it involves knowing the keywords your prospect is searching on.

Bottom line: Don’t bother with any sort of paid advertising until you’ve done your persona work. You need to know your ideal prospects inside and out before you can advertise to them online.

2. Having a senior living website optimized for conversions

You can spend a lot of money driving traffic to your website. But if your site isn’t built to convert visitors into leads, what’s the point?

An optimized senior living website will have the following:

Bottom line: Don’t bother with pay-per-click advertising of any kind until you’ve done all of the above. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting money.

3. Being realistic about your online advertising budget

Effective online advertising is marathon, not a sprint. Unlike a print ad that you run once a week or once a quarter, your online ads are something that will likely run daily for the long haul with a specific daily spend limit.

The dollars can add up quickly, too. For more competitive regions in the country, you’ll spend more. This is why it’s critical to have a sound strategy and a senior living website that’s poised to convert the leads that come in from paid ads. As noted earlier, this often involves creating special landing pages and content specifically for the prospects who come in from the pay-per-click advertising. (And this additional work will increase your advertising budget even more.)

Bottom line: When figuring out your budget, consider the lifetime value of a resident and work backwards on what you should target for a daily spend that will deliver the best ROI.

Should you work with a PPC firm on your senior living advertising?

It does make sense to work with a firm that has experience in developing, setting up, and monitoring online advertising for senior living communities. Pay attention to that last part. Having a firm with PPC expertise isn’t enough these days. Choose a firm that also understands senior living.

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5 Quick Ways to Turn Around Low Lead Generation

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1.) Increase Sales Calls To Professionals

  • Identify Your Top 10 Referral Accounts & 10 New Target Accounts
  • Pre-Call Planning is key to have effective, scheduled, and purposeful interactions rather than low quality drop by’s.
  • End every sales call with a scheduled next step to continue to build the relationship.

2.) Resident & Family Referral Reward Program

  • If you already have one in place, take it to the next level with improved incentives and improved promotion (make it a topic at every resident counsel meeting, celebrate successes, call families with good news, and reinforce that the best compliment is a referral!).
  • If you don’t have a program in place, create one today!  Word of mouth recommendations from families and friends remain the primary motivation for selecting a community – and it is the least expensive lead generation!

3.) Embrace the Internet

  • Organic leads will increase as you tweak your website to be a resource to families.  Review your website to understand the user experience and ensure that your site is easy to navigate and invites users to take action.
  • If you are not using lead generations/ referral agencies to generate leads (subscription, pay-per-lead or pay-per-move-in), you are missing out!  The best results come from companies that employ advisors to work directly with the families.
  • Use review sites to increase leads.  Prospects are drawn to communities with robust reviews (it is ok if not all are five star!), Reviews are out there about your community today, so it is important to monitor and respond to them – and post the best ones on your website!

4.) Increase Events

  • Monthly events for your lead base & Professional referral sources.
  • Create a buzz – send out “Save the Date” to create anticipation and be creative with your themes to keep people interested and intrigued.
  • You will increase your attendance if you follow up with personal phone calls and /or visits after sending the invitation.  Be proactive in getting RSVPs.
  • Execute well and follow up quickly to turn good will into good referrals!

5.) Direct Mail Campaigns & Advertising

  • If the well has run dry and you have mined your database completely, it may be time to generate new leads through purchasing qualified mailing lists that match you community demographics.
  • Well messaged advertising with a strong call to action is worth a try when looking to expand the radius of your market reach.

If you need more help, just reach out to Senior Living SMART!