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Use Traditional Marketing

Use Traditional Marketing to Build Community Awareness

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While most prospects find senior living communities through digital sources (like organic search and paid ads), other more “traditional” marketing tactics can still be critical during this all-important “find” stage.

The primary purpose of these traditional tactics is not to generate leads but to make people aware that your community exists.

Remember, prospects and adult children often live within a small radius of your community. Effective signage, a presence in the local media, and a strong local referral network can help people become familiar with your community’s name long before they search Google.

Below, we dive into several ways to build brand awareness in senior living via these more traditional marketing tactics:

  • Local media
  • Referral networks
  • Direct mail
  • On-site and off-site events
  • Grassroots marketing

Local media

The target demo for senior living still reads local newspapers, magazines, and publications. The messaging for print ad campaigns or paid advertorials (a popular staple in weekly and monthly publications) should highlight services and reviews. For the call-to-action (CTA), you can experiment with “Schedule a tour” or “Attend our [fill in the blank]” (like a book club; events do exceptionally well in these campaigns).

Consistency is key when building awareness. You can’t run a few ads and expect immediate results. Success requires sustained effort over time.

Speaking of results, they can be subtle and difficult to measure. Consistent messaging often registers subconsciously: “Didn’t I see an ad for that in the newspaper?” “I think I drive by that place on my way to work; I remember seeing a sign.” “Oh, that’s where we donated school supplies last fall.” These small connections gradually build familiarity and trust.

Print ads are especially important for communities going through transitions, like lease-ups, acquisitions, or changes in management.

We recommend running half-page or quarter-page ads every month. Use a combination of evergreen content, such as resident spotlights, testimonials, and “Did you know?” facts, along with any upcoming community events. CTAs should be relevant to the content (learn more, call today, save your seat), and any URLs or phone numbers should include tracking for proper attribution.

Referral networks

For needs-based senior living (assisted living and memory care), prospects often “find” a community through a direct referral from a professional contact such as a discharge planner, social worker, physician, home care provider, adult day care center, or geriatric care manager.

Independent Living prospects might seek counsel from trusted advisors, such as elder law attorneys, financial professionals, spiritual advisors, and realtors, since their decision is more planned.

Building a professional referral network requires time and a collaborative approach. However, the investment is worth it, as these referrals tend to have the highest closing rate at the lowest price.

Direct mail

Today, you can buy direct mail lists that go beyond age, income, and zip code. You can now source highly targeted lists to include parameters like health criteria, diagnosis, and household demographics.

For example, providers needing to generate leads for memory care can buy a list of contacts within the community’s radius and include other qualifying income and asset criteria related to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

The three essential components of an effective direct mail campaign include:

  • The quality and accuracy of your list (refresh your mailing list yearly)
  • The demographics (for example, health status, persona, financials, age)
  • The offer. Make it compelling! Think visually appealing design and an engaging message and CTA.

Including a QR code, vanity URL, or call tracking number will help measure each campaign’s ROI.

On-site and off-site events

A combination of various events—social, educational, networking, and community—can help attract different audiences at different decision stages.

Early-stage prospects in the awareness/research stage might be more comfortable attending an off-site event at a restaurant, library, church, or country club rather than booking a tour in your community. Dine & Discover, Lunch & Learn, and speaker/author events work well for these folks.

Prospects in consideration and decision stages are more likely to attend on-site events, such as educational programs (financial, legal, downsizing), open houses, Parade of Homes, support groups, and social events.

Grassroots marketing

Grassroots marketing is all about building meaningful connections within the community. Joining local chambers of commerce, donating to organizations like Toys for Tots, food pantries, or Meals on Wheels, and supporting school supply drives are excellent ways to establish awareness. Offering event space for community gatherings, hosting health fairs, and organizing immunization clinics further solidify your presence as a trusted and engaged community partner.

Yes, it is possible to get move-ins from hosting Girl Scout meetings, piano recitals, bridge groups, and even The Happy Hookers (get your mind out of the gutter—we’re talking about a knitting circle!).

Most of these tactics are outbound marketing—and that’s OK.

By “outbound,” we mean that the messaging is reaching a broad audience, most of whom haven’t expressed a need or interest in senior living. The common denominator is that the members of this audience live or work locally.

The hope is they will see your sign, print ad, or postcard or remember your outreach when there is an opportunity to refer. The lead volume for these tactics will be much lower (again, the goal is awareness, not lead generation). However, the closing ratio tends to be much higher in the long run. Senior living has a long sales cycle, and advancing prospects from awareness to close involves a multi-touchpoint and attribution strategy.

Weave these tactics into one comprehensive marketing strategy for senior living.

Do you need help putting all the pieces together and seamlessly executing various tactics? We can help. Get in touch to discuss your community’s marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy for Senior Living

Marketing Strategy for Senior Living: A SMARTER Approach

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An effective marketing strategy for senior living begins with defining your business objectives and integrating them into your brand, growth, and resident (post-sale) strategies.

Below, we briefly explore each area, resulting in a blueprint you and your team can follow.

Strong business objectives build a strong foundation for your marketing strategy for senior living.

Every effective marketing strategy starts with well-defined business objectives. These objectives guide all subsequent decisions and ensure your efforts align with your community’s overarching goals.

growth-brand-resident-strategies

For senior living, objectives might include . . .

  • Breaking up with aggregators or reducing your reliance on them for lead generation
  • Attracting the “younger senior” with less acuity/frailty
  • Extending lengths of stay
  • Shortening the sales cycle

When developing your business objectives, focus on specifics and concrete figures.

Using the above list as an example, here’s what those concrete figures might look like:

  • Reduce dependence on aggregators by 30%
  • Bring the average age of new residents down from 82 to 78
  • Extend the length of stay in independent living from five years to seven years
  • Shorten the sales cycle for assisted living from six months to four months

Keep these objectives in mind when developing your brand, growth, and resident strategies.

Weave a killer brand strategy into your overall marketing strategy.

The goal is to create and maintain a strong brand identity that resonates with prospects, residents, and referral partners and helps differentiate your community from the sea of sameness.

Key components of a brand strategy include:

  • Your “why”: Clarify your community’s purpose and mission. What drives your team’s passion for serving seniors?
  • Ideal Client (Resident) Profile (ICP): Think of your best residents. They are your ICP. Does your website speak to your ideal resident, or is it trying to be everything to everyone?
  • Value proposition and unique selling proposition (USP). Your value proposition is how prospects benefit if they choose your community. (Think of it like this: What’s in it for them if they move in?) Your USP is that special something-something that makes your community different from your competitors.
  • Brand identity: Develop consistent messaging and visuals to establish trust and recognition.

Develop a growth strategy focused on driving new opportunities.

A growth strategy focuses on attracting, capturing, nurturing, and converting leads. The goal is to create a seamless journey for potential residents from awareness to decision-making.

Here’s a breakdown of essential growth elements:

  • Attraction: Use your website, social media, and other channels to increase targeted traffic and generate interest. Showcase testimonials, reviews, and affiliations to foster trust.
  • Lead capture: Implement tools like landing pages, forms, and calls-to-action to capture visitor information.
  • Lead nurture: Use marketing automation, personalized content, and other tactics to build relationships with leads over time.
  • Lead conversion: Leverage marketing technology (martech) to streamline the sales process and track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as:
    • Marketing-qualified lead (MQL) to sales-qualified lead (SQL))
    • SQL to tour
    • Tour to deposit or tour to move-in
  • Prospect re-engagement: For leads that get stuck in the pipeline, use digital retargeting with paid ads, targeted workflows to advance MQLs/pre-tour leads, and targeted workflows to nudge post-tour leads that have stalled. You can also use a workflow to re-engage leads sitting in the “cold” and “lost but not disqualified” status in the CRM. (We have effective workflows for all of these scenarios.)

Don’t stop once you close a prospect.

Post-sale strategies are just as critical as pre-sale efforts. By prioritizing resident experience, you can boost retention and strengthen your reputation, leading to more organic growth.

In fact, senior living professional Jamison Gosselin conducted a survey that revealed personal referrals (like friends and family) had a ton of influence on those learning about specific retirement communities (this was cited by 52% of respondents). Building an intentional customer strategy that fosters brand ambassadors will lead to increased referrals (and these leads tend to have the highest conversion rate).

Key elements to keep in mind during the post-sale stage include:

  • Onboarding plan: Moving is stressful. To make it easier for new residents to move in, provide valuable resources for downsizing, packing, choosing a mover, and planning for move-in day.
  • Welcome program: The first 30 days can make or break a new resident. Develop a new resident welcome program that’s as special on day one as it is on day 30.
  • Retention plan: Never stop delighting residents. Keeping residents happy will reduce turnover while creating new brand ambassadors.
  • Referral program: Develop a referral program that makes it easy for happy residents and their families to refer others to your community.

Bring it all together in one comprehensive marketing strategy for senior living.

Do you need help putting all the pieces together and seamlessly executing various tactics? We can help. Get in touch to discuss your community’s marketing strategy.

Fresh Ideas For Planning Events That Drive Traffic & Generate Leads

Marketing Events for Senior Living: Fresh Ideas That Drive Leads

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Editor’s note: We updated this article on 12/17/24 to shift away from pandemic-related suggestions..

Well-planned marketing events for senior living communities can generate qualified leads, re-engage stalled prospects, and create opportunities to develop new professional contacts and nurture existing relationships.

On the other hand, poorly executed events can be a big waste of time and money.

How can you make sure you’re putting together events that deliver excellent ROI? Here are three types we recommend: educational events, social events, and community events.

Educational events: Show that you’re an expert and a resource

Educational senior living marketing events will help position you as a trusted advisor and valued resource. Below are some topics and themes to consider.

  • Author Visit. Many authors do book tours, both in-person and virtual For in-person events, the author can speak and bring books for purchase and signing.
  • Downsizing/ Transitions. Invite real estate pros and downsizing experts for a lunch & learn series.
  • Financial Solutions. Same idea as above. Your community hosts experts for a casual lunch. Think VA benefits, life insurance conversion, and long-term care.
  • Memory Care Topics. Again, hold lunch & learn sessions on popular topics like brain fitness, education, research, driving, and dementia.
  • Support Groups. Ideas include caregiver support groups, Alzheimer’s support groups, men’s groups, bereavement groups, etc.
  • Continuing Education Units (CEUs). Do this in your community or bring your program to a local hospital or skilled nursing facility.

Social events: Be social and show off your community’s fun side

Give prospective residents and their families a taste of what your community is like by inviting them to attend social events and fun activities. Here are some ideas:

  • Art classes. Paint and sip nights can be a fun way to get people to mingle, and the prospective resident gets to bring home artwork that will remind them of your community.
  • Fitness classes. Offer day passes to your most popular classes.
  • Networking. Think breakfasts, lunch, cocktail receptions, martini mixer etc.
  • Dash & Dine. Stop by for a tour or event and take home dinner on us!
  • Brunch. Ideas include champagne, jazz, holiday, and Mother/Father’s Day.
  • Senior/Senior Prom with local high school (Star Dust Prom).
  • Holiday/ Special Day Socials / BBQs. Think of all the possibilities: Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Mother/ Father’s/ Grandparent’s Day . . . and that’s just the beginning. You could focus on a silly day like National Hot Dog Day (third Wednesday in July). Invite a hot dog stand to set up shop on the premises and invite people from nearby towns to come by for hot dogs and ice cream on you.
  • Chef demonstrations. What better way to give people a sense of the food and menu options than by having your chef demo one of their top dishes or specialties (like cake decorating).
  • Fashion Show. Collaborate with a local store and use staff, residents, family, or professionals as models.

Community Events: Grass roots and local community

  • Host spiritual groups. Think parish nurses, Stephen Ministries, non-denominational meetings, or meetings with rabbis, pastors, priests, etc.
  • Host seniors’ groups. Think Red Hat Society, senior centers, and other related groups.
  • Host art shows for local schools/ artists or resident art
  • Host piano recitals for local teachers if you have a piano
  • Dinner & a movie if you have a theater
  • Sponsor a community yard sale
  • Host fundraisers. Consider fundraisers around the annual Alzheimer’s Walk or Prostate Cancer Awareness Month in September.
  • Sponsor a community health fair with free screenings
  • Host community group car wash (for example, for the local high school)
  • Host a variety/ talent show
  • Wreath/ miniature tree decorating – referral sources and families buy a wreath or tree and decorate it (usually with a theme) and raffle them off for charity at a social event.

Bonus: More great marketing events for senior living communities

Need help coming up with ideas? Get in touch and let’s discuss how events can fit into your marketing strategy.

man at work desk on computer with idea think outside the box

Senior Living Marketing Webinar: COVID-19 Considerations

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Marketing during a pandemic brings up many challenges. In this senior living marketing webinar, a panel of senior living pros will share strategies and tactics for lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead conversion. Yes, even in this climate of increased restrictions due to COVID-19.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL LEARN  

  • How to setup Facebook Live
  • What to communicate in email marketing
  • Leveraging technology to create virtual experiences
  • How to use each senior living marketing channel effectively
  • Communication best practices
  • Optimizing positive brand awareness
Download Slide Deck Presentation Download Transcription

 

[WEBINAR] Senior Living Lead Generation During COVID-19

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Even during a pandemic, we marketing and sales professionals must continue to connect and engage with our prospects, both existing and new. Learn what senior living lead generation options are available to continue your work towards those 2020 marketing and sales goals!

Senior Living Lead Generation During COVID

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • Engaging with prospects in the absence of tours and events
  • Alternative lead gen strategies
  • What prospects need from you during this pandemic
  • Maintaining and increasing your brand awareness
  • Best CTAs that are not tour or event focused
Download Slide Deck Presentation
Why All Senior Living Websites Need To Have a Blog & Premium Content

The Benefits of a Senior Living Blog & Premium Content

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Even as we sit here in 2020, it still amazes us the resistance we occasionally encounter when we tell people they should have a senior living blog and offer premium content (e.g., free guides, infographics, checklists, ebooks, etc.).

So let’s explain our rationale once and for all.

1. Senior living blog posts and premium content provide additional opportunities to attract people to your site and engage them with helpful info.

The more paths you can give people to enter and explore your website, the better. And that’s precisely what premium content and senior living blog posts do.

Remember, most people begin their shopping online these days. A basic 10-page or 20-page senior living website isn’t enough to cover all the information people are searching for. But every blog post you write is considered a website page. Every landing page you have for a free download, like a guide or infographic, is considered a page. And ALL of these pages are excellent ways to help attract site visitors and convert them into leads.

Google also likes a deeper website with lots of helpful info: “If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site.”

2. Blog posts and premium content provide a great opportunity for long-tail keyword optimization.

A long-tail keyword is one that’s hyper specific, but doesn’t have a ton of monthly searches. That’s OK, because the specificity of the search term often indicates someone’s eagerness to buy sooner rather than later. For example, someone searching on “yellow sneakers women wide width size 8” indicates a certain level of interest beyond someone who simply googles “women’s sneakers.”

Armed with a solid list of long-tail keywords relevant to senior living, you can optimize your blog and premium content so that it helps capture the people conducting these long-tail searches.

3. Blog posts and premium content can speak to a specific point in the buyer’s journey—and to different buyers.

Some of your core pages—like your home page—need to speak to everyone. It’s the home page, after all. It needs to be welcoming to everyone who lands on it, regardless of who they are or where they are in their journey.

But a guide that that discusses the differences between independent living and assisted living is speaking to someone earlier in their journey. The one-sheet on your community’s pricing is speaking to buyer who is in the decision making stage.

Having different types of content that speak to different types of buyers at different points in their journey is not only helpful to your prospects, but also your marketing and sales teams. How? Well, marketing and sales will be able to score the leads appropriately based on the types of blog posts and premium content the prospects read and download.

In the example we used earlier, the person learning about independent living and memory care would be a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) since they’re still in the educational stages, while the person who requested pricing would be a sales-qualified lead (SQL).

4. Blogs and premium content allow you the space to dive deep into complex questions.

Think of the most common questions people ask about senior living. Do a quick answer on your FAQs page. But go into a deeper explanation in a blog post or guide.

5. Blogs and premium content give you a great place to show your community’s personality and unique point of view.

In a previous article, we mentioned that one of the challenges facing senior living communities is that most (if not all) are essentially selling the same thing—and your core web pages won’t differ too much from competitors’ web pages.

But with a blog and other premium content, you can begin to differentiate yourself simply by how you talk and the approach you take to common questions (or objections/challenges).

In fact, we’d argue that more and more senior living communities need to get into this “personality-driven” content. Write a blog post on a day in the life of your…activities director, nurse practitioner, head of dining, you get the idea. Include candid photos and real quotes. Or create a guide on “How 3 Real Families Helped Ease Their Parents’ Angst About Moving into Our Community.”

THAT’S the type of content people won’t see anywhere else because it’s unique to your community. It’s honest, and it tackles the stuff that’s in the back of so many people’s heads.

The communities that start producing truly original, heartfelt, honest content are the communities that will succeed the most this decade—and a blog and premium content are a great way to disseminate this sort of material.

Need fresh ideas for your blog or premium content?

Let’s brainstorm together for 30 minutes!

What You Need to Know About Your Online Senior Living Competition

Competitor Analysis: How Senior Living Communities Need to Evaluate Online Competition

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You’ve likely set goals and key performance indicators (KPI) for your digital marketing strategy. Hopefully, you’re reviewing the data and adjusting your strategy based on the results against your goals. But to truly analyze your digital marketing success, you have to compare it to the results from your market. In other words, you need to conduct competitor analysis. This involves monitoring and measuring your competitors’ digital marketing efforts as well.

Want to be a better online sleuth? Focus on these top four areas and follow our tips.

Content

Look at what types of content perform best. Which blogs have the most reads or the greatest number of likes and shares? What sort of content offers does the competition promote? What about videos? Infographics? You get the idea.

Pro tip: And speaking of ideas, keep track of content topics that your organization hasn’t been capitalizing on—yet. We’re not suggesting that you plagiarize, but we guarantee looking at your competitors’ content will get your own creative juices going.

Website Traffic

It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole when looking at competitors’ websites and related analytics. Focus on these metrics for a solid overview of a site’s performance:

  • Overall traffic by month
  • Unique traffic
  • Main sources of traffic
  • Who is visiting
  • Time on site

Pro tip: HubSpot has an excellent (and free) online website grader that can provide this top-level intel. If you want to go deeper, SimilarWeb has free and paid subscriptions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically in the last two decades. One of the foundational elements is keywords (although the way we approach keywords has also evolved over the years).

  • What keywords are they bidding for?
  • What keywords are they ranked for?
  • Do they have any quality backlinks?

Pro tip: SpyFu is a great tool for SEO competitor analysis. WordStream takes a deep dive into eight tools (including SpyFu).

Social Media and Ads

When it comes to social media, look beyond “vanity metrics,” such as the number of followers, since those are rarely accurate. Instead, focus on engagement, such as the number of shares and comments. This will give you a better idea about what content is resonating with people.

Pro tip: Social Media Examiner offers a great list of four free tools to help you analyze and compare.

See how you compare with your competition!

Want someone else to do the heavy lifting for you? That’s what we do!  Click HERE to schedule a free consultation!

How to Build Your 24/7/365 Senior Living Sales Team

How to Build Your 24/7/365 Senior Living Sales Team

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Fifty percent of all senior living sales inquiries occur outside of regular business hours. Prospects often engage during early mornings, after work, and on weekends when full-time sales teams are not typically in the community. And keep in mind that these prospects aren’t just looking at your community. They’re likely engaging with several at the same time.

This can create challenges since studies show that the sales person who responds to the prospect first—”speed to the lead”—has the best chance of converting them. This is why building a 24-hour virtual sales team is a must if you want your community to remain competitive.

Sound like a daunting task? Here’s the good news: Many solutions exist to help you fill in the sales “gap” during off hours.

Senior Living Website – Your 24-Hour Sales Office

Eighty-seven percent of your prospects begin their journey on your senior living website—and it’s open 24 hours a day.

What information should you have on your site? Think about the top 10 questions that prospects ask your sales people during the inquiry process (and what resources the sales team provides). Make sure that those answers and resources are easily accessible on your website.

For example, prospects usually want to know what your community offers. Therefore, information on accommodations, amenities, activities, and care should be accessible through downloadable brochures, calendars, menus, and floor plans. Extra points for video tours and photo galleries, since most people prefer to consume information visually rather than reading a lot of copy.

Prospects also want to know about pricing, so tell them (at least the “starting at” pricing). Pricing transparency improves qualified lead conversion. People use pricing information to self-qualify themselves, which will give your sales teams a better chance to work with high-conversion opportunities.

Finally, prospects want to educate themselves before they get a sales pitch. Having educational blogs, guides, and checklists to help prospects make an informed decision will go a long way in building trust.

Make sure that there are CTAs (calls to action) throughout your website to lead your visitors down a path to conversion. For example: scheduling a visit, requesting a call back, or subscribing to a newsletter. Each CTA creates an opportunity to convert an anonymous visitor into a lead.

Marketing Automation/ Lead Nurturing

If someone called into your community or scheduled a tour, your onsite sales team would follow up, right? Marketing automation creates workflows for ongoing lead nurturing after prospects leave your website—without your senior living sales team doing a thing.

Even better? The most powerful marketing automation will allow you to personalize the content and messaging based on each prospect’s interests. Lead nurturing that is both automated and personal tends to have the highest conversions.

Not convinced? Well, imagine this: someone comes to your website at 10 PM on a Saturday and they request a brochure. Your sales team is not available and your prospect does not want to wait for the information. No worries! As soon as the person requests the brochure, they would receive it right from the website along with a “thank you” email that demonstrates the community team is ready to help. From a backend perspective, the person would be automatically enrolled in a lead nurturing workflow.

Then, a day or so later, they receive a second email to see if they have any questions. The second email might also include a CTA to request a call back and a second piece of content, like “how to make a decision” guide. Finally, a few days later, they receive a check-in email with encouragement to schedule a visit.

Notice how each interaction offers resources, builds trust, and encourages them to take the next action—and it’s all happening automatically in the background without your sales team needing to do anything.

Remember, 90% of your first-time website visitors are “not ready to buy”—yet. Marketing automation keeps prospects engaged, brings them back to your website, and exposes them to your brand until they are ready to move forward.

Technology that is Always On Duty

Complete your virtual senior living sales team with these technology solutions (vetted and approved by us, Senior Living SMART):

  • SiteStaff humanizes your website via chat services with college-educated American hosts hired for empathy, trained in senior living sales skills, and ready to answer questions with information available in a community-specific knowledgebase.
  • Roobrik offers interactive assessments to match needs with solutions. Prospects spend four to five minutes answering up to 28 questions about their situation, challenges, finances, cognitive status, and readiness to embrace change. A “Care Fit” report scores each person based on urgency and then matches them to care and housing recommendations.
  • Marchex provides a lens into the customer journey, their experience, and sentiment. And the entire process is automated—every single call. With the data surfaced, your sales team will be able to deliver a better, branded customer experience, which will result in greater revenue performance. By understanding “breakage” in the customer journey, you can advise your staff about lost opportunities and tips for correcting them. Information gathered will help the sales team to personalize their interactions, which will give you an advantage over competitors.

And, of course, if you need help with your senior living website or marketing automation, give us a shout!

Effective Marketing: 5 Metrics Everyone in the C-Suite Should Know

Digital Marketing for Senior Living: 5 Metrics Everyone in the C-Suite Should Know

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A few years ago, Eat This, Not That! was published to provide advice on how to replace unhealthy food choices with better alternatives.

Today, we’re sharing Ask This, Not That! – a guide for VPs of marketing and the C-Suite to measure the effectiveness of their digital marketing for senior living.

We recommend focusing on five critical metrics:

1. Digital Marketing for Senior Living: Conversions, Not Traffic

Don’t be distracted by website traffic. Instead, focus on what matters: conversions. As in traffic that actually converts into customers.

Invest your budget in creating more website conversion points rather than simply increasing traffic. Here are some ideas for doing exactly that:

  • Blog more. Websites that publish new blog posts every week get 3.5 times more leads per month.
  • Create premium content such as guides, e-books, tool kits, and infographics. Gate them (put them behind a form) to increase conversions of anonymous visitors to leads.
  • Add live chat (like SiteStaff) to respond to prospects’ questions and convert chats to leads and tours.
  • Make your website experiential with interactive surveys (Roobrik), room planners (Design Floor Plans), and financial calculators.

Note: Marketing teams should be able to quantify how many leads have converted to inquiry calls (using call tracking, such as Marchex), scheduled tours, and brochure/ pricing requests.

Question to bring up during your next meeting with marketing and sales: “What are the conversion rates for each marketing channel?”

2. Digital Marketing for Senior Living: Not All Leads Are Created Equal

Asking how many leads are generated is the wrong question. A better question to ask is this: How many leads are Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) vs. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)? You should have a way of measuring both.

  • MQLs are early stage leads in research mode. They engage by reading blogs, downloading guides and brochures, and checking out pricing. Or maybe they are trying to self-qualify, but they’re not ready for a sales pitch. They want to be left alone until they are ready!
  • SQLs, on the other hand, are in the consideration and decision stages. These leads will opt into calls-to-action, such as “schedule a tour” and “speak with an advisor.” As such, it’s imperative that the sales team has immediate access to these leads.

Having technology that can apply lead scoring to quickly sort leads into MQLs and SQLs is critical in today’s competitive “speed to the lead” environment. And your marketing team should be able to provide the number of MQLs and SQLs in the pipeline.

Question to bring up during your next meeting with marketing and sales: “How do we identify MQLs vs SQLs so the sales team is working with the prospects most likely to convert?”

3. Digital Marketing for Senior Living: Nurturing the “Not Ready” Leads

Pressure on getting move-ins TODAY has created dangerous behaviors of focusing exclusively on urgent (high acuity) leads rather than building a healthy pipeline.

Each sales team member can realistically manage only about 10 active leads. So what do you think is happening with the other 200+ leads languishing in the CRM? Not much beyond maybe a few perfunctory “just checking in” follow-up calls to make an activity quota.

Marketing teams should have a strategy to keep the “not ready” leads engaged. Marketing automation (we use HubSpot) takes rote and repetitive tasks off the sales team’s plates and uses automated workflows to ensure that “not ready” leads are given resources while being exposed to your brand. Over time, this fosters trust and encourages the lead to advance to an SQL as they continue on their decision-making journey.

The best part? You can customize these strategic “drip campaigns” to each prospect based on their expressed interests and website behaviors. Links to blogs, premium content, newsletters, and event invitations keep prospects engaged until they are “ready.”

Question to bring up during your next meeting with marketing and sales: “What is our strategy to engage, nurture, and convert ‘not ready’ leads?”

4. Digital Marketing for Senior Living: Impact of Third Party Leads

The question most executives ask is “how many leads are in the CRM?” But a better question is this: “How many unique leads are in the database?”

A VP of Sales & Marketing recently told me that 80% of the leads in their CRM were generated from third party lead sources. This is important for two reasons. First, these leads averaged a 3% conversion rate. This means the sales team spends 80% of their time with low conversion opportunities. That leaves them only 20% of their time to work with leads generated from high conversion lead sources, such as friend and family referrals (35% conversion), professional referrals (40% conversion rate), and organic digital lead sources.

Second, these are shared leads – probably with five to seven of your nearest and dearest competitors. So in measuring actual lead volume, third party leads should only count as 1/5th or 1/7th of a lead. Counting third party leads as a unique lead will skew your actual lead volume and lull sales teams into a false sense of security that they have “plenty of leads” in the pipeline.

Question to bring up during your next meeting with marketing and sales: “What’s the lead percentage from each referral source category?”

5. Digital Marketing for Senior Living: It’s All About the ROI

At the end of the day, it is all about ROI. That is the difference between a marketing expense and an investment. You should be able to measure through every marketing channel—digital, paid AdWords and social campaigns, events, and traditional print, radio and TV advertising—the dollars invested and the leads generated in return.

Ideally, you should have a way to follow every lead through their journey and measure the cost per lead, cost per qualified lead, cost per tour, and cost per move-in. At Senior Living SMART, we help our clients go even further by calculating the resident lifetime value. Our clients provide the average length of stay and average rate by lifestyle for each community so we can accurately calculate the ROI of all marketing efforts.

Effective Marketing: 5 Metrics Everyone in the C-Suite Should Know

Question to bring up during your next meeting with senior living marketing and sales: “What is the ROI of each marketing campaign?”

Need help analyzing your analytics?

As a senior living marketing agency, we can help you understand the metrics that matter most. Get in touch!

How to Boost Occupancy & Lead Generation Through Inbound Marketing. Learn how we helped one client experience over 1200% ROI across 10 communities in fewer than four months! In this case study, track the growth of 10 communities using marketing automation, and view measurable results with reported ROI.

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The First Conversation in Senior Living Sales

Senior Living Sales Tips: How to Engage Prospects Online

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Not too long ago, the first conversation with senior living sales prospects happened either over the phone with the initial discovery call or in person during an event or tour. Today, the first conversation with prospects is digital in nature. Eighty-seven percent of senior living sales start online, and providers have only seven seconds to engage prospects.

Here are five senior living sales tips to increase engagement and conversions.

Senior Living Sales Tip #1: It’s Not About You.

Your prospects don’t come to your senior living website because they have nothing better to do. They come because they have a compelling need or concern, many questions, and a desire to connect with helpful resources to guide their decision-making journey.

Remember, you only have seven seconds. So ask yourself how you’re going to connect, engage, and convert them to a lead. Prospects today are much more experiential in their research style. If you have relevant information, they will stay on your site. If not, they will bounce off to a competitor or third-party lead aggregator site.

So make sure you put the most relevant and helpful info front and center on your most trafficked pages, particularly the home page. Include calls-to-action that will lead people to helpful resources they can download. Make sure FAQs are easily accessible in the navigation (better yet, include a Live Chat feature so you can address their questions in real-time).

Senior Living Sales Tip #2: Create Content for All Stages in The Buyer’s Journey.

Ninety percent of website visitors are not sales qualified. Prospects in the Awareness Stage are looking for basic information (e.g., What are the options? What’s included? Can I afford it?).

When they move into the Consideration Stage, they are weighing pros and cons and transitional issues (e.g., Is home or community the best setting? What will we do with all the stuff? Is the family on board? How do we broach the subject with Mom/ Dad?).

By the time prospects move into the Decision Stage, urgency replaces ambivalence and the conversation shifts to timing and location (e.g., Which community is going to be the best fit? what funding sources can we tap into? How do we make a smooth transition?).

To meet prospects where they are, your website must offer a range of content types to consume throughout the journey and multiple CTAs (calls to action) to advance leads. You’ll want to gate some content, but you should also “un-gate” some content as well. Blogs make great un-gated content (we recommend two to four original educational blog posts per month). Offering downloadable activity calendars, menus, and newsletters works well, too.

Guides, e-books, and tool kits work best for gated content (the prospect must exchange limited contact information in exchange for the valuable resource). Offering digital brochures and pricing resources are very popular with prospects and have high engagement and conversion metrics. We have found that e-newsletters are the number one tool to re-engage website visitors.

Senior Living Sales Tip #3: Make Your Website Interactive.

Websites today have to be more than online brochures. Less copy and more interactive experiences will make the website “sticky” so prospects stay longer and come back often.

Need some ideas? Live chat (not self-managed, not bots, and not foreign-based) produces high conversion rates with 40% of chats turning into leads and 20% converting to a scheduled tour. Interactive surveys (such as financial calculators) and self-guided decision tools (such as Roobrik) engage and convert anonymous website visitors into marketing- and sales-qualified leads. Interactive site maps, virtual tours, and room planners allow prospects to explore from their couch, without the drive time or sales pitch.

Senior Living Sales Tip #4 Optimize the Contact Us Form.

Prospects at each stage will respond to different CTAs, so offer them a menu of choices. Create a “pick list” with options such as the following:

  • Download a brochure
  • Check pricing
  • Join us for lunch
  • Schedule a home visit
  • Schedule a tour
  • Attend an upcoming event
  • Speak with an advisor
  • Subscribe to our newsletter and/or blog

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) who opt in to face-to-face or voice-to-voice interaction should immediately go to the community sales team. We recommend marketing automation to nurture early stage leads with personalized workflows. This allows sales teams to stay focused on high-conversion opportunities without the distraction of following up with leads that are not ready.

Senior Living Sales Tip #5: Attract and Convert More Leads, Tours, & Move-Ins with Essential Resources.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite resources. But you can find others in our Senior Living Marketplace.

  • Senior Living SMART – website design, marketing automation, content development
  • SiteStaff – live chat staffed by college-educated Americans trained for senior living
  • Roobrik – self-guided decision tools with low lead-acquisition costs and high conversions
  • Marchex – call tracking to measure conversion points for digital, social, and traditional channels
  • Design Floor Plans – interactive sitemaps, room planners, 2- and 3-D floor plans

Need help getting your sales team to embrace this online environment?

We love working with marketing and sales teams. Our approach helps make everyone’s jobs easier. Let’s chat about your needs!