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Use Traditional Marketing to Build Community Awareness

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: A SMARTER Approach

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

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.

Using Facebook Live in Senior Living During COVID-19

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.

Increase Occupancy By Maximizing LTCi Benefit Payments

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.

Mom’s House Helps Seniors Move-In Faster

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.

Expand Beyond Zoom: Bigger, Better Ways to Use Video

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.

5 Key Insights: Employee Engagement in Senior Living Communities

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.

Why All Senior Living Websites Need To Have a Blog & Premium Content

The Benefits of a Senior Living Blog & Premium Content

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!

content marketing

Using Content Marketing to Generate More Leads, Tours, & Move-Ins

Content marketing, when done correctly, can help you attract and convert website visitors into qualified leads, scheduled tours, and move-ins.

But what content should you create? Most people immediately say “blog posts.” While blogs are a great tool to improve SEO, increase traffic, and engage visitors, you need to do more than simply “blog” if you want to generate leads, tours, and move-ins.

1. Invest in Premium Content Marketing

Your site probably has lots of ungated content, meaning people can access it without giving you their info. Your blog posts are examples of ungated content.

But offering premium content—something people can’t get anywhere else that is “gated” behind a form—motivates visitors to give you their contact information in exchange for the valuable content. From there, you can continue to nurture the prospects along their sales journey. So what should the premium content be? Think guides, e-books, “how-to” articles, and checklists.

A good place to promote your premium content is through a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of a blog post (e.g., “Get our free guide on aging well!”). The blog posts are the bait, your prospects are the fish, and the premium content serves as the hook.

Keep in mind that it’s important to have a variety of premium content because prospects will “bite” on different content based on their stage of readiness and interests.

2. Create Stellar Landing Pages

Your landing page is where the premium content “lives.” This the “gate” part in gated content. The landing page should include:

  • An image of the premium content – so work with a graphic designer on a beautiful cover!
  • A compelling description of what the prospect will learn – so work with a copywriter!
  • A form to gather contact information in exchange for receiving the content. If you want to be sure to gather real emails, distribute the content to prospects via email rather than direct download.

Don’t overwhelm prospects with too many required fields! This is a first date, so simply ask for first and last name and email address. In terms of how to create and host landing pages, we recommend HubSpot because they offer progressive profiling so you can ask additional questions with every opt-in form. As prospects take more premium content, you get more information such as preferred location, their role, and desired lifestyle.

Remember, marketing’s job is to “plate up” sales-qualified leads (SQLs) to the sales team. Each landing page represents a piece of content related to the sales funnel. Your sales team will be especially interested in prospects who opt into content that indicates they’re sales-ready. And by knowing what content the SQL has downloaded, your sales team can have a more productive conversation when they talk to the prospect on the phone or meet face-to-face.

3. Set Up Effective Senior Living Marketing Automation to Nurture Leads

Congratulations, you took an anonymous website visitor and converted them to a lead – great! Now, it’s time to nurture these leads to create face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions with the sales team.

However, if you reel in the fish too quickly, it will get spooked and drop off the line. That is what happens when you send every lead directly into your CRM. Instead, use a marketing automation platform that will create automated workflows to provide additional content and offers (e.g., tours, lunches, home visits, events) that are relevant to the lead based on the “bait” that reeled them in.

For example, if someone downloads a piece of educational content on tips for aging well, this suggests they are at the top of the sales funnel and perhaps just beginning to learn about senior living options. How you nurture them will be a lot different from the way you nurture someone who’s downloaded a guide on how to finance different senior living arrangements.

If you follow these three steps, you will establish your brand as a thought leader and you’ll continue to bring prospects back to your website throughout their journey. Best of all? You’ll be serving up SQLs that your sales team can take across the finish line.

If you need assistance setting up these systems, please contact us or call 888.620.9832.