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content marketing

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

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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.

Using Data to Uncover New Possibilities in Senior Living

Using Data to Uncover New Possibilities in Senior Living Webinar

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Using Incidence Analytics to Identify Market Need

Improving Senior Housing Performance with Precision Market Analytics

We are a data driven world. It can be good or it can be overwhelming. This webinar will highlight three scenarios where data is used to make intelligent business decisions, improve current assets and increase referrals to your communities. Learn how to use incidence data and medication data to improve your business results.

What to schedule a demo or learn more? Click here for more information on VisionLTC services →

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senior living marketing

[WEBINAR] Senior Living Websites: Attract, Engage & Nurture Prospects

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Senior Living Websites Should Attract, Engage, and Nurture Prospects

Lead nurturing is the purposeful process of engaging prospects by providing relevant information at each stage of the buyer’s journey. You want to actively move the prospects through your marketing and lead generation efforts, to the point where they become leads. In this webinar, we discuss how to nurture leads. Strategies include targeted content, multi-channel nurturing,  timely follow-ups, and personalization.

Interested in learning more strategies for exceeding prospects’ expectations?

Let’s chat! We’ll spend 30 minutes brainstorming with you.

Request a Session
INBOUND MARKETING

What is Inbound Marketing? And Do I Need It? [Webinar]

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Inbound marketing is the tool used to meet today’s customer where they spend most of their time – on the internet. Inbound marketing is all about attracting prospects through relevant and helpful content. It allows senior living communities to add value at every stage in your prospective resident’s journey. It pulls together content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more to attract prospects to your website.

 

5 Marketing Trends That Can Generate 5-7 New Move-Ins

5 Marketing Trends That Can Generate 5-7 New Move-Ins! Webinar

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This webinar will provide best practices on how to use your event marketing to increase your lead generation and move-ins!

Mystery Shopping as a Coaching Tool Webinar

Mystery Shopping as a Coaching Tool

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This webinar will provide best practices on how to use your mystery shopping as a coaching tool, and take your sales skills to the next level.

Break Out Of The Sales Quota Trap To Create A Winning Compensation Plan

Break Out Of The Sales Quota Trap To Create A Winning Compensation Plan

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Over the years, I have seen many sales compensation plans – the good, the bad, and the downright puzzling. Some are based on a flat bonus per move-in model, others are based on a percentage of revenue, some speed up the per move-in bonus amount as the number of move-ins rises, some pay nothing until the salesperson hits a threshold – it is all over the map.

I just read a fantastic article by Lee B. Salz, a sales management strategist at Sales Architects in Minneapolis outlining five ways to break out of the “quota” trap and develop a comprehensive sales compensation plan that benefits the salesperson, the company, and its customers. “While earnings are an important and relevant point, they aren’t the only consideration when designing an effective sales compensation plan,” says Salz. Focused on tying compensation to special quotas, companies wind up with unproductive, unmotivated sales teams that produce only when they have to.

5 Ways to Break Out of the Quota Trap

  1. Kick it off with a solid sales process

For a compensation plan to be effective, start by developing and documenting a sales process. Most companies ignore this step and instead jump right into writing commission checks as sales are closed. “You can’t reward for behavior if you don’t even know what the desired behaviors are,” says Salz. A better approach is to take a step back and figure out which results deserve those rewards (Prospecting? Closing sales? Collecting deposits? Professional referrals? Selling at market rate? All of the above?), and then wrap the sales compensation plan around those key goals.

  1. Make your sales process clear-cut and transparent

Consider, for example, exactly what it takes to close a deal from concept to completion. In most cases it starts with an initial contact, then tours, home visits, creative follow up, collecting a deposit, and ultimately signing a lease. Only by looking at the sales process from start to finish can managers identify the important links in the chain and come up with effective ways to compensate reps for their progress.

  1. Match desired activities up with actual results

Sales Managers are often frustrated with the focus of their salespeople, says Salz, and it is the sales compensation plan that causes this frustration. For example, asking salespeople to focus on selling at full market rate without using incentives or paid move-in sources, but then compensating them with a flat dollar amount per move-in, is a sure-fire way to cause the disconnect between desired activity and actual results. “Figure out what behaviors deserve the incentives,” Salz suggests, “and then come up with a sales compensation plan that positively reinforces those behaviors.”

  1. Work backwards from the company’s larger goals

If the expectation is that the salesperson moves in 6 new residents per month in order to grow census or maintain high occupancy, then historical conversion averages will help create the behaviors needed to produce the desired result. If the salesperson has a 25% tour: move-in average, they will need to generate 24 tours and if they typically convert 75% of their inquiries to tours, they will need to generate 32 new leads. Next, look at how many sales calls, events and prospecting activities will have to take place to generate the required qualified leads and tours. Once those parameters are in place, be sure to include decelerators for poor performance and accelerators for the salesperson who exceeds the goal. “Drive your salespeople to meet and exceed the plan that’s in place,” says Salz, “or you’ll wind up back at square one, with sales reports full of peaks and valleys.”

  1. Smile when you sign that commission check…or go back to square one

“If there isn’t a smile on the executive’s face when he or she signs that commission check, then there’s something wrong with the plan,” says Salz. Likewise, “If your compensation plan is structured properly, it should tickle you pink to write out that check,” Salz says. “If you are resentful or remorseful in any way, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Don’t Forget To Ask These Five Financial Discovery Questions!

Senior Living Sales Tips: 5 Essential Financial Discovery Questions

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Many seniors and their families are unprepared for the costs associated with senior care.  The good news is that there are companies coming into the industry to help families fund private pay senior living. But senior living sales people have to ask the right questions to uncover needs.

Senior Living Sales Tips: Ask These 5 Financial Questions

1. Are you a veteran or a surviving spouse of a veteran?

Over 80% of senior living prospects are veterans or a surviving spouse of a veteran. They need to understand the Aid & Attendance benefit and their qualification status, so they can incorporate the benefit into their financial planning.  Keep in mind that the benefit is not a “yes” or “no” qualification. It is an “if” and “when.”

2. Do you have a life insurance policy?

Seniors abandon millions of dollars of life insurance assets every year by surrendering their policies for pennies on the dollar or by non payment of premiums – because they do not know there are other options.

Seniors have the option to sell their policies today to supplement the cost of home care, assisted living, or skilled nursing care.  Cashing out the policy today will provide much more revenue to fund care than abandoning or surrendering the policy.  Life insurance policies are assets that seniors own and have the right to sell.  Once the policy is sold, the asset is held in an irrevocable trust that pays directly for care.  The senior can determine how much of the asset is to be set aside for inheritance, and how much to allocate for care.  There is no cost to either the senior living community, the family, or the resident.

3. Do you have a long-term care insurance policy?

We are seeing an increased number of long-term care insurance policies presented as payment vehicles for care.  The problem is that after paying premiums for decades, insurance companies often issue denials when it comes time to activate the policy as reimbursements for care, and it is very confusing for families to try to work through the bureaucracy on their own.

Typically, community teams try to make calls on behalf of the families. This is time consuming and often unsuccessful. Very few people seem to know that there are professionals who specialize in advocating for seniors and can work through the insurance process to validate claims.

4. Do you know how to establish a realistic budget?

Families need to feel comfortable with how much they can afford and how long the funds will last. Adult children responsible for figuring out a funding strategy for their parents are often stumped about where to begin. Most are unaware of companies and consultants that can help families with a cash-flow analysis quickly and comprehensively.  The two most common mistakes made by adult children is determining their affordability range and leaving out income and only taking into account assets.

5. Do you have a home to sell and do you need to sell it before moving into a community?

For many seniors who do not have other funding vehicles, their home becomes their financial resource.  It is important to understand the plan and create a timeframe to rent or sell the asset and have resources available to support their goals.  Companies exist that will coordinate the sale of the home and unpack/ settle the resident into their new living situation.  There are even companies that will purchase the home!

It’s never comfortable to ask about money. But it’s better to stretch your comfort zone than leave families in the dark about all the options available to to them.  Please reach out to Senior Living SMART to be introduced to any of these resources!

website review

Turn Your Website Into a Lead Generation Machine [Webinar]

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87% of all senior housing sales begin online, making websites the #1 sales tool for lead generation. Prospects visit a community website an average of 7.8 times during their buying journey. This webinar will demonstrate how to convert anonymous website visitors into exclusive and unshared qualified leads.

Free Website Audit

What’s your website already doing well? What can it do better? We start where you are so we can develop a plan to optimize the good while nixing the bad and the ugly.

Learn more about our free website audit

Sell to the Ballerina, Not the Wheelchair

Sell to the Ballerina, Not the Wheelchair

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In Senior Living Sales

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend David Smith’s One On One Sales Training and he showed us this picture to illustrate his prospect-centered approach. It brought me back many years when I was a sales counselor and a new resident named Bea scooted herself down to my office in her wheelchair to tell me that she was bored. We chatted for a few minutes and I asked why she was not enjoying any of the day’s activities. She just sighed and said “the problem is that everyone here is so old”. “But Bea”, I replied, “you are 99 years old and almost every resident here is younger than you!” Her response stayed with me; “when I look in the mirror, I see a young and vibrant woman”.

I now realize that I was seeing the woman in the wheelchair but Bea was seeing “ballerina self“.

So, are we selling to the woman in the wheelchair or the ballerina?

There are two different sales philosophies in the senior living industry today – transactional and relational.

Philosophy

Transactional

Relational
Target Demographic Need based & urgent prospects The “Not Ready” prospects
Available Market 10% of the qualified market 90% of the qualified market
How To Measure Effectiveness More Activities – More Leads, More Calls & Tours, Less Time from Inquiry: Move-in (shorten the sales cycle), Do More & Be Quicker Spend More Time in The Selling Zone – Face-to-face/ voice to voice/ planning/ creative, personalized & proactive follow up.
What Are We Selling Features, Benefits of Real Estate, Lifestyle & Experience Change
How We Are Selling Get all the qualifying information including wants, needs, finances, time frame and then match information to community solutions and sell “better & difference story”. Focus on readiness to change, stage of change – denial, thinking, planning or action. Build a relationship, help guide prospect to the best decision for them and learn life stories.

The transactional approach sells to the woman in the wheelchair and the relational approach sells to the ballerina.