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senior living marketing

Senior Living Marketing: The Power of Differentiation

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Marketing a senior living community can be challenging. After all, most communities are essentially selling the same thing. As a result, it can be difficult for consumers to identify the community best suited for their lifestyle and needs.

How can you elevate your senior living marketing to show true differentiation? Read on.

1. Differentiate through technology. Here’s what to keep in mind when evaluating your options.

2. Differentiate through value and price. You could use a “high-end” approach. This caters to the belief that the more costly a product or service is, the more valuable it is. Another option: Position your brand as the provider of high quality at a value price. (Hint: Southwest Airlines does a great job at the latter.)

3. Differentiate through product and services. Convey value by highlighting unique product or service features. For example, how does your dining program compare to local restaurants? How does your resident wellness program compare?

4. Differentiate through customer service. Thanks to the prevalence of online reviews, good customer service will always be important. But exceptional service will elevate your status in the senior living marketplace even more. What are your residents and families saying about you? Do you have a customer service program that creates raving fans?

5. Differentiate through user experience. Senior living communities must build emotional connections through memorable experiences. Remember, there are many transition “points” for residents and families during their stay in your senior living community. How well do you do at these important points in time? Are you eliciting feedback from your residents and following through on what you’ve heard?

Need help creating an unbeatable senior living marketing strategy?

We’ve spent decades working in the industry. Let us help!

 

value proposition

Senior Living Marketing Strategy: Creating Your Value Proposition

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When it comes to devising a killer senior living marketing strategy, we need a new shtick.  I’m tired of listening to recorded calls and mystery shops and hearing the same things: We have the best people. You’re going to love the food. We’re resident-focused.

If every senior living community is saying the same thing, then what’s the point? How can you possibly differentiate? To stand out, you and your team need to agree on your community’s value proposition.

How do you go about creating one?

Well, when was the last time you spent time with your team to honestly discuss your senior living marketing strategy? Have you recently looked at your place in the market, your differentiators . . . and then figured out a story that conveys those things? Remember, people are more engaged with stories than information. Finding time to brainstorm can be a great team-building exercise. It will also help get everyone up to speed with what your community’s value proposition is. (And how to communicate it.)

Senior living marketing strategy: Start with a thorough competitive analysis.

This involves going on a tour of each competitor and acting as the prospect. Ask all the questions that prospects ask you to see how the community sales person answers them. How are they are positioning their community? Do they explain their pricing, levels of care, amenities, lifestyle, memory care program, etc.?  Pick up a full marketing packet to see how your community’s presentation compares. Make notes of your impressions right away while the experience is fresh in your mind.

Senior living marketing strategy: Do a SWOT with the team.

Schedule an hour or two to strategize as a team about your community’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).  You can go online to get an outline, training, and tools on how to do a SWOT. But for now, here is a quick overview.

Strengths & weaknesses refer to internal aspects of the community

  • Demographics, location – close to cultural, community & healthcare resources, on a main road, easy to find? What are the characteristics of your current residents and families? Why did they choose your community?
  • Physical plant – first impressions, age & condition of interior & exterior, updates needed, does the model apartment Wow? Size of community, apartment mix, etc.
  • Amenities – dining, activities, transportation, recreation, social, spiritual, intellectual activities, pool, spa, etc.
  • Care – survey results, memory care program, levels of care available, niche programs, acuity management, training, technology
  • Team – stability, experience, turnover, leadership, culture, mission, values, etc
  • Other – reputation, ownership, customer service, friendliness, family engagement, history of community (who built it & why?)
  • Price/value – drill down into competitive analysis

Opportunities & threats refer to external aspects of the community

  • Marketplace Changes – new communities in development, competitors adding on units or products (i.e. memory care), hospital closing, businesses coming or going?
  • Competitors – running specials, renovating, creating niche programs, have an ACO relationship with the local hospital that could reduce your referrals? Changes in leadership/ turnover/ stability?  Acquisitions?
  • People Changes – have key referral sources moved, are there new relationships that have to be nurtured, are there new docs in town, new homecare companies?
  • Regulatory/Economic – Did the state create a grant program to encourage homecare?  Is the hospital forming an ACO?  Are there new state regulations that may affect you?

When the SWOT is completed, your team will be able to identify unique characteristics that will create your “better and different story.” In other words, your value proposition. So, when someone asks why they should select your community, you have your answer at the ready.

Here’s an example: “We’re locally owned, and we do business with our friends and neighbors. Our owner built this community because he wanted his mother to have a lovely place to live. And she lived here for six years until age 92! Our owner is here every week to speak with our team, the residents, and their families. And because we don’t own hundreds of communities, we can make sure that this community runs well. Our residents develop strong bonds with our staff. We have very low turnover! Our staff has worked here an average of 5 years. We got a perfect score on our most recent state survey and a 92% satisfaction score from residents and families.”

Now THAT’S a story, right? And certainly much more compelling than “We have the best people and great food.”

Need help with your senior living marketing strategy?

You’ve come to the right place. We have deep expertise in senior living and marketing. Set up a complimentary brainstorming session today.

sales tour

Senior Living Sales Training: What “Funny Farm” Can Teach Us About Tours

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The movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase should be required viewing as part of senior living sales training. When Andy Farmer and his wife struggle to sell their country home after a not-so-idyllic experience of rural living, they decide to enlist the help of an eclectic cast of characters from the community. Everyone comes together to create the perfect experience for a hot lead with a “scheduled tour.”

Everything is planned down to the most minute detail: from ducks waddling along as prospects arrive to a deer prancing across the yard to the perfectly staged home setting and refreshments. It all unfolds perfectly with the help of the entire town!

Nothing is left to chance. The deer had been caged, and as the “prospects” arrived, Chevy Chase as Andy Farmer gave the command into his radio to waiting helpers to “cue the deer” at just the right moment.

Senior Living Sales Training: How to Create the Perfect Tour Experience

The couple that was “touring” was so taken by the experience. They offered more than the asking price and closed on the spot. And because everything was so perfect, they even wanted all of the furniture, dishes, and even the yellow dog.

A well-planned tour of a senior living community can have the same effect. People want to fall in love with a place that is the “perfect fit.”  When this happens, there is less price sensitivity because the family sees and appreciates the value. I’ve had many situations where the family wants to purchase the entire model apartment because it is so warm and inviting!

Here are some quick tips for how your senior living sales team can create a “Cue The Deer” experience:

1. Do thorough discovery to learn about the prospect’s life story.

The more you know, the more personal of an experience you can create.  Ask about interests, hobbies, careers, military service, favorite foods, books, movies, music, family, routines, “must haves” and “non-negotiables.”

For example, with my mother, the community must serve tea in a teapot. Heaven help the server who shows up with a tea bag in a cup and tries to pour water over it and call it “tea!”

2. Based on this information, plan the tour and use your team. 

The team can execute some easy personal touches, such as having a welcome sign at the reception desk with the prospect’s name, having their favorite refreshments served in the hospitality room, or scheduling a favorite activity during the visit. You get the idea.

3. Have a personalized gift at the end of the tour – something especially for them. 

Some common themes can be kept on hand (tea/ coffee lovers basket, dog/ cat lovers selections, photo books of local towns spiritual books/ journals, etc.). Others can be purchased prior to the visit if it is something specific (like the latest book by a favorite author).

4. Do things that your competitors are not doing!

For instance, put out a valet parking sign in advance of the tour. (If they can’t find a parking spot or have to park far away, you will have your first strike against you.) Meet the tour personally at the car – what a great first impression, right? Have umbrellas and wheelchairs handy. Have cold water on hot days. Serve refreshments in glassware & china, not Styrofoam and paper. Offer homemade goodies. And, finally, walk every visitor out to their car for the final personal touch.

We can help your sales and marketing teams create red carpet tours!

We can also turn your senior living website into a lead generation machine so that you have plenty of great leads to give tours to. Let’s chat about your needs!

sales questions

Senior Living Sales & The Decision Making Process

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Making a decision to choose a senior living community is complex, emotionally dynamic, and personal. Navigating the senior living sales process with families and prospects is delicate.  Very, very rarely is there only one decision maker, so doing thorough discovery using the right questions is important for all involved.

Here are a few senior living sales tips learned over the years:

Senior Living Sales Tip: Who? 

It’s important to understand the various roles and responsibilities everyone plays in the decision-making process.  Roles include the first point of contact, a primary caregiver who understands the day-to-day situation, the financially responsible family member, and the long distance family member who thinks everything is fine. Many possible combinations exist.

Each is a key influencer. And each will have different questions, priorities, and hot buttons. A great way to get this information is to say, “Every family we talk to has a different way of researching and choosing a senior living community.  There are family roles, and often-different priorities. Let’s talk about how you, as a family, are going to make this decision together. How would you define your role? Who else will be involved? Are any of them particularly supportive or resistant to the idea of senior living as an option?”

Bottom line: Identify the person or people you will need to win over. And know who is in your corner!

Senior Living Sales Tip: What?

What’s important to each decision maker? Has something changed in their lives that’s forcing them to look at senior living options? What’s the level of awareness/ involvement that the prospect has in making the decision? (Expect different answers for IL and Memory Care.) What other options are they considering? (Not only competitors, but home care etc.)

Senior Living Sales Tip: Why?

Why are they looking now? And why are they looking at your community specifically? Why would a community setting make sense for them?

Senior Living Sales Tip: Where?

Where is the best location for the family and the prospect? Decision makers will likely be looking in a variety of locations, including out of state.  Where does each decision maker/ influencer prefer for them to be located?  Where does the prospect prefer to live?

Senior Living Sales Tip: When?

When are they thinking about making a decision? (What is their timeframe?)  When are they thinking about making the move?  When can we get everyone together for a family meeting to understand and talk through questions, concerns, and options?

Senior Living Sales Tip: How?

How will you all make the decision? Asking how elicits a strategy. For example “I am going to call every community within 10 miles of where Mom lives to get some basic information.  Then, we will narrow down our choice to 4 – 6 communities to visit. From there, we’ll decide on our two top choices and we will bring Mom/Dad to visit to make the final choice.”

Ask how they’ll know when they find the right community? How will their Mother/Father know which community is the best for them? Knowing in advance that “when I find a community where my mom will fit in and feel comfortable” is very different from “when I find a community where my mom can swim, that has a bridge group, and a rich cultural program.”

Better to know earlier in the sales process!

Senior Living Sales Tip: Who Else?

Sometimes, when you think you’ve met all the decision makers, another hidden decision maker pops up!  This can be a family attorney, financial planner, discharge planner, or spiritual advisor.  It’s always a good idea to confirm all of the known participants and then ask “who else” will be involved.

Need some help tweaking your senior living sales process?

We work closely with senior living sales and marketing teams. Let’s chat about your community’s needs.

sales tools

Putting the Right Tools in Your Sales Toolbox

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It is always tricky creating the right Sales Toolbox – one that creates urgency without eroding revenue.  Used correctly, incentives can be used to shorten the sales cycle and achieve move-in targets but they can also be overused leaving money on the table.  Choosing the tools that are right for the job of occupancy & revenue growth requires good analysis and the flexibility to make changes as occupancy fluctuates.  Here are a few things to consider:

Customize the Toolbox for the Size of the Job

Different tools are needed to boost occupancy by 20% than by 5 % so create different toolboxes for communities at various levels of vacancy.  This can be accomplished by simply using the same incentives but with different values (dollar amounts or percentages) or by sweetening the incentives when the occupancy drops to a certain level.  For example, communities above 90% occupancy may be able to offer a variety of incentives up to a certain dollar amount (reimburse moving costs, apartment upgrades, etc.) or use discount percentage (discount community fee by x%, etc.) but if occupancy drops below 90% the dollar amounts and percentages increase.

Short Term vs. Long Term incentives

Some incentives are short term as the incentive is applied once, usually upfront, and other incentives are applied on an ongoing basis.  This is where the revenue vs. occupancy growth must be considered and balanced.  Waiving or discounting a month’s rent or community fee is a short term incentive that erodes revenue for only the month the incentive is applied; discounting rent or offering rent locks erodes revenue over a longer period of time.   Operators and sales leaders have to work together to determine what the goals are in order to create the right toolbox.

Inspect, Analyze and Adjust

There are certain trends to look at in creating the right toolbox.  The first is the average length of stay by lifestyle (IL, AL, ALZ), which helps to project the impact of long-term incentives.  There is a difference in offering a two-year rate lock when the average length of stay is 18 months then when it is 48 months.   Also, the average rate per unit by type of your current residents is helpful to consider ensuring that new residents are not paying less on average than your residents who have lived in the community for years.  Once the sales toolbox is created and approved, an approval process must be established for transparency and to track the success of each incentive offered.  If families show no interest in one of the offers, change it up!

Best Practices

Here is what I have learned in building sales toolboxes over the years:

  • Have a sales toolbox for the Sales Team and another one for the Executive Directors.  I like to give the sales team the short-term incentives and empower them to use the toolbox to shorten the sales cycle and reserve any incentive that impacts ongoing revenue in the hands of the Executive Director.
  • Get feedback from the community and regional teams while creating the toolbox and be willing to adjust the incentives based on individual market differences.  Everyone likes to be part of the process and collaboration increases buy-in.
  • Make sure there are good systems to track the impact of the incentives.  Knowing the historical move-in numbers, market rates and actual collected rates will help evaluate the impact of the program.  The purpose of a sales toolbox is to increase the move-in volume by empowering community teams to overcome objections and shorten the sales cycle.  In six months the trend should show a correlation of incentive dollars relating to increased move-in volume.
  • Evaluate which incentives are working as it may reveal an underlying issue that can be addressed.  For example, if most families are choosing a 5% rent reduction, you may have a pricing issue or if they are choosing an apartment upgrade (a studio deluxe for the same price as a standard studio), you may have a barrier based on the size of your apartments.

Are there any other tools you would add to your sales toolbox? Let’s Chat

information

Maximize Your Senior Living Resources: Information Management

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Blog Provided By Joan Bachman, RN, HNA, RHIT, BSBA, FCN

Maximize Your Senior Living Resources

The Only Place You Find “Success” before “Work” is in the Dictionary. Survival and growth of an organization rely on the effective use of available assets.

Senior Living Resources: Information Management

A successful organization maintains accurate business records and promotes healthy communication.

Legal Documents

  • Describe legal documents and authority for access.
  • Maintain legal documents securely, whether hard copy or digitized.
  • Establish and implement policies for retention of records.
  • Comply with regulatory and insurance carrier suggestions for backup and audits.
  • Limit access to legal documents based on authority and responsibility.

Communication Systems

  • Communication may be spoken, written, computerized, or pictorial/graphic.
  • Establish and implement policies and responsibility for each segment of communication
  • (Business, Client, Public, and Advertisement/Promotion) based on regulatory requirements.
  • Communicate openly with staff. Secrets breed distrust; informed staff supports the Mission.
  • Describe confidentiality requirements.
  • Define how social media may be used for business and personal purposes.

Physical Messages

  • Maintain your capital assets to demonstrate self-respect and contribution to the community.
  • Expect clients and staff to be clean and neatly dressed.
  • Control noise levels within the building.
  • “What you are doing speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”

Is there information that your community needs to improve on recording? Let’s Chat

pricing strategy

3 Pricing Strategies to Grow Rate, Grow Occupancy – or Both!

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There are many traditional pricing models offered by senior living operators in an effort to grow rate and increase occupancy.  There are no right or wrong answers as long as the strategy is in alignment with your goals.  Generally, pricing strategy is directly related to the stability of occupancy.  With a higher occupancy, operators can push rate. When occupancy declines, incentives may be offered to boost occupancy and that erodes RPU.  The balance is in knowing when to turn the rate and incentive levers and to be flexible and proactive enough to make regular adjustments.  Pricing is not something that operators can do once a year during budget season and then forget about.

Pricing That Offers a Greater Price Range for Prospects without Eroding Rate

Value/ Premium Pricing

This strategy allows a pricing spread throughout the community that offers greater pricing elasticity to meet a wider range of financial options for prospects without eroding rate/ RPU.  Apartments with a premium location (near an elevator, on the first floor, near dining room etc.), premium view or with premium amenities (upgrades, closet space square footage) are priced at higher rates.  Apartments with undesirable locations (end of long hallways, upper floors), undesirable views (parking lot, dumpster, mechanical units) or with a lack of amenities (dark, small, limited closet space) are priced at lower rates.  This strategy allows 3 price points for each apartment type – standard, premium, and value so the overall community still achieves the average rate while offering a greater range of pricing options.

Variable Pricing

Much like paying points on a mortgage, the greater the upfront move-in fee, the lower the monthly base rent.  For example, for every $2000 more paid up front, the resident base rent is reduced by $200.  This gives the community good cash flow up front, and the advantage for the resident is that the investment is paid back within 10 months. Then all future increases are based on the lower rate.

This strategy provides solutions for prospects who:

  • Have good liquidity from the sale of their home or from strong investments, but they do not have much income (they can put up a large move-in fee and buy down their monthly price that is within their income range).
  • Have a strong income, but do not have upfront cash (waiting to sell their home, money tied up in annuities, CDs or other investment).

Companion Living

In addition to “purpose built” companion apartments, this strategy creates companion living apartments out of studio, alcove, and traditionally private one  &  two bedroom apartments.  The companion price is set between 55 – 65% of the private rate for each resident.  It creates a very low price point, which is attractive to residents who would traditionally be financially disqualified.  It provides the community with 110 – 130% of the private rent revenue and two LOCs.

To be successful, the community needs to set up companion model apartments to show how a small space can work for two unrelated residents.  It may also require some form of divider for privacy.

There are probably many other great ideas out there! Are there other creative pricing strategies you have used successfully to balance the growth of both rate and occupancy? Let’s Chat