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Robyn Bradley cover image

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives: Mastering Content Marketing

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Topics Discussed and Key Points:

  • Turning data into great messages that grow your company
  • Reconciling keywords that people search for with the keywords you use to describe your business
  • The impact of the pandemic on the senior living industry
  • Transitioning from marketing to sales—and having synergy between both
  • Catering your message from the Greatest and Silent Generations to the Baby Boomers

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with writer Robyn Bradley. A self-proclaimed “copy bitch by day and novelist by night”, she is an SEO expert who for two decades has put together, among other things, websites, sales letters, print ads, radio spots, and marketing brochures.

Robyn has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and she won a short story award in 2007. Her work has appeared in FictionWeekly.com, Metal Scratches, The Breakwater Review, Writer’s Digest, and The MetroWest Daily News, and others.

In today’s conversation, Robyn talks all things content marketing and the art and science of writing relevant, unique, and utterly human copy. She says that it all begins with pinpointing the right keywords to write around. With those search phrases as your starting point, you can begin to bridge customer desires with your particular goals as a company and tell an effective and engaging brand story.

Throughout the pandemic—and even as we emerge from it—the companies who thrive stay human and are not afraid to tackle the tough topics. As a senior living provider, trust can be gained when marketing makes an effort to explain, transparently, how the facility and staff will be able to keep residents healthy and safe amid the ongoing crisis. Videos and virtual tours are excellent ways to quickly capture that trust.

The operators who win are those who make it easy for prospects to find them, engage with them, and choose them, by meeting them where they are and removing friction along their journey.

As the industry shifts from catering to the Greatest and Silent Generations to the Baby Boomers, the key to success is to take everything that already works and “dialing them up by hundred,” as Robyn puts it. Radical authenticity and more customizable living spaces are also vital.

Debbie likens generational changes in the senior living space to those of the university, where the traditionally uniform college environment has largely disappeared so that the modern student now enjoys a plethora of choices regarding where they live, work, hang out, and eat.

Sherry Bonelli headshot

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives: Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks

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Topics Discussed and Key Points:

  • What is a Google Business Profile Gold Product Expert?
  • Elevating your local search ranking
  • The importance of keyword research
  • Building authority in your industry
  • Taking advantage of voice search
  • Getting to page 1 on Google
  • Beating your competitors at the SEO game
  • Using third-party tools on your Google Business Profile

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with Sherry Bonelli, owner of early bird digital marketing, a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and digital marketing professional with over 23 years of experience. Early Bird digital marketing serves clients all over the country. Sherry Sherry also holds a Master’s of Internet Marketing Degree, is a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and is the host of the Marketing Plan Podcast.

She is a Google Business Profile Gold Product Expert and is a columnist for leading digital marketing websites like Search Engine Land, MOZ, Search Engine Journal, Adweek, SEMrush, BrightLocal, SCORE and others. She received Search Engine Land’s 2018 SEO Contributor of the Year Award. For two years in a row her blog posts were among the top 10 most read articles on Search Engine Land’s website.

Sherry gives her top tips and strategies on elevating your local search ranking. Best practices include optimizing your Google Business Profile (including picking a specific category and accumulating reviews), website, and becoming an authority in your industry by writing valuable blog posts and gaining recognition by other players in your space through guest blogging and appearing on podcasts. “It’s not just one thing that Google is looking at,” says Sherry. “It’s hundreds of different factors.”

Keyword research is also crucial when putting together a strategy. An often overlooked reality is the fact that many potential customers may be using different words and terms while searching for the solution you provide. A provider may think that prospects are searching for “assisted care living” when they might be looking for “nursing homes” or “old folks homes”. At the same time, a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is to write for your user, not for Google.

One way to address this is to creatively include these keywords on your website, articles, and copy to educate visitors on why your facility uses a different term to describe itself. In other words, don’t get trapped into only using industry lingo or jargon.

Take advantage of available tools to figure out how your competitors are winning the local search game. This can be as simple as searching for those top ranking businesses yourself and taking note of how they distribute their keywords on their websites. In short, says Sherry, “Mirror what they’re doing on your site—but do it better!”

Resources Mentioned:

Early bird digital marketing

Transcript

Image of Claire Carlile

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives: Local Search Marketing

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Topics Discussed and Key Points:

  • Why you should treat your business listing on GBP as an extension of your website
  • Optimizing your listing
  • Maximizing user experience
  • Understanding GBP’s Insights and utilizing UTM tags
  • How reviews impact your ranking
  • Improving your local ranking
  • Citation management

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with Claire Carlile, who works at BrightLocal as their Local Search Expert. She also owns her own U.K.-based marketing agency, Claire Carlile Marketing. Focused on making the most out of the digital marketplace, the company specializes in SEO, local SEO, and review management.

Claire does a deep dive into Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business. Your business listing is often the first thing that people see when doing a Google search. That piece of information directly influences whether they visit your website or give you a call, or move on to your competitors.

Because of this, Claire encourages businesses to treat their GBP as an extension of their website. There are several steps you can take to optimize your listing, the first of which is to claim the listing and give the right people access to it. Make sure the company’s name, address, phone number, and primary category are up to date.

It helps to focus not just on the ranking factor, but also the conversion factor. Ultimately, ensure that your profile has everything it needs for visitors to be able to contact you.

Claire explains how to get the most out of your Insights, keys to citation management, and how to create a strategy that can reliably net your listing a substantial number of good reviews.

She also speaks on ranking for local SEO, both organically and for a 3-pack placement. Google’s local algorithm factors in proximity, relevance, and prominence. She reiterates that your GBP listing is a critical influence on the algorithm, particularly your reviews.

Resources Mentioned:

BrightLocal

Claire Carlile on Twitter

Pleper

GMB Spy (Chrome extension)

Postamatic (Google Sheets add on)

BrightLocal guide to GBP posts

Claire’s UTM tagging sheet and Moz WBF

Transcript

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives: All Things Paid Search with Jay Buerck

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Topics Discussed and Key Points:

  • How the pandemic has impacted organic and paid search in the senior living space
  • Differences between Google and Bing for paid search
  • How to maximize organic search and, later, complement it with paid search
  • The steps to mapping out an effective SEO strategy
  • First-touch versus retargeting campaigns
  • Paid ads on Facebook versus Google and Bing
  • How to set proper expectations when running ad campaigns

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with Jay Buerck, Director of Strategy at Digital Strike, a “search-focused marketing company” catering to businesses of all sizes. Specializing in organic and paid search, the company’s focus is to harness intent-based marketing from search engines.

In this conversation, Debbie and Jay do a deep dive into all things Google Adwords, PPC campaigns, and other strategies to increase a business’s web presence.

With over half of Digital Strike’s business being in the senior living space, Jay references a DialogTech study which found that search volume has been decreasing, up to 40% for certain providers. At the same time, 75% of searches related to finding a community have taken place online, with about 83% of those searches coming from individuals who do not have a specific community in mind.

“It’s vitally important to be online,” says Jay, “and increase your visibility, whether that’s through organic search or through paid search.”

Asked about maximizing organic search, Jay refers to the three pillars of SEO that Digital Strike subscribes to: technical, content, and authority. Anyone can start seeing a boost in their search rankings by optimizing all three of these foundational factors.

Jay also speaks on setting expectations when running ad campaigns, saying that it’s important to look not only at your company’s metrics, but those of others who have run comparable campaigns so that you are not looking at your data in a vacuum. It also helps to engage in conversation with stakeholders and refer to reports that reveal current market trends.

Resources Mentioned:

Digital Strike

Jay Buerck on LinkedIn

senior living marketing strategy, hands with gears

7 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Senior Living Marketing Strategy

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As we wrap up third quarter, now’s a good time to think about your senior living marketing strategy for the fourth quarter (as well as next year). Below, you’ll find seven mistakes to avoid as you develop your strategy.

Mistake #1. Thinking you don’t need a senior living marketing strategy in the first place.

For some things in life, you can fly by the seat of your pants. But marketing your senior living community isn’t one of them. The benefits of having a formal marketing strategy are many:

  • It provides clear goals.
  • It keeps everyone accountable (marketing and sales).
  • It provides important insights to the C-suite.
  • It will help inform future strategies based on real intelligence.

Mistake #2. Simply going through the motions of creating a strategy.

Don’t treat your marketing strategy as one more thing you need to cross off your to-do list. Your strategy should be your team’s constant companion, the blueprint everyone refers to week in and week out. 

Mistake #3. Treating your strategy as if it’s set in stone.

Your senior living marketing strategy must remain fluid. The best example we could possibly offer: Consider the strategy you had going into 2020. Given the pandemic, if you had “stayed the course” with your original strategy, that would have been a big mistake. Strategies will and should change based on things like analytics and conditions on the ground. 

Mistake #4. Making your strategy too vague.

On the flip side of #3, you still need to have a concrete marketing strategy—one with clear goals and specific initiatives to support those goals. If it’s too loosey goosey, it won’t serve anyone. A good way to approach developing your strategy: Focus on key areas. Think website/SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, email marketing/automation, social media marketing, and print/traditional marketing (like direct mail). Define what you’ll be doing under each, as needed.

Mistake #5. Making your strategy too long.

Planning too far out can result in unwieldy and unrealistic initiatives. Better to focus on shorter time frames. Consider creating quarterly marketing strategies or even month-to-month marketing plans, if that makes following them easier.

Mistake #6. Not revisiting the results of previous strategies before developing this one.

Think of strategies as chapters in a novel — they should all flow together, rather than function as separate books. You should always review past strategies and develop new strategies based on measurable results. 

For example, is your paid advertising delivering excellent ROI? Great! You might decide to reserve more budget for pay-per-click campaigns. Are you finding you’re not gaining any traction on Twitter, but Facebook is lively? Wonderful. You might decide to downgrade (or eliminate) Twitter initiatives and make Facebook the focus of your social media strategy.

Mistake #7. Developing your strategy in a silo and/or forging ahead on your own, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.

There’s no shame in saying you’ve never created a formal senior living marketing strategy before. And there’s no shame in saying you’d like some guidance (even if you have created strategies in the past). In fact, though it might sound self-serving, we do believe working with an objective third-party on your strategy can be extremely beneficial — precisely because it will be objective. You and your team might be too close to things. Or you might not have the experience in developing a sound strategy. 

Whatever you do, don’t develop the strategy by yourself. Work with team members in marketing and sales at the very least. Or do yourself a favor and reach out to us about developing a strategic marketing roadmap for your community.

senior living advertising paid search 101

Senior Living Advertising: Paid Search 101

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

What is paid search anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much does paid search cost advertisers?

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

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

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

Can you control how much you spend?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s Chat!

 

senior living marketing graphic of filling lead funnel

Senior Living Marketing Channels: Which Ones Matter in 2021?

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Which senior living marketing channels do the majority of your prospects hang out on today? Let’s keep it high level and discuss the big three umbrellas: Search, Social, and Email.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #1: The Search Is Over.

Who would have thunk when Google was founded in 1998 that it would take over in the way it has? Today, “google” is a verb, and it’s the first thing we all do when we’re searching for anything online, whether it’s a new place to eat, a new car to buy, or a new place to live, like a senior living community.

Sure, how your prospects get to you via search might not always be a straight line. Some searchers might come from review sites. Others from directories. Still others from your Google My Business listing or social media. And, of course, some will land on your website first and explore the above after. But it all starts with search.

We’ve shared stats like these before, but they’re worth sharing again:

Over 6000 searches related to senior living communities are made each hour. [Source: Senior Housing News]

Baby Boomers spend more time online than Millennials, and a staggering 92% of Boomers shop online. [Source: The Shelf]

Boomers have great attention spans and will read your content! 60% of Boomers regularly read blogs, and 70% percent watch video content online. [Source: The Shelf]

Boomers are almost as likely as Millennials to own a tablet. [Source: Marketing Charts]

68% of Boomers own a smartphone. [Source: Pew Research Center]

Plenty of senior living marketing tasks come under the search umbrella, including the following:

Bottom line: Whenever you think about senior living marketing, you should always be thinking about it in relation to search. Optimizing your digital marketing for search should drive everything you do.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #2: Let’s get social.

Social media is an important channel to focus on now—for a few reasons.

First, your prospects are already hanging out on various social platforms. Consider the following breakdown for social media usage among Baby Boomers in the U.S. according to Statista.

  • YouTube – 70%
  • Facebook – 68%
  • Pinterest – 27%
  • LinkedIn – 24%
  • Instagram – 23%
  • Twitter – 17%

Second, consider the generations following Boomers—specifically Gen X and older Millennials. They’re even bigger social media users. So investing in social media marketing now makes sense. You’ll capture the Boomers who are active, and you’ll be poised to welcome the next generations as they start thinking about senior living for themselves.

Third, you can be a lot more casual on social media than you can in other places, like your website or Google My Business listing. You can be whimsical. You can even make a typo without anyone walking away thinking you’re unprofessional. Best of all, you can give a real sense of what your community is like.

As we often remind our clients, all senior living communities are selling the same thing. Differentiating yourself from the community down the street or the next town over involves pulling back the curtain and letting people see your community’s true “essence”—those little things that make it different, special, and that might inspire someone to call your community home. Social media is a great way to share your community’s essence.

Senior living marketing activities that fall under the social media umbrella include:

Check out this series we recently completed on senior living social media marketing.

Senior Living Marketing Channel #3: The death of email has been greatly exaggerated.

The adoption of smartphones and tablets is one of the main reasons why email is alive and well—and will remain so for the near future.

This article reports that email is a top three distribution channel for both b2b and b2c marketers, that over 4 billion people around the world used email in 2020, and that email has over a 90% penetration rate among US internet users. The same article notes that email remains the most reliable channel for nurturing and converting marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads to actual customers.

Of course, the key to effective email marketing is making sure you have a smart strategy—and that you have good marketing automation that’ll help you execute that strategy. This involves understanding your prospects’ journeys so you can develop the right content for the right prospect and deliver it to them via email at the right time.

Remember, silo mentalities need not apply.

Don’t approach each senior living marketing channel as if it exists separately from the others. Instead, create one strategy that includes all three channels. Need help? You’ve come to the right place. Our strategic marketing roadmap is an excellent place to start.

Let’s Chat!
Boost your website speed and SEO performance with a website audit from Senior Living SMART

Senior Living Website Audits: 6 Signs You Need One

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Most marketing and sales teams understand the benefits of a senior living website audit. The question, however, is this: When should you conduct one? Here are six signs that it’s time.

1. You haven’t done one since . . . ?

Ideally, you should audit your online presence at least once a year. (In addition to assessing your website, you should review your social media, Google My Business listings, and the overall competitive landscape.) If you can’t remember the last time your team has done any of this, schedule an audit ASAP.

2. You suspect something’s broken, but you’re not sure what.

Have you ever driven a car and it’s made a weird sound? You know something is off—or possibly even broken—but you don’t know what it is. The same thing can happen with senior living websites.

Maybe you’ve encountered a broken link on your site, and now you’re suddenly wondering how many other broken links exist. Or maybe a prospect mentions they had trouble submitting a form. Or perhaps you’re seeing a drop in traffic and you’re wondering about SEO.

Schedule an audit! After all, you get your car oil changes, tune-ups, and multi-point inspections, right? You should do the same with your website.

3. People complain about your site.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Maybe you’ve been hearing more complaints, like the site is slow. The opt-in forms don’t work. The navigation is confusing. Or the content is full of typos and just plain unhelpful.

If you’re hearing more complaints in general—either directly from prospects or from review sites—pay attention. Even more so if the complaints consistently gripe about the same issues. All are signs that it’s time to schedule a website audit so you can see what’s what.

4. Your senior living website isn’t delivering the ROI you’re looking for.

Remember, your senior living website should attract targeted traffic and convert that traffic into bona fide leads—leads that ultimately book tours and become move-ins. If your site isn’t consistently doing this, it’s failing you.

How to perform a quick gut check? Ask yourself if any of the following sounds familiar:

If you answered yes to one or more of the above, it’s time for a senior living website audit.

5. You want to refresh or redesign your senior living website, but you don’t know where to begin.

Even if you know where to begin, take a step back and perform an objective audit of where your site is today. An audit is a smart and cost-effective way to get a sense of what’s working, what isn’t, what you should “take with you” (to a new platform, for example), and what you need to do differently.

An audit might even convince you that you don’t need to make as big of a change as you were originally anticipating. Plus, having a baseline will also make it easier to measure how well the refreshed website performs in comparison to the current one.

6. Your team is too close to it.

We’ve all been there where we’re too close to something to see what’s really going on. This is especially true with websites. You stop “seeing” the look and feel or what’s broken (or what’s working).

Or the opposite can happen as well. Because you spend so much time on the site, day in and day out, it’s tempting to think you need to change things up simply because you’re getting bored. The reality might be that the site is fine “as is.” An objective third-party website audit can provide an honest and fair assessment.

 

Learn More

Concept of business men and women evaluating senior living marketing services

How to Evaluate Senior Living Marketing Services

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If you’re thinking of changing marketing agencies or maybe using one for the first time, this article is for you. As you evaluate different agencies and the senior living marketing services they offer, keep the following questions in mind.

1. Does that agency have experience in the senior living industry?

The senior living industry is special. We don’t have to tell you that, right? After all, it’s real estate, healthcare, and lifestyle all rolled into one. An agency with senior living industry experience will have a much shorter learning curve. This saves time—and money.

2. Does the agency offer comprehensive senior living marketing services?

Are you OK juggling multiple agencies? Perhaps one that can handle your website, another for advertising, and still another for print materials? Or would you prefer to have a streamlined experience with one agency that handles everything soup to nuts? If you’d prefer the latter, then make sure you investigate all the services the agency offers. (A good place to start is the agency’s website.)

3. Does the agency only offer marketing services a la carte? Or does it provide strategy as well?

You don’t want to approach senior living marketing services like you do ordering from a fast-food menu. “I’ll take two website pages, a round of lead nurturing emails, and a PPC ad campaign to go.” Before you can think about marketing services, you need a marketing strategy. A good marketing agency will devise a strategy based on your community’s challenges and goals.

Marketing agency business men and women working together in a streamlined fashion to meet project goals

4. Does the agency demonstrate a deep understanding of each marketing service it offers—particularly how it relates to the senior living industry?

Anyone can provide a laundry list of marketing services on their website. You want to work with an agency that has expertise in the services it offers. How to tell? Look for examples of thought leadership.

Does the agency regularly blog about marketing topics? Are the blog posts well written and informative? Does the agency participate in industry webinars and podcasts? Does it offer guides about various marketing topics? Does the agency get quoted by relevant publications, like Senior Housing News?

5. Does the agency outsource any of its senior living marketing services? Or does it handle most stuff in-house?

This is a trick question. It’s not unusual for marketing agencies to outsource some work to contractors or to trusted partners. (For example, some marketing agencies might have a trusted PPC vendor they work with.) But if the agency outsources most work to third parties, this raises red flags.

First, it might cost you more in the long run since the agency is essentially serving as the middleman. Second, this approach can dilute the strategy since one of the positives a good marketing agency brings to the table is overseeing the BIG marketing picture. It’s easier to manage and oversee the various senior living marketing services when everything happens under the same roof.

6. Does the agency deliver real, quantifiable results?

Unless the agency can provide you with real, tangible results—think increased conversions and more tours and move-ins—what’s the point? To evaluate, ask the agency to share the results of three recent campaigns. Read case studies on their website. Ask to speak to several of their current clients. (And ask the clients the same questions about real, measurable results). Finally, read the agency’s reviews for more insight into not only deliverables, but also how the agency works with clients.

Marketing ideas leading to results you can see

7. Is the agency named Senior Living SMART? :)

All kidding aside, we pride ourselves on devising strong marketing roadmaps and delivering real, measurable results to our clients. Plus, we only focus on the senior living industry. It’s our passion! Interested in learning more about our senior living marketing services? Let’s chat!

Creating a marketing plan for 2021

Your Senior Living Marketing Plan for 2021

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Too often, marketing and sales teams stress out when creating their yearly senior living marketing plan. At the end of December or beginning of January, they will create complex, color-coded spreadsheets with endless tasks and dates and “ownership.” (Often, no one ever looks at the plan again!)

Don’t get us wrong: Planning is important. But it’s impossible to plan a whole years’ worth of marketing tasks in one fell swoop. Instead, it makes more sense to develop an overarching plan for the year—that famous 30,000-foot view. From there, you can create tasks per quarter. (And you don’t need to create the quarterly tasks all at once, either.)

Talk about a much easier approach, right?

The purpose of this post is to help you with that 30,000-foot view.

We recommend getting your team together and talking through the following four main buckets. An important note: You will need to think about them in conjunction with each other. But to start, devote four separate afternoons. Spend each one on a different bucket. On the fifth day, bring it all together and develop your broad-stroke senior living marketing plan to guide you for the year.

What comes out of your discussions will vary depending on your community. It will also depend on the type of year you had, your goals for next year, and your budget. Below, we’re including some questions to get the ball rolling.

CAVEAT: If you’re reading this in 2020, you can’t go into 2021 without thinking about the pandemic. So your 30,000-foot view needs to include the reality of COVID-19. Hopefully, it will be a different story when we enter 2022. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to get instant access to our COVID-19 marketing assets.

1. Senior living marketing plan: Think search.

Let’s face it: Almost everyone begins their searches online. This is certainly true for older adults, which is why the foundation of every senior living marketing plan needs to be search and SEO.

Some questions to ponder or to kick-start your discussion:

  • How often did you conduct keyword research last year? Be honest! If you’re reading this in 2020, we wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is “not much” since everyone was dealing with COVID. If that’s the case, make it a priority going into 2021.
  • When’s the last time you did a site optimization audit? Your website is a machine. Like any machine, it requires maintenance.
  • If you’ve been running paid search campaigns, how have they been working? Review metrics, including the most important one: move-ins. Have your PPC campaigns performed well? Do you want to increase the budget? If they haven’t performed, is it because they’re not the right campaigns? Or is PPC not right for your particular community at this time? Meaning you might want to put the budget towards something else for part of next year and revisit?

No doubt, you’ll come up with plenty of other discussion points around search. Keep track of the big items and themes. For example, maybe you come out of this meeting with something like the following:

  • Perform fresh keyword research in Q2.
  • Re-optimize site, as needed, in early Q3.
  • Increase budget on Facebook ads, decrease budget in Google AdWords.

2. Senior living marketing plan: Think content.

As we like to say around here, content isn’t king—it’s emperor. People crave content at every stage of their journey. Your job is to make sure what they need is available to them when they need it.

At the very least, your content strategy will involve discussions around:

  • Blogging. You should enter January with a three-month editorial calendar in place. The calendar should include keyword-rich topics, blog writing assignments, and due dates. In fact, when you enter January, you should already have the completed January content in hand. Your team should be working on February content.
  • Premium content. Aim for a good mix of gated pieces that will entice people to provide their email address so you can continue nurturing them.
  • Social media. We don’t have to tell you how personal senior living is. Your community should have an active and engaging presence on places like Facebook and Instagram. From a business standpoint, maintain a good LinkedIn page so you can continue to attract great employees. (Make sure you’ve claimed listings on places like Glassdoor and LinkedIn as well.)
  • Email marketing associated with automaton. We’ll dig into this more in the automation section below. Bottom line, though: Don’t simply set it and forget it.

Again, the above will get you started, but it isn’t an exhaustive list of items to think about. Always look at content holistically. For example, is there a “theme” you’d like to focus on for the first half of 2021? Maybe it’s around “choosing senior living during uncertain times.” How can different channels—blog, email, social, premium content, and so forth—support that theme?

Try to walk away from this brainstorming session with a couple of larger themes for next year that will drive your month-to-month content creation.

3. Senior living marketing plan: Think automation.

We’ve written A LOT about marketing automation. If there’s one thing ALL senior living communities can do better, it’s in this area.

If you have marketing automation…

  • When’s the last time you looked at analytics? Review the last two quarters. What surprised you? What made you excited? What worried you? Bottom line: you’ll want to do more of what’s working. And you’ll want to reassess what isn’t.
  • When’s the last time you reviewed the content of your lead nurturing campaigns? Too often, we see communities set up their lead nurturing email campaigns and never look at them again. Some messages will be evergreen. But others will need tweaking. For example, what you said in May of 2020 will (thankfully) sound different from emails sent during May of 2021.
  • Consider your leads. Not just the number of overall leads, but conversions to move-ins. What’s the quality of SQLs? What’s the breakdown of MQLs to SQLs in the database? Etc.

If you don’t have marketing automation . . .

While your marketing team will be involved in all of these discussions, you should absolutely include sales in any discussion pertaining to lead gen. They know the leads. They can speak to their quality—or their perceived quality.

4. Senior living marketing plan: Think outsourced marketing agency.

Are you currently working with a marketing agency? If yes, are you happy with the engagement? If not, why not? Can you communicate your concerns with the agency and discuss strategies for moving forward together? Or is it time to make a change? If it’s time to make a change, what will be the process for making a switch? (Who will own it?)

  • Hint: What’s the sign of a truly good agency? They’re actively involved in planning next year’s marketing. In fact, they’re likely driving the discussion.

If you’re not working with an outsourced marketing agency, discuss whether it would make sense to do so. What sort of budget do you have? What are your expectations?

And on the fifth day of planning your senior living marketing . . .

Now, you’ll bring it all together: Your themes. Your goals. Your plans around search (organic and paid). Your content strategy. Your marketing automation tasks. Your budget. Make sure everyone is on the same page regarding these things. Then, create your Q1 marketing calendar. Use your tool of choice—Asana, Trello, Google docs, Basecamp.

Think of your senior living marketing plan as the roadmap. Think of the month-to-month calendar as the actual driving directions and milestones (tasks) along the way.

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't have time to plan?

Hey, we get it! Its been a tough year. Here’s the good news, though: We can do ALL the leg work for you (with your input, of course). We can distill everything you tell us—your goals, your budget, what’s working, what isn’t—and put together a strategic marketing roadmap for your community. Your team can execute it, or we can. (Or a combination!)

Let’s talk about your marketing plan!

Let’s Chat!