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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 agencies, cell phone with ads

Senior Living Advertising Agencies: Do You Need One?

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Advertising for senior living has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Newspaper print ads and telephone books (remember those?) might have been an effective strategy circa 2000. 

But when’s the last time you consulted the Yellow Pages? And while print ads might still play a role in your ad strategy today, they’re certainly not the only advertising game in town, not when you have Google AdWords and Facebook advertising to consider.

What’s a senior living community to do? Hire an advertising agency on top of an outsourced marketing agency? Or can a good marketing agency handle everything—marketing and advertising?

The short answer is yes. Yes, you could work with two separate agencies—one for advertising and one for marketing. And yes, you could work with one marketing agency that manages everything in-house.

We’re fans of the latter approach—using one agency to do everything—for three important reasons. 

1. Senior living advertising and senior living marketing should work in harmony, not in silos.

When you work with two separate agencies—one focused on advertising and the other focused on marketing—it’s easy for everyone to slip into a silo mentality where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

Too often we see miscommunication or lack of communication altogether when multiple agencies are involved (even despite good intentions). This can result in mistakes like inconsistent messaging between the ads and the actual website that the ads point to. 

The most successful advertising and marketing work together toward the same ultimate goal—attracting more leads that convert into move-ins. And this is much easier to accomplish when everyone is in the same agency.

2. Things are much less likely to fall through the cracks when you work with one agency that oversees everything.

Today’s advertising can be complex because you have to juggle multiple channels, multiple pubs and platforms within each channel, different creative, and various flights. Think print ads in newspapers and magazines. Digital versions for the online versions of those pubs. Radio spots. Google AdWords. Facebook advertising. Remarketing ads. The Google Display Network. And that’s just the beginning.

If your advertising and marketing teams are in separate agencies, it can be easy—too easy—for something important to fall through the cracks, like deadlines or changes to messaging.

For example, if a digital ad promotes a new ad-specific landing page on your website, the marketing agency will typically be in charge of creating the landing page, not the advertising agency. Think of how easy it could be for the ad to go live and yet the landing page doesn’t exist because someone either forgot to inform the marketing agency or forgot to follow up to make sure the landing page was all set.

Collaboration that happens in-house means mistakes and miscommunications like this can easily be avoided.

3. Consolidating everything under the same roof will likely save you money over the long haul.

If you’re working with one agency to handle everything soup to nuts, you’ll get better pricing overall because everything falls under one vendor instead of being spread across two.

Plus, a senior living marketing agency that also offers ad services will already have established relationships with the right advertising partners, which also saves time and money. And the best agencies will pass these savings onto you. 

If you do decide to work with a separate ad agency, follow these tips at the very least:

  • Research and vet different senior living advertising agencies the same way you would any vendor or partner.
  • Make sure the ad agency has experience with ad buys in the senior living space. Ask about other senior living clients they’ve worked with, quiz them on their industry knowledge, and ask them to share a preliminary plan outlining their ideas for ad placements. 
  • Make sure you connect your marketing agency to the senior living advertising agency you ultimately choose. Members from both agencies should be involved in strategy planning and calls—and have access to the same internal documents and calendars.
  • Keep in mind that not all marketing agencies have expertise in advertising. So sometimes you might not have a choice. If you love your marketing agency, but they don’t do ad buys, you’ll need to work with a separate ad agency.
  • Make sure your marketing agency has real advertising experience if you decide to task them with handling your advertising as well. Again, anyone can claim to have this expertise. 

Let’s Chat!

 

marketing senior living communities couple on computer

Marketing Senior Living Communities: 3 Ways to Keep it Real

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One of the biggest challenges when it comes to marketing senior living communities is making sure the community sounds different from all the other ones out there. This is no easy feat since most communities are essentially selling the same thing.

Need some help standing out? Here are three strategies for creating authentic content so that you don’t sound like everyone else.

1. Paint vivid pictures and tell compelling stories.

Most senior living communities talk about the same features and amenities—and in the same boring ways.

  • We have a fitness center and lots of fun activities! (Really? So does the gym down the street.)
  • We have a chef who makes nutritious and delicious meals! (As opposed to all those chefs making unhealthy, yucky meals?)
  • We have the most beautiful grounds and views! (Prove it. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.)

While these features are no doubt relevant, you should recast them in a fresh light if you want to differentiate your community from all the others.

Ask yourself…

  • What makes your fitness center and activities so special?
  • What makes your food so great?
  • What makes your grounds so special?

Dig deep. Find the diamonds. What do we mean by that? Well, consider the following blurbs—and the pictures they paint and the stories they tell.

Fitness is a way of life in our community. One of the first things you’ll notice when you visit our community is our on-site fitness center. It’s near the main entrance, and it’s in a gorgeous building with lots of natural light thanks to all the windows. But that’s not why you’ll notice it. You’re going to notice it because you’re going to FEEL the energy pulsing out of it, thanks to always-full classes in things like yoga, Tai Chi, Zumba.

Life is delicious, and so is our food—just ask Barbara. Barbara likes her eggs sunny side up and her coffee strong and black. She loves Reubens for lunch or our chef’s chicken salad—although she’s been known to opt for freshly made sushi when the mood strikes. For dinner, she loves a good roast or hearty pasta with meat sauce. And don’t forget the wine and charcuterie board beforehand that she has in our on-site pub. And did we mention the after-dinner drinks, cake, and conversation? In the warmer weather, you can find Barbara having her meals outside on our lovely patio. In the winter, she likes sitting by the roaring fire with a hot cuppa. She loves attending bread-making class on Saturday mornings and the gingerbread house-decorating party during the holiday season. (Barbara’s grandkids love this as well). But perhaps what Barbara likes best? “Someone else is doing all the cooking and cleanup!” she says with a laugh. “I just get to enjoy!” Wouldn’t you like to be Barbara?

Welcome to your happy place. We have five miles of gorgeous walking trails. In the spring, our gardens bloom with tulips and daffodils. Our resident bird-watching group keeps everyone up to speed on the various activities—from hummingbird sightings in May to hawk watching in September. Our property is filled with flowering dogwoods, mighty oaks, and maples with leaves so red they rival a sunset. Every window has a view—and offers up something new to see, like a chipmunk skittering over a rock wall, a turkey wandering near the woods, even a fox or two! Nature is so incredibly calming and revitalizing. We have plenty of benches to sit and simply “be.”

We’re riffing here, but you get the idea. Describe all the “usual” things like food, activities, and the property itself, but do it authentically so that no one could ever confuse your community with another one down the road.

2. Don’t use stock photos.

Stock photos can’t adequately capture the essence of your community. Not to mention, we often see the same stock photos showing up on competing websites. Don’t do this! Custom photography is an investment, but a worthwhile one.

With custom photography . . .

  • You can show real people living real lives in a real environment—your community.
  • You won’t have to worry about the same photo showing up on a competitor’s website.
  • You can caption the photos and reinforce the fact these are real residents and real staff in your community.

Update your photo library at least once a year (ideally, once a quarter). Photos can and should be repurposed for blog posts, print collateral, and—perhaps most importantly—social media, like Facebook and Instagram.

3. Give people click-worthy info.

If you’re going to write compelling narratives and paint vivid pictures, you need to do so every step of the way on your website. Entice people with interesting calls-to-action (CTAs) and make sure the content you’re serving up is worthy of a click.

For example, in the food/dining blurb we included in our first point above . . . what if you included two CTAs at the end of it: MEET OUR CHEF and EXPLORE OUR SUMMER MENU.

The “Meet Our Chef” CTA would open a lightbox with a video of your chef talking about their culinary point of view and what they love about creating food in your community. Or perhaps it leads to a Q&A blog post, complete with pictures that help your chef tell their story.

For the “Explore Our Summer Menu” call-to-action, this would open an actual menu that highlights different dishes. Think of nice restaurants and their menus—the way they describe ingredients and techniques as well as the pictures of scrumptious-looking dishes. Think of how you feel after you look at one of these yummy-looking menus. That’s the same feeling you’re trying to achieve here.

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!
senior living social media infographic

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: Instagram, LinkedIn, & More

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This month, we’ve done a series on senior living social media marketing. In case you missed any articles and want to catch up, here are the links:

While YouTube and Facebook tend to be the most popular social media channels with Baby Boomers (the usage breakdown is 70% and 68% respectively, according to Statista), we predict that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) will grow quickly in popularity among Boomers. So, we wanted to share some ideas for Instagram and what communities should keep in mind as they experiment with this social media channel.

Then, we’re going to chat about LinkedIn. Nope, it’s not a social channel that you’ll use to attract prospective residents. But it can be a great platform for attracting prospective employees while solidifying your brand’s narrative.

Let’s get to it!

Instagram for senior living communities

First, some impressive stats. As Instagram notes . . .

  • 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
  • 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily.
  • 1/3 of the most viewed stories are from businesses.

Second, let’s talk images. Because that’s what Instagram is ALL about: pictures. In fact, 995 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second.

If you want to have any sort of success with this platform, you need to take great pics and post them regularly.

What sorts of pics should your community post? Have at it, we say! Think people (residents and staff), nature, animals, people, grounds, food, people, different areas of the community at different times of day/different seasons, holidays, events, and oh did we mention PEOPLE? :)

You get the idea. Instagram (IG) is all about capturing moments, and no doubt your community offers up many, many moments every single day. Use IG as a way to truly communicate your community’s essence. You want prospects to be able to browse through your IG feed and picture themselves in your community—or not—Instagram could also serve as a great way to help people disqualify themselves as well.

In a previous post about Facebook tips, we mentioned that you should encourage your entire staff to take pics as they go about their days. To make it easy, set up a Dropbox where people can add pics directly from their phones. Not all photos will make the cut, but it’s great to have options and to get people in the habit of taking and sharing pics.

Pro Tips:

  • Make sure you have a business profile for your community (rather than a personal profile). Business profiles, like business pages on Facebook, have added functionality baked in.
  • Make sure you have a complete bio and a link to your website. Keep in mind that you can’t include links within posts.
  • Be smart about hashtags. Hashtags are the way people share specific content with a wider audience—and the way people find the content. Less is actually more, however. Search Engine Journal reports, “Using more hashtags actually decreases the average engagement rate. It’s likely better to use fewer hashtags (no more than 5) than to use too many. Ultimately, when it comes to hashtags, it’s not about quantity. It’s about relevance.”
  • Take advantage of Instagram features, like IGTV. IGTV is for long-form videos (no more than 60 minutes when uploaded from the web and no more than 15 minutes when uploaded from mobile; go here for specs and here for how to upload). THIS is how you can repurpose your awesome YouTube videos. Talk about a bigger bang for your buck, right?

LinkedIn for senior living communities

As for LinkedIn, only 24% of Boomers use it, which makes sense since it’s a professional networking site. Most older adults are phasing out of full-time work rather than networking and looking for new jobs. That said, even though LinkedIn isn’t a platform you’d use to engage with prospects, it is a platform you’d use to engage with current employees AND prospective employees.

And great employees make for a great senior living community, right?

Pro Tips:

  • Make sure you create a company page. Individuals have personal profiles. Businesses need to create a company page. Just like Instagram business profiles, your LinkedIn company page will have more features. Make sure you have up-to-date imagery and brand narratives about your community. Be sure to talk about the community from an employee perspective as well.
  • Keep your company page up to date. We see too many communities with outdated company pages. While you might not be as active on LinkedIn as you are on Facebook or Instagram, you should still post updates. Sharing blog content is an easy way to do this.
  • Make sure employees follow the company page. If community employees have a presence on LinkedIn (i.e., they have a personal profile), encourage them to follow the company page. And encourage them to list their position with your company on their personal profiles.
  • Make sure key personnel have current personal profiles. For visibility purposes, you want to make sure the C-suite and managers have updated personal LinkedIn profiles that include their current position with your company. (If you have a company page and an employee lists it in the work history, LinkedIn will automatically “pull” the company logo from your business page—this is incredibly important from a consistent branding perspective.)

Don’t rule out other platforms for senior living social media marketing.

Plenty of other social media platforms exist—and popular ones too, relatively speaking, like Twitter and Pinterest. When it comes to social media, you need to think strategically. What’s going to give you the biggest bang for your marketing buck? Right now, that’s probably YouTube and Facebook, so we’d recommend focusing on those first. But absolutely mix in one or two more (and even more than that if you have the staff and budget).

Also keep in mind that what works for your target audience today might not work five years from now. For example, while TikTok is currently a young person’s playground, it might not stay that way. Remember, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, it was geared toward college kids. Today’s college kids are using other platforms, like IG, Snapchat, and TikTok while their parents and grandparents play on Facebook.

Bottom line: Things are fluid, and senior living marketing teams need to remain nimble and be willing to pivot to new platforms when the time is right.

Let’s Chat!
Creating high converting content ideas for Facebook

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: High-Converting Content Ideas for Facebook

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For the last couple of posts on our blog, we’ve been taking a deeper dive into senior living social media marketing. In case you missed them, here are the links:

In our experience, social media is one of the least understood marketing vehicles in our industry. Sure, we all “get” Facebook, at least from a personal perspective. But these platforms can provide an excellent way to reach prospects and engage with current residents and their families.

So, let’s turn our attention to content ideas for another social media platform popular with older adults: Facebook.

1. Share videos.

According to Social Media Today, video posts on Facebook generate more engagement (59% more!) than other types of posts. The same article offers up several other worthwhile tips. First, focus on shorter videos (90 seconds or less). Provide captions that entice people to watch. Make sure your video has a compelling thumbnail.

  • Pro tip: Try “boosting” posts with videos. This is a form of Facebook advertising that lets you take an existing organic post that you then share with a wider target demo for a budget you set. Boosted posts can give you a good idea regarding which types of videos perform best (for example, a people-focused video vs. a tour video). Pay attention to video metrics (Facebook offers deep analytics known as Insights).

2. Experiment with Facebook Live.

Facebook Live takes videos to a whole new level because you’re sharing video footage in real time as it’s happening. (Thus, the word “Live.”) This isn’t some gimmick, either. Facebook Live works. In fact, HubSpot reports that Facebook lives generate 10 times more engagement than traditional videos.

You might wonder, “Well why should I bother with traditional videos at all then?” Two reasons.

First, you should be creating traditional videos for YouTube since, as we reported in a previous article, YouTube is currently the top social media platform with the Boomer generation (78%). You can’t ignore that stat! If you’re creating videos for YouTube, you’ll get a much bigger banger for your buck if you share that video content across other platforms, like Facebook.

Second, not everyone is comfortable doing something live. Not to mention, Facebook Live videos are often less polished than traditional videos. (Think shaky cameras or people going off “script” or videos simply going longer.)

Like everything else with senior living social media marketing, you want to have a smart strategy in place. And this strategy should include a mix of traditional videos and Facebook Live.

3. Post images.

Facebook is a visual medium. As people scroll through their feed, they’re much more likely to stop on a captivating image rather than a block of text. In our next blog post, we’ll be talking about Instagram, which is ALL about images. The image suggestions we make in that post will most definitely apply to Facebook.

Here’s the overarching theme when it comes to Facebook images.

People, people, people. Think residents and their families. Staff members. Crowds from events like an author visit or Mother’s Day luncheon.

Spaces within your community. The pub, the salon, different room styles, dining areas (inside and out), fitness centers, views from various vantage points.

  • Pro tip: Always include captions, which can help provide context.

4. Share testimonials.

Got a great review, comment from a resident, or sweet anecdote in a letter or email? Share it on Facebook (ideally with a pic for added visual interest).

  • Pro tip: Whenever possible, include a picture of the person who gave the testimonial. And don’t just think in terms of residents and families. Testimonials from staff members can be great to share as well. And, of course, video testimonials are great as well.

5. Post important/relevant announcements.

Facebook can be a great way to get the word out about breaking news or important announcements. During the pandemic, many businesses communicated with people via social media (both through Facebook Live and “static” announcements).

For example, if your community is in the path of a hurricane, Facebook can be an excellent way to provide updates for families who are watching from afar and can’t get through to loved ones due to sketchy cell service and downed power lines.

  • Pro tip: For shorter announcements that you want to stand out, use Facebook’s colorful background feature. It essentially turns your status update into a larger picture-type post (with bigger text and a colorful background—this makes it eye-catching). (Here’s how to do it.)

6. Share content from your community’s other digital assets.

Share your senior living blog posts on Facebook. (Write an engaging caption.) Share resources that followers will find helpful, like a guide for how to downsize a home. Share links to your podcasts. This is the cornerstone of effective senior living social media marketing.

  • Pro tip: Make sure you pay attention to the analytics so that you can measure results. For example, if you share a link to a recent blog post, how much engagement did that Facebook post get (likes, clicks, comments)? And most importantly, how many people clicked FROM Facebook to your blog post? The goal is to get a better feel for what types of content get people to click so that you can post more of it.

7. Share content from relevant and reputable third-party sources.

For example, during the pandemic, linking to CDC and/or state guidelines made sense. Or you could share links to articles where your community or someone from your community is featured.

  • Pro tip: Before sharing third-party content, always ask yourself if it will serve/help your target audience. Always check links. Always make sure you’re sharing accurate, properly vetted info. Avoid content that’s highly polarizing (such as political memes).

Let’s Chat!
Ideas for compelling YouTube videos

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: YouTube Content Ideas

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In our previous blog post on senior living social media marketing, we noted the most popular social media platforms among the Boomer generation, and YouTube sits at the top of the list at 70%.

Some folks might not think of YouTube as a social media platform, but it most definitely is since users can like, share, comment, and reply on videos. YouTube videos also rank well in organic search results (provided you optimize your video titles and descriptions—treat these the same way you do optimization elements on your website).

When thinking through your senior living marketing plan and budget, diversification is important—but so is a smart strategy. YouTube is an excellent platform to invest in not only because Boomers spend time on the platform, but also because you can easily use your YouTube videos on other platforms, like Facebook, blog posts, and Google My Business listings.

When it comes to content, what sorts of videos should you develop for your senior living community’s YouTube channel? Here are some ideas . . .

1. Give a virtual tour of your entire community.

No doubt, you might be tired of hearing the words “virtual tour” thanks to the pandemic. But virtual tour videos offer people a great bird’s eye view of your community.

They can also be an excellent way to move people from the marketing-qualified stage to the sales-qualified stage. For example, if you embed your tour video in a lead nurturing workflow and someone books an in-person tour after viewing it, you’ll know that you’ve got an interested prospect on your hands.

Not to mention, virtual tours are excellent vehicles for people who are coming from outside the immediate area. So, for example, if adult children are looking for places for mom and dad in another state, virtual tours can provide important info.

  • Pro tip: Your tour of the community itself is just that—it should provide a solid overview. Don’t make it overly long, either. Three to four minutes should be enough to give everyone a good sense of place.

2. Provide a tour of various room layouts/floorplans.

Consider these your “drill-down” videos where you provide a deeper look into one aspect of your community. Most prospects want to know about the residences themselves. What floorplans are available? How big are the bedrooms? Is there a patio/deck? What other amenities do certain floorplans have? You get the idea. Create videos for each type of residence your community offers.

  • Pro tip: Add a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each video so people can download the actual floorplan. You could choose to give away the floor plan free and clear (no name required) or put it behind a VERY brief form so that you can nurture the person further.

3. Show off your dining areas (inside and out).

Anyone who’s worked in senior living sales for any length of time knows that one of the most popular questions centers around food. What are the dining options? Who’s the chef? Are any residences outfitted with full kitchens? Does the community offer a private function room for family events like birthdays and anniversaries? Is there a pub on site? And so forth.

Think of all the questions you get about food in your community and create a video (or set of videos) that focuses on cuisine and other culinary aspects.

  • Pro tip: What truly differentiates your community from others in the area when it comes to dining? Do you have an award-winning chef? Then, do a video interview with them. Do you cater to different diets, including contemporary diets, like keto and paleo? Talk about how you accommodate.

4. Stroll the grounds.

Setting is everything, and if this is what makes your community special—perhaps it sits on a golf course or overlooks conservation land or is a stone’s throw from the ocean—then create a video that captures the magic. Get footage from different times of day and, ideally, different times of year.

  • Pro tip: Regarding our last suggestion, you could create a series of “seasonal strolls.” So if you have a senior living community in the northeast, make sure you have a video of your community in every season. Play up the gorgeous maples with their leaves ablaze in the fall and the blooming dogwoods in the spring. Capture residents sipping cocktails on the veranda on a hot summer’s evening. Celebrate how your community looks decked out in holiday decorations in December.

5. Record events.

Think guest musicians, sing-alongs, poetry slams, comedy nights, and the like. Residents who missed an event can watch on demand from the comfort of their home. Prospects will get a good feel for how active and engaging the event schedule is in your community.

  • Pro tip: When recording an event, ask the videographer to also get b-roll of the space and to get reaction quotes from attendees (i.e., your current residents and their family/friends). While these “candid” clips won’t make it into the cut of the event itself, you’ll have the footage available for other marketing purposes. (Like our next idea.) 

6. Create yearly retrospectives.

Put out a “best of” video every December that features clips from events and anything else that was new that year (such as the opening of a new amenity, for example). These can be great videos to share across social media in December, since people are always eager to reflect on the past 12 months. And they can serve as great marketing vehicles moving forward.

7. Highlight area attractions.

When it comes to senior living—and truly demonstrating that it is indeed a different lifestyle than the myths that persist around “retirement homes”—you need to go beyond the community itself. Because while all the amenities your community provides are certainly important things to share and show off, you also want to give people a flavor for what life in the town/city and nearby areas has to offer.

  • Pro tip: Ask your existing residents about their favorite nearby spots. If you keep hearing the same answer, make sure you add that spot to the list.

8. Interview residents, family members, and staff.

Highlight the people who reside and work within your community. Record a resident or group of residents with a great story. Tape short resident testimonials (this should be an ongoing item). Feature staff members from various departments. Again, look for people with interesting stories, who’ve been part of your community’s family for a long time, and/or who are popular with residents/staff.

  • Pro tip: Videos with staff can perform double duty. Yes, they can be a great marketing tool, but they can also be a great recruitment Post your videos to places like your community’s company page on LinkedIn.

9. Experiment, play, and try new things.

What we shared above isn’t an exhaustive list. Honestly, the sky’s the limit when it comes to YouTube content ideas. Be willing to experiment and try new things. Ask people in your community for ideas. (You might be surprised at the creativity!)

  • Pro tip: If you need help, seek it, which brings us to our final point.

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More likes equals profits

Senior Living Social Media Marketing: 4 Reasons to Invest

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We’re getting ready to unleash a series of blog posts on senior living social media marketing. First up, why should you invest in social media anyway? Here are four good reasons.

1. Your prospective buyers are already hanging out on social media.

Social media use has skyrocketed among all demographics, including older adults. According to Tech.co, among people 55+, there’s been a 66% increase in product discovery via social media over the past four years, and 70% have bought something online in the last month.

Here’s the breakdown for social media usage among U.S. Baby Boomers. (Source: Statista.)

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

Bottom line: Your prospects are already spending ample time on social media. So why not meet them where they are? This is why senior living communities need a strong overall digital presence. Having a great website is important, but it’s not enough. Your brand needs to extend to social media as well.

2. Solid ROI is possible, provided your social media marketing is done right.

Too often, communities take a willy-nilly approach with their senior living social media. They might post occasionally to Facebook. Or maybe they start an Instagram page, only to abandon it after a few months. Or maybe the marketing team is posting the same things across ALL channels, thus giving themselves (and only themselves) the appearance that the community is “active” on social media.

None of this is strategic. And none of this is smart. None of this is going to give you a good return on investment (ROI).

Remember, senior living social media ROI doesn’t magically happen. Like everything else in marketing, you need to have a smart strategy to achieve the ROI you’re looking for.

In addition to strategy, you also need a way to measure your results. This will absolutely require robust analytics and a senior living website that’s built to convert visitors into leads—along with marketing automation to nurture those leads.

By the way, if you’re wondering what we mean by ROI, we’re typically talking two big things when it comes to senior living social media marketing:

  • Lead generation
  • Brand awareness

And keep in mind that ROI opportunities exist within both paid and organic social media.

You likely understand how paid social media advertising can result in ROI. But people sometimes forget that ROI applies to organic social media as well. It takes time and people to do the work that can deliver strong organic results (and those hours and people cost money!).

3. Senior living social media channels provide a great way to share your community’s “essence.”

Your senior living website is a great place for information, both factual (e.g., locations, amenities, floor plans, price ranges) and educational (e.g., “10 tips for financing senior living”). All of this is essential and important info for your prospective buyers to have. However, as we often acknowledge, so many senior living websites sound the same because they’re all essentially selling the same basic “product.”

Social media provides the perfect place to elevate your community and share its true essence. Post a shot of a resident enjoying a cup of coffee on a summer morning as she sits on her patio marveling at the view. The way the sun spills onto the patio, the smile on her face, the view itself—this is REAL. It’s not posed. It’s not a stock image. It can help a prospective buyer picture what their morning might be like waking up with a cup of coffee in your community.

4. Content for social media channels can be easier and less stressful to create than traditional marketing materials.

People expect your website and printed sales collateral to be slick and polished. But with social media, people crave authenticity. While some might feel overwhelmed by this, we think that the casual nature makes it easier to create content, not harder.

Strike a truly conversational tone in posts, captions, and comments. Sound like a real person. Talk about real, relevant things in an honest way. Have fun with emojis. Be playful in your tone. If you make a typo, don’t sweat it.

Take pics with your phone (they don’t need to be perfect). In fact, you’ll be rewarded for more authentic shots. This makes it easier for more people to participate beyond your marketing and sales teams. Anyone with a phone has the ability to capture something special that you can share.

For example, that fabulous shot we described above of the resident enjoying a cup of coffee? You can share it across multiple channels. Sure, you should resize the image according to the platform’s specs. And you will need to tweak the description/caption, depending on where you’re posting it. But still—you get more mileage from that one shot.

Repurpose content across channels (but do so thoughtfully). Keep in mind that repurposing content doesn’t mean simply copying, pasting, and sharing it across five different channels. Instead, be thoughtful in your approach. Where should you use that one awesome shot you took of a resident enjoying coffee? The shot is great for Facebook and Instagram, but probably less so for LinkedIn since LI focuses on professional networking.

Still feeling overwhelmed? Don’t go it alone! Turn to experts in social media and senior living. (That would be us!)

Thanks to our decades of experience working in senior living, we understand what prospects crave. And as digital marketers, we get social media as well. We can bring it all together and deliver the results you’ve been looking for. Let’s chat!