How to Evaluate Your Senior Living Marketing Strategy

Senior Living Advertising Ideas That Avoid Stereotyping

March 4, 2020/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Blog, Directors, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

One of the main reasons why marketing a senior living community is so challenging is because it’s easy to fall into the trap of advertising to seniors in a stereotypical way. In fact, a recent survey of 400 seniors aged 70 or over revealed that 60 percent of respondents felt that most advertisements used stereotypes to represent seniors. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few advertising ideas to help you avoid senior living stereotypes:

Don’t Be Pushy Or Preachy

A lot of ads that target seniors tend to be on the condescending side. You’ll want to try and position yourself as an authority on the subject, but you won’t want to do so in a way that you’re telling your audience you know better than they do. This will come off as pushy or preachy, which is a tone you should avoid. Be factual and informative in an honest and respectful manner.

Focus On The Individual, Not The Demographic

One of the biggest offenses in senior stereotyping is to use actors that fit the general demographic of your audience and have them do something mundane, like smiling while they drink a glass of wine and stare out into the distance. How is your audience supposed to relate to an image like this? On the other hand, you also don’t want to deceive a senior struggling to live on their own; such as someone being helped into bed because they are too feeble to function by themselves.

Instead of trying to represent an entire demographic by the extreme ends of the spectrum, focus on the individual. What does your target audience actually want and need out of a senior living community? Highlight purposeful activities, such as actively participating in the world and continuing to pursue their passions.

Check out this article for tips on how to market senior living communities

Show Don’t Tell

Having someone speaking to the audience about the benefits of moving into your living community is a tired trope. It’s something that most seniors expect from a pamphlet. Showing is much more effective than telling. A great example of a senior living community that did this focused on showing the day-to-day lives of its residents as they dined, exercised, played pool, painted, and more — all without any dialogue whatsoever. Like they always say, an image is worth a thousand words.

Entertain Your Audience

It seems like many advertisers forget that seniors still like to be entertained and that they have a great sense of humor. You don’t need to be deadly serious when marketing towards seniors. Try to entertain them and appeal to their sense of humor — you’ll find that they’ll be much more engaged as a result.

Many senior living communities fail to market to a senior audience effectively. This is because they fall into the trap of using advertising ideas that rely on senior stereotypes. Seniors recognize these stereotypes and do not appreciate them. As a result, you will have difficulty generating interest in your community. Use these advertising ideas to help avoid stereotyping seniors in your marketing efforts.

7 Tactics to Implement in Your Senior Living Marketing Strategy in 2020

February 17, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Although there is a great need for high-quality senior living facilities that can cater to a growing senior population, there are many different facilities who are competing against one another for the attention of potential residents. As such, an effective senior living marketing strategy is an absolute must. A good senior living marketing strategy will allow you to generate more awareness of your facility and more interest in it. If you don’t employ a number of marketing tactics, you’ll find it challenging to compete for residents, which, in turn, will make it difficult to succeed. With that in mind, the following are a few marketing ideas that can help you improve your senior living marketing strategy in 2020:

1. Improve your web design

Your website is the main hub of your online presence. All of your inbound marketing efforts will direct prospects to your website. However, if your website design is poor, you will likely lose a lot of the prospects that you worked so hard to attract. Make sure that your website uses a simple and easy-to-read layout that’s not cluttered. Every webpage should be easy to scan so that visitors can find what they’re looking for. Your website should also be easy to navigate. Implement a menu bar that’s not overcrowded with links and that includes links to the main pages. A search function can also be very helpful. Finally, it’s vital that your website loads quickly. Visitors will abandon any page that takes longer than two to three seconds to load. They may even leave your website as a result of the wait.

2. Publish helpful content

Create content that is relevant, helpful, and informative to publish throughout your website. Every page should have good content on it. You should also have a blog on which you can routinely publish new content to keep the interest of your prospects. While written content can be effective, make sure that you create a variety of different types of content to keep visitors engaged. For example, images, infographics, video content, and podcasts can all increase engagement.

3. Make it easy for leads to engage

If your leads have questions or simply want to get into contact with you, you need to make it easy for them to do so. Have your contact information available on every webpage and social media page that you have so that prospects can contact you through phone or email. Having a social media presence will also give them the option of messaging through your social channel as well. If you want to go the extra mile, implementing a live chat or a chatbot feature can also be quite effective.

Similar Article: 4 Senior Living Video Marketing Ideas That Will Improve Engagement

4. Encourage leads to take action

It’s not enough to just nurture and educate your leads. The last thing you want is for someone to be interested in your facility as a result of exploring your website, only to decide that they will contact you later. Because you run the risk of them forgetting to do so. Use CTAs (calls-to-action) to encourage leads to take action right away. Whether it’s contacting you or filling out a form to sign up to an email list or to redeem an offer (such as a downloadable ebook).

5. Use PPC ads to attract better prospects

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are effective because they allow you to target specific prospects using keywords. When someone does a search for that keyword, your ad has a chance of showing up. Not only can this help you spread awareness of your facility through Google, but it’s a cost-effective tactic as well. Because you’re only paying for the actual clicks that your ads get.

6. Use local SEO to find residents in your area

Many decision-makers who are looking for senior living facilities for their loved ones will want to keep them close to home. As a result, you should implement a local SEO strategy that makes it easier for people to find your facility while performing local searches. There are several tactics that you can employ to boost your local SEO. You can submit your NAP (name, address, and phone number) to online directories, such as Yelp, you can use local keywords throughout your content whenever appropriate, and you can add or claim your Google My Business to strengthen your local presence on Google.

7. Establish a presence on social media

A social media presence not only makes it easier to interact directly with your audience to answer questions and address concerns, but it’s also a great way to spread awareness of your facility. When you engage with people, their followers may see the interaction, which is an excellent way to boost your reputation. You can also post content to social media, which if it’s shared, liked, or commented on, can help increase exposure.

The success of your senior living facility is going to depend on your ability to generate awareness of your facility. As well as, being able to engage and entice decision-makers to reach out to you. These are seven tactics that you should implement in your senior living marketing strategy in 2020 that will do just that.

Tips On Using Facebook For Senior Living Social Media Marketing

January 29, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Senior living social media marketing, is one of the most effective ways to spread awareness about your senior living community. In doing so, you provide your audience with insight into your facility. This is because decision-makers will often look through social media pages; to not only find the information they’re looking for, but also to get a sense of what other people think about your facility as well as how you engage with decision-makers. As for what social channels you should focus on, Facebook is arguably the best way to reach your audience. This is because Facebook not only has over two billion users, but because 75 percent of American adults between the ages of 18 and 49 use Facebook, which means you’re more likely to reach the family members who are in charge of finding a senior living facility for their loved ones.

Keeping this in mind, the following are a few senior living social media marketing tips to help strengthen your efforts to reach your audience and to engage with them via Facebook:

1. Showcase Your Personality

Besides delivering information about your community, you’ll also want to showcase the personality of your community. This is done through the tone you use and the type of content you post. Showcasing your personality is important because it makes your community more engaging for potential prospects.

2. Use Real Pictures Of Your Property And Your Residents

People tend to be attracted to visual content. Pictures of your community can convey much more about what it’s like to live there than words can. Facebook is a great place to share pictures of your property and residents that will have a real impact on your audience. Additionally, people will be more likely to share visual content, thereby helping to drive awareness of your community. Just make sure to use actual pictures of your property and residents and not stock pictures. As this will feel inauthentic and will hurt your trust.

3. Give Your Residents A Voice

Instead of constantly trying to convey the message that residents are happy and active in your community, let your residents deliver the message themselves. Post testimonials from actual residents in your community. Even something as simple as a quote from a resident and their picture can impact a person’s impression of your organization. Your audience is much more likely to believe what actual residents have to say about your community over what you have to say about it, after all.

4. Promote Events And Activities

Keep your followers up to date with all community-related events and activities. Posting updates that include the dates and times help keep your audience informed about what’s going on in your community. It also gives decision-makers the opportunity to see what kinds of events and activities you typically hold.

5. Be Helpful To Your Audience

Facebook is a social channel, which means it’s not just about delivering information to your audience. It’s also about engaging with them in a two-way conversation. As such, make sure to address any questions, concerns, or feedback that’s left on your page; in a polite, friendly, and helpful manner. The more helpful you are, the better it will reflect on your senior living community.

6. Post Content That Is Informative And Relevant

Facebook is a great way to nurture leads through the buyer’s journey by posting links to content. This content can be from your blog or even from other relevant blogs on other high-quality, non-competing websites. Since the buyer’s journey isn’t linear, make sure that you post content that addresses all three stages of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness – At the awareness stage, people are still identifying what their pain points are. Content that addresses common challenges to finding the right senior living community (such as budget, help with activities of daily living, location, staying active, and more) help address the awareness stage.
Consideration – Once they are familiar with their pain points, they will begin looking for specific solutions. Post content that highlights potential solutions to those challenges and how your community is able to provide such solutions.
Decision – At this point, people will know exactly what they’re looking for and will be deciding on the community that best suits their loved one’s needs. Content that helps convince your prospects that your community is the best option can include testimonials, virtual tours, ebooks, and more.

Similar Article: 4 Tips for Marketing Senior Living Communities

7. Use Relevant Hashtags

When posting content or comments to Facebook, adding relevant hashtags helps to categorize what you’ve posted. Doing so can make it easier for interested people to find your content more easily. In doing so, helping to drive awareness of your community on various social media platforms. This includes not just Facebook but also Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Pinterest.

There are plenty of social media tools available that allow you to track mentions of your community. This allows you to get an overall idea of what people think about you since you can monitor reviews on Facebook as well as general comments about your community. Not only can you get a sense of your reputation this way and find areas that need to be addressed (in the event that there are similar complaints about specific things), but it gives you a chance to find opportunities to engage with the people who are talking about your brand.

9. Drive Conversions Using CTAs

Although your audience can do its own research using the content you post on Facebook, they still need to be encouraged to take action. Use CTAs (calls-to-action) to encourage potential prospects to take specific actions, such as opting in to your email newsletter or calling your community to set up an appointment.

Facebook can be an incredibly effective way to inform your audience about your senior living community and to drive conversions if you know how to leverage it properly. These are nine senior living social media marketing tips that will help you do just that.

4 Tips for Marketing Senior Living Communities

June 4, 2018/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Marketing senior living communities can be a real challenge. You’re providing services for seniors; however, there are many people that are involved with the decision-making process. This means that one of the biggest challenges that you face is not only setting yourself apart from other senior living communities but fulfilling the needs of everyone in your audience. This is why how you market senior living communities is so important. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few tips for successfully marketing senior living communities:

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

Identifying your audience will help you target them more effectively when marketing senior living communities. However, since there are several types of people you’ll want to target, marketing a senior living can be tricky. Like previously mentioned, a lot of different people have a say when it comes to a senior moving into a senior living community, from the senior’s adult children to the medical professionals they work with.

Knowing who your audience is will be vital to your marketing efforts, especially when it comes to creating content. You have to write content for the person who is reading it, after all. If you attempt to create content that appeals to everyone, odds are it will end up appealing to no one. To avoid this, you’ll want to create a buyer persona. Creating buyer personas will allow you to more effectively target the needs of your audience when marketing senior living communities.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and provide insight that you can use to target them. For example, a standard buyer persona will include a person’s age range, their income levels, their goals, their needs, their challenges, their preferred method of communication, and more. This information can be attained from existing customers, from online surveys and from social media. Because different types of people have a say in the decision-making process, you’ll want to create several buyer personas.

2. Market Your Staff

While you’ll want to market the services, amenities and activities that your community offers, one of the most important elements of a senior living community is the staff. Families who are looking to move their loved ones into a senior living community will want to make sure that the staff is not only competent but that they will build meaningful relationships with the residents.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you highlight your staff as friendly and caring. You should have a page on your site introducing visitors to your staff. Along with that, you should also create content highlighting their interactions with current residents. Video content is a great way to achieve this since it will help showcase their personalities and their connection to residents.

Check out our article: 5 Digital Marketing Tactics For Senior Living Communities

3. Promote Activity

One of the main things that both seniors and decision-makers care about is that residents will be able to live a fulfilling life once they’ve transitioned into a senior living community. Seniors want to maintain as much independence as possible, which means that they want to be able to live an active and social life.

You’ll want to position your senior living community as a place where this is possible. You can do this by highlighting and promoting different events and activities that your senior residents participate in. This can be done by writing blog posts about some of the daily or weekly activities that are available, posting pictures and videos of residents participating in various activities, or promoting upcoming events using social media.

4. Use Your Website As A Sales Tool

You should treat your website as a sales tool to help promote your community as a service. Publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience can help bring in traffic and will allow decision-makers (who are your customers) to educate themselves via the content you have provided. These are your leads. You’ll want to use your website to capture your leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

A social media presence can be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, you’ll put your community in a position to directly address concerns and answer questions that decision-makers may have about your community. This can go a long way in building relationships and trust. Secondly, it allows you to keep family members up to date with any news or events concerning your community. This shows your audience that you care about your community and are regularly engaged in improving the quality of life of your residents. Using social media in such a manner can help to build your reputation and spread awareness as a result.

Marketing senior living communities is no easy task, but these tips will give you a good foundation on how to reach your target audience and to position your senior living community as a safe, comfortable and friendly place that will meet the needs of your residents and of those involved in the decision making process.

Why Marketing Automation Is Important In Senior Living Today

January 25, 2018/in Articles, Directors, Senior Living Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Experienced industry marketers have pointed out that marketing automation is the next generation of senior living marketing strategy. Without automation, senior living sales teams are missing opportunities to reach potential clients and key decision-makers. And that affects your bottom line.

Marketing automation offers insights into the behaviours, interests, and needs of individual leads. That kind of information is critical when your sales team is trying to convert a lead into a move-in. If your sales team knows exactly what the lead wants, converting that person becomes much easier.

Why Automation Helps Increase Conversions:

You Can Personalize Your Communication

By tracking what your website visitors request about your property off your website, you can follow where that lead is at in their buying process. The more touchpoints you offer on your website, the more data you can obtain from your prospect. And that data makes it possible to market back to them on a personal level. This type of personalized communication makes a real difference in senior living marketing.

Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

Move Your Prospects Through The Sales Process Faster

Helps seniors move through the sales process faster. Seniors, as well as their adult children, love to get timely responses to questions and content. Automation makes this easier by engaging interested seniors with relevant content and gauging their responses. Quick engagement with high-quality information will help the lead reach the decision point faster. And that is critical in senior living marketing these days.

Allows You To Nurture Your Leads To A Close

It is more than likely your prospect is looking at more than one senior living community. A carefully crafted set of emails will help to keep your brand top of mind and educate your prospect on your unique selling points. This helps nurture the lead further down the sales funnel. As they reach the decision-making point, you can provide targeted information and the option of contacting a salesperson to talk further.

Provides Critical Insights into Individual Leads

Marketing automation software can track what web pages a lead has the most interest in and which offers they signed up for. This information offers critical insights into what is of most interest to the lead. One lead might be interested in a small single bedroom apartment and the social programs. Another lead might be interested in a larger unit and what healthcare services are available. The sales team can use these details in making their pitches and converting a lead into a move-in.

The power of marketing automation is the ability to gather information and nurture leads through the sales process. Then, the sales team can leverage and gather information to convert the sales-qualified lead into a paying resident. Making this critical link between marketing and sales is why marketing automation is so critical in the senior living market today.

Senior Living Tips for Facebook Advertising

Senior Living Marketing Tips for Facebook Advertising

March 7, 2017/in Articles, Directors, Senior Living Marketing, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world today with over 1 billion active users. The platform is ideal advertising space for all types of businesses and organizations and senior living is no exception.

The following are useful tips on how to create strong Facebook advertising for Senior Living Marketing.

1. Develop Your Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Creating buyer personas is one of the keys to having an effective marketing campaign. It helps you to clearly define what message will resonate with your audience in your advertising. Know who your personas are and you will better understand how to talk to them. As a result, you will be able to attract the most valuable visitors, leads, and customers to your community.

To Understand More About Establishing Your Buyer Personas, See Our Article Why Buyer Personas Are So Important.

2. Target Your Advertising

Now that you have developed your buyer persona’s you can use that information to directly target those types of people within Facebook. Not only can you run ads targeted by location and demographics within Facebook, you can also target by Behavior and Interests. For example, if your community is next to a golf course, you can run ads towards seniors who are retired and are interested in golf. This way you can focus your messaging to meet the audience where they are at today.

3. Show Off Your Brand’s Personality

Make sure when you are advertising on Facebook that you stay true to your brand and show-off your brand’s personality. Is your community about the activity? Show your residents being active? Are you near a college? Highlight this fact in your posts. Think about what will resonate with your audience and how you can make them feel comfortable and excited to visit your community.

4. Have Good Calls to Action

The Call-To-Action is the Most Important Element of your Facebook Ad. It is how you convince people to take the next step towards learning about your community. If you have a good image, it will draw people’s attention, but the CTA is where people will make their decision to actually stop and click. You want to make sure your CTA’s are as strong as possible and test to see what resonates with your audience.

5. Change Your Ad By Device

Facebook ads look different depending on what device you are browsing Facebook on. You want to make sure that your ads look their best on any device. Desktop ads should have a longer copy and link descriptions. Mobile ads should be shorter. Be sure to change up your artwork to match the medium it is being delivered in.

Seniors are becoming savvier when it comes to social media. They are looking to understand more about your community and what you have to offer. By thinking about your audience and what they care about and combining it with your own brand’s personality, you will be sure to do well with your Facebook advertising.

Marketing to Seniors Through Laughter

October 3, 2015/in Advertising Agency, Directors, Senior Living Marketing /by Mark Beebe

Whether you call them Older, Seniors, Elderly or Boomers, these widely accepted generational labels fall into an age-specific reference as “those over 50” or “people 65 and up.” As this market keeps adopting digital technology, finding what separates you from your competition is becoming more difficult. But with all the studies out there, there are five simple rules for marketing to seniors that everyone should abide by. Read more

The Benefits Of Marketing Automation For Senior Living Communities

September 18, 2015/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Seniors today are more tech-savvy than ever before. A recent Nielson report shows that the number of adults 65 years old or older actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent in the last five years. Furthermore, adult children continue to play an important role in finding quality elder care for their parents. This means that it is vital for your senior community to maintain a strong web presence, and vital for your company to reap the benefits of marketing automation, as a part of senior living marketing.

When searching for a community online, seniors and their children both expect timely responses to their questions and content that addresses their specific needs. Marketing automation helps enable senior living organizations to engage leads with relevant content, track and score each lead’s behaviour and deliver better quality leads.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is a tool that informs, interacts and nurtures leads as they move through the sales funnel. It is a process that manages a community’s interaction with its prospects by providing them with the right information at the right time in the buying process. By targeting content, marketing automation informs, entertains, socializes and earns the prospect’s business.

Prospects define the path through their modes of interaction, targeted search, website visits, by downloading brochures or requesting a tour of your community.

How does it work?

MA tools start with the premise of managing all levels of leads and then apply business rules, analytics, segmentation and scientific data to manage prospects in your sales funnel.

Here is an example of what a basic automated email workflow could look like:

Step 1: Email Invite

You send an email invitation to download your latest community brochure to a targeted list of contacts

Step 2: Thank You Note

You send a thank you note to all the people that downloaded the brochure.

Step 3: Follow Up Email

A few days later, you send a follow-up email to the list of people who downloaded the brochure, offering them more detailed floor plans, amenity lists and information about your community.

Step 4: Notification

Finally, when someone reads that information, your sales team will get a notification so they can follow up with them (this person is now much more qualified and is likely farther down the buying process)

Learn more about the Benefits Of Inbound Marketing

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes for a moment. If this was you, receiving information from a senior community about their services and amenities, wouldn’t you prefer to get emails like the ones above over blasts you can tell they’re sending to hundreds of other people? It feels personalized like it is tailored to you and addresses your individual medical needs. This makes you much more likely to trust that community and ultimately schedule a tour.

This is the foundation of marketing automation. To provide you, as a marketer, with the ability to target your contacts and send them content that is based on their behaviour. You’re giving them the information they need when they want it. You’re easing their buying decision. And as a result, your conversion rates will increase and vacancies will decrease.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Staying Forever Young In Senior Living Advertising

June 21, 2010/in Articles, Directors, Senior Living Marketing /by Debbie Szwast

Think seniors aren’t online? Think again. A recent Nielson report shows that the number of adults 65 years old or older actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent in the last five years. That’s more than 17 million people who you can reach online. Senior living marketing has become very popular.

What does that mean for you when marketing a senior living community? It means you must have a strong online presence. More importantly, your website must be easy to find, easy to read and easy to navigate. Read more