Digital marketing is a powerful tool for the small- to mid-sized Senior Living operator.
In the face of generational shifts, consumer empowerment, and economic uncertainty, digital marketing can…
- Help you find new prospects, cheaply.
- Keep your company in the minds of your audience.
- Support your sales team’s initiatives.
- Collect valuable information from prospects.
However, some Senior Living communities have a marketing strategy that is as old as the seniors they serve—digital tools are nonexistent.
Others use some digital marketing tools, but there is no real digital strategy.
To help you assess the health of your community’s digital marketing strategies, I’m going to ask you 12 diagnostic questions:
#1 How do you find leads?
This is a question of what drives your move-ins.
If the majority of your sales happen through signage, paid referral agencies, direct mail, or other means, then your digital marketing strategy isn’t pulling its weight.
#2 Is your website SEO optimized?
In today’s world, SEO plays a vital role in the game of digital positioning. There are other senior care providers on the market who are competing with you for that coveted spot on Google.
Your website should use keywords that reflect your business and keywords that are feasible to rank as a mid-level operator.
#3 Do you check your website’s stats?
Your digital marketing strategy won’t be any good unless you commit to practicing an occasional audit of your website’s statistics.
You need to see how people find your website. You need to check your bounce rate. Without this valuable input, you won’t have an effective strategy.
#4 Is your website design up-to-date?
You may provide Senior Living care, but that doesn’t mean your website shouldn’t be cutting-edge.
If you want the decision-makers to feel as if they are putting their loved ones in a place that offers superior service, make sure your website reflects that fact. Be sure your site includes plenty of social proof.
#5 Do you have a strategy to capture leads?
Your website should offer an easy way to capture your leads and their information.
Using quality content, you should have tactics in place to garner prospects’…
- Name.
- Email.
- Phone number.
#6 Do you have a fully functioning blog?
Part of creating the kind of content that will spark lead generation involves maintaining a workable blog on your website.
No statistics are needed for this fact: if you don’t have a blog, then you don’t have a digital marketing strategy. Period.
#7 Do you use content to segment your customers?
Another advantage of quality content is its ability to tell you what kind of prospects you are dealing with.
If you gain new leads from a blog post on memory care, you will have a better idea of how your sales teams should position your community’s offerings.
Take advantage of your content’s ability to differentiate.
#8 Do you have a follow-up system in place?
Your digital marketing strategy should be an integral part of your sales team’s follow-up system.
As I’ve said before, your digital strategy will do you no good if you don’t secure the leads you generate.
Begin crafting those automated systems to ensure you respond to prospects immediately.
#9 Do you engage prospects on social media?
It’s true. Your residents from the Silent Generation probably won’t be on Twitter.
But don’t forget their children are!
Leverage social media as a channel to broadcast your content and keep meaningful conversations going with your stakeholders.
#10 Do you use email to nurture your customers or prospects?
Email should be one of your tools in your digital marketing toolbox. Using email nurture sequences, you can turn leads into customers willing to sign that lease for their aging parents.
Emails allow you to educate leads in a way so that they feel empowered to make a decision and take action.
#11 Is your digital marketing strategy directed toward the right audience?
Don’t churn out blog posts and emails that read like they’re written for Millennials. Remember you are marketing the services of your senior care community to a unique and sometimes reluctant audience.
Craft messages that are respectful and sensitive toward the particular struggles your prospects will have.
#12 Is there open communication between your marketing and sales teams?
The friction between marketing and sales teams is notorious.
But if you want a functioning and thriving digital marketing program, these two camps will need to collaborate.
You’ll need your sales team’s observations and your marketing team’s expertise to come together if you want to drive move-ins.
If these questions reveal your digital marketing strategy as lacking, you can begin to take steps in the right direction. Enroll in my digital media program today.
Just send me an email at tbild@bildandco.com or text 813-390-3349 with your name and number, and I’ll help you start the process.
