Senior Living marketing is experiencing a massive shift.
As traditional marketing efforts give way to digital marketing strategies, you may feel torn between two worlds.
Unsure of how to guide your community, you struggle to know if it’s time to give up the newspaper ads for building awareness with Facebook campaigns.
Your need for effective Senior Living marketing is further intensified by the necessity of outwitting competitors and competing for qualified leads.
In a recent article on competition in the senior care industry, Senior Housing News featured Bild & Company’s CEO, Traci Bild. Bild stressed the importance of differentiation, noting…
“With 95% of what senior living communities offer being the same, buyers get confused and oftentimes stop looking altogether.”
The good news is digital marketing can help you distinguish your community from other Senior Living operations and build value for leads before they ever step through your doors.
Here are three easy ways to transition your Senior Living marketing so you accomplish these goals:
1. Leverage Pay-Per-Click Ads
In the past, your community might have secured expensive television ads. Or perhaps you advertised heavily in the local newspaper. For each of these strategies, you paid a sum—whether or not your audience ever saw or responded to your ad.
In contrast, online pay-per-click (PPC) ads offer a unique advantage.
As the name would suggest, PPC ads only require payment if your prospects click on your advertisement. In addition to cutting costs, this digital marketing technique can help you increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
PPC ads allow you to target narrow segments of your audience. For instance, Facebook explains that its PPC ads can refine your audience based on…
- Age.
- Gender.
- Education.
- Location.
- Hobbies.
- Purchase behaviors.
- And more.
By focusing on PPC ads, you give your community the chance to generate qualified leads for a fraction of the cost.
2. Offer Free Resources Online
Distributing free resources is probably another important strategy you’ve used for your Senior Living marketing.
Perhaps you send leads brochures through the mail, and your sales counselors distribute free information at events that draw seniors. However, in-person efforts to educate your leads (and capture their information) are limited by the time and resources of your sales team.
You can do away with these constraints and still achieve effectiveness when you offer free resources online in exchange for your leads’ contact information. Those free resources can include…
- Guides on important issues, such as dementia.
- Quizzes to help your prospects understand their family member’s need for senior care.
- Mini e-books that provide guidance on a subject of your expertise.
It’s a simple way to educate your prospects and increase the value of your community as a trusted resource without placing an extra burden on your sales counselors.
3. Educate through Nurture Emails
While traditional mail is still needed in Senior Living marketing, you’ll want to take advantage of email marketing for leads who are internet savvy.
Not only does email marketing reduce the costs associated with regular mail, but it also gives you important data. Your email campaign software will allow you to view how many people open your emails and respond to your call to action.
On top of that, you can create a sequence of nurture emails. Nurture emails slowly build trust and credibility with your audience—by providing information or answering their questions—before offering the next step of a tour, phone call, or other activity.
Each of these three Senior Living marketing tips are powerful in and of themselves.
But they can provide you with an explosive growth in lead generation when you combine them together. Here’s how this strategy works:
- A qualified lead sees your targeted PPC ad. The ad promotes your free resource, which meets a need of your prospect, and he or she clicks on the advertisement.
- Your lead is taken to a web page offering the free resource—but requiring your lead to provide his or her information first. Your prospect provides an email address to access your report, mini e-book, or guide.
- Your lead then receives a series of emails. These emails further demonstrate your company’s value by offering additional information. The emails clearly direct your lead to take the next step of calling your community or scheduling a tour.
At Bild & Company, we can help you implement a similar Senior Living marketing strategy so you make the most of your marketing dollars to drive sales.
Find qualified leads, and request Bild & Company’s marketing services today.
