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Marketing “Your Community” And “Senior Living” Can Lead To Terminal Failure

March 26, 2013 By 2 Comments

This is a guest article I wrote for RetirementHomes.com. 

First off, let me clear the air by saying I am not dismissing the idea of marketing. In fact, quite the opposite, I love marketing! But it is important to know the truth about marketing and how to create an effective message.

The other day I was visiting my parents, and sitting on the kitchen table, was a direct mailer from a nearby senior living community. As soon as I saw the mailer, I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew this community was throwing away good money.

I need to be blunt about something. A successful senior living community is dependent on cash flow, which comes from residents in your market…not from your community.

Can you guess the terminal mistake this community made?

They talked about THEIR community and what THEY do. Success does not come from your community. Marketing is about your prospect’s NEEDS, WANTS and DESIRES and never about your specific community.

Full article at: http://www.retirementhomes.com/library/marketing-your-community-and-senior-living-can-lead-to-terminal-failure/

Residents Are More Important Than Clicks

March 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

This is a guest post I wrote, that was featured on NewLifestyles.com. It's loaded with lots of great info and I would take a good read.

Imagine this scenario. You are on a gameshow competing with 8 other people for a $100,000 cash prize. You and the other people have no experience, but you’re asked to shoot a bullseye 70 meters away with an arrow. You have the choice to use a traditional bow and arrow like Robin Hood, or you can use a new compound bow and arrow that has a super powerful scope, is easy to operate and shoots incredibly fast and accurate.

This is a no brainer… Right?

You would choose the compound bow!

If advertising on Google is just like this gameshow, then why do many senior living communities choose the old Robin Hood type of bow and arrow with their online marketing campaigns?

Seniors and caregivers are on Google’s search engine to research their problems. Maybe an adult child is looking into the different options for their parents, wants to know more about a specific community, or their parent just had a bad fall and they desperately need to find a community.

Whatever the reason, if they click on your ad, you have less than 10 seconds to give this person what they are finding, or they will hit the back button.

Full article at: http://blog.newlifestyles.com/2013/02/13/residents-are-more-important-than-clicks-are-you-a-blind-archer-with-your-senior-living-online-marketing/

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The Real Purpose Of Your Senior Living Website. Are You Getting Results?

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A new website is a wonderful thing. It is like opening something from the Apple store. You feel excited about having a new voice for your senior living community and start thinking of things like branding, color schemes, flashy design, the logo, a big picture of your community, and how many hits it will get, etc. 

But, have you ever considered the main purpose of your website?

Your website is often times the first point of contact with potential residents and their caregivers. You have just seconds to give them information they need, or they are gone like a roadrunner. And all the flashy design can go out the window.

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The Senior Living Resident Gumball Machine, Important Senior Marketing Numbers

February 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Today, I had an interesting conversation with a potential client. He found my website online and was looking for a consultant. We started the conversation and he was telling me about how his current pay per click marketing company is not doing satisfactory work. In fact, from what he was told me, they were awful. He ended up taking over the campaign, and with no prior knowledge of internet marketing, he was able to achieve lower advertising costs than this supposed internet marketing company.

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2 Ways To Get Your Senior Living Community On The First Page Of Google’s Search Results

January 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever had a conversation with an internet marketing company that went like this? "Well there's a number or complex technical factors that go into Search Engine Optimization including keyword density, meta data, link analysis, and latent semantic indexing."

After that conversation, you say to yourself, "They must know what they are doing because this just seems way too complicated and time consuming." 

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How getting hit on by a 92 year old woman taught me a valuable marketing lesson

January 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

One of the coordinators wheeled her right next to me. As he was backing her up she looked over at me, gave a wink and stuck her tongue out at me.

This happened to me recently while visiting my grandmother in a skilled nursing community. My grandmother was at the community because she recently broke her hip. The community was in the town she was born and raised in, so she knew everyone there and right away felt welcomed.

This community had a wonderful activity director. There was something going on every day. The director planned singing, homeschooled children to do arts and crafts with the residents, animals going in and out the rooms. Every time I was there, there was something happening.

One particular day this past holiday season, me and my sister were visiting my grandma. We all went to the common area to watch a man sing and play the guitar. There was around 30-40 people and we got a front row seat.

That’s when I met her.

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How Simplicity And Efficiency In Senior Housing Advertising and Marketing Boosts Response

January 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment

There are many challenges when advertising senior housing in today’s environment. Not only do you face increasing competition, overcoming obstacles and finding out if the potential resident is a good fit for your community, but you’re dealing with an aging audience whose senses and mind are not as sharp as they once were. Every communication your community has with seniors needs to keep this in mind.

Imagine this scenario. A 70 year old widowed woman living at home who is starting to have trouble taking care of their daily tasks. She stubborn and thinks she can take care of herself forever, but her family is worried about what her future holds.

She is starting to find that daily living is getting harder. Tasks like laundry, cooking, cleaning, yard work, and bathing. She is slowing down, but home life is not. Plus her vision and is going, and her mind is starting to slip a little.

Now imagine she opens her mail and sees a brochure that reads like the one described below:

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5 Covert Ways to Increase Your Senior Housing Yellow Pages and Newspaper Ad Response without Spending Extra Money

December 31, 2012 By 3 Comments

If you’re anything like most senior living communities you know the importance of having a portion of your advertising budget reserved for yellow page and local newspaper ads. While seniors and their boomer adult children are catching on to the internet, Pew Research reports as of April 2012, only  just over 50% of seniors across the U.S. now are now online. This means many still use old fashioned books and newspapers as a resource instead of a booster seat for their grandchildren.

This is why it is important to maximize your marketing budget as much as possible. In this post, I show you how to maximize your yellow page and newspaper advertising, without spending any more money.

Running better performing senior living Yellow Page ads has a few benefits:

  1. More Contacts.  Better performing yellow page ads will undoubtedly provide more phone calls, appointments, and website visits than poor ads.
  2. Less Poor Quality Leads.  Poor quality leads are created by poor ads.  When a prospect doesn’t know what you can uniquely offer them in comparison to the competition, then you can’t qualify them as well with your ad. If you are generating poor quality phone calls, take a look at the source that generated the call and see if you can provide more differentiation in the ad.
  3. Higher Conversion Rate.  If you do a good sales and persuasion job in the ad, prospects will be more educated and prior to calling. You’ll notice less questions and an easier path to adding a new resident if your marketing is done properly.

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How To Get Senior Living Prospects To Reach You The Moment They Need You

December 18, 2012 By 2 Comments

And Create A Marketing System That Delivers Targeted Leads Month After Month

You can deliver your community's unique message the very moment your customers need you, pay only when they click on an ad and have complete control over your spending budget.

This is entirely possible with Google Adwords pay per click advertising. Being able to reach a potential client the exact moment they need you makes pay per click advertising one of the most powerful lead generation strategies around.

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5 Ways To Get Raving Reviews On Your Senior Living Google Places Page

December 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google places is a great way for a senior living community to get free exposure on Google. If you're not familiar with what Google places is, they're the listings with the raindrop icon next to them when you do a local search. 

Google allows users to leave a review, and the number of reviews gets displayed beside the listing. The more reviews your community has, the higher the number displayed, and the higher the chances a potential new resident or adult child will see the listing.

Here's a story of how powerful a highly reviewed Google places listing can be.

I recently visited my sister in Brooklyn NY who lives in the trendy Williamsburg area. We spent a Saturday exploring new areas outside of Williamsburg, and ended up in an unfamiliar area. It was late and we were getting hungry, so we wanted to find a new restaurant.

I did a search on my phone for restaurants near by.

Below is a screenshot of the search results for “restaurants in Brooklyn”. Notice the restaurant with 1,870 reviews and a Zagat score (restaurant review site) of 26/30.

Can you guess which restaurant we went to? The amount of positive reviews separated it from everyone else on the page. It did not matter if this listing was the last one on the page either. What I was looking at was the reviews from honest people.

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