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.
In today's world of shortened attention spans and information overload, it is important your website hits people's emotional buttons and engages them in a relationship as soon as they land on it.
This is why, instead of focusing on the aesthetics of your senior living website, the most important metric to consider is, "how many customers can I get from this thing?"
A beautiful and flashy senior living website looks nice, but what you really should focus on is it being part of your marketing system that brings in new residents on autopilot and assists your sales process.
Not just an overpriced digital brochure!
How To Create A Sales Funnel Within Your Senior Living Website
You literally have less than 10 seconds to capture seniors and caregivers attention or they're out of there. Seniors and caregivers in your community are going to find your site a number of ways. One of the most controllable ways is from the search engines.
If you are paying for traffic via pay per click, you need to make sure you have a specific "landing page" that is designed to give people what they are looking for and capture their information. In fact, every page on your senior living website should capture people's contact information, or get them to pick up the phone and call you.
Many senior communities do not send people to a specific page. They'll send them to the homepage, which looks nice but provides no action to take, and then wonder why people aren't contacting them.
Let me ask you a question, "Would you place a newspaper or yellow page ad without giving a caregiver or senior an easy to find phone number, website address, or other easy way to contact you."
Seniors And Caregivers Do Business With People, Not Companies!
A great way to get seniors or caregivers information (other than just getting an inquiry about the community) is to give away some valuable information you produced in exchange for their contact information. This can be a free report, email course, free video, access to a cost calculator, etc… Then you can follow up with them through email, build a relationship through storytelling, scratch their itches, and be the one educating them.
Who are they are most likely going to turn to when you're the one supplying them with all this great information, expertise, and have formed a personal relationship with them through your stories? The chances of it being your senior living community are greatly improved with every relationship you can forge through a good follow up system after people visit your community's website.
There are many services that provide email marketing and I recommend signing up for one. They allow you to drip feed emails over time. Imagine having all this great information, personal stories, etc. working for you 24 hours a day, even while you're sleeping. This is a sure way to stand out from your competitors who send out a standard and boring company style newsletter once a month.
I hope this article has opened up your mind to the potential of your senior living community's website. If you have a flashy designed website and you're not sure if it's bringing in new residents or customers, then I encourage you to hold your web design company accountable. Ask them why it's not producing any results, and if they do internet marketing. This is why it's important to work with a company that understands how to make a website produce results.
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Kevin M. Williams is the President of SeniorMarketing.com. SeniorMarketing.com increases occupancy and income for senior living communities across the country. To schedule a free 30-minute Marketing Tune-up, please call (888) 523-3311 or visit: <a href="http://www.seniormarketing.com/">http://www.seniormarketing.com/</a>
About Kevin Williams
