Inbound Concepts for Senior Living Marketing
Instead of reaching out to potential residents when they’re in the middle of something else (with an ad or mailer, for example), why don’t you make it so they find you? Thanks to inbound marketing, you can do just that. The following senior living marketing ideas will help you achieve 100% occupancy (that’s right, you heard me).
Inbound Marketing for Senior Living
Inbound marketing helps potential residents find us when they’re actively searching for the solutions we are providing. Sure, you may still utilize certain traditional advertising tactics, but inbound should definitely be part of your marketing mix.
This is a highly popular strategy for most major companies, but I see a lot of senior living communities ignoring it. Big mistake. Marketing for senior living is most effective with inbound in the mix. So as your brainstorming assisted living marketing ideas, don’t neglect the concepts I’ll be talking about in this article.
As inbound marketers, we attract potential customers to our site by providing valuable content that will help them in their search for a service like ours, in exchange for information on the prospect.
After they land on our site, we promote downloadable offers that will further aid our prospects. In return for the download, the prospective resident provides their email address.
We’re then able to track their movements on our web properties in order to offer them further content until they’re ready to make a decision. And we have a much better chance of getting them to see that content, because now we have the key to their inbox.
I call it the Inbound Sales Funnel, and here’s how it looks:
The sales funnel describes the journey potential residents (“prospects”) take as they search for solutions to their problems.
At the beginning of their journey (the top of the funnel), your prospects don’t even have assisted living on their mind. They just know they have a problem.
As they begin searching for a solution to that problem (the middle of the funnel), they become aware of your solution and others. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, they have chosen a category of solution and are looking for the best fit for their particular situation.
- Top — Aware of a problem
- Middle — Evaluating solutions
- Bottom — Deciding which community
For example, at the top of the funnel, John notices that his mother is having trouble remembering things. In the middle of the funnel, John begins to look at different options (in-home care, assisted living, nursing home, etc.) to help his mother.
At the bottom of the funnel, John has determined that assisted living is the best fit. Now he considers whether or not your assisted living community is right for his mother.
When you’re doing lead generation, you will have to create content and offers that appeal to prospects and leads in different parts of the funnel.
A senior who’s just starting to worry about rising housing costs isn’t ready to be offered an opportunity to tour your community. If a daughter is looking to see if she can afford to pay for her mother to move into your community, you’re wasting your time if you target her with an ebook about what to do when your parents can’t live on their own anymore.
Buyer personas are descriptions of your target customers based on what you know about the market and your current residents.
Buyer personas will inform your decisions about what sort of content, offers, and copy will most appeal to your target customers.
In the assisted living industry, your most common personas are:
- A senior who needs care
- An adult child who needs care for a parent
- A spouse who needs care for their partner
But that’s just at the most basic level. Build on these personas by considering similarities between current residents, spouses, and their children.
Are there any insights that will allow you to better speak to these personas directly?
You should create content for each persona at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. The key to good inbound marketing is context. That means speak to specific people at specific stages of the buying process.
Lead Qualification
People who convert (i.e., give you their email in exchange for an offer, tour, information, etc.) via inbound marketing then need to be qualified. Find more information on how to qualify leads at Advertoscope.com.
Lead
A lead is anyone who shows an interest in your community. Basically, anyone who fills out a form on your website.
Qualification
Once you’ve brought in a lead, the next step is to qualify that lead, which means determining whether or not they’re a good fit for your community who is likely to move in the near future.
This can be done through the lead nurturing process.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is usually done through automated emails that are sent to leads based on their behavior on your site. For instance, if a lead looks at your assisted living page and not your nursing home page or your independent living page, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re interested in assisted living.
You can nurture that lead by continuing to send them emails with content and offers related to assisted living. This content should work them down the funnel.
Start with awareness stage content based on the problems addressed in the content that originally lead them to you. Work in some consideration stage content occasionally that addresses solutions to those problems. When they start engaging with your consideration stage content, it’s time to begin sending them decision stage content about why your particular community is the best option.
(Click here to read my guide on lead nurturing.)
Next Steps
For more information on lead generation, read the Inbound Sales Funnel Workbook.
Keep checking back here for more senior living community marketing strategies, and if you have any questions, let me know at roy@advertoscope.com.
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