Doesn’t senior living marketing feel like rocket science sometimes? You’re taking action but not getting the results you want. You have tons of projects and visions, but you don’t really know which one to prioritize.

Before long you realize the cold, hard truth: you don’t really know which direction to take. There’s no focus in your actions. Why? More often than not, it arises from a lack of knowledge of assisted living marketing.

With that in mind, we’ve taken the initiative to share the best senior care marketing tactics that have worked and continue to work for many communities. A lot of these were also derived from facilities that have shared how they were able to drive their respective brands to succeed.

Senior Living Marketing

Be sure to have a clear objective from the start and stick to it

We can’t stress this enough because almost any tactic is bound to fail if it’s not attuned with your goals. More importantly, it gives your marketing team the focus it needs. Did you know that a bulk of communities rarely have concrete objectives that give their efforts direction?

To establish one, you need to start looking deeper at your company’s vision and mission. For example, if your intent is to be the best memory care provider locally, then it would be easier to direct your resources toward achieving that.

Whether it’s building the website content, running digital advertising, managing social media posts or crafting your message, each and every one of these vital activities will be dictated by that goal.

Capitalize on multiple ways to conduct digital marketing

Any senior living marketing agency that genuinely cares about your facility will wholeheartedly advise you to use whatever’s at your disposal. And what’s good about digital marketing is that there’s more than one way to do it.

Senior living SEO is already a given. Why not pair it with social media marketing, email marketing, and PPC?

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to go all the way in all of them. This will only eat up your resources and spread you out too thin. The best approach is to test the waters of each option you have, then decide on what to scale on based on initial results.

Use LinkedIn the fullest

When we say to the fullest, you have to know how you can use it to your utmost advantage. LinkedIn has been part of the arsenal of senior living marketing because it allows communities to position their brands professionally.

It’s also a hub for many professionals themselves who may be interested in working with your community. Not to mention the way the platform lets you exhibit your brand’s accomplishments and awards.

These are why it’s well worth building your brand’s LinkedIn page. Connect with your employees there. Post regularly and use hashtags like you do on most social platforms. Equally sweet is the fact that the platform also offers analytics!

Dedicate time in building your profile, and you’ll be creating that much-needed buzz in no time.

Encourage resident referrals

Cultivating referrals among present residents is an often-overlooked method that plenty of communities can vouch for. Every community is different so it’s not advisable to suggest an all-encompassing strategy in this regard.

Most strong resident referral programs are founded on a staff that is well-educated about how it works. The most ideal incentives should be discovered and offered. All the while, you should also be taking steps to ensure that your residents remain satisfied and happy so they’ll be motivated to send referrals.

Prioritize everyone’s contentment

Speaking of keeping everyone content, this goes for your staff, too. In fact, we can even argue that you should place them first before you embark on another project. Why? Because they’re also actively lending in your community’s marketing.

Once you keep your residents happy, they’ll be more than willing to recommend your community. More pleased residents means higher occupancy rates. In fact, even a small number of fully fulfilled people can already make a difference in the world.

Ensure your ads are synchronized with your brand

Did you get less-than-desirable outcomes in your first ad campaign? Digital marketing is sadly not the panacea that many people tend to think it is.

one of the biggest reasons why this is so is because of your competitors. Before long, your ads can get lost in a sea of uniformity.

This underlines the need to boost your ads with the most appropriate message. It should be unique to the true value that your organization offers. Otherwise, they’ll more than likely end up in the wayside, ignored.

Keep your reviews fresh

Did you know that more than 80% of prospects tend to ignore senior living feedback that is at least 3 months old? This is why if you’ve been ignoring your reviews for a while, it’s high time for you to start looking at the most recent ones you’ve been getting.

You may have had high ratings in the past. Nonetheless, they won’t mean a thing if the latest ones you’re getting are subpar. People will only ignore your community the moment they see two stars or below grades.

Start concentrating on local leads more

If you haven’t already been doing this, now’s the best time to do so. According to recent studies, 90% of move-ins tend to come from no more than 11 miles of a particular community’s location.

Geotargeting could not be more important now. Naturally, this should also influence how you develop your overall SEO strategies as opting more anything other than local could immediately translate to a waste of money.

Make the most out of call tracking software

This kind of software gives you invaluable insights about your leads, after all. For example, you’ll be able to know, once a person makes a call, where the prospect came from — whether they came directly from an ad or a website. It could also be a billboard or your social media page.

Pinpointing where your leads come from makes it easier for you to know which platforms and strategies you should invest more in. What’s even better is the fact that it often works well with hyper-local SEO strategies.
Work with an agency that is aligned with your goals.

It won’t hurt to rely completely on a senior living marketing agency if it means you’ll finally be in the green and be put in the right direction with their help. Once you decide to go this route, take the time to know whether they know how to interact and deal with modern seniors. All the better if they have technology on their side.

Conclusion

All it takes to move the needle in your marketing efforts is knowing what works. Yes, it pays to experiment and discover your own strategies gradually. However, given the innate challenges of promoting assisted living services nowadays, the most ideal route is to take inspiration from what works.

Once you begin to strike gold, that’s the ideal time to introduce your own twists. We hope that the knowledge we shared would help you do just that because they’ll be the keys to your success.