7 Do's and Don'ts of Senior Living Marketing

How Successful Senior Living CEOs Measure Marketing ROI

As a successful Senior Living CEO, you likely already have an internal marketing team or a series of external agencies handling your different marketing needs (online, offline, etc). With all of the great marketing you’ve invested in, do you have an integrated scorecard where you know what your ROI is for each channel and dollar spent?

Since you’re reading this article on how successful senior living CEOs measure marketing ROI, my guess is you’re not getting the ROI you want, despite your many marketing efforts.

Too many smart Senior Living executives have fallen into the trap that is the “more is better” approach, falsely assuming that simply launching more marketing campaigns, being on more marketing channels or cranking out more content will secure their ranking on Google, get them in front of more prospects, or lead to more sales. It won’t.

That’s why we at Spark Evolution created this list of 7 Marketing Do's and Don’ts - so you can discover what you’re doing wrong, and what you’re missing out on by not doing it right.

After reading this list of 7 do’s and don'ts, you may find yourself needing to speak with your marketing team(s), whether internal or external, to reevaluate why you are using your current marketing tactics, why you’re not using other marketing tactics, and how well - or not - that’s being measured, analyzed, and acted on to generate the best results.

7 DON’TS OF SENIOR LIVING MARKETING

1. Just because new marketing channels like Periscope are emerging, doesn't mean you need to be there. If you don't first consider what works for you, you'll be wasting your time, energy and budget for next to no return.
2. Don't wait until one, two, four weeks have passed to check on how your campaigns are doing. Check up on all your senior living marketing campaigns daily!
3. While great content can overcome poor distribution, great distribution cannot save poor content - whether that content was poorly written, designed, or on an uninteresting topic to begin with.
4. Don’t brand all your content. Non-branded content gets more shares - and thereby, eyeballs - than branded content. There are strategic ways to do this that will still glean value for your brand.
5. You can’t afford to take a rear-view mirror approach to marketing. You’ve got to have not only the marketing expertise but the marketing tools that give you real-time data about how prospects are interacting with you and pivot on that data.
6. Quit using industry jargon in your communications - just because you understand it doesn’t mean your target audience does.
7. Don’t talk about yourself all the time. It’s overly promotional, and it’s a turnoff to consumers who may have otherwise been interested in you.

7 DO’S OF SENIOR LIVING MARKETING

1. Stay focused on the most important part when creating content: make it worth distributing.
2. Do what you can to get real reviews of your senior living community on Yelp, Google, your Facebook and Google+ pages, and any other review sites. Consumers trust peer-to-peer recommendations, online ratings and reviews, and user-generated content such as review sites more than branded content.
3. Get your current customers involved in the storytelling of your brand. Nothing hits home quite like a real person your prospects can relate to endorsing your community. If these current customers trust you with Mom, maybe your prospects can, too. 
4. Understandably, consumers want to be informed before making a purchasing decision. So when describing your senior living community, answer any and all questions your prospect may have, preferably in the form of a single-page FAQ.
5. Remember that content marketing is meant to generate more leads at a lower cost over time. If you want powerful content that keeps working for you, you must create evergreen content that resonates with your prospects.
6. Most consumers conduct product research online before they engage with a company representative, so your web presence needs to be sparklingly stellar, with social proof everywhere. Here’s a free senior living marketing bonus tip for you: run a google search of your senior living community’s name in an incognito window and note the results that appear. How many of those results include social proof in the form of a quote, photo testimonial, tweet, retweet, etc? Every single result on the first page should include real, varied, and realistic social proof.
7. Your target audience is 57% of the way through the buying process by the time they call your sales rep, so your digital presence and web content must immediately demonstrate why your senior living community is a better fit for your prospects’ needs than your competitor’s community. If your content marketing doesn’t quickly engage and convince your prospect, you're out of the running.

Share Your Thoughts

What did you think of this article? Will you be following - or not following - any of the above do’s and don'ts for your senior living community? Tell me in the comments!

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Spark Evolution is an Inbound Marketing agency that partners with brands that are passionate about delivering health, vitality, and joy to the baby boomer generation. Our clients: attract boomers at every stage of the buyer’s journey with the right content delivered at the right time, increase conversion rates with scalable and personalized marketing experiences, decrease the cost of client acquisition, and provide real-time analytics on the metrics that matter to grow your vision.

We are proud Hubspot Gold Partners, helping clients leverage the power of Hubspot, the #1 Marketing Automation software worldwide. Visit our website: www.sparkevolution.com