Now is the time for Q1 2020 senior living marketing planning. It’s the time of year to pause, look at trends, see where your residents are coming in from, and look into ways to improve results, improve your community, and improve your senior living marketing strategies for the new year.
At Craft & Communicate, we follow a similar rule. Each quarter (including additional times throughout the year), we analyze our current procedures, view our past months’ trends, and assess our quarterly and annual goals.
What we’ve come to realize is in order for Craft & Communicate to truly grow, we need to stop focusing on the growing, and instead zone in on ways we can improve our current services and products for our senior living clients.
It’s what we often say to our clients, too. Instead of hosting four events a month and getting maybe one lead out of said event, focus in on your current residents.
Are they happy? Are their kids happy? Would they recommend a friend? Start there.
Before Looking to the Future, Nurture the Present
We offer a series of surveys every year to our clients in order to find out what their residents and adult children are after.
Do they want more healthy dining options? Do they want more educational opportunities and less bingo? If they could volunteer weekly to an organization in their city with transportation provided by the community, would they?
The answer to all three is always yes, by the way.
This type of zoning in and this type of questioning are essential in order to grow.
By grow, I mean grow better, not necessarily bigger. Bigger, if interested, comes from being better.
Making Our Senior Living Marketing Services Even Better
For Craft & Communicate, for the first time in our nearly four years of existence, we are not focused on getting bigger. This is exciting for us. In fact, we purposely made the decision earlier this year to get smaller.
That was a hard decision to make, and yet it was also essential: in order for our business to be successful, we must attract businesses with equal goals. If we’re committed to ensuring value in seniors’ lives, our clients must, too.
So as far as growth, we’re zoning in: who are the right clients? Who in senior living do we really want to represent? Our current client roster is one that we’re all proud to represent. If we do indeed get bigger, it must be with the right clients.
Your senior living community is the same. If you discount your apartments so drastically and upset your good residents by letting in a few bad birds, was it worth it? If you host events that don’t match your company’s mission, and those events attract the wrong residents, was filling those four apartments really worth it? You have to make hard decisions.
Your Senior Living Marketing Planning: Choose to Grow Your Culture, Always
Each community has a culture, just as my business has a culture. There’s not a soul who works for Craft & Communicate who I don’t absolutely love. There’s not a single body here who doesn’t pour their heart and soul into everything they do. We were very particular when selecting our group, and I’m proud to say, we’re the best that senior living has to offer.
Is your community the same? Can you look a little deeper, a little closer? Look at trends, look at the happy residents, and find ways to get more of them?
Remember always: like attracts like. Be the best person you could possibly be and notice who starts showing up in your life. Communities are the same.
Bigger comes from better.
Happy Q1 goal planning,
Jen
Let us know if we can help grow your senior living marketing strategy. We work to elevate your brand through real stories with real people and real emotion. Contact us to see the difference.
