Creating a senior housing marketing plan that delivers results is an extensive process that involves a lot of preparation, goal setting, and research. It’s important to have a mix of marketing strategies, both digital and traditional, that supplement one another. The Craft & Communicate team has decades of experience marketing senior living communities. Here’s our advice, in a two-part series, on putting together a marketing plan that will set you up to meet goals for years to come.
Compliance in Senior Living
Senior living falls into the healthcare and housing categories leaving it subject to several regulations. It is vital to ensure all marketing material is compliant and does not make any misleading claims.
Many ad platforms, such as Google or Meta (formerly known as Facebook), have their own set of requirements and limitations for these special categories that need to be adhered to.
We suggest working closely with your community’s legal team to ensure all of your ads, print materials, and website are compliant. However, we at Craft & Communicate work diligently to stay up to date on all the latest certifications, trends, and requirements (like ADA, Google ads, SEO, etc.) to ensure your marketing efforts are appropriately targeted, effective, and compliant.
Determine Your Audience & Messaging
Before building your marketing plan, get a solid grasp of who your target audience is and what your selling points are. This will help you determine the best marketing avenues to use within your plan.
Create Buyer Personas
What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is a fictitious character that depicts your ideal customer and is based on research, your community’s data, and potential surveys.
We suggest creating buyer personas before you start developing your marketing materials and strategy. This will help you stay focused on who you are targeting and get the best results from your efforts.
Most senior living communities have a few different groups of potential buyers. Create a buyer persona for each group. Here are some things to ask yourself and include in each persona.
- Demographics – What is their age, income range, and marital status? Are they homeowners or parents themselves?
- Professional – Are they employed full-time? Are there certain job roles you would expect this persona to have?
- Values – What are their most important values? Will they be looking for a religious-based lifestyle? Are regular activities important?
- Challenges – What struggles is this person likely facing on a regular basis?
- Concerns – Where are their pain points? Will budget be a major concern for this person?
SWOT Analysis
Creating a SWOT analysis for your community will determine your messaging and where to focus your efforts.
A SWOT analysis is an in-depth analysis of your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Here are some of the key things we suggest considering for each category.
- Strengths – What are the biggest selling points of your community? High staff-to-resident ratios, long-term employees, or local ownership can all be strengths.
- Weaknesses – What do your competitors do better than you? High employee turnover, small apartments, or location can all be weaknesses. List all of your weaknesses so you can combat these and work toward improvement.
- Opportunities – What are all of the senior living communities in your area lacking that you could take advantage of?
- Threats – Which competitors are your biggest threats? Are there new communities likely coming into your area in the future? Carefully detail your competitors, their marketing strategies, and potential future threats that you’ll want to consider.
Set Goals & Measure
We suggest setting quarterly and annual goals for your business before putting together a marketing plan. Do an honest evaluation of your community’s current status and set specific goals for your business.
Depending on what stage of business your community is in, your goals may change. We suggest considering the following things and setting goals for each category.
- Occupancy Rate
- Leads
- Website Traffic
- Website Conversion Rate
- Social Media Followers and Engagement
- Sales-To-Close Percentage
Ensure Tracking Is In Place
Before you implement any of your marketing efforts, it is vital to ensure you are accurately measuring success.
We suggest using a combination of the following marketing tools to measure your results.
- Google Analytics will help track traffic to your website, where your leads are coming from, which pages are more effective, and more.
- Call tracking software can help you track the source of phone calls from print ads, TV ads, and other sources that are not easily traced online.
- A CRM platform can help you track your sales process and enable your sales team to easily follow up with prospective residents.
Get more detail on how to measure the ROI of your marketing efforts here.
Ready to Design a Marketing Plan That Delivers Results?
As the experts in senior living marketing, Craft & Communicate is committed to helping communities maximize their budgets and helping seniors find the best communities to live out their golden years. Contact us today to start brainstorming ideas for your community’s marketing strategy.
