Alan started with an extraordinary vision for his community: he set out to create an assisted living memory care community that welcomes residents to feel at home.
Today, that vision is a reality… The homes are designed with residents in mind, and are similar to those a resident would purchase for their very own family. Each team member is genuine, accepting and caring, and gets face-to-face and heart-to-heart with residents daily, creating an intimate environment in which residents can thrive. The care team makes a conscious effort to validate each resident, whether that means sitting with residents and listening to their stories, or encouraging them to set the table and participate in the various inner-workings of the home.
There’s only one problem.
Alan was severely over-invested in elder care referral agencies, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for leads that rarely materialized into new residents. He and his marketing team had a robust customer relationship management system and were overwhelmed with the possibilities. They had plenty of marketing tactics, just no real strategy.
Quietly, Alan’s potential residents were leaking away to the surrounding communities. As hard as Alan and his team worked, this was disheartening if not defeating.
Alan is not alone. Communities everywhere are increasingly bogged down by marketing. The competition is brutal, and it seems nearly impossible these days to truly differentiate in a sea of sameness. What’s more, it’s an uphill battle to attract and retain the kinds of team members that make for a thriving community.
Online marketing is all the rage these days – why not try a little of that? Resident families occasionally refer – but how to attract more of those high quality referrals? Does the website need a refresh – or are marketing dollars best invested elsewhere? The marketing is working okay – hopefully inquiries will come…
Hope is not a method. There is an actual methodology to marketing.
1. Survey the residents, resident families and team
2. Define your look and messaging
3. Create a balanced marketing strategy
4. Deploy the plan for steadfast results!
Using this method, I worked with Alan to unite his vision for his community with his revenue goals. I surveyed his residents, families and team with a questionnaire to find out what they appreciated about his community. From the verbatim survey responses, we were able to define exactly the message that resonated best with residents and families, and therefore their peers – or potential new residents. Based again upon the survey results, Alan and I collaborated on how best to tell the unique story about his community and differentiate his from the others, and we created his balanced marketing plan.
Over the months that followed we put the balanced marketing plan to work. And it did just that – it worked.
Alan was able to fulfill his vision and fill his community with this methodology, which has helped countless more communities enjoy validation of their marketing efforts, higher returns on marketing investments, more stability, steady growth and increased community value.
Learn how you too can experience that same validation, ROI, and success.
Adapted from KABOOM!: The Method Used By Senior Living Organizations for Best Marketing Results by Wendy O’Donovan Phillips
