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Brilliant Ideas For Your Senior Living Community Marketing Plan

If your senior living community isn’t closing enough sales, it may be time to reassess your marketing and try an integrated approach. There are various reasons and scenarios that cause people to consider moving into a community. There are also several types of decision makers involved in the process of choosing a community. For those reasons, it’s necessary to approach your marketing from all angles in order to maximize leads and conversions.

Use these ideas as inspiration for your senior living community marketing plan:

Inbound Content Marketing

Outbound marketing isn’t very effective for retirement communities because you aren’t just selling a product. You’re selling a major life choice that comes with a long list of concerns and considerations for a person entering an uncertain time. Your biggest competition is not other communities, but the option of staying at home. For this reason, the sales cycle in this industry is generally long (weeks, months, even years).

Update Your Website

During the time a person is considering moving into a senior living community, they’ll be searching for information that will help them make the right decisions and transition into their new lifestyle comfortably. Your website is a great opportunity to become an educational resource for your potential clients. When prospects find valuable content on your website, it not only helps them feel comfortable with the idea of moving in, but also positions your community as the most knowledgeable, helpful, and caring option for them.

Keep Up With Your Blog

Start a blog and update it regularly with articles geared toward both seniors and their adult children who may be involved in the decision process. Think about your prospects’ main questions and concerns and try to address each of them in a separate article. Consider these blog title ideas: “10 Signs Your Loved One Needs Memory Care” “How To Help Your Loved One Transition Into Assisted Living” “5 Social-Success Stories From People Who Flourished In A Senior Living Community” “How To Finance Senior Living” and “

Utilize Forms on Your Website

To ensure that you collect leads from your blog traffic, include a form for readers to subscribe to email updates. You should also turn your best content into downloadable white papers that prospects must enter their contact information in order to receive. Good content will produce interested leads if you have a strategy in place for collecting them.

Marketing For Referrals

There are some scenarios in which referrals produce fast-acting leads that don’t take months of nurturing to convert. These are the crisis scenarios, like when an injury or serious accident occurs and a senior is faced with no other option but to move into assisted living as soon as possible. Contact local physicians and inquire about referral possibilities. Psychologists and neurologists can also produce leads for memory care. If finding new ways to get referrals isn’t part of your current senior living community marketing plan, you’re missing out on a significant portion of the market.

Integrated Direct Mail Campaigns

Direct mail is an older marketing channel, but it’s still used to this day because its effectiveness has been consistently proven, especially with the 60+ demographic. The best way to use direct mail is to develop a multi-touch campaign plan that gives prospects multiple opportunities to take action.

Personalized Postcards

For instance: start your campaign with a postcard. Use the postcard to address prospects’ problems and offer your senior living community as a solution. Explain the benefits of assisted living and don’t shy away from emotional appeal. Include all of your contact information on the postcard, including a link to your website or to a landing page where prospects can request a one-on-one appointment.

Brochures

Produce brochures that showcase the features and amenities of your community. Sell prospects on the benefits they actually care about (social activities, dining options, home maintenance, etc.)

Drive Event Attendance with Invitations

Host an event for prospects to come take a look at your community and meet your staff. Send a direct mail invitation or flyer to advertise the event. By this point, prospects will have already seen your name in their mailbox twice, and if they’re considering moving into a senior living community it’s likely they’ll attend your event.

Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Don’t get overwhelmed with work trying to execute your direct mail campaign by yourself. More importantly, don’t waste your money working with a cookie-cutter marketing agency that doesn’t make your goals their goals.

john k
Article by John Kennedy

Born and currently based in Lowell, Massachusetts, John is an impassioned copywriter and Olly Olly’s fearless Content Manager.

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