The Profit-Driven Provider. How to fill your senior living community at market rate.

Transcription

1 The Profit-Driven Provider How to fill your senior living community at market rate.

2 With increased competition, increased expectations from consumers and increased pressure to grow occupancy in lieu of rising attrition rates, this triplethreat is sure to continue to threaten occupancy growth across the United States. While many are assuming that baby boomers will provide the bump in numbers needed for cash flow, what most are not considering is how much more difficult this audience will be to sell to. How can you thrive in the senior living industry and increase your net cash value? Zeroing in on how to reach your target audience at each level of the sales funnel, and not only get visitors (to your website as well as your community), but also convert those visitors to qualified leads is the key to increasing your ROI for various strategies your organization chooses to pursue this year. Which strategies should you be focusing on? Let s take a look. AWARENESS STAGE Seeking educational information to help grow in their knowledge of solutions. u Free Tip Sheets u Free White Paper u Free Enewsletter u Checklists u Infographics u Press Release u Blog Posts 1 GET TRAFFIC Top of Funnel CONSIDERATION STAGE Seeking demonstration of solutions expertise. Comparing to other solutions. u Free Webinars u Case Study u Reviews/Testimonials u Product & Spec Sheets u Videos u Buyer s Guide 2 GET LEADS Middle of Funnel DECISION STAGE Ready to say yes! Seek reinforcement and validation of their decision. u Free Trials u Demos u Free Consultations u Quotes/Estimates 3 GET SALES Bottom of Funnel $ $ $ RETENTION STAGE Continue to receive helpful information about the product or service. u Free Trials u Demos u Free Consultations u Quotes/Estimates 4 RETENTION

3 Before we embark upon the eight ideas that will help you take the senior living industry (and your market) by storm, understanding the sales funnel and how your potential customer buys online is key. When the search for the right senior living community begins, your customer first starts with fact-finding and begins looking for information that will help point them in the right direction. Beginning a search can be overwhelming! Relevant, purposeful content is key to pulling the visitor in and capturing their attention. Long gone are the days where a website with floor plans, pricing, and amenities is sufficient enough to capture attention and drive results (in the form of increased traffic at the community level). In terms of content, one key question needs to be answered: What will you deliver to the customer that will entice them enough to convert from a visitor to a qualified lead, and ultimately, an active prospect? After converting the visitor to a lead, the key is to keep them engaged with relevant information and calls to action while encouraging them to take the next step in their search. Positioning yourself (your organization) as the trusted advisor and a viable resource (with a wealth of information regarding making the senior living decision) will ensure they know where they want to start actively looking when the time comes to visit communities.

4 Here are 8 ideas that will take your sales and marketing strategies to the next level: 1. Understand Your Lead s Online Decision Process What does having increased online leads do for your business? The statistics are startling! 80-90% of all searches in the senior care and living industry begin online. Attracting leads by drawing them into the sales funnel allows you to engage (and ultimately encourage them) to move to the next stage of the buying process, furthering their research. Your online buyer has a 4-step process they go through: Attract: Something has triggered the potential customer to search for your services. The question is, will they find you when they search? If 90% of searches begin online, positioning yourself on the first page of Google so you are easily searchable is key. Rarely (if ever) do consumers search beyond the first or second page of google to find answers to their questions. Secondly, content is key to getting potential customers to your website and keeping them there. What topics are seniors researching? Start a focus group and solicit feedback to identify where to position your content. The content may or may not actually be related to searching for senior living. Remember it s more than just educating them on YOUR community; it s about positioning yourself as the go-to for all things senior living related. You may not be knowledgeable in all areas, so pursue opportunities to partner with others who can help supply you with content in areas you may not be as familiar with. Not only does this provide information on a hot topic seniors are searching for, but it also creates a mutually beneficial relationship with a third party who could potentially direct traffic to your website where their resourceful information is listed. Consider information on veteran s benefits, funding the stay, downsizing, making the move, dating and others.

5 1. Understand Your Lead s Online Decision Process Convert: Ok, step one accomplished! You have more people visiting your home page. Now what? Transparent messages and strong calls to action become key here. Can the consumer tell what your competitive advantage is? Are there calls to action that ask them to take the first step in expressing their interest with you? Long gone are the days where a request more information here call to action is enough to grab your consumers attention. Content, content, content is key! In order to access the content, begin with requesting their and name. Be respectful of the fact that they are not yet ready for a voice to voice, however they may be appropriate for a digital marketing campaign that can send them more useful information on the same topic that interests them today. Decision: Every family/prospect will approach the decision making process in an individualized way, but we all follow the same basic steps when making a difficult decision. Strong sales systems coupled with a content strategy ensures that you become the go-to resource for making this very difficult decision. Here is where sales systems really need to shine. Capturing traffic, converting traffic and navigating the process with them are critically important to securing the sale. Ultimately, your sales people should be capable of securing the sale quicker than if the prospect and family had navigated the process themselves. How can you shorten the sales cycle? Systems! Advocacy: You got the sale! Time to celebrate! However, don t forget to take the opportunity to re-tell (where appropriate) their decision to go with your community and seek opportunities for others to hear from your raving fans. Whether through testimonials, quotes or verbal endorsements, customers want to hear what other customers are saying. This information can be used in digital marketing campaigns, on your website and directly with families as they engage your sales people.

6 2. Understand Your Prospect s Needs The discovery process begins with the initial attempt to gather information about your community from a live person. Top performing sales people know the discovery process is on-going throughout the duration of the entire sale. Top performing sales people constantly seek opportunities to learn more about their customers because they understand the value in knowing your customers needs and wants as well as they do. The senior living industry works with many different types of buyer personas. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of types of customers based on market research and real data about your existing customers. For senior living communities, personas come in the form of prospects (looking for themselves), adult children looking for parents, spouses looking for a significant other, professional referral sources, online directories and many more. Within these personas become easily identifiable needs, wants and desires. Understanding the various personas you are marketing too makes developing a marketing strategy an exact science rather than a guessing game. Identifying the most appropriate content to position your website then becomes driven by what various personas are in need of. Understanding how influencers, decision makers and different personas influence the decision making process from all aspects allows you to think like the buyer and ultimately identify a way to ensure that navigating through the online search appeals to all those involved. You can do this by creating targeted messages that appeal to each persona you will work with. Providers who continue to focus on a one size fits all approach to their website message will continue to struggle with driving online traffic that converts. Develop a strategy for content that fits each of their varying needs, wants and desires.

7 3. Lead Nurturing vs. Prospect Nurturing What is the primary difference between a lead and a prospect? Leads have engaged in your website, selected a call to action and are continuing their online search for information. Prospects have actively engaged in your community by calling, ing, selecting the I would like more information CTA on your website or in some cases dropping in. With increasing technological advances in programs (such as Hubspot) lead nurturing strategies have the ability to automate lead nurturing online, taking the weight of managing both leads and prospects off the shoulders of the sales person, and allowing them to focus their energy and attention on those strictly ready to take the next step in the search. Keeping in mind that your prospect has made 60% of their buying decision by the time they contact your community, lead nurturing strategies are critical to senior living success. Here s something to keep in mind: a user comes to your site 5-7 times before they interact with you. Guides or other educational information that will help them in their decision process have the potential to decrease the number of times (visits) it takes to gather (what they feel is) critical information prior to visiting communities. This also provides the opportunity to achieve a lasting first impression of your community before ever even visiting you! Once you receive their contact information from a call to action on your website, your next responsibility is to show them value and gain their trust so that they will come back/ But remember, you must do this without violating their privacy and still respecting their wishes. They re not yet ready to speak with a sales person or they d pick up the phone and call your community. So how do you keep them engaged? Start by having literature that follows the content they are selecting on your website, becoming a trickle to your marketing campaign. Nurturing leads with automated marketing strategies will decrease the amount of time it takes to become ready to meet you and your community, as well as provide helpful information and education in making the decision that is right for them before they even arrive at the community. Ultimately, it saves the sales person time so they can focus on converting prospects and leads.

8 4. Integrated Campaigns Using traditional and online marketing together makes for a great campaign! A common misconception is that direct mail is dead. In itself, direct mail has a much less impact than when it is coupled with digital marketing strategies. Identifying the right time to communicate your message with your potential customers will ensure you can get the most from your campaign. Here s the facts: industry statistics show that 40% of senior living marketing budgets are shifting to online marketing. Why? The results, the ROI and identifying what works and what doesn t are all easier to measure! Keep in mind that your message has the greatest impact on your results. Don t de-value yourself by pushing an incentive, but rather utilize your content marketing strategy to identify events that mirror your content and use direct mail to push new leads to these events. 5. SEO: The Secret Everyone is Missing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one key element of an inbound marketing strategy, and arguably one of the most important. It is both an art and a science. There are over 200 measurements to determine where your community will be placed on a Google page in a search. For example, social media, online directories, how quickly your website loads, and the responsiveness of it, all affect how you will be ranked by search engines. Not sure where to start to improve your rankings? Perhaps it s time for a marketing audit to identify your greatest areas of opportunity. 6. ROI: Driving the Decisions You are what you measure! Top performing providers understand that good investments should be tangible to measure. Measuring success in sales and marketing has become a science. Measuring your ROI with various sales and marketing strategies allows you to evaluate the efficiency of the investment. Whether you are seeking to outsource training, website development or other various sales and marketing strategies, the company you work with should be easily able to calculate what s in it for you. While the last three years have shown an increase in outsourcing sales and marketing strategies, taking the guesswork out of whether or not you should invest your time and resources should be your partners first priority.

9 7. Sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Is your CRM working with you by helping you to easily navigate planning and documentation of the sales process or is it working against you? Effective use of a CRM will save your organization both time and money. Marketing automation systems coupled with your CRM should create a bi-communicational, hands-off system to lead nurturing that makes the customer s journey transparent to the sales person. For a prospect nurturing strategy, the transparent communication should make buying priorities, barriers and objections easy to identify, making the strategy to alleviate them easy to identify. Training and coaching become critical in this stage of the sales process. Few sales people use their CRM to be strategic, but rather most currently use it to simply document the most recent interaction or schedule a next step (if you re lucky). Metrics should also be transparent within your CRM. Do you know how many inquires it takes to get a move-in? Are you calculating this manually or is your CRM doing the work for you (ultimately eliminating human error). Data equips you to make good decisions regarding your sales and marketing strategies. Not having the data necessary to make educated decisions simply puts you in a position to play a very large guessing game with your time, energy and resources. 8. Insightful Selling Insightful selling, otherwise known as taking advantage of teachable moments, is having the ability to show your customer something they have not thought of before. The senior living experience is changing and consumers are demanding to speak with well-educated, helpful sales people. The last thing they want is a regurgitation of what they can already find on your website. Can you meet their needs with helpful information that will benefit them? Are you a senior living expert?

10 Looking for a clear vision of where to take your organization this year? With increased competition, increased expectations from consumers and increased pressure to grow occupancy in lieu of rising attrition rates, it s time to take action! to schedule your free 30-minute software systems consultation: michelle@elite-business-systems.com P.O. Box 151 Kensington, MN 56343