Common senior care marketing mistakes include depicting stereotypical views and underestimating the power of digital marketing. If facilities want to improve their long term care leads, they can adopt the following strategies:
Understand Your Target Audience
Any effective marketing starts with understanding the target audience. This means understanding what seniors and their families are looking for in a long term care facility by conducting in-depth market research to understand their target audience’s needs and how to generate LTC leads.
Create a Positive First Impression
Successful long term care facilities provide not only clinical care but also professional hospitality by creating an inviting and comfortable environment. Visually appealing entrance areas, clean corridors, outdoor amenities, and showrooms that highlight the facility’s best features help to make a good first impression when potential residents and their facilities watch virtual tours or visit the facility.
Eliminate Fear
Many adult children have reservations—feelings of guilt, a sense of abandonment, or fear—about how their elderly parents will react when moving to a long term care facility. This is especially heightened if it is the first time a senior has been in a long term care facility.
To alleviate this fear, facilities can create virtual tours with detailed, downloadable reports on their inspections, safety records, and survey results on their website and social media platforms. This way, seniors and their adult children can assess whether the facility meets their needs while navigating these fears with a better understanding of the quality of care.
Show Value
An effective way to improve senior care leads is to highlight differentiating factors that make the facility stand out. For Mann, that means “delivering environments that people enjoy so that they can enjoy the finer things in life, but also have the best medical care while aging successfully.”
Some facilities showcase their value and get senior care leads by focusing on culinary dining experiences, while others emphasize that they offer WiFi in all rooms. This is particularly appealing even among seniors who increasingly use modern technology like smartphones and tablets to keep in touch with their family and friends. Furthermore, studies show that between 2012 and 2021, there was a 48 percent increase in seniors (65 years and older) using smartphones and 40 percent increase in seniors using tablet computers.
Reach Out Via Email
Facilities that send out a monthly email newsletter to their customer base provide the perfect opportunity to reach out to the approved senior network and their families, informing them of what is happening in the facility and the industry as a whole.
Get Testimonials
One of the best marketing strategies to improve long term care leads is to encourage current residents to provide testimonials about how good the facility or the caregivers are. These can be posted on the facility website and social media platforms, providing valuable feedback that may encourage potential seniors to visit the premises and enroll as residents.
Organize Interactive Events
Long term care marketers can make the most of modern-day technology by organizing interactive events where families can interact with their loved ones. This not only improves morale at the facility but also provides the perfect opportunity to promote the facility in local media as well as their website and social media platforms.
Implement Intuitive Long Term Care Software
The rise in modern-day technology has also led to improvements in technology, most notably long term care software. When facilities implement efficient long term care software systems, they experience improvements in workflow efficiency, enhanced quality of care, and more accurate documentation. This is why marketers should highlight the innovative nursing home software and how it impacts resident care.
