Senior living communities are constantly competing for leads and conversions in a fiercely competitive field. Senior living has been particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
These communities had to generate new leads through marketing efforts in the absence of traditional lead sources such as in-person events, marketing, and sales professionals.
As well as lead generation, lead nurturing is one of the most important aspects of marketing for senior living communities. This involves developing relationships with potential residents and their families and providing them with valuable information.
Lead cultivation requires time and effort, but the payoff in terms of future sales can be very lucrative. To maintain your omnichannel marketing strategy, you must nurture leads through education and inspiration.
According to Gartner research, 15% of B2B organizations do not include outreach in their sales and marketing processes. By communicating relevant, personalized messaging throughout the buyer’s journey, you can convert qualified, educated leads at a higher rate.
The role of lead nurturing in an effective omnichannel marketing strategy for senior living is equally important to lead generation.
Here are some best practices and lead nurturing strategies in senior living that can help your community stand out from the competition.
1. Educating with Personalized Content
You should take advantage of the many digital resources available to you as a sales expert. They will assist you in educating your leads actively. Among these resources are:
- An attractive, well-written website, featuring objective content promoting the senior living industry as well as content that highlights the differentiating features of your community compared with your competitors. By doing so, leads will not only gain a better understanding of the value of residing in a senior living community but will also be able to see why your community matches their lifestyle preferences.
- You can use blogs to elevate your expertise as a community, giving leads confidence that you’re present and care about them.
- Posts that capture the true heartbeat of the community on social media.
- Automated email and SMS campaigns targeting leads with the right message at the right time using a marketing automation platform. You can use nurture programs to encourage engagement with all of the aforementioned channels, enabling you to prioritize your efforts and personalize your conversations to accelerate your customers’ buyer journeys.
Making sure that you have the right tools in place to deliver a seamless buying journey is key to delivering content effectively.
Read More: How to Build a Successful Senior Living Website?
2. Investing in Relationships and Creating Experiences
The next step? Inspiration. After receiving a referral from marketing, the sales counselor must both educate and inspire their customers. While being an educator, sales must create experiences that inspire customers to want to engage further with the community.
Conversations rooted in deep discovery, stellar listening skills, and meaningful follow-up move customers through the buyer journey more quickly. Key tactics counselors should focus on include:
- Assuring customers of your unique product and contract options, safety and security protocols to keep residents safe, health and wellness offerings, specialty services and amenities, moving resources, and more that match their needs and wants.
- Answer specific, personal questions with reassuring answers to ease any concerns.
- Offer customers an opportunity to experience the community for themselves, whether that be lunch during a personal visit, happy hour and dinner followed by a complimentary overnight stay, a virtual fitness class from the comfort of their own home, or a virtual tour customized just for them.
- Get them to meet resident ambassadors who can share their positive experiences living in your community.
When you cultivate your customer experience based on a deep understanding of them, you will be able to ensure it resonates with the individuals who are the best fit for it your community, so use up-to-date buyer personas when developing your approach and messaging.
3. Use Marketing Automation for Senior Living Lead Generation
Sales and marketing teams no longer have to manually score leads, segment them, and send emails as part of senior living sales strategies. Automated marketing takes care of it. Sales and marketing teams can then focus on the RESULTS, specifically the analytics, so they can respond appropriately.
It goes without saying, but most leads should eventually be converted to SQL(sales-qualified lead) from MQL(marketing-qualified lead). Hopefully, that’s what you should be aiming for.
As an example, suppose you have a prospect in the “I am an adult child looking for a parent in the next 6-12 months” category who is opening your emails, downloading content, and spending more time on your site.
Lead scores can be changed from marketing qualified to sales qualified. With a powerful marketing automation system, you can program it to automatically make these changes based on lead behavior. The sales team can now follow up directly with the lead since the person appears to be very interested.
A company’s omnichannel marketing efforts don’t end once a lead is generated. In order to transform leads into residents, a program must continue to provide them with the information they need at the right time and in the way they need it.
The power of knowledge cannot be underestimated. The passionate and positive spread of knowledge will create more educated, qualified, decision-forward customers – customers who can make better decisions more quickly and confidently. As a result, your inspiration will spur the residents to action.
Read More: 5 Key Trends of the Senior Living Industry in 2022
Don’t let your leads fall through the cracks. Nurture them with the help of ScrumDigital. We work with senior care and senior living organizations to help them thrive online, helping them to increase census through better digital marketing and sales/CRM.
Talk to us about your project!
