Content That Boosts Resident Occupancy in Senior Living

As more Baby Boomers reach the age of retirement each day, the senior living industry is changing and growing to accommodate their needs and preferences. In order to maximize resident occupancy, senior living communities must produce content that effectively reaches and relates to them. Thus, content creators need to understand how and why today’s Baby Boomers make decisions and deliver on the devices and platforms they use.

Digital Literacy

Contrary to what younger generations may believe, data shows that Baby Boomers are digitally literate, with a Pew Research Center survey showing that 7 out of 10 own a smartphone and more than 66% own a laptop, desktop or tablet. Not only do they own these devices, they use them. The same survey found that 65% of adults age 50-64 (part of the Boomer generation) and 41% of adults age 65 or older use Facebook. Another 68% of 50-64 year olds use YouTube. What does this mean for your senior living community? It means your digital marketing game is a vital part of increasing resident occupancy. Your target audience is online, so you should be, too.

An Optimized and User-Friendly Website

To effectively reach Baby Boomers online, you need a content-rich, optimized and user-friendly website. Plan to add in these elements to provide a great digital experience with content that will convert:

• SEO—As your audience does research online, you want them to be able to find you easily. Remember that technical SEO is only part of the equation; having useful and helpful content on your site is also essential.
• Clear List of Amenities & Services—Don’t hide your features in blocks of text on your website. Clearly list your amenities and services so prospective residents and their families can easily compare.
• Calendar of Activities—Highlighting what life is like as a part of your community is critical to securing new residents. Lifestyle and community are a huge differentiator, so make sure that information is easily seen, searchable and attractively displayed.
• Virtual Tour—A virtual tour of your facility can be a great asset. It shows both prospective residents and their families exactly what to expect, and it provides you the opportunity to showcase your community and team’s personality, which begins to build a relationship.
• Clear Calls to Action – Each page of your website should have a clear call to action somewhere, whether it’s to schedule a tour or sign up for a newsletter or download a handout. Give them the opportunity to convert from any page of your site.

Advertising

Once you have an optimized and user-friendly website to send clicks to, you can layer in advertising. Keep your ad messaging and targeting in line with the content discussed above, featuring the differentiating aspects of your community.

• Google Search Ads—Advertising on the Google Search Network will help you show up in search results for your targeted keywords. Being toward the top of the page in those results can result in an increase of both traffic to your website and conversions.
• Display Ads—While search ads target users actively searching for certain keywords, display ads can be used to target users visiting certain kinds of sites. You can use display ads to gain brand awareness as users browse sites in the category you designate.
• Facebook Ads—Since so many Baby Boomers are on Facebook, it’s a great place to advertise. The audience segmentation is particularly useful in targeting your precise demographic based on perceived interests and social preferences.
• Retargeting Ads—Retargeting ads show after someone has already visited your site, and serve to keep your community top of mind as they consider a decision.

Post-Tour Surveys and Marketing Automation

 Ultimately, your goal is to maximize resident occupancy, and you know that driving more community tours (more in quantity, but also more effective tours) is how you make that happen. But your efforts, and the flow of content to your leads, can’t stop there. The best option at this stage is a post-tour survey that serves a dual purpose of providing valuable feedback that can be used to inform and improve your efforts and providing another touchpoint of communication after the tour to gauge the likelihood of gaining a new resident. With the help of marketing automation, this whole process is streamlined and the data produced is aggregated into functional reports.

• Marketing Automation—Keep track of your leads and where they are in the nurturing process with marketing automation that connects to a CRM. You can send leads appropriate content when they subscribe to your newsletter, schedule a tour, and then you can follow up afterwards (among other features).
• Post-Tour Surveys—With marketing automation, you can automatically send out post-tour surveys either by email or SMS, then have the responses automatically pulled together into reports.

With these elements working together, you can boost resident occupancy in your senior living community by reaching out to your audience online with effective content, bringing more prospective residents through your doors with tours, and increasing your conversion rate from tours to residents with valuable post-tour feedback. The EVG Senior Solutions team can help you stand out from the competition by creating a custom, researched-based marketing strategy for your senior living business. Contact us to learn more!