How to Generate Leads for Senior Living Facilities

The senior living facility industry is experiencing a surge as Baby Boomers are retiring, and there’s a lot of them. At some point, they and their loved ones will begin looking for facilities that can take care of their needs, especially those with underlying medical conditions. 

That’s why there’s no time like now to market your senior living facility; you have plenty of prospective clients. 

Senior Living Marketing Requires a Different Approach

Marketing senior living facilities require more than your average marketing strategies. With senior living facilities, you’ll have to practice more empathy and consideration in your approach. Your facility also requires a specialized kind of marketing since your residents are not your primary target audience but their loved ones. 

That’s not to say, however, that you should completely stop marketing towards seniors. Instead, the main focus of your marketing efforts will be on their family members or caretakers. These people are typically the ones who go looking for senior living facilities and have a say in their elders’ housing arrangements. 

With that in mind, here are some ideas to help you reach a broader audience and generate more leads for your senior living facility:

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience and defining who they are will help you formulate more specific marketing strategies to trigger the right pressure points. More importantly, it lets you understand the best channels to reach them. Your lead generation efforts are only effective when used strategically. Knowing as much as you can about your target audience will help you find them, catch their attention, and deliver your marketing materials. 

Defining your audience will also help you create content that is relatable to seniors and their loved ones. Quality content aimed at a specific audience will build credibility and trust — and trust is everything in marketing. 

Evaluate the Top of Your Funnel

Effective lead generation begins with a carefully crafted marketing funnel. By analyzing incoming customers at the top of your sales funnel, you can gain valuable insight into what strategies are driving them there in the first place. Perhaps it’s a guest post or a social media ad, or maybe it’s through organic search results. 

When you know how your prospects are getting into your funnel, then you can double down your efforts to maximize your inbound leads. If you’re struggling to get inbound leads, that may suggest you need to work with a better marketing team. 

Analyzing which strategy brings in more leads will help you make better marketing decisions.

Deliver an Outstanding User Experience 

People visiting your senior facility website or designated landing page is one thing; taking action and converting to paying customers is another. 

Conversion rates are heavily influenced by user experience. When prospects have a great experience navigating your site and quickly finding all the information they need, they are more likely to buy what you’re selling. 

Fast website speeds, effective use of white space, uncluttered paragraphs, easy navigation, visual content, clear Calls to Action (CTAs) — these are all tenets of great user experience. 

Stand Out From Competition

The senior care industry is competitive and will likely continue to be so over the next couple of years. By 2030, around 18% of the US population will be at least 65 years old. This presents a huge target market, which many senior living facilities will be looking to take advantage of in the coming years.  

In order to generate quality leads, your facility must stand out for all the right reasons. Offer something valuable that seniors and their families will resonate with. Besides offering free tours of the facility, offer them freebies or tokens. You can also market a culture that would be synonymous with your brand, promoting a sense of community and safety. 

One way to stand out from the rest is to deviate from what is commonly offered and come up with something original.

A good example is Bahama Bay Club, which offers luxurious living amenities —  executive chef lead restaurants, resort-style pools, wellness spas, voice command nurse call system, and round-the-clock support services, among others. In this way, seniors can look forward to a life of luxury and bliss after retirement, which can make them more willing to make the switch to the retirement community. 

Conclusion

Generating leads may be a challenge for most senior living facilities. However, since generating leads will increase their occupancy rates, it should be at the top of their list. Starting with knowing who your audience is and where to focus your marketing strategies and materials will eventually pay off with increased revenues. 

Want to know more about how you can market your senior living facility? You can hire a business consultant. Apricus is a consulting firm that specializes in senior living development. Whether it’s how to operate, manage, or build a retirement home for seniors, you can count on us. Contact us today!