Assisted Living Marketing

Assisted Living Marketing: Direct Mail, Email, Online Ads and Surveys

Let us help you keep those rooms full.

If you run an assisted living or other senior living community, you have rooms to fill.

Vacancies cost your money.

The population for your housing continues to grow, but does the competition.

You want a consistent flow qualified leads that come to you at a reasonable cost per lead.  And you want a process for staying in touch with those leads over several weeks or months.

That should be the goal of every assisted living marketing program.

Reach out to nearby residents – use our direct mail surveys to reach out to your wider community to conduct market research and identify future residents.

Promote One-on-One Tours – keep your name front and center and build your brand to those who may making a decision soon.

Seminar Invitations – bring future residents and their adult children to a free seminar to showcase your facility and answer their questions.

Professional Community Outreach – keep your name in front of health, legal and financial professionals who may be able to refer your community to their clients.

Stay-in-Touch Communications – use direct mail postcards and email to stay in touch with families that have expressed an interest in your community.

 

 

Why referrals are not enough

Whether you run a single community or a network of communities, marketing is always on your plate.

You may have gotten by on referrals, but you know they are spotty and do not provide the consistent flow of leads you need.

Marketing may not be your strong suit – or something you like to do – but you know it is essential if you’re going to keep your crews busy.

The trick is finding some way to maintain that flow of new business without having to spend your day chasing down new projects.

What you need is a system that consistently generates leads on the front end, and then nurtures those leads on the back end.

Ideally, you want that system that runs on auto pilot – 24/7 – so you can focus on what you do best.

Choosing a marketing partner

Finding the right marketing partner is hard.  Just do a Google search for “contractor marketing” or “contractor leads” and you’ll see there is no shortage of companies that are ready and willing to do business with you.

Most are website companies that offer beautifully designed and SEO-optimized websites for your industry.

Others provide online marketing services – meaning Google or Facebook advertising. Some offer social media services. And then of course, there are those contractor lead services through companies like Home Advisor and Angie’s List.

These services are all deserving of your attention … if that’s all you need.

If you’ve tried any of these services, chances are you’re still frustrated (even if you are happy with that particular service).

You’re frustrated, I think, because you’ve come to realize that marketing is more than a single activity.

  • A beautiful website impresses visitors but doesn’t generate traffic or leads – not consistently anyway.
  • An online advertising program can generate lots of clicks, but how many convert into leads?
  • Social media is great way to extend your message, but doesn’t stand alone as a marketing program.
  • Lead referral services vary widely in lead quality, lead costs and competitive rules.  Contractors have many contrary opinions about these services.

It’s time for an integrated approach

When you don’t have time to focus on your marketing, you tend to focus on the latest new thing. You jump from one activity to another hoping this new program will finally be the answer to your “new business” challenge.

If you’re like most people, you look for simple solutions … hands-free solutions … inexpensive solutions.

What you will soon realize is that the only solution is an integrated solution – one that combines your lead generation activities with a series of proven, consistent lead nurturing follow-up activities.

Create your own marketing funnel

You may be familiar with the marketing funnel (also known as the lead funnel or sales funnel).

The purpose of this funnel (regardless of what you call it) is to illustrate the need for assigning specific marketing activities to specific steps in the sales process.

As you can see with this funnel, you have multiple activities at the top of the funnel. These are very different activities but they all have one purpose – to capture the initial lead and get prospects to raise their hands and say they are interested.

Once the lead is generated and the prospect enters the funnel, there are many other activities that could be used to nurture or engage those leads until they are ready to buy.

In this funnel, we are showing many activities – many more than you are likely to need for your program. But it allows you to see the possibilities.

How can you bring this to your business?

You may be wondering if this is realistic for a small business like yours.  It is … with my help.

It may look like a lot of moving pieces, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

The beauty of this is that once we have it set up and working properly, you’ll have a system that continually generates a predictable flow of new leads and stays in touch with those leads throughout the sales process.

Moreover, you’ll have a sales lead system that works on auto-pilot.

Bob McCarthyLet’s get acquainted

My name is Bob McCarthy. I’ve been helping small businesses with their marketing programs for more than 30 years.

In the early years, my focus was on direct mail and print advertising. Today, my services have expanded to include email, search marketing, online advertising, websites and social media.

In my view, a good marketing program should include it a mix of activities – both online and offline.

It should also track and measure everything. If you can’t measure a marketing activity – if you can’t tell exactly how many leads a particular activity has generated – you shouldn’t be doing it.

As someone who began in the direct marketing business, I understand how direct response works – and how it can be used in all marketing activities. Not just direct mail. But email, online and yes, even print advertising.

I would like to bring this direct response mindset to your business.

You will be working with me

I am not a large company working with hundreds of clients at a time. I typically work with no more than a dozen clients at a time. I like it that way. I get to work with my clients one-on-one. I get to solve their problems myself.

When you call my office, you get me. When you become a client, I will develop your strategy. I will manage your campaigns. I will write your copy. I will work with you (usually by phone) to make whatever adjustments are needed to get you the desired results.

I’m not alone. I have a an experienced team of professionals behind me. I have graphic designers, web developers, other copywriters and social media experts available to work with me (and you) on a project basis.

I also have email service providers, printers, mail houses, landing page services and website hosting that I can bring into any project. But only if and when you need it.

What specific services do we provide?

As you will see below, we can help in a variety of ways.  We have our core services and then we provide a range of additional services that may or may not be of interest you.

We provide only those services that make sense for you.

Our core services …

Direct Mail – we can help you plan, create and execute direct mail campaigns for lead generation, direct selling, retail store sales and fundraising.

Email Marketing – we can help you create drip email sequences and solo email blasts to your targeted email lists. We can also help you build those targeted email lists for both lead nurturing and lead prospecting.

Online Advertising – we can help you build your online presence with paid search, display advertising and remarketing on Google and Facebook. We will work with to continually improve your cost per click and cost per conversion.

Marketing Surveys – we can help you develop direct mail and/or email surveys to generate leads and conduct market research on your target audiences.

Beyond our core services …

For many organizations, there’s so much more to do than just the big projects. You have other responsibilities that can often take over a big part of your day.

When we work with clients, we are often asked to help out with these day-to-day needs. So if needed, we can help you with:

Website Updates. We have extensive experience with WordPress websites and can assist you with updates, revisions, reorganization, new pages or blog posts, improved optimization and improved lead capture.

Lead Magnets. The key to direct response is the use of lead generation offers including lead magnets. We can work with you to develop informational lead magnets to meet your sales process goals.

Landing Pages. Every campaign should have its own landing page that is focused on that campaign. We create and post landing pages either on your website or on third-party platforms.

Content Strategy & Creation. If you’re focused on inbound marketing, we can help you plan and create content for your website to build organic traffic and capture leads.

Local Search. If you’re a local business selling to local customers, your SEO efforts should be focused on local search and getting your business to appear on a Google Map listing.

Social Media. Social media is free but time consuming. We use social media primarily to extend your message to a larger audience using only the appropriate social platforms for your audience.

Print Advertising. It may be a little old-school, but print advertising still works for some businesses. We believe in using direct response print advertising so you can generate immediate leads and measure your response.

Print Marketing Materials. If you need printed materials for hand outs at trade shows or to be placed on display, we can help you create and print those materials.

This is a “do-it-for-you” service

There are a lot of good marketing platforms out there for all types of services. Most of them are self-serve platforms that leave the implementation to you – and that require training and ongoing attention.

This can be a real challenge and frustration for many business owners.

If you work with me, you won’t have to worry about that. We create and manage all the platforms for you so you don’t have to be involved at all.

But if you do want to learn the platform, we will show you how it works and teach you how to do it yourself. Remember, the accounts we set up on your behalf are yours. And they will be yours even if we stop working together.

We start with an Action Plan

During the first week of our relationship, we will provide you with a step-by-step Action Plan that will outline everything we are planning to do on your behalf.

This will include every project we are planning and a timetable for those projects.

Of course, your input is important here so we will be looking for your feedback before anything gets finalized.

Flexible services and pricing

We understand not every business has the same set of needs – even within the same industry.

Some may already have a marketing program that simple needs some enhancements and adjustments. Others may be just starting out or need a complete overhaul of their marketing.

So we’ll hold off making any recommendations until we get to know you.

After we review your business and marketing needs, we’ll provide you with an itemized estimate that gives you the option of adding or removing different services.

Let’s start with a Strategy Session

If any of this interests you and you would like to find a better, more efficient way to run your marketing, let’s schedule an introductory Strategy Session.

There’s no cost or obligation involved, but I think you will find this very helpful in your own planning.

To schedule a 60-minute Strategy Session, please contact Bob McCarthy at 508-473-8643 or bob@mccarthyandking.com.