WHAT'S GROWING ON

Although marketing and sales strategies for senior living mirror other industries, it is important to understand what makes senior living unique. Understanding the differences in behavior, timeline, and how senior living prospects move through the buyer’s journey can help marketing and sales teams customize their efforts to their audience.

If you’ve been searching on a company’s website for a quick answer, odds are you’ve seen or used automated chat messaging. Chat Automation, also known as chatbots, is the fastest-growing channel for companies to provide information and handle customer service inquiries. In fact, the use of chatbots has increased 92% since 2019.

Email Marketing is becoming one of the most popular and direct ways to get in touch with your prospects. In fact, 95% of companies using marketing automation are taking advantage of email marketing. These companies have seen that for every $1 spent on email marketing, they see an average return of $42 (DMA, 2019).

Every person has been on the buyer’s journey—even if you didn’t know there was a name for it! The buyer’s journey is the process of realizing that you have a problem, and the series of choices you make to solve this problem.

Marketing funnels are the different stages that a prospective customer goes through until they reach the final step: conversion. The idea of a marketing funnel is that there are many leads, or potential customers, at the top of the funnel, but much fewer at the bottom. The purpose of the funnel is to narrow down your leads to those who have a high probability of becoming a customer.

Managing your senior living contact list can be a demanding task, but a CRM system can provide the necessary assistance. CRM may mean “Customer-Relationship Management”, but these programs are for every lead, customer, or contact that interacts with your senior living community. Whatever lifecycle status a contact is, these programs allow you to fully manage, engage, and communicate with your audience.­

As more and more senior living communities begin to adopt inbound marketing strategies, the process of nurturing leads is becoming even more important. However, many companies are unfamiliar with what “lead nurturing” means and how it benefits their community.