5 Senior Living Marketing Team Roles Every Operator Needs
As senior living communities compete for the same occupants in today’s increasingly competitive landscape, effective senior living marketing team is more important than ever. Standing out from your competition is the #1 reason why your senior living community needs an experienced in-house marketing team…
… To execute a winning marketing strategy that finds, attracts, converts, nurtures, and retains more inquiries to drive towards your occupancy goals.
So, who should be on your all-star senior living marketing team?
Let’s build your rockstar senior living marketing team. We will start by defining your marketing team and their roles.
We’ll break it all down in this article, including:
- Which 5 marketing roles are a must-have
- Estimated salary ranges for each role
- How to leverage a senior living marketing agency to fill gaps on your team
Role #1: Director of Marketing
Why you need one: The Director of Marketing is the champion for all your marketing campaigns. They oversee the marketing strategy from conception to execution. As the director, they also motivate, mentor and monitor the progress of everyone on the marketing team. Your Director of Marketing will ensure all marketing efforts are on track. Those efforts will support your community’s strategic goals and initiatives.
How to choose one: As the captain of your marketing ship, you’ll want an experienced leader who understands the unique audience you’re targeting with your senior living marketing campaigns. In addition to having excellent communication, public relations and organizational skills, they should have a variety of technical and analytical skills. This will help them to navigate the ever-changing digital marketing landscape. These include a strong understanding of how to leverage content creation, email marketing, SEO, social media, PR and traditional and digital ads.
Typical salary range: According to Indeed, the national salary average for a Director of Marketing is $86,111. At the low end, salaries for this role come in around $49,485 and on the high end at $149,846. You’ll want to choose a number that is commensurate with your candidate’s education and experience as well as the average salary range in your specific city.
Role #2: Creative Director
Why you need one: A Creative Director oversees all things related to your visual branding such as your logo, typography, color palette, imagery and other graphic elements. They often set and maintain your brand guidelines. Your Creative Director will also manage graphic design projects for all offline and online marketing needs.
How to choose one: Creativity is key when looking to fill this role. You’ll want someone who has experience designing for a senior audience and who understands the nuances of selecting readable fonts and colors that offer strong contrast. Plus, they will have a strong command over classic layouts that are intuitive and easy to navigate for older users. Along with a creative spark, this person should understand design for multichannel marketing, have excellent listening and communication skills, work well in a fast-paced, multitasking environment and be a team player.
Typical salary range: Creative Directors make an average salary of $98,326 according to Indeed. At the low end, salaries for this role begin around $54,676 and peak at $176,822.
Role #3: Digital Marketing Manager
Why you need one: With a growing number of seniors exploring their living options online, your community needs a savvy Digital Marketing Manager. Someone who knows how to find and attract prospective families to your website and social media platforms. This essential marketing professional will help plan and execute your digital marketing campaigns including creating web content, emails, social media posts, display ads and landing pages.
How to choose one: A keen understanding of data analysis is a critical skill to look for in a Digital Marketing Manager. They need to be comfortable tracking and reporting the performance of every campaign so they can tweak content or other factors when needed. Plus, the right digital marketing manager can build upon winning campaigns that are giving maximum ROI. They should also have a passion for crafting compelling digital content for prospective residents and family members.
Typical salary range: On average, Digital Marketing Managers make $60,417 per year. At the low end, they can bring home $36,135 and at the high end of the scale, they can make as much as $101,016.
Role #4: Marketing Assistant
Why you need one: A Marketing Assistant provides indispensable support for the other members of your in-house marketing team. This person can help with copywriting, researching, maintaining marketing databases, updating social media accounts, formatting presentations and other administrative office duties.
How to choose one: Strong written and verbal skills are a must for your Marketing Assistant. They will be helping on a variety of campaigns. They should have excellent attention to detail, good organization skills and be just as comfortable working with the team as they are working alone on self-directed projects. The right marketing assistant should also have strong technical skills in all the software programs and platforms your community uses.
Typical salary range: The average U.S. salary for Marketing Assistants is $44,490 according to Glassdoor with a possible range of $32,000 to $62,000.
Role #5: Senior Living Marketing Agency Partnerships
Why you need them: Despite all the expertise that your all-star marketing team will undoubtedly have, there will be times you need a specialist to execute high-level marketing tactics that require more training, experience and skill. By adding a senior living marketing agency to your in-house team, you can tackle more technical marketing initiatives like SEO, PPC and marketing automation.
How to choose them: It’s all about results when it comes to choosing a senior living marketing agency to join your team. Of course you want an agency with a proven track record in the senior living space. You also want them to be able to show specific results in the areas you need help with to achieve your strategic goals this year and positively impact sales revenue. The right agency partner will be a great listener and responsive when you reach out for updates or assistance.
Typical cost of hiring a marketing agency: Most marketing agencies work on a monthly retainer, but you can also find some that work on fixed hourly or daily rates. Monthly retainers range from $1,800 to $6,000 per location depending on the type of services, team size, and agency’s location. An average monthly retainer cost of $3,500 according to Bark.
Putting Your Marketing Team to Work
Now that you have all the information needed to assemble the perfect in-house marketing team, you just need a winning marketing strategy to guide everyone’s efforts.
Check out our recent blog 5 Smart Strategies for Leveraging Digital Marketing to Increase Occupancy in 2023. You’ll find tips the whole team can use to create campaigns that help boost occupancy this year.
Expand Your In-House Marketing Team with Smart Girl Digital
There are so many ways you can leverage a senior living marketing agency expertise. Our goal is always to bolster the marketing efforts of your in-house team. Plus, we have experience leading in-house marketing teams to digital success. We can provide expert guidance with digital marketing strategy, local search optimization, reputation management, email marketing automation, content development and website conversion rate optimization.
Contact us today to book a Digital Discovery Call to discuss your strategic marketing initiatives and learn more about how we can support your in-house marketing team.
