7 Digital Marketing Trends to Boost Senior Living Occupancy in 2023
7 Digital Marketing Trends to Boost Senior Living Occupancy in 2023
With Q4 well underway and budget season in full swing, we know that you’ve already got our eye on trends to grow your occupancy in 2023. As marketing consultants for senior living operators, we’re looking at new digital marketing trends. Understanding these trends can help senior living communities attract and nurture fresh leads throughout the new year.
There is no denying the importance of a solid digital marketing strategy for your communities. As we gear up for 2023, let’s take a look at seven digital marketing trends you should aim to incorporate into your marketing plan.
Below you will discover:
- How to provide value and create an interactive digital experience
- 4 Tools to automate your social media
- New ways to leverage influencer marketing
- Strategies to increase your digital transparency
- Why you need to collect more data
- Why every campaign should be automated
- When it’s time to work with a SMART digital partner
Provide Value & Create an Interactive Website Experience
When prospects first visit your website, they are often in the research phase of their journey. They are looking for insight on how your community can meet a particular need for themselves or for a loved one. But, they have more questions and are really looking for some guidance.
One quick and easy way you can help them navigate this critical stage in today’s complex digital sales funnel is by offering a no-pressure interactive assessment.
In a matter of minutes, a well-crafted online assessment tool can help your prospects learn about their options, gain clarity on their readiness to take the next step. It may even prompt them to make first contact to schedule a tour or speak with someone directly in your community.
By having a tool, like an online assessment or quiz, you can provide value and guidance while creating an interactive digital experience. The information you can gather helps you inform your prospective family member with the right information at the right time.
With this information, you can provide a curated customer journey and sales experience that meets the family where they are in the decision making journey. Your sales teams have more insights to their prospects and creating automated follow up email campaigns can be written based on how they answer key questions in your assessment.
Create Your Assessment Easily with Roobrik
The good news is you do not have to reinvent the wheel by creating an interactive assessment tool from scratch. Software experts like Roobrik have already developed proven and customizable assessments that are tailored for senior living. They can easily be integrated into your website.
We encourage our senior living clients to add personalized assessments to their websites in 2023 because they pull double duty. On one hand they empower your prospects with insights based on their responses to the survey questions. On the other hand they empower your sales force by feeding them warm leads along with helpful data about where those leads are in the decision-making process.
Automate Your Social Media
With 46% of seniors age 65+ using Facebook regularly — in addition to 79% of their younger loved ones — you already know your online marketing strategy should include social media in 2023.
But, are you using an automation tool to schedule and optimize your posts so they hit your target audience at the best times?
By scheduling posts with an automation tool, you not only ensure that your social feed stays updated with fresh content, you also save your marketing team time while allowing them to collaborate more seamlessly. Within a social media automation tool, your copywriter can add all the text and tags for each post. Then your graphic designer can follow up with images. Finally, your social media manager can review and improve all the posts before they get shared with your followers.
Another benefit of using social media marketing automation is you can push your Facebook content to other social media platforms like Instagram without additional effort. That approach allows you to expand your social media presence while focusing primarily on the platforms your target audience uses the most.
We’ve compiled a shortlist of a few popular social media automation platforms you may want to consider using in 2023.
Social Media Automation Platforms:
- Cloud Campaign – user-friendly drag-and-drop interface makes scheduling content quick and easy for beginners. Plus it `offers drip campaign scheduling for recurring posts. Plans start at $34 per month making it the most affordable of the four platforms listed.
- Social Bee – organizes your posts into content categories to ensure a nice mix of engaging content. Business accounts start at $39 per month.
- PromoRepublic – tracks views and clicks across all social media accounts and features local SEO and Google Business Profile reports. Accounts start at $49 per month (billed annually).
- Sprout Social – at $89 per user per month (billed annually) it is the most expensive option on our list, but it offers one integrated inbox where you can view and respond to comments and direct messages for all of your social media accounts..
Leverage Influencer Marketing to Boost Word of Mouth
Senior influencers are taking social media by storm. While they may not rival their millennial counterparts in terms of followers, the number of seniors with an impressive following is growing annually. In fact, Instagram’s top senior influencers have enjoyed a 24% increase in their following since 2017.
Why are “grandfluencers” on the rise? According to Sprout Social, it is all about trust. Consumers trust recommendations that come from older people. With age comes experience, so if a senior influencer approves a product, consumers are more likely to trust the endorsement.
You can start small, using micro influencers who live in your community and already have a social media following. Or, if you want to aim higher, you can use an influencer search tool to help you find the right influencers to target an even broader audience. A good example of an influencer who may benefit your community is the adult children of your ideal resident.
Increase Your Digital Transparency
Moving into a senior living community is a major life change for both seniors and their loved ones. Naturally, everyone involved will have a lot of questions. What are the monthly fees? What other expenses might they incur?
Making it easy for people to access this type of key information on your website, without making them jump through hoops or fill out cumbersome forms, builds trust. It also ultimately saves your staff time from answering questions that you’ve already answered on your website.
Before the new year starts, take some time to evaluate your website for transparency. Think about ways you can make information easier to access on your website to improve the overall web experience for online visitors.
Areas to consider:
- Do you have a Q&A page linked on your homepage?
- Do you feature blogs on your homepage that answer important questions?
- Does your site offer floor plans or virtual tours?
- Should you be listing your prices on your website?
If you answered no to any of the above, you know where you can make updates for 2023.
Bonus article: If you want help rethinking your content strategy Creative Copywriting for Senior Living Sales Funnel Success includes tips for everything from web pages to blogs, paid ads and social media posts. It is a must-read if you’re looking to breathe new life into the copywriting of your content plans in 2023.
Collect More Data
It’s more crucial than ever for senior living operators to gather data in order to execute customized digital marketing campaigns. General audience campaigns rarely pack the same punch as targeted campaigns. But, to capture the highest ROI from your targeted marketing efforts, you need to know how to reach the right prospect at the right time. For that, you need accurate data.
Fortunately, if you have a website, a marketing automation platform, and a social media account, you’re likely already sitting on a treasure trove of data thanks to Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.
What type of prospects are you already attracting? What content is luring them in?
Do not start the new year without combing through your 2022 reports to answer these questions and learn more about what you’re already doing well. Also, take note of the content that has the lowest engagement and may need to be completely revamped in the new year. Learn more in our blog post Auditing Your Community’s Digital Marketing Plans
Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns
If you’re still manually creating email marketing campaigns in 2023, you will get outpaced by senior living communities that use automated marketing platforms to perform a wide range of activities. These activities can include sending targeted emails, triggering follow-up sales messages, requesting online reviews, and even handling customer service chats with online visitors.
There are a ton of automated solutions on the market so it is worth researching to find the best fit for you. At a minimum, having key 4 must-have marketing automation workflows will ensure that you are staying top of mind for prospects at every stage of their journey.
You can work with a consultant that specializes in leveraging marketing automation to help you set up the most effective workflows to achieve your marketing goals in 2023! Ask about our MAP Tech program for senior living communities.
Work with a SMART Digital Partner
Let’s face it, staying on top of every new trend associated with the various digital funnels for senior living operators is getting more challenging every year — even for the most experienced marketing professionals.
New algorithms, apps, and automated tools are being released almost daily. It can be overwhelming for you to keep abreast of all the exciting changes in the world of senior living marketing.
There are a lot of moving parts to building a successful marketing strategy. Start by making sure you have your digital foundations in place. Then, cut yourself a break and align with a digital marketing partner that can take some of the work off your plate while helping you out-market your competition.
Here are just a few of the digital marketing tasks a smart partner can help take off your plate:
- Content writing for blogs, webinars and website
- Landing page creation
- Lead magnet creation
- Online reputation management
- Organic and local SEO
- Paid ads management
- Sales CRM integration
- Social media strategy and management
- Website redesign
- Video creation and editing
Be sure you understand how all of these tasks and elements come together to help you reach your occupancy goals in the New Year. The right partner will come in alongside your leadership team to make recommendations, provide feedback, and execute a strategy that delivers results.
Get Your Digital Marketing Strategy Ready for 2023 with Smart Girl Digital
We have shared a lot of digital marketing trends that are sure to help your senior living community succeed next year. But, our guidance does not have to end just because this article is coming to a close.
We are here to help you implement a solid digital marketing strategy in 2023. This includes all the essentials like marketing automation, SEO, paid ads, email marketing and so much more.
Contact us now to schedule a FREE Digital Discovery call. It’s the perfect opportunity for us to learn more about what you are already doing. We will also explore some of the proven tools, tactics, and strategies to take your marketing to the next level and beyond. Click below to book now!
