The 3 P’s of Marketing Automation for Senior Living
The 3 P’s of Marketing Automation for Senior Living
Do you want a solution to supercharge leads for your senior living community? With the 3 P’s of marketing automation, you can do just that!
If you’re unfamiliar with marketing automation, don’t worry — you’re not alone. The word automation conjures up images of robots and AI.
But really…automation is all about making processes more manageable, efficient, and streamlined.
With marketing, automation you can set it up to be a simple or complex as you want. But it all starts with the 3 P’s – Process, Platform, and Partner!
Marketing automation in the senior living industry can help you optimize your sales processes by finding the right platform and collaborating with a strategic partner. These are the 3 most important tasks to ensure marketing automation success.
Whether you’re looking for new ways to boost lead generation for your community or you want to be on the cutting edge of digital marketing trends, keep reading to learn just how effective marketing automation for senior living can be!
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Marketing Automation for Senior Living
Marketing automation supports the speed to lead processes for senior living lead generation.
Rather than a new inquiry waiting around for community’s sales team to give them a call, a well-structured New Inquiry campaign can deliver the right message immediately after inquiry.
Or… instead of waiting for new lead handouts from a third party like A Place for Mom or chasing down cold leads manually, marketing automation allows your community to have an evergreen process for nurturing new prospects, leads, and residents on autopilot.
That doesn’t mean that automation replaces traditional sales & marketing.
On the contrary, it enhances it!
As noted in our Marketing Automation 101 blog, this can happen in several different ways…
- With CRM management (assessing lead scores so your sales team can reach out at the perfect moment)
- Through social media channels (with chatbots, automated posts, social ads, and direct messages laying the groundwork for a solid relationship)
- Using email marketing (i.e. prospect nurture campaigns, emails to lost leads, and even resident newsletters to stay top-of-mind for prospects)
- …And more!
Both the possibilities and the benefits of automation are endless. However, before a plan of action to implement new tactics can be outlined, it’s vital to understand where exactly marketing automation will fit into your community’s current strategy.
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The Process of Marketing Automation
The process of marketing automation can be a long one. For example, did you know that on average, it takes 25 touches to convert senior living customers? (Source) Let’s walk through a handful of possible touches and how a community can automate them.
Here’s the scenario… A daughter is searching for an independent living community for her parents. Both are active and in good health, so her main focus is finding a community with a calendar full of events, lots of green space, and a friendly and welcoming environment suitable for visits from the grandchildren.
Touch #1: Google Search
75% of senior living prospects start looking for local communities via a search engine. The most common? Google.
- What can be automated? It’s not enough to add business hours and a website link to your Google My Business page. What prospective customers really want to see is activity. Automating periodic messages, photos, videos, and event promos ensures anyone who comes across it sees just how lively your community is.
BONUS: Don’t forget about those reviews! Automating a post-move-in email campaign for happy residents and/or resident family members gives them the opportunity to share exactly what they like about your community. This sort of information is a goldmine for potential customers.
Touch #2: Community Website
Think of your website as a digital hub. It’s a jumping-off point meant to inspire visitors to take the next step in their customer journey through marketing automation.
- What can be automated? Quite a bit actually, but, for the sake of simplicity, the one automation you CANNOT MISS is a contact form. With a strong marketing automation platform and strategy, a new inquiry from your website forms will add a name and email to your CRM, then use their activity on your website to determine lead scoring values. This helps sales teams know who may be ready to move in & who needs a bit more convincing.
BONUS: Create a value-add resource. If a website visitor does happen to need some convincing, a well-crafted resource can help! With it, your prospects learn about their options and 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.
Touch #3: Social Media
Social networking isn’t just for the kids! 46% of seniors age 65+ use Facebook regularly — in addition to 79% of their younger loved ones.
- What can be automated? The most important thing to automate is your social posts. Keep your community entertained and informed with a mix of upcoming events, third-party content that’s relevant to your brand, and heartfelt stories from other residents, staff, or family members.
BONUS: Automate DMS. While community pages are typically created with current residents in mind, keep prospects in the loop by automating messages for common questions. This helps communities save time when interacting with prospects outside of the sales funnel.
All three of these touches provide the opportunity to impact prospective customers — but that’s just the beginning. These touchpoints happen pre-awareness, at the very top of your marketing funnel.
The meat & potatoes of your marketing automation strategy come after the opt-in. With a robust marketing automation plan, you can use email automation to continue nurturing prospects to augment and accelerate your community’s sales process.
The Best Platform for Your Automation Plans
Selecting the right marketing automation platform is vital. It’s a seemingly small decision that can have a BIG impact on your automation efforts. Luckily for you, we know just what to look for to help you and your team decide.
1. Assess Immediate Needs: This is two-fold. 1) What is your current sales CRM? and 2) How many people are currently in your database with an email addres?
Since most, if not all, email marketing platforms charge by the number of subscribers, the very first thing you should note is how many subscribers your community currently has. At the very least, handle the automation you may already have.
When it comes to your current sales CRM, the best marketing automation platforms leverage data from your sales process via your sales CRM. Therefore, you want to make sure your marketing automation platform integrates with your sales CRM.
2. Scale up With Automation: Next, think about the future and your overall digital strategy plans.
- How many campaigns do you have on your upcoming strategy plans?
- How are your driving traffic to your website?
- How effective is your website at converting visitors to inquiries?
- How are your automation campaigns supporting each stage of your sales cycle?
The perfect automation platform for your community leaves room for driving inquiries, developing drip campaigns, and communicating each touchpoint back to your sales CRM.
3. Sort Out Wish List Items: Automated email workflows are just one part of marketing automation platforms.
Some other little-known features are call tracking, web form creation, appointment calendar tracking, and more. Assess your wish list and choose the platform that can meet your strategy plan needs.
Have questions about what Marketing Automation Platform is the best for your organization? Let’s Chat!
We have experience with over all major automation platforms and are certified in the top automation platforms serving the senior living industry. Plus we have a full team of automation experts to help you get set up and started seamlessly.
Get a Strategic Marketing Automation Partner
Listen… you don’t need an agency to get started with marketing automation. As noted above, the tips and tools outlined can help get you started just fine.
However, if knowing the ins and outs of marketing automation is the fire to supercharge your lead generation efforts, partnering with a smart marketing team is the gasoline.
Just like selecting the right platform can boost your automation efforts, so can partnering with the right team.
Benefits of a Dedicated Marketing Automation Partner
Hit the Ground Running – While other agencies struggle to strategize for senior living, we have the knowledge and experience to implement the above strategies for your senior living community.
Done For You Services – We have tried-and-true automation services no matter where you are in your digital marketing journey.
- Our Google Jumpstart program can help you grow in your local market
- Our Funnel Sprint focuses on optimizing your current funnels to maximize marketing efforts
- Our Smart MAP System is a full-service solution to suit all of your automation needs
Experience Matters – When it comes to marketing automation for senior living, we know what works and what doesn’t. Our team doesn’t just have digital marketing and automation experience, we have experience working in the senior living industry — on the operator side, on the agency side, and on the vendor side.
No learning curve needed with Smart Girl!
If you’re ready to supercharge your automation efforts, click below to schedule a FREE Digital Discovery Call. We’d love to chat with you to learn more about your community and how we can help you use marketing automation to increase occupancy.
