In our three-part series of the Impact of Digital, we’ve been covering the value of having a holistic digital marketing strategy for senior living operators.
Part One focuses on the foundation elements of a smart digital strategy.
In Part Two, we cover smart search and conversion strategies for increasing qualified inquiries.
Now, let’s dive into Part Three of this Impact of Digital Series…
If you’ve made it this far in the series (or are interested in leveling up your automation game), then you know that thriving in a modern day marketplace means that savvy senior living communities and operators must be implementing a digital-first strategy faster than ever before.
With the expanded sales cycle by capturing contact information earlier in the research phase, the need for automation support is an increasingly important piece of your digital foundation.
Nurturing families through their journey with valuable information improves your sales and marketing alignment while giving families information they need to make their decisions. Imagine nurturing leads on auto-pilot while team members are focused on tours.
The true impact of your digital strategy is brought together with a smart lead nurturing plan that can follow up in meaningful ways automatically.
With better technology to capture inquiries on the first touch and improved marketing automation to gain leads earlier in the buying cycle, the sales cycle grew in 2023. (Aline 2023 EOY Benchmark report)
There are so many ways to implement thoughtful and personalized communication touchpoints in workflows that align with your sales process.
In this article, we are going to share specific takeaways we have seen that work based on our client work from a holistic digital strategy perspective.
For senior living operators looking to find the same level of success in their marketing automation strategy, let’s dive into the specifics of how we created these results:
- Thoughtful & intentional customer journey mapping
- Continuing the conversation with content that adds value and nurtures relationships
- Measuring what matters to meet lead volume and occupancy goals
According to WelcomeHome, “Despite having low volume as a direct lead source, leads from marketing automation sources have the highest tour rates of the online category, indicating that prospects are well-educated on senior living and prepared to move forward.”
As certified automation experts, the Smart Girl team has seen how simple, but automatic emails full of value-add resources can augment and accelerate the sales process. So…let’s dive in!
Automating Lead Nurturing Thoughtfully & Intentionally
Now that you are driving qualified traffic to a well optimized website…what’s next?
“Successfully converting an inquiry to a move-in takes a quick response to keep leads hot, but without an objective, automated way to prioritize your efforts, your most promising leads could quickly fall under the radar and turn cold.” (Aline, 4 Ways Lead Scoring Can Improve Conversions)
An often overlooked and underrated leg of the three-legged stool is the marketing automation platform. Nurturing leads once they’ve made an inquiry is a foundational piece of your digital tactic.
- What happens once a lead makes an inquiry by form from your website?
- What happens once they’ve called the community to book their tour?
- What happens after they tour?
The ‘what happens next’ question is often left up to the manual management of the sales team in the community. By doing this, senior living sales leaders don’t have visibility into all the activities that are happening to nurture hot leads. Senior living sales counselors are overwhelmed with all the tasks they have to keep up with. And…it limits the number of leads that can be worked thoughtfully and intentionally by the sales team.
This is where marketing automation and lead nurture campaigns come into the play. Starting with the basics, every senior living community should have three (3) foundation lead nurture campaigns in place:
→ First, a new inquiry welcome campaign.
→ Next, a post tour follow up campaign
→ Finally, a long term nurture campaign (for those not quite ready to make their decision)
There are many other types of nurture campaigns that can be created. Nurture campaigns can be segmented by level of care, point of contact, assigned sales counselor, and so many other options.
But…if you aren’t using a marketing automation tool that is integrated with your sales CRM, you are missing out of the depth of connection your marketing messages can have with your sales processes.
In order to thoughtfully and intentionally leverage the efficiencies of marketing automation, senior living communities must have a plan in place so sales and marketing teams both know what is going on.
Here are the steps to get you started with any type of lead nurturing campaign:
- Start by mapping out the nurture campaign you want to build.
- Identify who the audience is for this campaign and the sales stage they are in
- Define how many communication points you will have in the campaign
- Set the cadence between each communication point
- Draft up the message for each communication in this campaign
- Design & build your campaign in your MAP system
Ongoing Measurement & Feedback Loop for Real-Time Adjustments
After putting all the pieces together for your holistic digital strategy, we cannot forget about measuring what matters. Reporting and metrics are the backbone that drive all creative decisions.
Ongoing measurement using your sales and marketing data will make your team stronger and smarter while driving more results for each community in your portfolio.
For each tactic in your digital strategy, you probably have a report format specific to that tactic. Those metrics are important and relevant to that tactic. But senior living leadership is often looking for higher-level reporting data.
Consider building a global reporting dashboard that showcases your results in a visually pleasing and easy-to-understand format. Dynamic dashboard tools exist to help you with this part of your digital strategy.
Reporting Platforms
- Google Studio offers a way to incorporate your GA4, Google Search Console, and Google Ads data into any myriad of visualization charts.
- ActiveDEMAND users have access to pre-built reporting dashboards that visualize lead, tour, deposit, and move-in attribution by bringing together first party data and your CRM data for an industry-specific set of reports.
HOT TIP FOR YOUR DASHBOARD: Any dashboard of data that you are using to make decisions for your organization should be owned by your organization. Avoid relying on third-party reports and static PDFs that you will lose when you leave that third party. Build your dashboard using tools your team has invested in directly and ask for ownership access for any dashboard created by an external partner.
Creating a Feedback Loop
Regular monthly reporting and calls to review the results are critical to your marketing success. Internal and third party stakeholders should have reporting dashboards that are accurately visualizing the data of what is happening in your digital mix.
This includes measuring volume of marketing qualified leads versus sales qualified leads, market source attribution to show where traffic and conversions are coming from, and sales stage advancement.
On those monthly (or bi-weekly) calls to review the reporting, senior living marketing teams should consider the process for providing a feedback loop that allows for real-time adjustments that optimize performance over time.
Having an open discussion with your partners about the sales data, lead volume, closing rates, and more helps everyone make the tweaks necessary to deliver more qualified leads. This takes time, trust, and true partnership for everyone to be moving the same direction.
Bring your partners together with open communication to ensure your holistic approach to doing digital right involves everyone who is making an impact on your strategy.
Remember… One part of your digital strategy can have an impact on another part. So we all must work together to help community teams reach their occupancy goals.
Final Takeaways
These takeaways are grounded in our work with one senior living operator who is thriving with more qualified leads at a lower cost because of these steps.
At Smart Girl Digital, we are experts in senior living marketing automation platforms. We are certified with the leading platform, ActiveDEMAND. And, we specialize in creating and automating campaigns that deliver results.
For clients using our Smart MAP program, they benefit from a library of over 15 campaign frameworks designed to work with the leading CRM integrations.
To learn more about Smart Girl’s automation programs, book a discovery call.
Want proof? Here are the results achieved for one operator within their first 12 months using Smart Girl Digital:
- 47% increase in organic traffic year-over-year
- $76k+ saved in Google Ads spend in 9 months
- 963% increase in Google Ads conversions
- 80% reduction in cost per inquiry
- 50% lower cost per move-in
- 71 move-ins facilitated by consistent nurturing with value-add content
- Post inquiry engagement rates that are 50% higher than industry average
