Independent Living Facility Marketing & Web Design
As an independent living facility, you pride yourself on providing residents with the best care possible. You also want to make sure that not only residents are comfortable with what you have to offer but their families, too. This begins with how your facility markets itself. While the final decisions will come down after in-person visits by family members, the best way to attract these visits is with the right marketing approach.
With the aid of Simplemachine, you’ll have a team of professionals working with you and your independent living facility. Whether you’re looking for a rebranding or are struggling with bringing potential residents into the fold, Simplemachine can help develop the right marketing approach for your facility.
Connecting with Different Demographics
While your clients are of one demographic, you will need to focus on connecting with several demographics. It isn’t just connecting with future residents. You also need to connect with their families. Several marketing approaches are needed to connect with these different demographics. The information that attracts future residents to your website will not be the same as what attracts their family members to your website.
It is important to not use a blanket marketing approach. Instead, you must segment the approach. You may even want to use different landing pages and outreach methods to connect with these demographics. This way, you’ll improve your ability to connect with each demographic while showcasing what makes your independent living facility different from others in the community.
Localized Search Engine Optimization
You service a specific community. Most future residents will not want to move far from their current living area. They often still have friends in the area and activities they participate in. Therefore, future residents are most likely going to come from within the local area. This means you’ll need to improve your localized search engine optimization.
When someone begins searching for independent living facilities, they will do so with the hopes of finding one locally. They will likely click on the first link and then move down the list provided by the search engine. The higher up your facility’s website is on these localized searches, the greater the chance of immediately attracting the website visitors. There may only be a handful of independent living facilities in the community. And the last thing you want is to fall behind these other service providers.
The beauty of boosting your localized SEO is it doesn’t need to be complicated. With the help of Simplemachine, you will have your website tweaked to boost localized search engine rankings. Simplemachine will perform a complete website audit to see what’s working, what isn’t working and what can be done to boost the performance of your website. If you’re interested in a complete website redesign, this can be done. But if you like the way it currently looks, Simplemachine can assist with making the needed changes that will improve your search engine results.
Promote What Makes Your Facility Different
When marketing your facility, it isn’t just about the services you provide. It’s what sets your facility apart from the competition. Perhaps you have more professionals on hand to assist with the needs of residents. Or maybe you schedule more activities for residents, plan trips or offer an assortment of meals that are not available at other facilities.
Each point of interest that sets your facility apart from the competition needs to be highlighted. You need to showcase this information. Family members and potential residents research what locations have to offer. After viewing a few websites share that information will begin to all look the same. However, if your facility goes above and beyond or offers something unique, these elements are worth promoting. This often becomes the difference between scheduling a visit and the potential resident looking elsewhere.
Stay Connected on Review Services
This is an area that many independent living facilities struggle with. Services like Yahoo, Google, Yelp and others all offer reviewing options for individuals. These reviews come from residents and the family members of residents. But they can also come from prospective residents and what they experienced during a visit. A single poor review can affect the prospect of future visits and prevent prospective residents from ever walking through your front doors. To prevent that from happening, you need to stay connected with these different review services.
You can do this by claiming your facility on searches like Yelp and Google. Once you do this, you will be notified whenever a review is made. You can respond to the review with a response comment. So, if someone had an issue during their visit, you can address the problem. Often, when someone has a problem during a visit, it’s because someone happened behind the scenes that they were not aware of. It could be as simple as the heat in one room might have been off because repairmen were working on the HVAC system. Meanwhile, they negatively reviewed your facility because it felt cold to them.
While it can be difficult to remove a negative review, you will maintain face by addressing the concerns in the review. By doing so, you demonstrate that everyone who enters your facility is important to you. It shows that you will do what is necessary to ensure the highest quality experience for residents and potential residents.
Keep Family Up to Date on What You’re Doing
One of the best ways to market your independent living facility is to showcase what your facility is doing. Family members want to know their parents or friends are being taken care of. However, calling them is not always an option. That is why you can showcase what you’re doing through social media, through blogs and other updates. Through a blog, you can discuss everything from future plans to prepping for life in a new facility and what family members can do to make the transition a bit easier.
Keeping family members updated on what’s going on and reporting on the events residents are taking part in helping to keep family members happy. But it can also help promote your facility to potential residents. Word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to bring in new residents. Satisfied family members will share the information with others who might need to transition a loved one into such a facility.
You don’t want an outdated website without a social media presence. Thanks to an updated Facebook page and blog posts, you’ll keep current family members up to date while potentially attracting new residents as well.
When creating a marketing plan for your independent living facility, it is important to focus on future residents and their families as well. You will have several key demographics to focus on. Simplemachine will help you develop the right marketing approach for these varied demographics.
Are you ready to take your marketing to the next level? Do you want more information on how a new marketing approach can boost website and facility visits from prospective clients? Contact the Simplemachine team at your earliest convenience for more information.
