The senior living industry, like many others, has faced a 'new normal' with COVID-19. In this blog post, Tasneem Rossouw, Digital Copywriter at Huble Digital, provides five top tips of how you can future-proof your senior living brand strategy.
The year 2020 has set a new normal in almost every industry, and nowhere more so than in senior living. Operational demands have shifted. For example, new standards of care required by the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted how communities assess occupancy rates and affected traditional marketing tactics such as scheduled community visits.
As a result, ensuring optimal occupancy and engagement is one of the top challenges of 2020 — so why not future-proof your brand with senior living marketing efforts that acknowledge and transcend them?
Here are five tips to help you build that strategy:
Plan for the unexpected
Your plans for marketing your senior living community probably didn’t include how to manage during a global pandemic like COVID-19. And that’s not your fault — no amount of trends forecasting blogs could prepare us as a society for even just the first six months of 2020! Brand resilience now relies more on your ability to adapt quickly and efficiently to changes that global events demand.
For example, in the wake of health precautions sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, senior living communities that quickly stepped in with virtual tour experiences were able to maintain the quality of their buyers’ journey for prospects. Dive into how COVID-19 has changed the face of the senior living industry in this Barron’s article, and how your marketing efforts can be adapted to meet them.
Embrace what remains the same
Life is characterised by change, but some things that make a senior living marketing strategy effective, remain the same. The role technology plays in optimising your marketing efforts cannot be overstated — it was important before, and it’s even more important now.
For example, family values and authentic social connections remain at the heart of your community, and technology helps you keep those bridges of communication open for residents and their loved ones. Sharing how you use it to facilitate connections assures prospects of your brand’s continued warmth even during times of necessary social distancing.
Address stakeholder concerns head-on and be a solutions-oriented brand
Recent economic and social crises have had a demonstrable impact on how senior living communities are run. While some may not affect your marketing campaign, others, like the COVID-19 pandemic, may require open acknowledgement. Communities that talk about the challenge, how it impacts their residents and staff, and what they’re doing to address it, will build more brand trust than those who pretend it’s business as usual.
This blog post by Senior Housing News shares how marketing teams have adjusted their strategies in the face of COVID-19, partly by addressing concerns around the perceived infection risks of community living and adapting rather than denying.
Know what to leverage with digital transformation
Embracing the right technology can improve both the efficiency of your internal marketing operations, and foster new ways of connecting with prospects. For example, with the outbreak of COVID-19, best practice suddenly meant all staff that could, worked remotely, and that community visits for potential sign-ups went virtual. A resilient marketing and operations strategy will equip you with the hardware and software you need to make, and sustain, these kinds of shifts.
Partner with marketing technology experts
The strategic savvy that the post-2020 industry requires, coupled with the increasing need for digital transformation, can leave you feeling overwhelmed. After all, these come over and above the usual stressors that accompany meeting your occupancy quotas. A strategic agency partner can match your needs with technological solutions to put your message in front of your target audience, at the right time.
At Huble Digital, this is what we live for. As an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner, we’re always available to discuss your business challenges and propose solutions to optimise your customer experience and help you build a resilient business core. Chat to one of the team and future-proof your senior living business smartly and efficiently.
