NASHVILLE, TN — Making a strong impression at every stage of the prospect’s journey is an approach that will not only increase occupancy; will help seniors’ organizations build their brand, according to a panel of experts who spoke at the annual LeadingAge meeting on Sunday.

Journey-based planning, they said, involves developing and implementing an intentional sales enablement strategy that focuses on the customer experience. The approach uses relevant information, tools and content to help sales teams sell more effectively.

The senior sales cycle needs an average of 25 touch points – activities such as phone calls, emails and in-person visits – before a prospect becomes a resident – ​​more than the healthcare and direct-to-consumer industries, according to panelist Trisha Haber, group account director for ThomasARTS Marketing Group.

“There are a lot of activities to get someone to move into a community,” Haber said. “We know that for many communities, this is a lot of manual work that someone has to manage, especially if you have an executive director who wears many hats at a community.”

A journey-based process, she said, is designed to support the end-to-end customer experience, taking a large part out of local communities.

Personalize your marketing

Kelly Ornberg, executive strategy consultant at Oakmont Senior Living, said it’s important in the digital marketing world to get to know people on a personalized level.

“Storytelling is so powerful,” she said. “You need brand awareness to be competitive.”

Organizations that don’t tell their stories will be left behind, Ornberg said, likening them to yesterday’s Radio Shacks and Blockbusters when they need to be today’s Netflix and Peacocks.

“Your personalities today are not your mutations today,” she said. “There’s so much going on in the sales cycle process, so it’s important from a marketing perspective to keep your sales leaders and yourself focused on the relationship and a person’s sales needs.”

Integrating marketing automation into the sales cycle, she added, helps communities meet an individual’s needs.

Paul Barlow, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Age in transformationsaid that personalized marketing automation can tap into a community’s value proposition, information about the community – including its location, lifestyle factors, stage of the purchase journey, aging journey through thought leadership and anticipated objections.

Haber said it’s important for communities to use marketing to tell their story and what makes them different and unusual, and she said it’s important to put those messages on the platforms that older adults use:

• 99% of older adults use the Internet daily for email, health care searches, social networking and banking.
• 12% of people over the age of 63 are on TikTok.
• Over 47% of older adults spend an hour or more on Facebook and YouTube each day

But don’t forget about the other potential customers, namely the adult children of potential residents. According to Ornberg, only 28 percent of independent living residents said they made the decision to enter a community without the help of their adult children.

“Talking to a grown child is a different selling point than talking to mom and dad,” Ornberg said. “Ideas of safety, wants and needs are different.”

Marketing, she said, can target those adult children and educate them long before they might have a one-on-one meeting or conversation with their loved one. A good marketing program, she added, can educate families in a way that prepares them to take the leap and join a community.

“We’re in this because where you live matters,” Ornberg said.

getting started

Marketing and technology are moving at such a fast pace that communities can barely keep up, Ornberg said. Both she and Barlow recommended hiring smart people to be the brains behind the marketing strategy, allowing salespeople to meet prospects and their families at their level, offering customized programs, content and emails to help them move through through a complex process.

Barlow emphasized that the sales and marketing process is constantly evolving and should never be a “set it and forget it.” He said a community’s marketing program allows it to keep its promises to families.

Implementing a travel-based sales enablement program, Ornberg said, is done gradually and strategically and won’t pay dividends overnight. One Oakmont community, for example, took nine months to create sales and marketing workflows.

“Take your time and have the right things in place to build this,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is the future and we have to be able to find a way to keep up.”

For smaller communities that don’t have the budget to work with an agency, Haber recommended planning the trip and getting a message across before exploring the tools and technology platforms available. Start small, like a thank you email after a visit or a post-tour survey. And don’t be afraid to reach out to agencies for consulting — she said many smaller organizations can hire a consultant for 10 to 15 hours to build a strategy.

“If you can be taught, pay the experts to teach you,” Ornberg said.

The annual LeadingAge meeting continues until Wednesday. A representative said more than 6,100 people had registered as of Sunday evening.