More and more people are searching online for senior living communities. The senior living search terms they're using are also changing. This is because the generation of Baby Boomers are aging. As such, seniors as well as their "adult children" are looking online to find information about senior living options. With the numerous different demographics that are searching for information online it's important to have solid assisted living marketing personas developed.
Potential "Personas" in Assisted Living Marketing
As stated above there are multiple different type of people that could potentially be looking for information on assisted living. Because of this fact it's more important that ever to identify and cater to each of these very different demographics. Potential target personas for assisted/independent living include:
- The Senior
- The "Adult Child" of a Senior
- A Professional Referral Partner Community
- The Spouse of an Ailing Senior
Benefits of Well Defined Marketing/Buyer Personas
To make well defined marketing personas it takes a bit of time and effort. You may be saying to yourself "I know who my potential buyers are, why do I need to spend time making personas"? While you might have a solid grasp on who your potential residents are there a numerous reasons to still create in depth personas for your customers.
93% of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals report segmenting their database by Persona. - Boardview
1.) A Deeper Understanding of Customer's Needs/Interests:
During the process of creating target personas you'll take a deep dive into the person's gender, geographic location, income level, age, interests, education level, job, challenges, and goals. By taking the time to write out information for all of these areas you start to get a deeper understanding of who your potential customers are and what motivates them to take action on certain purchasing decisions. You may think that you have a solid understanding of your potential customers but until you write everything out it's tough to visualize the full picture.
How to Leverage It: By knowing the problems your potential residents face, you can cater your content to your audience in a way that they'll find valuable and useful. Use these insights into your customers' needs and wants to identify the topics your prospects want to learn more about, and create blog content and downloadable content around those topics. For example, a great blog post for the persona of an adult child might be "3 ways to tell if your Dad needs assisted living."
(Profile of a famous Hubspot Persona "Marketing Mary." It's often fun to create personas roughly based on real people, for example at your community you could have a "Senior Sam", etc. )
2.) Knowledge of Where Your Customers Spend Time Online:
Once you know the background of each of your target personas, this insight will help you gain a better understanding of where your where they spend their time online. You'll discover which sites they use to find information, and which social network platforms they're on most frequently. Each persona in your target list will have different ways that they use the internet. As a digital marketer it's hugely important to know where your target audience goes when they're online.
How to Leverage It: Knowing this information will allow you to better target your assisted living content marketing efforts to specific site and to promote it in the places your potential prospects are most likely to see it. For example, if you find that your "spouse of an ailing senior" persona tends to spend most of their time on a specific blog you'll have a better understanding of the type of content they like to read and the best sites for you to publish it on. The prospects you want to reach are more likely to react to the content that interests them if they find it using the online channels that they already are used to going to.
A case study by MarketingSherpa found that buyer personas created a 171% increase in marketing-generated revenue.
3.) Consistency Across Your Entire Business:
How to Leverage It: This information you've created is incredibly useful for your sales team at your community. For example if a lead is determined to be a designated persona, the sales rep can tailor their pitch before they even connect with the prospect over the phone. The conversation that a sales person has with the adult child of a senior could be totally different that the ones they have with the senior themselves. The adult child will have different questions and concerns and by tailoring each step of your sales process to the person you're speaking to you'll have a much higher chance of converting that person.
Each audience member has different questions and different needs. You have to be conscientious about the kind of care you're providing and who your market really is. This will allow you to not only funnel more traffic to your site, but more effectively engage them once they get there. If you'd like to get a full year's marketing gameplan, which includes customized target personas for your community, checkout our NextWave Starter Pack.
