The senior living market is expected to grow bigger as baby boomers age and plan for moving into a senior living community. If you’re in charge of senior living sales or marketing a senior living community you'll want to have a good handle on your company’s Cost Per Lead (or "CPL"). In this post we'll look at 3 inbound marketing tactics you can use to help reduce your communities cost per lead and start driving more residents.
Why CPL is important
First of all, your CPL will provide a benchmark and tell you if your company is moving the needle with its marketing efforts. Secondly, it will tell you which marketing technique is more effective so you can "double down" and can focus on what works.
According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report the average CPL for companies using inbound marketing is $135, while for companies using outbound marketing, the average CPL is $346. These figures show that inbound marketing costs less compared to outbound marketing, which imply that companies should focus more on inbound marketing.
"Inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads"
- Hubpot
How to Calculate CPL
If you want to measure the impact of your senior living marketing efforts, computing the CPL is necessary. The formula for CPL is simple: Cost Per Lead = Cost Per Click / Conversion Rate
Measure this for a period of time that you’re implementing a marketing strategy to have a basis in determining its effectiveness. Compare CPLs of your inbound marketing strategies (even outbound marketing strategies) to know what adjustments you need to make to lower the CPL.
*This chart from Enquire leads shows their breakdown of leads by source across the senior living industry.
Reduce CPL with these 3 tips
Since HubSpot’s report and other marketing experts recommend inbound marketing over outbound marketing for cost effectiveness, it is a good idea to focus efforts on this. Now, the question is, how can a marketer reduce the CPL when using inbound marketing? Here are three important tips you need to consider for developing a senior living marketing plan that will optimize your cost per lead.
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Study and create content for your ideal customer
Do you know your ideal customer/resident? Is he a senior considering independent living? Is he or she an adult-child who is in-charge of caring for aging parents or grandparents? Do they struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and need memory care?
Don’t waste your time and resources on marketing in general. Focus your inbound marketing efforts on answering the questions your ideal customers would ask. By putting out helpful content, whether in the form of blogs, videos or e-books, that solve your customer’s problems, your inbound marketing will be more effective and less costly in attracting the right kind of leads for your community.
Know also where you can find your ideal customer and be present in those places. If they hang around with their friends on specific social media channels, then be sure to put content there. If they read certain blogs or publications try to do a "guest blog" on one of these channels, etc.
*Great example of an e-book from Holiday Retirement geared at the "adult child" senior living persona
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Create landing pages that convert
How you create your landing pages affects the response you will get from potential customers. To increase the conversion rate of a landing page, here are a few tips that you should implement.
First, design your submission form using colors and font that look attractive to your customers. Second, ask from your customers the essential information only. For starters, a name, email address and telephone number should be enough. Third, a landing page with a lot of text can scare customers away, so just talk briefly about the benefits of your product or service.
For a determined period of time, check the conversion rate of your landing page. Make adjustments and check the results again. Keep on making adjustments until you reach an acceptable conversion rate.
*Example of what an A/B test of landing page looks like. Small changes can result in big differences in conversion rates. The only way to know is to test and measure them.
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Go H2H (Human-to-Human) with Your Social Media
H2H marketing (or Human to Human marketing) may be simply explained by the quote “Humans don’t buy from companies; humans buy from humans.” If that is so, inbound marketers should seriously consider the use of social media to show the human side of their company. How can you accomplish that?
Don’t just post press releases and product promotions on your social media page. Post entertaining or inspirational pictures, videos and articles you and your prospects will enjoy. Ask questions about senior living to hear what they have to say. Continue the engagement by offering solutions to senior living problems. With social media, it’s easier and cheaper (even free) for companies to make people feel that there’s a person behind a company. Hence, don’t ignore your social media channel. Make a connection first and the business will follow. Checkout our recent post on conversational marketing to learn more about using chatbots for senior living.
To learn more inbound senior living marketing tactics click the image below to get our guide to senior living lead generation. Many of the tactics in this e-book will help you reduce your cost per lead and in turn cost-per-move in at your community.
