Who do you market to in your senior living marketing program? It may seem like a silly question with a very obvious answer. However, if you were going to say “seniors,” your answer is incomplete. With targeted marketing for senior living communities, the role of decision makers cannot be ignored. To do so is dangerous to any independent living or assisted living facility that wishes to reach objectives for occupancy. Sticking by how you marketed in the past will not bode well for your future.  

Know Your Audiences

Targeted marketing for senior living communities is not about marketing to your audience. It’s about marketing to your audiences: both of them. That is to say: seniors and their adult children (who are often the decision makers and are often female). The information that family members want (and how they want it) can differ considerably from their parents. In the past, the adult children didn’t necessarily figure into marketing strategies very much. Effective senior living marketing does not make that mistake.

In its senior living marketing, Dreamscape Marketing has identified three primary concerns that the adult children of seniors have about senior living communities:

• Location (Is it too far away from them to visit easily? Is it in a “nice” neighborhood?)
• Cost (Are the apartments worth the monthly fees? What percentage of the entrance deposit is refundable?)
• Reviews of the community by residents or their adult children (Are they happy? Are they satisfied but with certain reservations?)

Despite these priorities, any number of senior living communities are content to continue marketing more traditional aspects like the quality of the food and certain amenities, which tend to be the more baseline concerns for future residents.

These same communities might encourage a senior living marketing agency to fill their website with photos of smiling seniors in swimming pools and on exercise equipment. However, they often don’t fill in the blanks for the adult children with detailed landing pages concerning: 

• Financial & legal information
• Specifics about what the community can do to promote healthy aging

Any successful targeted marketing for senior living communities must take these concerns into account. Any senior living community that struggles to achieve higher occupancy rates must look to the concerns of seniors and their families as well.

Targeted Marketing for Senior Living Communities: It’s a Two-Fold Plan

A truly qualified senior living marketing agency knows full well that the term “senior living marketing” is almost a misnomer. Why? Because in the end, you’re marketing to two separate target audiences simultaneously: seniors and their adult children. Each audience has overlapping priorities as well as different concerns. Ignoring one audience in order to market to the other is counterproductive. Targeted marketing for senior living communities means being able to serve both audiences equally. 

Any senior living marketing strategy must completely understand each target audience in order to be effective. On your website and your social media, efforts must be taken to create content for each target audience. For example, a tab on your website specifically for the adult children is a smart idea, especially if they are the decision makers. They may have little concern about the size of the pool but they will have plenty of questions about your continuum of care.

Targeted marketing for senior living communities is essential for increasing the number of move-ins to your community. If you’re looking to fine-tune your digital media to better market to both of your target audiences, we can help. Dreamscape Marketing has created hundreds of websites for our healthcare clients. Call us today at 888.307.7304 and let’s discuss how to make targeted marketing for senior living communities work for you.