Increasing Occupancy with Digital Marketing & SLAs

You’ve already pulled out all the stops in your retirement residence; you have a beautiful space, your staff are excellent caregivers, and you roll out the red-carpet during tours for prospective residents. Despite your efforts, your vacancy rate is still higher than you would like it to be. Leveraging your network of senior care professionals and Senior Living Advisors, spotlighting your community online, and providing certainty to residents transitioning from home or other residences can meaningfully improve your occupancy rate.  

As a senior living provider, you’ll want your occupancy rates high or steadily increasing. Below, you’ll find specific senior care sales and marketing key performance indicator (KPIs) to track your occupancy rate progress, along with tips on how you can maximize your relationships with Senior Living Advisors to support more move-ins. 

Move-ins (known as conversions) are critical for senior care providers to maintain their businesses, but in order to get a lot of conversions, you’ll need plenty of online traffic and leads.  

Setting a goal to increase the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that come from your website or other places online is a great starting point. Using a tool like Google Analytics or Facebook’s native metrics and comparing them to the number of seniors your sales team has interacted with over the last year can help guide your goal setting.  

Track the success of your digital content strategy by looking at metrics like engagement and impressions—this will show you whether seniors or their loved ones are finding your home online with the intent of becoming residents.  

At this stage, you’ll be creating educational content in the form of blogs and social media posts. Your residence’s goal is to show prospective residents that your senior living care service is an authority in the industry. This educational content goes a step further, also helping Senior Living Advisors gain a better understanding of your brand and your residence. By delivering informative content to SLAs, you’ll make it easier for them to match you with your ideal residents. 

Regularly using social media platforms like Facebook or senior care specific platforms like Cared Upon, is a great way to interact with potential clients as well. It’s critical to ensure that your residence’s listing stays up to date no matter where you are online. A content calendar, social media posting schedule, someone dedicated to capturing insights and engaging with prospective clients and their loved ones will help. 

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is the number of prospective residents who become sales opportunities by moving further through their Senior Living Buyer’s Journey. Keeping track of this metric will allow you to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your sales process and the efficacy of your MQL-generating strategy.  

Along with gleaning insights from your online channels, consider keeping track of the clients referred to you by Senior Living Advisors and asking them regularly for feedback. For example, if you find that for every five seniors an advisor begins the sales process with, only one moves in, you’ll be able to work together to determine if your residence can provide additional resources or support to SLAs in your community. 

Your primary goal is to convert seniors searching for care into residents. Since more move-ins means your senior care vacancy rates will decrease, it also means an increase in revenue for your business.  

It’s essential to nurture MQLs throughout their Buyer’s Journey so that they eventually become SQLs. Building credibility for your brand by providing valuable educational online content, receiving positive reviews from seniors already in your care, and collaborating with other senior living professionals, can help support senior living clients throughout their journey.  

Improving your conversion rates can (and should) be done across each source of senior living leads:  

• Organic and Paid Search Engine Optimization and Social Media: Measuring these conversion rates allows you to decide where your advertising budget is most effectively spent for maximum return on investment (ROI). You’ll want to invest in channels that are leading to the most new residents. 
• Offline Marketing with Senior Living Advisors: SLAs can become an important pipeline of non-digital leads for your residence. Keeping track of their placement success with your residence and working together to create successful move-in experiences is paramount. 

A vetted third-party review platform like Cared Upon has already established trust as a client-focused digital information hub. Optimizing your presence here can help your residence attract more of your ideal clients by supporting your business’ credibility online.  

In addition, this robust platform allows care providers to claim and populate their listings with relevant information that can be accessed by future residents, their loved ones or other care advocates like Senior Living Advisors. It’s free to get started, all you have to do is claim your listing. 

To Claim Your Listing 

1. Visit caredupon.ca/care-providers 
2. Search for your business 
3. Setup your profile 
4. Confirm your ownership with a call from our team  
5. Login