1. Know Your Care Home Audience
Whenever you are marketing a business, knowing your target audience is crucial, even more so within a care home. To fully understand your care home audience, you should carry out a sufficient amount of research. This includes looking into the preferences of people’s families as well as the service users’ needs and requirements. Remember, not all residents will be making their own decisions when it looking for a care home, so you will likely be showcasing to their relatives.
When carrying out research, you must consider the ageing population. Be aware that you could be promoting your home to 60-year-olds looking for a care service for their relatives. This means that you will need to adjust and adapt your marketing strategy to grab their attention alongside the average age of those who are looking for your service for themselves.
When creating your marketing content, you should make an effort to understand people’s main priorities when looking at care homes. Is it the location? Is it the pricing? Or is it specialised facilities or care? Market research through surveys, feedback from past and present service users and their families and speaking to the public will help you understand what the majority are looking for.
Finally, put yourself in the position of the person typically researching and choosing a care home. In most cases, this will be a son, daughter or another relative. While price will be a factor, knowing their loved one will be safe, secure, and well-cared for in a person-centred way will be a higher priority than getting the best deal. All of this should shape how you present your offering.
2. Research Your Competition
Promoting your care service will fail if you aren’t on par with or better than your competition, so make sure you look into other local care services, their ratings and reviews, and what they have to offer.
Keep in mind that even though residents aren’t likely to be exceptionally tech-savvy, they will be able to see the positive results that a digitised care service has on their service users. Fortunately, proving this isn’t difficult, as it will be reflected in customer satisfaction, your independent regulator rating and positive reviews. Just make sure that you promote the use of digital software and the benefits it has had on the quality of your service and your residents when marketing your care home.
You should also keep in mind that with the growing dissatisfaction towards the cost and quality of care, many residents and families have benefited from a range of services and apps that have been created to help the elderly remain in their homes for longer. This is another form of competition to be aware of and when marketing your care home, you must use your marketing material to reflect the qualities and advantages of living at your care home rather than using a domiciliary care provider.
3. Find Your Unique Selling Point
Once you have done your market research and looked into your competition, you should identify and promote your unique selling point. What makes you different from other care homes in your area? And how will residents and their families benefit from this? If you’ve carried out your research correctly, answering these questions should come to you naturally.
For example, if you have specialised care facilities, you are located in the countryside or near the beach, or you offer certain activities that have been proven to be loved and successful in the past, these should be the unique selling points that you should use to encourage service users and their relatives to choose you over your competition.
4. Care Home Marketing with Social Media
Whether your target audience is in the higher age bracket or they consist of young adults, social media advertising is an extremely effective way to build both your brand and reputation. It allows people to see real-time updates of what you have to offer on a daily basis, as well as special events, new launches and updates and how you go the extra mile during special occasions. It also keeps your website professional and clutter-free.
Key steps for Social Media Advertising:
- Be consistent and update regularly – people want to see that you’re proud of your care service and take time to record and post often.
- Use both stock photos and more natural photos of the care home – this will help you represent a better feel for the place while saving you time.
- Use videos to show what the residents have been up to – this includes filming mini-tours of the facilities, and include recorded reviews from residents and colleagues.
- Consider which social media platforms will be most beneficial for your audience – the age group you target will have a huge influence on this, however, Facebook is one of the most popular platforms, so it’s a good place to start.
- Take advantage of ads – for example, Facebook ads will use the audience and the location of the business to promote in a specific radius.
Not only will using social media advertising build your brand and reputation for potential new clientele, but it will also build upon rapport with current residents’ families. It’s a quick and beneficial way of keeping everyone updated, and seeing how the care home keeps residents’ independence by advertising potential day trips or activities they run each day.
5. Care Home SEO and Your Website
This is the more technical side of marketing where people may feel uncomfortable to start with, but once they know what they’re doing, it can be very successful. When building any website, it’s crucial to be aware of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). You need to know what people are searching for on their browsers and the best way to promote what your care service has to offer. Here are the key points to consider when it comes to building your care home SEO and creating a successful website.
How to Build Your Care Home SEO:
- Use keyword research to understand what people are searching for. You can gear the content (the words, images and so on) on your web pages to best fit their queries. You can even create blog posts to answer common questions that people ask when researching care homes as a purchaser of care.
- Create a Google business profile to connect with potential residents inside the local map packs provided.
- Develop local landing pages on your website to rank in organic search results.
- Ensure that the google business profile location name is on the title page and the URL, and all key contact information is provided on the landing page.
- Only use keywords that could drive leads to your business. E.g. use residential care home instead of care home, use health home care instead of just health care.
- Use Google Ads to help rank to the top with google as local SEO can take time to work.
- Use blogs and research what other competitors are writing about to reassure potential residents, or their loved ones, on how your care home operates and ways you are dealing with current affairs e.g. living in a post-lockdown environment.
How to Build Your Care Home Website:
- Make sure your NAP (Name, address, phone number) is present and clear to see.
- Update opening hours and visiting hours regularly, especially around seasonal times when there could be changes or a higher influx of visitors.
- Present reviews and quotes prominently, from both residents and their families as well as third-party review websites to build trust.
- Present ratings from the CQC (or your national regulator of care) and any other certifications to promote professionalism and trust. You can also include excerpts from inspection reports.
- Use retargeting ads through YouTube, Google or Facebook to re-engage interest. 96% of first-time visitors are not ready to buy and will leave. Don’t waste the interest that has already been shown.
6. Care Home Marketing Locally
Just because online marketing is heavily popular and crucial when building a business, this doesn’t mean you should neglect classic marketing methods. Local marketing and advertising are equally as important as creating an online presence.
For example, one of the best ways to promote a business is through word of mouth. This could be done in so many ways, including connecting with local healthcare professionals, sponsoring community events, adverts in local newspapers and posting flyers through the door.
You should also be aware that online advertisements (such as Google Ads) can usually be targeted to specific geographic areas i.e. those who live closest to a particular care home/s.
7. Earned Media
Earned media (sometimes called earned PR) is press coverage that you get for free by doing something interesting.
Care homes can do this much easier than say, a manufacturer of car parts, who would have to work to come up with an interesting story, or to go out of their way to do something interesting, which the press (local or national) would be interested in covering.
Care homes are full of stories, made up of residents and care workers who have interesting lives. People love to read about older people doing something extraordinary, such as some kind of stunt for charity, or simply being helped to lead happier lives. And if people love to read about it, the media want to cover it.
Think about any interesting activities in your care home, partnerships with local schools or bands, or interesting new therapy methods you are pioneering. On the other hand, we always see lots of care providers being featured in the press when there is adverse weather.
Stories of care workers battling through the snow to get to your care home and ensure the people they care for are not left alone restores people’s faith in each other and is something they love to read about.
Hopefully, these few examples show that you don’t need to invent something or exploit your staff or residents to gain some well-earned attention. Instead, you just need to showcase the great work your staff are already doing.
Staff and residents alike (with their consent of course) may also get a kick out of being featured in the press, showing that despite the negative headlines around of sector, people are still out there making a difference and supporting people each and every day.
Tools to Guide Your Care Home Marketing Strategy
When choosing a care service, people want to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. They want to know that they or their loved ones will be safe, comfortable and well looked after during their time there. All of the methods listed above will promote the trustworthiness and professionalism of your care service. Building an online presence using SEO and social media marketing makes it easier to understand potential residents and both their and their family's needs.
To help you obtain and maintain your reputation, boost your CQC rating (or relevant independent regulator rating) and improve the culture, management and job satisfaction of your colleagues, we at Access highly recommend digitising your care business. We have a fantastic range of award-winning health, support and social care software that can help you deliver the best care indefinitely. Contact us today to speak to one of our experts and learn more about what our care management solutions can do for you.