ASSISTED LIVING
Marketing To Drive Growth At Senior Care Facilities
Assisted Living
While demographics are generally supportive of the pool of potential residents for assisted living, facilities are still suffering from persistent vacancies. Business development professionals know that challenges have grown since the crash of the housing market in 2008; families, both seniors and their adult children, are still faced with financial stress as well as many competing residential options and modes of care. With such a broad array of choices available to seniors, it is incumbent upon Senior Care Facilities to execute a well-designed, long-term marketing plan to drive growth.
Assisted living has long been considered needs-driven, but care at a facility or residence is increasingly viewed as an“ optional” purchase for addressing those needs, especially for adult children under financial strain.“ Aging in Place”, the practice of keeping elderly parents in their homes longer than they may have historically, is often viewed as a path to saving money, though that“ independence” has many, often hidden, costs. Home improvement to provide accessibility, oncall transportation services, maintenance, just to name a few, all add-up and are frequently underestimated by families when considering costs and benefits.
Increasingly, seniors are also moving-in with their adult children to both preserve assets and in some cases, support their children. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an increase in the number of communitybased services for seniors, as well as visits to both physician offices and emergency rooms. This arrangement also places significant strain on a family emotionally, particularly if active grandchildren are in the mix.
There are also many new alternatives to facility care, as well as technological advances, which allow for home monitoring and long-distance caregiving that have made competing options more plentiful than ever before.
In this environment, it’ s not hard to see why waiting lists, once the industry norm, have become a thing of the past! Relying on how things were done by previous owners or successful facilities in previous years is no longer a guaranteed road to success. Instead, facilities need to work harder on their marketing plans than they ever have before.
To address this competitive marketplace, communicate their value proposition and drive growth, assisted living and senior care facility marketing plans must address two constituents at the same time.
1. The family members of the clients that you wish to serve.
2. Enticing those senior clients themselves.
These groups respond to your message in different ways, but ultimately seek the same goal: quality of life that makes financial sense. Identifying your target demographic( if you do not know it already), finding out whether your buyers are more likely to be senior citizens or their adult children, is the first step in building a successful marketing plan.
It bears mentioning that some facilities at this stage of the marketing plan take an easy, well-worn route that can short circuit the organization in the long run. Instead of building a road map to increased occupancy, some facilities move straight to discounting- reducing entry fees,
26 | FALL 2016