Digital Marketing: The Primary Source Setting the Pace in the Senior Care Industry

The baby boomer generation is driving the growth of the senior population—the 65 and over crowd. The latest research shows that people over the age of 65 now make up 17% of the total population in the U.S. and the growth is just the beginning. That’s the kind of data the senior care industry should be looking at to justify extra effort on digital marketing strategies.

Here’s another nugget of information that should get your attention. The second-largest topic that people are searching for on sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing is also strongly connected to people over 65—healthcare, which is a hot topic on search engines.

Your role is to educate consumers about in-home care and other homecare services. Online marketing establishes your senior care agency as the local expert authority in home care and assisted living services. The right advertising approach gives your home care agency credibility and strengthens your reputation.

Digital Marketing and Senior Care Stats

If you’re still not convinced, the following statistics emphasize some important reasons why it’s a crucial time to go after your share of the senior care market:

·   Business Insider projects that the home care market in the U.S. is expected to increase from $100 billion in 2016 to $225 billion by the year 2024. This figure reflects a 125% increase.

·   By the year 2030, around 2 million Americans will opt for life in a senior care community. That’s double the number since 2016.

·   According to American Senior Communities, senior living will become a highly competitive industry.

Large percentages of these seniors will soon be in the market for professional in-home care. Now is the time to start steering them in your direction. Take a look at these statistics for a little more assurance that a boost to your digital marketing efforts will be worthwhile.

·   Every hour, U.S. seniors generate 6,000 searches online for in-home care or healthcare. According to Senior Housing News.

·   About 70% of consumers seeking senior care will place a call when researching their options.

·   Phone calls will convert to customers 10-15 times more often (30% faster) than internet leads and give you a more immediate return on investment.

·   Retention is higher from phone calls as compared to web leads and they’re more profitable in the long-term.

·   94% of healthcare patients evaluate their providers using online reviews.

·   84% of people have as much faith in online reviews as a personal recommendation.

·   Home care agencies spent just over $129 million on advertising in the U.S. in 2020.

·   The senior care industry is expected to increase ad spending to $136 million by the end of 2020.

As these numbers demonstrate, a strong digital marketing campaign, along with a robust management strategy for building good reviews, is essential for acquiring new customers in the home care industry.

Home Care Agencies and Digital Marketing

Just imagine how many new opportunities you’ll have for new clients with over 10,000 baby boomers moving into the senior season of their lives every day.

Here are a few more things to think about:

·   The low rate of unemployment and a shortage of qualified in-home care providers make recruiting and hiring caregivers challenging at best.

·   Your marketing activities are separate from your sales efforts and without an overall digital marketing plan and SEO plan, you’re probably not getting qualified leads.

·   Your hiring processes don’t closely relate to your marketing plan without connecting them directly to your marketing strategy, so you could be missing out on highly qualified candidates.

·   The senior care industry is growing with local and franchises and they’re competing hard for a share of the market.  

Don’t take a chance on falling behind the pack!

Don’t Fall Behind Your Competitors

With new agencies vying for their share of the senior care industry, you need a digital marketing strategy that lets you set the pace. Here’s how to do it successfully:

1. Use your content to emphasize the need for in-home care.

2. Highlight the many ways that baby boomers and others will benefit from quality in-home care including how it helps with aging in place and the quality of life.

3. Best practices for sales suggest “making the ask”, so be proactive and ask for referrals.

4. Point out what sets your agency and your staff apart from other home care providers.

5. Referral sources are checking your online reviews and scope of services, so strive to rank this information high on search engines.

6. Be active on social media. According to the 2020 Benchmarking Survey, about 44% of home care agencies indicated that most of their leads generated from Facebook and Google and you can track your leads this way too. (This compares with only 3.7% for newspaper ads).

7. SEO is the leading source for customer leads (over 30% admissions rate).

Where to Spend Your Marketing Dollars in Digital

Incorporate a mix of channels into your digital marketing strategy—PPC, social media, and SEO. Your potential clients for in-home care are on all of them. If you’re not, you’ll be missing them.

Also consider that one marketing channel can give a boost to another. PPC ads will give you a 10% conversion rate through your contact forms and 15%-20% through calls. Here’s the real beauty, PPC ads and social media visits will increase traffic to your website and that will also boost your SEO efforts. If you don’t convert a customer from PPC, they may give you a second shot when they go directly to your website.

As a few final words, think about your messaging. Tell your story in a way that prospects see themselves as part of it. When you deliver value to them and meet them in the places they’re already comfortable hanging out, you’ll know whether you need to change any of your campaigns.