Account-based marketing (ABM) is an effective lead generation tool for senior living communities. Although many marketers think they have their audience nailed down, the senior living sector is more nuanced than you’d imagine. Persuading seniors to become residents is no small task. As easy as lead generation may sound, the execution is far more complicated.
Even the most sophisticated companies struggle with knowing their market and using the right promotions to encourage conversion. Take The New York Times, for example. In 2011, the nation’s second-largest newspaper targeted readers who had recently canceled their subscriptions.1
Their strategy was to send a handful of ex-readers an incentive to reactivate their membership. Sounds reasonable, right? Unfortunately, The Times mixed its audience up and accidentally sent the offer to all eight million subscribers. They ended up having to honor the 50% off offer for many readers who had no plans to cancel.
In the case of The Times, mistaking the market proved catastrophic. But in the case of your senior living community, the results can be just as disastrous. Using ABM helps ensure blunders like these don’t occur in the first place.
Why Account-Based Marketing for Senior Living Matters
ABM is a strategy for targeting qualified leads on a granular level and engaging them with personalized content. With this approach, you connect with prospective residents based on their unique tastes and preferences. ABM takes digital marketing to the next level by combining the knowledge of your community’s sales and marketing divisions.
This powerful wealth of information helps dramatically increase conversion rates and ROI. But there’s more to ABM than dollars and cents. ABM supports senior living lead generation in a few different ways.
1. Shortens the New Resident Journey
The senior living sector is notorious for lengthy sales cycles. The average time from initial contact to new resident move-in is 70 days or more for assisted living. For independent living, the number of days increases to 120.2 That’s quite a bit of time for prospective residents to be moving through your sales funnel! To prevent leads from losing interest in your community, your team will need to develop and deliver engaging lead nurturing content across that timeline
Fortunately, ABM not only supports your lead nurturing campaigns, but also contributes to shortening the new resident journey. With content personalized to the specific interests and pain points of the audience, your sales and marketing teams can move prospective residents through the funnel more quickly. Additionally, the deeper your understanding of your prospects, the more easily you can segment and qualify your leads. Ultimately, you’ll realize a better ROI on your marketing budget.
2. Improves Personalization
Four out of five consumers say they’re more likely to buy from a business that tailors their marketing strategy.3 And overall, nine out of ten survey respondents say they prefer personalization when communicating with a company.
Personalization is the hallmark of ABM. This process targets the right leads with the right message. How is this possible? You must first deeply understand what each segment of your audience needs, thinks, and wants.
Even though you have a large pool of leads, each one wants to feel special and unique. Seniors eyeing a move-in are making a huge decision about their future. Personalized attention communicates a high level of detail and thoughtfulness—important traits seniors and their families consider when selecting a community.
3. Nurtures Relationships
Personalization naturally lends itself to building relationships. The more you nurture leads through personalization, the stronger the bond prospective residents will form with your senior living community.
The most important part of ABM is, communication doesn’t stop after conversion. In addition to resident services, your sales and marketing teams should continue reaching out to new residents to ensure an excellent experience.
ABM promotes a cooperative approach that ensures you deliver on promises and uplevels your lead generation strategy. This approach also encourages your residents to become brand advocates. Their positive personal recommendations online and in-person increase your reach exponentially.
4. Enhances Efficiency
Laser-focused targeting is one of the benefits of ABM. This level of specificity in marketing helps you do more with less by efficiently allocating resources where they’re most likely to result in conversions. Efficient targeting allows your senior living community to spend more time collaborating to determine the right course of action for the right market segment.
Account-based marketing delivers great results for senior living community executives looking to streamline processes and make the most of their marketing budgets. But setting up a successful AMB strategy requires time, data-management tools and processes, and commitment.
Ready to incorporate ABM into your digital marketing plan but not sure how to start? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Contact us at 888.307.7304 to schedule a discovery call and learn more about our ABM strategies and our full suite of senior living digital marketing services.
For a list of references, please contact us.