Since the 2020 pandemic, the way we promote businesses and organizations has changed drastically. And keeping up with best practices has been no small feat, especially in the highly competitive field of senior living.

For many of our senior living community marketers, the transition to a digital-first marketing mindset has been accompanied by a whirlwind of other operational and industry challenges. And, even though you do your best to stay on the competitive edge of digital marketing, you worry about the results your hard work yields.

One of the most important steps for crafting a successful digital marketing plan is building in metrics to help you determine which of your initiatives are performing successfully, and which are failing to deliver the anticipated returns. With September right around the corner—and 2023 budget proposal deadlines looming alongside the return of cooler weather—it’s time to take a look at a couple of ways you can incorporate success metrics into next year’s plan.

Is Your Website Successful?

Your website is the entry point for most of your leads. In fact, three out of four new residents and adult child decision makers begin their search¹ for senior living communities online. So your website needs to be designed to facilitate the journey from prospect to new resident move-in.

Here are a few different metrics you can use to evaluate how well your website is performing in reaching your ideal prospective residents and nurturing them through to conversion.

1. Google Rank

In a Google search for senior living communities in your local area, are you one of the top results?

If not, you should be. Ranking high on the search engine results page (SERP) can be the difference between attracting the attention of a prospective resident or losing the opportunity to connect with that new resident lead.

The first result on the SERP commands a quarter of click-throughs, and the top five account for 67%² of all clicks. That means that to truly contend for the attention of prospective residents and adult child decision makers, your community needs to rank in the top five for your target keywords.

Eighty-three percent of people who search for keywords referencing senior living³ have no specific community in mind when they begin their search. This makes it all the more important to rank highly for the keywords most likely to attract your target audience, as their search will start with the topics most relevant to them instead of with a specific community’s name.

2. Google Analytics

If you aren’t using Google Analytics to measure the success of your website, start now. There’s a reason why 40% of websites using web analytics⁴ choose this free tool to understand how users find and use their website.

Google Analytics tracks the performance of your website according to different sets of measurements, which you can adjust and control. For example, understanding how many visitors each major section of your website (homepage, services pages, blogs, etc.) received over a specified period of time, or how people found your website. Overall, your Google Analytics data will typically focus on acquisition, behavior, and conversions. 

Take the time when setting up your Google Analytics to think about the data you’ll need to evaluate how well your marketing strategy is performing, and set up the goals and metrics accordingly. 

Is Your Inbound Marketing Successful?

Inbound marketing is a little tougher to measure because the purpose of this strategy is to plant seeds that indirectly sprout into leads. Looking at lead generation and organic web traffic can help you determine whether or not your efforts are meeting your marketing goals.

1. New Resident Opportunities

Every digital marketing effort aims to fill a sales funnel with as many quality leads as possible. For senior living communities, this translates to attracting prospective residents and nurturing them through conversion into new resident move-ins.

So take a collective look at all your leads. We’re talking about everything from website visitors to social media followers, walk-ins, and any other way you’ve gathered new resident leads in the past year. The volume of these leads is a good indication of your broad inbound success. Don’t forget, inbound marketing generates three times the number of leads as outbound,⁵ so most of these leads are the direct result of inbound efforts.

Now that you’ve got your leads gathered, dig deeper. What percentage of your leads converted into new resident move-ins? Are there noticeable patterns in the data? And did those patterns align with your expectations? If not, it may be time to invest in some market research to see where you’re missing out on potential conversions or overlooking segments of your market.

2. Organic Web Traffic

Web traffic is a straightforward metric easily measured by Google Analytics. And once again, this is a good indicator of inbound success because all your inbound marketing should drive leads to your website. The better you conduct your inbound marketing strategy, the more organic visitors you’ll have.

There are different tools that allow you to track how people are getting to your website. Whenever you post a link to your website, through paid ads, social posts, emails, etc., you should generate a specific tracking code that allows you to see how many people clicked that link to visit your website. UTM codes allow you to add customized tracking details to your links before posting, and can be integrated into your other analytics to help provide further context to your data.

Is Your Outbound Marketing Successful?

Outbound marketing is a little easier to quantify because there’s usually a solid click trail to follow. Check out these metrics for measuring success.

1. Lead-to-Close

Divide the total leads earned from an outbound campaign by the number of new resident move-ins it generated. This tells you just how well your outbound efforts worked because you have a clear picture of how many leads converted into residents.

2. Revenue per Lead

But how valuable were those leads, anyway? Take the total revenue earned by an outbound campaign and divide by the number of leads. This calculation demonstrates the value of each outbound lead.

A Good Website Makes a Great First Impression

Does the idea of setting up success metrics leave you feeling less than successful? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Connect with us at 888.307.7304 to learn how we can take the stress out of your 2023 digital marketing strategy.

 

For a list of references, please contact us.