Mobile Marketing for Senior Living

In a world gone digital, mobile marketing for senior living communities has become a necessity. What is mobile marketing for senior living communities exactly? It’s a digital marketing strategy that’s concerned primarily with the mobile devices that people use to access the internet. As strategies go, it’s fairly new. Certainly new enough that not every business fully realizes just how important it is.

Mobile marketing is the direct result of a massive change in how people shop and get their information. A decade ago, this all happened on a personal computer. Now, it’s on mobile devices. Although a PC at work is still the norm in most workplaces, fewer and fewer PCs are being bought for home use. These days, it’s all about mobile devices and the convenience they offer. Now, people can access the internet from anywhere on their smartphones and tablets. They’re using mobile devices to read email, text, IM, and shop or seek information on the web.

Make no mistake… seniors have become enamored with mobile devices just like everyone else. The stereotype of the technophobic senior citizen is just that—a stereotype. Seniors are accessing the web and social media on smartphones in unprecedented numbers these days. Your marketing must take this into account or you could get left behind competitors.

For senior living communities still hooked into more traditional marketing, the future will be difficult. Mobile marketing for senior living is the future. The sooner your community embraced it fully, the sooner you can see higher move-in rates.

Establishing Mobile Marketing For Senior Living Communities

Mobile marketing is a unique entity. As such, it needs to be seen as having its own unique properties. And definitely its own unique advantages. Mobile technology has grown very fast because it can adapt to its users’ preferences and tastes. It’s these user preferences and tastes that make mobile marketing so powerful.

As you forge ahead with mobile marketing for senior living, here are three things to keep in mind:

Who is Your Mobile Audience?

You can’t just say that seniors are your target audience and leave it at that. You need to dig deeper if you want your marketing to be cost-effective. One way to get started is to develop several profiles of typical residents. This would include info like:

What’s their background?
What did they use to do for a living?
Where do they get their information?
What type of content appeals to them?

As you create these profiles, you will start to see certain common denominators. The objective should be to broadly define the type of seniors most likely to move into your community. This process will help you to define your target audience.

What Should be Your Mobile Marketing Goals?

When adopting a mobile marketing strategy, you need to decide what you hope to accomplish with it. To do so, keep in mind these points:

What are you already doing regarding mobile? If your answer is that you’re not doing anything, the need for mobile marketing couldn’t be more obvious.
How are you currently using mobile marketing as part of your overall marketing plan? Why is mobile marketing a priority for you now? What do you expect to gain from mobile marketing?
Study your key audiences for mobile marketing. How diverse are your key audiences of seniors? What seems to be the biggest common factor? Location? Income? Their level of activity? How specifically do you want to target these factors in your marketing?

When you’ve considered all of the above, you’re in a good position to set realistic and achievable goals. That’s how you leverage mobile marketing for senior living communities to the maximum.

What are Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

Digital marketing is all about the ability to track and analyze results. Obviously, mobile marketing is no different. To know if your mobile marketing is working, you need KPIs that can be measured:

Engagement: Is your website capturing the attention of people on their mobile devices? If your senior living website isn’t mobile-friendly, viewer engagement will likely be dismal.
Acquisition: Once people are on your website, do they go to the next stage of interaction? Do they call or contact you electronically? If not, you need to look more carefully at your content. Are they interested in what you’re telling them? Are your calls to action working?
Customer Service: Is it easy to contact your community when someone views your website on a smartphone? Depending on your web design, the answer may not be “yes.”