For senior living marketers, the holiday season is a good time to reach adult children who are searching for senior living and at-home care services for loved ones online. With reported spikes in interest and searches between Thanksgiving and into the New Year, experts at G5 work with our clients to maximize their lead generation during these vital moments.

Boost Digital Advertising Spend

Data from Google Trends shows that in the weeks following Thanksgiving and Christmas there is a spike in senior living queries, especially from Monday through Thursday. With that in mind, if you are utilizing Pay-Per-Click search advertising you can easily begin implementing bidding strategies and campaign strategies around these types of trends. If you aren’t using PPC advertising, there isn’t a better time to start than right now to ensure you’re ready for a large spike in online queries.

The results from these ads are immediate and deliver highly targeted and motivated individuals who are ready to convert. These users are actively looking for the services that you have to offer, so it’s important that your search engine advertising budget allows you to display ads consistently throughout the holiday season.

Facebook advertising is another great avenue to attract users with strategies tailored to adult children and potential residents. Having the ability to advertise on Facebook and find your audience in a specific location is perfect for targeting the right audience at the right time. Facebook also offers a great opportunity to advertise any type of event you may be hosting at the community or any holiday move-in specials. By taking advantage of Facebook’s massive reach, this strategy can produce interest in your community and help increase your brand’s presence.

Outside of geographic, demographic, and psychographic targeting, advertisers also employ the power of Facebook’s lookalike audiences to help them discover new users on Facebook who are displaying similar online behavior to users who have already visited or converted on your website.

Align Your Marketing & Sales Teams

Here are some statistics to think about:

  • 94 percent of move-ins come from leads contacted the same day
  • 72 percent of tours scheduled come from leads contacted the same day
  • 80 percent of move-ins will occur if the prospective resident is contacted within the first 90 minutes

People are busy, so they don’t have time to waste. The sooner you can respond to their inquiries after they make contact, the better your chances are of converting that lead. Your sales and marketing teams need to be aligned to set clear expectations of types and quality of leads.

It’s also critical to use data from your website, content management system, Google Analytics, and from any other sources to help identify opportunities. Analyzing data and the resulting strategies will keep your marketing and sales teams focused during the holidays when it’s easy to become distracted.

Increase Holiday Content on Your Website

The holidays are a great time to showcase your communities online. Any traditions or events that you may have, such as hosting a holiday meal or a Christmas bazaar, are good sources of content that will showcase what you have to offer. It’s also a good time to make sure all of your website information is up to date as there is an expected increase in traffic to your website. Having current and relevant content is a valuable way to develop trust with prospective residents.

Another simple way to connect with those searching online is to update the main photo at the top of your page, a.k.a. the hero image. The holidays traditionally bring families together, and using an image that is family focused is a great way to bring that feeling to life.

Use your site’s blog to engage people in a fun and informative way. During the holidays, there are several topics that you can incorporate, including family holiday traditions, a resident recipe roundup, or holiday gift ideas for seniors. Offering seasonal-specific content offers potential residents more insight into what it would be like to live in your community.

At G5, we find that adult children of potential residents and independent seniors use Facebook to keep up with their children and grandchildren. With that in mind, it’s important to have an active presence on Facebook, with unique pages for each of your communities. It’s also a great tool to share your blog posts and direct more traffic to your website.  

New Year, More Momentum

Instead of going dark this holiday season, why not finish off the year with an increase in leads and start the new year with plenty of momentum?

Click here to learn more ways to adapt your senior living marketing this holiday season.