We recently sat down with Jamison Gosselin, G5’s VP of Senior Living Strategy, to learn more about his time in the industry and where he sees the biggest opportunities for growth moving forward. Here’s what he had to say.

Jamison Gosselin Interview

G5: Jamison, tell me a little bit about your background and what drove you to seek a career in senior living.

Jamison Gosselin: I find senior living absolutely fascinating. I’ve been in the senior living business now for about 15 years and  I still find the complexity of the consumer behavior absolutely fascinating. Every day there are great stories being told in senior living communities all over the country, all over the world now. So what I typically find is we need to better share those stories across a variety of media. That’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to G5.

G5: Can you expand a little more on why you decided to join G5?

JG: G5 first popped up on my radar when I was corporate marketing director at Sunrise. G5 was expanding into senior living; and had a pretty compelling story about maximizing scale. I got to work with them a lot while I served at ALFA (Argentum) and they participated in the President’s Council. I stayed in contact with them over the years while I was at Holiday and doing my own thing.

The team reached out to me several months ago to explore ways they could boost investment in senior living. So, I went out to Bend and met the folks there. G5 was thinking big thoughts about the future of technology and really pondered how it could help modernize how scaled up businesses could make marketing technology an operational advantage. G5ers were really dialed in to finding ways to doing things smarter for their clients. I found the people hungry to learn more about senior living — our aches and pains, trials and tribulations — our big opportunities.

For me, technology innovation is a big solution for all of those things. It sounded like some fun, and would allow me to serve in senior living from a different angle.

G5: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the senior living industry today?

JG: There are quite a few challenges in the senior living space right now. You know, from a sales and marketing perspective, we’ve been talking about this occupancy issue in the industry. It’s definitely been self-inflicted in many ways as the industry has built more apartments, perhaps a little too early, but I think all of those apartments will become homes for folks soon enough.

Second, senior living sales and marketing has to get its act together. We often get lost in the day to day, getting stuff from A to B and lose sight of the big picture opportunities. The strategy. Yea, some of it is staffing, but it’s also about prioritization and managing up and down. As an operator, having outside marketing partners with deep skills become extensions of my in-house team was critical to building a high performing lead generation machine. This approach enabled me to get out of the weeds more and serve as a better partner with sales, operations, HR and IT on bigger company opportunities, However, one still needs to remain engaged often with the vendor partners — provide insight, guidance, a pat on the back (…or a smack upside the head).

Third, do you know the vast majority of seniors who could live in senior living communities are unaware, uninformed or uninterested in the value they offer? We often look at the community down the street as our competitor. Wrong. It’s those who choose to stay at home, many alone. Ignorance and apathy are not bliss in many cases. Now, with all the smart home tech coming out — that will offer more excuses.  I don’t think any of us believe Siri and Alexa are better companions than the people who make up our senior living communities.

We, as a senior living business, need to figure out how we convince the millions of seniors and their families, who have chosen this path to instead check out senior living.  

Why? The vast majority of people who choose to move into senior living live a better life. Many wonder why they waited so long to move-in. Those are stories worth telling far and wide – and connecting to our brands.

G5: What do you think is the best opportunity for growth in senior living?

JG: We need to develop a more economical mid-market product. This has been discussed at length for years — and we’re starting to see some early options today. We’re also starting to see brand segmentation.  The research is telling us the Boomers will want more choices and more personalization. The research also tells us there is a need for a range of affordable options from luxury, amenity rich urban communities to basic, cozy flats surrounding a community building available at lower price points with fewer amenities.  For me, how can we make sales and marketing more efficient and effective to help reduce the hard and soft cost burdens of these operators who seek to innovate product while providing a good pipeline of leads?

G5: Do you have any advice for senior living organizations looking to scale their operations?

JG: Senior living companies are growing quickly right now. There’s a lot of investment in senior living enabling people and companies to open senior living communities, start senior living management companies, or do a lot to just expand their existing senior living businesses. What a lot of companies aren’t figuring out though is how they take advantage of scale as quickly as they are growing.

It is very important for senior living companies to look at their investments in people, skills and technology today, especially at their central community support office. How are they growing and managing a productive, centralized platform to support their communities efficiently and effectively with subject matter expertise? And how are these in-house experts — marketing, IT, HR people — building effective partnerships with vendors to serve as extensions of the team to better execute? That’s important — partnership.

It’s an exciting time right now in senior living and technology innovation. Senior living has tremendous upside opportunity. We’re working hard to refine and reimagine digital marketing solutions specifically for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for senior living.

Learn More About G5

G5 is dedicated to amplifying the impact of senior living marketers. Offering websites, SEO, digital advertising, advanced analytics, and an in-house creative agency, we bring your brand to life, infusing it throughout all of your front-end digital marketing.

To learn more about the difference we can make for your senior living communities, schedule a demo today.