The Senior Living Marketing Boom and How to Get Smart(er) with Your Strategy

0:06Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz, and my guest today is Debbie Howard. She is the co-founder and CEO of Senior Living Smart, a full-service marketing agency serving the seniors' housing industry. She and her partner, Andre Catazon, have grown the agency from startup to 40 employees and are celebrating their 12th anniversary by publishing the first book that we're going to talk about today, Smart-er, that errs in parentheses, Marketing for Senior Living Communities, How to Work Smarter, Not Harder. Debbie's also, by the way, a member of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

0:45So we've known each other a long time. Welcome to the show, Deb. Thanks, John. Great to be on and be chatting with you today. So there have been, over the years, a number of folks in the network have published books. Actually, there's another one that I'm interviewing tomorrow that has a book also coming out. Books are a great tool for a lot of reasons. What would you say are your goals for publishing a book? I would say, number one, it's because there's been such a pivot in the, really in the prospect, if you will, for senior living. Like we just, the industry in general is just really hitting that leading age of boomers coming in.

1:20And there's just a recognition that the way that our industry has marketed in the past is not going to be effective and is not going to work. Moving forward with this new generation of buyers that has very different expectations. So really wanting to get ahead of that. We can only serve a certain number of clients in the senior living industry. There's more need than there's our ability to really serve them from a partnership level. So it gives us a greater reach to help more people. And frankly, not everybody can afford a full service marketing agency of record. And so we hope it levels the playing field, maybe for some folks that are doing marketing on their own or using a marketing agency that doesn't have senior living expertise.

2:01And then I think just selfishly, I do think that a book is also great for being able to get those keynote speakers and get on the conference stage. And we'll be developing a course as well with the option to either do it as just self-paced learning or really to do it from a certification standpoint with submitting to our team of experts as they work through the course in order to kind of pass to that next level and achieve an actual certification. You have, as the book denotes, smart-er marketing. You have a smart, as in your business as well, living smart, smart marketing framework. Is there a way to kind of break that quickly down what that is?

2:40Yeah, I think so. So smart is an acronym. We've used it in our business since day one. But as it applies to the book, the S is strategy. The M is marketing automation. The A is for analytics. R is for resources. That really encompasses content. And then the T is for technology. And in this case, it's really more about that MarTech stack and getting the right technology and then getting everything connected. So let's start with strategy. One of my favorite topics, the S word, as you've called it. Why is that? I mean, this is a stupid question for me to be asking you because you and I have had a lot of conversations about that.

3:17But for those out there listening, why do you call strategy the foundation of all effective marketing? I mean, especially for our industry, I think people have to focus on the strategy to attract their right and ideal prospect. I think the industry is really fortunate that we don't have to create any demand for ourselves. There is plenty of demand that's created just by an aging population, right? We're not out there having to really create that. What we do have to create is a way to attract the right residents for each of our brands. And I think in general, in the past, we've been able to just be better than a nursing home.

3:56And that was okay. The next generation of buyers wants a lot more than that. And so we really just can't serve up the same messaging to attract the kind of prospect that's going to be ideal in this next generation. So super easy to turn on lead generation. Just open up the floodgates and you can just be inundated with leads. We have clients that have over 200 leads a month. They can't possibly work the number of leads that they have. But it's really about getting the right leads that are going to be right for your brand, that are going to engage, that are going to advance and turn into residents.

4:32And that's really the part of the strategy that I think the industry has been lacking because everyone's pretty much serving up vanilla ice cream with different colored sprinkles. Yeah. Well, and not to mention because you talked about man's actually growing, right? That demographic is growing, at least for the immediate period of time. And so a lot of competition has jumped into it, right? A lot of people saw dollars and private equity as playing a big role in it now. So a big part of strategy, I'm guessing for you, is helping people differentiate because there are now so many players in every market.

5:05Yeah, there are a lot of people coming in because they're looking at the demographics and the age wave and saying, I want to get in on this. but they have no experience in the industry. And it's very difficult industry to actually operate in. So a lot of it is helping people to find their brand voice and their differentiator. What's your better and different story? We always talk about not just listing your services and amenities, but really what is the problem that you're solving? And not everybody is right for every operator. Some people really want a small, cozy environment that's more home-like.

5:38Some people want the chandeliers and the brand new communities that have all the bright and shiny technologies. And so it's really about drilling down to understand what's the story that you have that nobody else has out there. Because everyone has the dining and the transportation and the care and everyone says it's the best. But at the end of the day, they don't have your story, your residence, your culture, your mission, your values. And so that's what we really focus on to attract more people who look like the same people who chose that brand historically. So we do a lot with persona interviews and focus groups and all of that to really get to their special sauce.

6:15I understand what they do that's unique. There's a great, listeners are probably getting tired of me using this quote because I use it all the time. But you know, when it comes to that kind of brand and differentiation, there's a Dolly Parton quote that she said, just discover who you are and go be it. And I think that's a lot of, there's a lot of truth in that. I mean, everybody has a brand. It's just whether or not it's intentionally communicated or developed. It's you can't say, oh, we want to be this or be that. You are that. Right. And it's being OK with being that. Right. So if you are a 25 year old building, you're experienced.

6:50Right. You've been serving the neighbors for decades. You probably have larger apartments because guess what? Twenty five years ago, they built bigger apartments and suites. Right. You probably have the A market because now all the A locations are taken. And so the new construction has to come in on a busy road or in a more industrial area because they don't have that. If you're new, you're only going to be new for a short period of time. So, you know, use that. But I do think that there's always that resistance of having marketing help us pretend to be something that we're not. Right, right, right.

7:23And that's, I think, where brands, really, they just get in trouble. People who say to me, Deb, we want the younger, older people in here, the people that are 50. We want you. I had a client who said, I was relating that I had gone through this experience with my mother and finding a community. And they said, well, no disrespect, but we don't want your mother. We want you. And I was like, okay, so if you want me, I work full time. Do you have a workspace for me? Do you have a shared office space? Do you have a conference room? I like to do pottery. Do you have a craft studio? Can I, do you have a kiln?

7:55Like, do I like play pickleball? Do you have any pickleball courts? And they're like, oh no, we don't have any of those things. I'm like, well, then how do you think you're going to get me? Yeah, right, right, right. So the next two letters were marketing automation. It's kind of a double-edged sword or can be certainly for folks because we can use it as a way to not have to actually talk to anybody, for example. So how do you balance the fact that I'm guessing the buyer in your particular case really wants to talk to someone? They want to know who's going to be helping mom, right? So how do you balance kind of that marketing automation with the need for so much human interaction in this type of environment?

8:31Yeah, great question. Because I think especially this leading edge of the boomers, they want to remain anonymous and autonomous for as long as possible. So it's really up to marketing. I think marketing gets the sale 70 % closed. They expect a lot of transparency. They want to go download guides and ebooks and they want to watch videos and virtual tours. And it's a very long journey. So it's depending on which level of care, if it's active adult and independent living, it's over a year. If it's assisted living, it can be more than six months, 22 to 20 touch points along that journey. And the sales team cannot possibly do 22 to 20 touch points for every single prospect that they have in their pipeline.

9:12So we look at marketing automation as being a complement and nurturing the not yet sales ready leads, those marketing qualified leads. they're not opting in to schedule a tour or clicking to call. But if we let them download a brochure or a funding guide, a family decision toolkit, they will opt in and then we nurture them. And there should really be no dead ends to the prospect journey because it is so long. But you're right. When that prospect is ready to talk to sales, they expect to talk to sales immediately. So it takes a long time to get somebody to pick up that phone and to make that advance from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead.

9:51But I think that's what marketing automation does so well. And we look at reverse engineering the move-ins and where did they come from? What was the original attribution source? But also how many of them entered in with an intent to talk to sales? So we're able to take that subset of people who've gone all the way through the journey, become a resident in that community, and we're able to look at every single touch point along the way. And what's interesting is about, for most of our clients, about 35 to 45 % of the move-ins, the actual residents did not start out having intent to talk to sales.

10:27They progressed all by themselves with marketing automation without the sales team having to do anything. I think that's a part a lot of people underestimate too, is how much of that is going on without our knowledge, right? I mean, and that we can actually lose the sale before we ever had the opportunity to make the sale without really understanding that people need, people want to go on parts of that journey on their own because nobody really wants a sales presentation, right? They quite often want to know how something's going to work and be reassured that what you promised is going to happen.

11:00But that happens very late in the journey a lot of times. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of a variable regional pricing.

11:41And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less like Uber 8x8 and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive at oci at oracle.com slash duct tape. That's oracle.com slash duct tape. Oracle.com slash duct tape. So how do you, and you and I have talked about this before, so I know a little bit. How do you align then that marketing approach with sales? Because a lot of times sales, mother and father and mother-in-law and father-in-law were in assisted facility, living facilities, and sales pretty much looked like whoever was walking by the phone when it was.

12:26So how do you get that aligned? It's actually a friction point that we always have to work through with every client because salespeople think if they have every call and every lead, they're going to do better. But the reality is people are not everyone is ready for a sales interaction. And if you force it, you will lose them and they will go somewhere else. So it's really a matter of respecting the prospect and allowing them to decide how they want to engage with you and allowing them to raise their hand when they're ready for that sales interaction. So how it usually goes is when we're kind of talking to a new client, we're talking about how marketing automation is a compliment.

13:04It does a lot of the rote and repetitive administrative work that the sales team doesn't have to do. Somebody can go on and schedule a tour. They can pick a date and time. Marketing automation is going to confirm their appointment, thank them for scheduling, remind them that they're coming tomorrow. And then after the visit's over, maybe ask them for a review. And so we want to get the salespeople the right leads at the right time. They can only manage so many. So we want them to have those high intent, ready to advance prospects, but we can't lose the pipeline. So at first, the sales team likes that, right?

13:39That sounds really good. I'm going to get the high intent, ready to convert leads. I'm going to get fewer leads to work and I can spend more time with them and do what I do best, building relationships and report. It sounds great until 70 % of their leads disappear. And then it's like, well, where's my leads? I want more leads. These are all the leads that you threw away. These are the leads that you moved to loss. These are the leads that you moved, that you tried to reach twice and then moved to cold. But there's a little bit of a panic that sets in until they start seeing that the pipeline is advancing.

14:13Marketing automation is delivering them month over month, these sales qualified leads. And what's interesting is when you look at the length of stay for somebody who comes in as a sales qualified lead with lots of urgency, like I got to move in today. Mom's getting out of rehab. We need something immediately. Their length of stay is far shorter, which means your revenue is far less. And they're higher acuity. It's more stress on the team. The people that actually have the longest sales nurturing cycle and start as marketing qualified leads end up having almost double the length of stay. So double your revenue.

14:50They stay longer. They have a better experience. And it's not a crisis situation. That's an interesting observation that could probably apply to a lot of industries. Sometimes talk about making almost people jump through hoops, making them consume certain content, making sure that when they do show up, they're educated as much as like why we're a good fit. And I know some people push back on that. It's like, no, I just want the phone to ring. But you get, you really do. There's a qualification process that goes through that. I know that's not exactly what you were describing, but, but I think that's interesting.

15:19But I think it is because I think that the assumption is, and we get a lot of people who say, I just want sales qualified leads. Like just give me phone calls and tours. Sales qualified means they have an intent to speak to sales. It doesn't mean they're financially qualified or they're going to be a good fit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's always has to be that additional qualification that happens in sales for those people that have that urgency. But I think sometimes people have a very warped definition of what a sales qualified lead is. They think you're handling somebody who's going to tour today and move in tomorrow.

15:55And when they find out they're not a fit, either from a health perspective or a financial perspective, it's like, what has marketing done for us? Yeah. And another element I'm sure that they have to deal with a lot is the 50-year-old oldest daughter of the family has never bought this product before. They probably never wanted to and hopefully wouldn't have to. And it's disruptive and it's expensive and it's emotional and all of those things. Yeah. So I know we fight with a lot of folks over websites. There was one I was just looking at today. They were like, we need you to improve our website.

16:25I was like, your website's a complete takedown. It is basically a brochure from 20 years ago. Well, how do you explain to people the role that their website plays in the sales process? We just tell them it's their most important marketing asset. and end of story, hard stop. And so if they haven't done anything in three years, they need to do something. Now they don't want to hear that and they want to talk about a refresh. Will it cost us more to refresh a bad website than it does for us to stand up a brand new contemporary mobile first responsive type of a website? So every marketing channel in our industry drives people to the website.

17:04That's where the conversion happens. That's where the attribution happens and that's where the nurturing begins. And so 90 % of people looking for a senior living community will visit the website during their journey. So we feel like it's the number one most important investment. Well, and I think what a lot of people underestimate too is like what you just said. That's quite often where they start because, again, you've got to start somewhere. That's the easiest thing. We sit down at the desk and we do a little research and that's where we'll start. But what I think a lot of people underestimate is as I get more involved in the journey, I'll come back.

17:35But I have different objectives now. I'm there for a different reason now. Right. And so I think a lot of people underestimate that. It's just like, oh, no, it just needs to have our phone number on there. Tell them what we do. But, you know, no, I've got different questions and objectives. My third, fourth time there. A hundred percent. It completely changes. We look at the three stages, the weather, the stage, the where stage and the when stage. And people in the weather stage are just trying to figure out whether it's now or the new year, whether I can afford it, whether dad's going to get the veterans benefit.

18:05There's all those weather questions, and then there's where questions that are about the brand, and then the when is about the urgency. But you need content for every single stage, every question. You mentioned the course, but you were actually going as far as a Smarter Marketing certification. You want to talk about that and maybe why you decided to go down that route? Yeah, well, we think that there's so much opportunity for education. We don't have an industry certification in marketing. We do have other things like a certified senior advisor. There are certain things, but we just felt like there's a real opportunity in the industry to create some good standards and benchmarks.

18:46And really, for me, it's always about how do we make this a better experience for the prospect? And if we can help people deliver a better experience, it's going to be a better reflection on the industry. because to a large degree for people that are serving the assisted living and memory care part of seniors housing, they are selling a product that nobody wants, hopes they don't need, have never bought, don't know how to do it. And it's challenging and it's a heavy lift. So we feel like we can deliver a lot, a lot of value to the industry. And we allow people, if they just want to take the course just for learning, just to do a better job internally, or maybe holding another agency accountable, they can do that without the certification.

19:27But people that are really serious, each of our subject matter experts will be doing the videos teaching their part of the course, and then they will review the work. So for instance, if somebody is doing a class on persona development, right, they're going to have to submit their focus groups and their interviews and their outcomes and their persona documentation. And someone on our team will review it and then pass them or give it back to them for some more work. Yeah. And I think I've always believed the more education you can do, even with somebody who turns around and becomes a client, they're a better client, right?

20:03Because they understand why you're doing what you're doing or why you're asking them to do what you need to do. That's always been my point of view. Yeah. Well, Debbie, it was great getting to spend some time with you. You want to tell people where they might connect with you, obviously find out about the certification and pick up a copy of Smarter Marketing for Senior Living Communities. Yeah, thank you, John. I'm on LinkedIn, very active on LinkedIn, so you can definitely find me there. Senior Living Smart is the website. The book will be published on Amazon, so available on September 17th, which is next week.

20:34Yep. Yep. Depending upon when you're listening to this, September 17th, 2024. Believe it or not, Debbie, people come back and listen to these years later. So I always like to get the date sort of out of there, or relative at least. But anyway, congratulations. And again, hopefully we'll run into you soon out there on the road. Thanks, John.