10 Strategies to Add to Your Senior Living Marketing Playbook in 2024

The senior living industry is so diverse and dynamic that there’s never a shortage of strategic marketing trends to look out for. As the start of the new year unfolds, now is the perfect time to revisit your marketing plan, evaluate what has been working and what has not, and get to know new trends.

We’ve compiled ten senior living marketing ideas to inspire your marketing strategy for 2024.

1. Targeted Social Media Advertising

Having a social media presence is imperative these days for building your reputation as a senior living brand. But if you are only relying on organic posting and community building to grow your reach, you are missing out on key opportunities to reach targeted audiences at scale.

Successful marketing starts with defining your target audience, and when your target audience is as wide and varied as the senior living market, ranging from your future residents to their families and caretakers, reach is all about quality over quantity. Social advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram provides targeting options that can help you reach a high-intent target market more consistently. Leverage location and interest targeting to get in front of prospects looking for the care levels and living accommodations your community specializes in.

Once you have a successful ad campaign in place on tried and true platforms like Facebook and Instagram, consider exploring emerging channels like TikTok to deliver ad content to adult children of seniors on the platform.

2. User-Generated Content Campaigns

User-generated content is one of the most impactful marketing tools at your disposal. It’s cost-effective, authentic, and created by the very people your target audience is most eager to hear from.

This year, encourage your residents and their families to share their experiences through various types of content, like videos, photos, and testimonials. Amplify the reach of this content through social media advertising campaigns, email newsletters, and your website to build trust and credibility among seniors and their families.

3. New Video Advertising Opportunities

Surprise, surprise video marketing makes the list again. While you’ve likely heard us talk about video marketing trends before, video strategies are often overlooked by marketing teams each year because of the perceived effort and time they take to produce.

If that’s you, these numbers will change your mind:

• Video marketing leads to purchases: 84% of consumers purchase products after seeing them in videos.
• Videos reach more of your potential residents: More than two-thirds of the US population watch digital videos daily. In 2023 alone, video takes up 82.5% of overall web traffic.
• YouTube users by the billion: By October 2023, YouTube’s monthly active users have reached 2.5 billion.
• Connected TV is on the rise: Time spent watching connected TV is expected to double from 1 hr per day (in 2019) to 2 hours per day in 2024.

YouTube and Connected TV advertising are often overlooked by digital marketers but offer impressive targeting capabilities for reaching local in-market prospects.

Other video advertising opportunities to explore include short-form mobile video ads, such as Instagram Stories and Reels.

4. Interactive Ads

In a sea of ads, expanding the boundaries of ad creative is one way to ensure your ads stand out. With new media creation opportunities that leverage HTML5 in ads, you can create interactive ads that deliver a unique experience to your target audience.

These ads can give users the ability to click through care options within a display ad or email campaign to keep prospects engaged and increase ad recall.

5. Hyper-Local Targeting

For many senior living communities, future residents and their families reside in the local community and can be found in as small as a five-mile radius around the property. Hyper-local targeting strategies like geo-fencing and Google Business Profile optimization can capitalize on this and help you reach your target audience with greater precision.

Last year, the average US adult clocked in at least 4:36 hours of daily mobile use. With strategies like geo-fencing, you can deliver mobile ads at the property level, targeting prospects that step into relevant local businesses and community centers.

To ensure prospects searching for care in your local area can find you when they search their favorite search engine, add to your Google My Business profile by providing complete information about your business and creating daily posts to increase your presence in local search results.

6. AI to Scale Content Marketing

For many families, shopping for senior living is a new and unfamiliar experience. At the start of their search, they’re likely to research they may not know which care level their loved one needs or how to compare communities. Content marketing that educates prospects about senior living in your local area and how to select care experiences can place you at the start of a prospect’s consideration set and help you build authority and trust among prospects.

With advancements in generative AI, you can now leverage free tools like Chat GPT to brainstorm relevant articles and source outline ideas to streamline the content creation process. This can open up opportunities to create a wider range of content that your team can publish on your website, post to social media channels, or deliver in email newsletters.

7. Creative Offers to Increase Tour Appointments

Think outside the box to encourage prospects to move to the tour stage of the customer journey. Play off of the traditional lunch-and-learn concept and test out new offers to increase tour conversions on your website.

Is your community located near a wine region? Offer “Wine Down Wednesday”, where prospective residents and their families can come in for a tasting and then take home a bottle of wine after the tour. Another spin on the lunch-and-learn concept is to have your chef prepare the prospect’s favorite meal or dessert rather than whatever is on the menu that day to make the experience more memorable. 

Make it easy for prospects to schedule tours with an automated tour scheduler to prevent long response times from impacting your sales pipeline. Expand your tour options with gated self-guided virtual tours and guided virtual tours that can be easily accessed from your property website.

8. Chat Solutions to Increase Speed to Lead

Today’s prospects expect immediacy. 75% of customers expect help within five minutes or less. However, with an omnichannel presence, it can be difficult for onsite teams to track messages and provide responses within a matter of minutes. Chat solutions, like chatbots, can help you ensure prospects get a response right away. With the emergence of AI, these applications can be more sophisticated than ever before, providing prospects with relevant information about communities in a matter of seconds. 

However, in an industry like senior living, where the information-gathering process is complex and emotional, it’s prudent to pair automated solutions with a human in the loop. This is why we recommend a hybrid chat solution that can enable prospects to switch between an AI and a human agent for a fast and personalized experience.

9. Long-Term Lead Nurturing Campaigns

In the senior living industry, it’s not always a race to get them to move in the moment they enter the sales cycle. Most of the time, when prospects start researching senior living communities, it’s a long way from awareness to purchase as there may be multiple decision-makers or it’s just not yet time to “buy”, and they’re merely looking at what options may be available when the right time comes. Even as residents move in, the consideration stage never ends, as some need to change their care levels as time passes. 

This is why lead nurturing is a must in your marketing playbook. Ensure you don’t miss out on any important opportunities to connect by implementing automated lead nurturing solutions that can email or text information and offers based on specific triggers and sequences.

10. Intimate Outreach Events

When it comes to creating outreach events, as counterintuitive as it seems, sometimes less is more. For many prospective residents, large social gatherings can be intimidating, and it’s easy for introverted seniors to get lost in the fray. 

We’ve seen communities switch to promoting smaller, more intimate events at a more frequent pace and see greater success at converting those prospects to residents. Events that speak to specific interests and hobbies, like a book club, bible study, or painting, can bring like-minded people together and forge a stronger connection with your community. 

To ensure these events are attended, regardless of size and type, make sure to promote them on your website, in emails, through social posts, and within ad campaigns.

Create the Ultimate Senior Living Marketing Playbook for 2024

Make 2024 the year you shake up your marketing game plan. With the emergence of AI, the emphasis on automation, and the influence of social video platforms on the future of marketing, the best senior living marketers will stay nimble and innovative to meet the needs of today’s prospects. As the year unfolds, try implementing these ten strategies to stay ahead of the pack and establish yourself as an industry trailblazer.

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