From ‘Chef Fest’ to celebrity speaking engagements, operators find a host of creative ways to market themselves and boost revenues.
By Jeff Shaw
Ten years ago, Legacy Retirement Communities had a major marketing problem.
Despite a $3 million marketing budget, the company — which operates four seniors housing communities in Lincoln, Neb. — was struggling to boost the portfolio’s average occupancy rate of 85 percent. All marketing efforts were falling flat.
The final straw came in 2004 when a lead-building event at one of the communities, supported by a television campaign that cost over $10,000, yielded only two attendees. Greg Joyce, Legacy’s CEO, knew there needed to be a change.
“At that point we would have been better off flying over the city and dumping $100 bills over everybody,” says Joyce. “You’d get more leads that way.”
The problem was the company’s approach to filling rooms. Legacy’s team focused almost exclusively on the financial transaction — a real estate sale — rather than on finding people who were a good fit for the community.
“Back in our old philosophy we focused more on quantity than quality,” says Joyce. “We had a selfish viewpoint. We had some one-bedrooms to fill and we needed people in them.”
Legacy made a bold decision. The company scrapped its entire marketing plan and budget and chose to host large, public events that serve as an experience for the local community. Management refrained from making any direct sales pitches at these events. The theory was that by building a solid reputation throughout town, the leads would bubble up organically.
“The philosophy around these events is we want people to come in and have an amazing experience,” says Joyce. “We don’t want them to feel like they’ve been baited into a marketing event.”
The first event in 2008 — a “Chef Fest” showcasing the on-staff culinary team at the company’s Legacy Estates community in Lincoln — drew nearly 2,000 people. The event featured a meet-and-greet reception in the lobby, a live radio broadcast with a local station, cooking demonstrations by Legacy Estates’ executive chef in the dining room, live music in the courtyard, appetizers and an open bar in the pub, plus more live cooking demonstrations of Bananas Foster and other desserts in a community room.
Events are now held several times per year at each of the four communities. Each event costs between $5,000 and $7,000, including all the promotion (invites, radio ads and newspaper ads).
The results speak for themselves: Legacy spends $2.5 million less on marketing per year, but boasts a 0.5 percent vacancy rate. (Yes, less than 1 percent vacancy) The waiting list to get into a Legacy community is nearly 100 people long.
Legacy is definitely an outlier, focusing solely on huge, public events, but event marketing should be part of every operator’s strategy to build occupancy, says Dave Martino, chief creative officer for the senior living division of Minneapolis-based Bluespire Marketing.
“Event marketing is a methodology whereby we can create a safe selling environment. It’s the first experience that a potential resident will have with your particular product or service or building,” says Martino. “The role that event marketing plays is to give a prospect that very first glimpse of what life is like in a place where, given the option, they’d generally prefer not to make the living transition.”
Events are a great opportunity to break down false impressions, showcase the campus for potential residents and their adult children, and hopefully have them all walk away with a positive impression, says Martino.
Based in Des Moines, Iowa, Lifespace Communities has made events the bread and butter of its marketing efforts at the 12 seniors housing communities it operates in seven states.
Kimberly Hulett, vice president of sales and marketing for the company, says Lifespace puts more effort into events than any other marketing effort, including billboards and print or television advertising.
“The sooner [potential residents] experience the lifestyle, the shorter the sales cycle becomes,” says Hulett. “At the end of the day, it’s the residents, the feel of the community and the experience of the community that’s going to help them make that decision.”
Once the event is over, though, it’s important to sustain the momentum.
Metrics matter
Seniors housing, and independent living in particular, has one of the longest lead cycles of any industry. On average, it takes 18 months from the time someone is classified as an independent living lead to that person becoming a resident, according to Dave Dunn, public relations manager, and Randy Eilts, vice president of public relations, both of Kansas-based senior living marketing firm GlynnDevins.
“How you get from attending an event to occupancy is through relationship building and a number of touches beyond that event,” says Eilts. “It takes eight to 11 touches with that prospective resident before he or she makes that decision.”
Eilts says many seniors housing communities use customer relationship management (CRM) software that enables them to track the progress of leads and communicate with the lead regularly to keep that senior progressing toward residency.
Tracking and communication begins with a “thank you” notification when a lead RSVPs for an event. That’s followed by a reminder follow-up. Then a post-event note is sent that either thanks the person for attending and attempts to schedule a one-on-one appointment, or asks why they the senior did not attend. The software can even determine when a lead has gone cold or is taking an unusually long time to progress.
“You can use that to measure their propensity, or if they’re ready to buy,” says Eilts. “You can create groups to come in for a contract seminar, or perhaps make it a little more intimate with a small group that’s sitting on the fence to come in and have dinner with the executive director.”
Typical metrics to track after an event are the number of one-on-one appointments scheduled, deposits received and ultimately the number of sales generated. A good benchmark, says Dunn, is that out of every 100 leads, operators should expect 10 appointments and, eventually, one to five residents.
It’s vitally important to engage the seniors and establish some sort of touchpoint after the event, says Dunn. For example, celebrity speakers help drive photo opportunities, such as travel author Rick Steves and political commentator Oliver North, says Dunn. “After a speaker makes his or her presentation, you do a photo opportunity. For [the lead] to get that photo, they come back or you deliver it by e-mail and have another touch point to further that relationship.”
Hulett says Lifespace uses “drip campaigns” with their leads, which involve sending occasional e-mails at regular frequencies.
The information gathered through tracking their responses and movement on the website can help determine what most interests a lead. For example, someone looking at floor plans on the website is probably interested in a tour, while someone using the costs calculator is considering budget issues.
“It tells us what the market’s looking for,” says Hulett. “It tells us where to focus our efforts.”
Bluespire’s Martino warns against attempting to move leads along too quickly. Many leads want to jump straight to looking at real estate, but ideally that step should be taken later in the process.
“Don’t let the prospect take control of the process,” he says. “You can ultimately have more conversions at higher rates of ROI (return on investment) and meet your sales goals in a better, more streamlined way than just tackling everybody that walks through the door. That’s hard to train and it’s hard to get marketers to accept that.”
Prepare for pitfalls
Events come with a lot of risks, and operators should be prepared to face them. But if well executed, events are some of the most rewarding ways to market a seniors housing community, says Martino. “You have to work harder and work smarter. You have to be a planner.”
GlynnDevins’ Dunn echoes the need for smart planning, noting that sickness and weather can cause unexpected schedule changes. Strep throat once caused a big-name speaker to cancel an event, but a backup speaker was already in place in case of such an occurrence.
“It’s not just about that one event,” says Dunn. “It’s all the little parts around it, from a little reception beforehand or a little meet-and-greet after. There’s a lot of work that goes into that to pull it off.”
Another challenge is knowing how to deal with people who don’t qualify as leads but who attend the events, resulting in wasted resources.
Lifespace’s Hulett refers to them as “suspects” (as opposed to prospects). They attend simply to enjoy the food or speaker but have no interest in the facility itself.
She compares the scenario to “nosy neighbors” at an open house who attend out of curiosity and don’t have a legitimate interest in buying.
The solution, she says, is to do everything possible to weed out those people with questions during the RSVP process and confirmation calls and to be careful in targeting the leads in the first place.
“The biggest mistake anybody makes is not establishing the goals upfront and not being strategic about the implementation.”
Legacy’s Joyce recalls one event the company hosted that included the giveaway of a big-screen television. “Everybody came out of the woodwork — we had a 20-year-old there.”
By focusing on events that are of interest to its target market, Legacy fixed the problem, says Joyce. “We’ve been very fortunate that we don’t really see that.”
Joyce also notes that events can be a major imposition on an operator’s current residents if they are not carefully planned. Legacy’s solution is to allow residents to come down early “to partake without fighting the crowd” and to make them hosts, so they feel like part of the event.
“If you’re going to have a problem, that’s probably a good problem — trying to figure out how to accommodate the volume of people.”