Marketing a continuing care retirement community (CCRC, or life plan community) is crucial to a CCRC’s success. Why? Because CCRCs need to have high occupancy rates in order to remain financially viable.
In essence, residents who live in the independent living portion of a CCRC cost the community less and thus their fees help subsidize the higher cost of living of those who live in assisted living and skilled nursing care. CCRCs must maintain a steady flow of new residents coming into the independent living portion of the community to bolster the community’s overall bottom line.
Because of this need to maintain a high occupancy rate, your sales and marketing teams must be equipped with the tools they need to successfully tell and sell your community’s story. Of course, a key part of that story must be about cost and affordability — ensuring that financially qualified prospects know that they can afford to live in your CCRC. But how can you effectively tell that story about affordability to your ideal prospects?
>> Related: Crunch the Numbers: Staying in Your Home vs. Moving to a CCRC
CCRC Marketing 101
The first step with nearly any marketing effort is to identify your target audience and then find effective means to reach them. Once you have done that, there are four stages of the marketing funnel, and each stage has a primary goal:
- Awareness > Attract
- Consideration > Inform
- Conversion > Convert
- Loyalty > Engage
In today’s digital age, one of the main ways that you first attract and inform a prospective customer, or in CCRCs’ case, resident, is through your website. Whether they find your community through a Google search, a mailer, or some type of print or TV ad, almost all marketing efforts point people to your website as the call to action.
Once on your website, a prospect should be able to learn more about your differentiators, your top selling points. For a CCRC, one of the biggest talking points is of course the peace of mind that comes with having access to a full continuum of care services, should a resident eventually need them. This is a huge selling point of course and what sets a CCRC apart from other types of retirement communities.
>> Related: How a Well-Designed CCRC Website Can Educate Prospects, Generate Leads
Dispelling misperceptions about CCRC affordability
But there is a hurdle that CCRCs often struggle to overcome, even among their target audience: misperceptions about affordability. In many cases, seniors incorrectly think that they cannot afford a CCRC. They love the idea of having the access to care services if needed, but they believe that that peace of mind is not within their budget.
The reality is that in some cases, moving to a CCRC can cost the same or even less than remaining in one’s current home, particularly in the long run should care services eventually be needed. In other cases, a CCRC may cost a bit more than a senior’s current living situation, but perhaps not that much more. The bottom-line fact is that a CCRC may be more affordable than some seniors realize and work well within their budget, but they have self-excluded themselves as potential prospects because they don’t realize that they actually do qualify financially.
How can a CCRC overcome this conundrum?
> What if there were a simple way for this “qualified but doesn’t know it” prospect to find out that they actually CAN afford to live in a CCRC?
> What if there was a value-added call-to-action that you could use on your marketing pieces and advertisements to increase the inbound traffic to your website?
> What if there were a way to allow interested individuals to determine 24/7 if they are financially qualified for your community?
> What if there were a way to build a better prospect list composed of those leads who are financially qualified?
MoneyGaugeTM from myLifeSite is the answer to all of these questions.
>> Related: The Cost of a CCRC vs. the Value to Residents
The MoneyGauge solution
MoneyGauge is revolutionizing CCRC sales and marketing. It’s a highly customizable online tool that allows your website visitors to get a preliminary assessment of your CCRC’s lifetime affordability. Personalized to your community’s specifications and added to your website, MoneyGauge saves valuable time on the front-end for both your site visitors and your sales team, building a lead list of those prospects who are a good financial fit for your community.
When a visitor comes to your website and completes the MoneyGauge assessment, they can see a cut-and-dry visual of their ability to afford the various independent living residences within your community. That “qualified but doesn’t know it” prospect will begin to realize that they do, in fact, have the financial means to move into your CCRC.
MoneyGauge is also an ideal value-add to use as your call-to-action on marketing materials and prospecting outreach. All MoneyGauge inputs can be customized to your community’s unique specifications, and a custom URL and QR code can even be generated for your community’s use.
The results of a MoneyGauge assessment are valuable to the prospect, informing them of their potential financial qualification, or advising them that they are not a good financial match to your community. But the results are truly invaluable to your sales team, enabling them to target the best-qualified leads for their sales outreach efforts. That is a huge timesaver for a sales team, and since time is money, that of course equates to a cost-savings too. You’re only spending time pursuing prospects who likely can afford to live in your CCRC.
And one of the best parts of incorporating MoneyGauge into your website and your marketing efforts is it never sleeps! That’s right: MoneyGauge can be working to build your lead list of financially qualified prospects 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
>> Related: Marketing CCRCs in the Digital Age
Finding the “ripest” CCRC prospects
If you were baking an apple pie, would you rather have to pick through basket after basket of apples to find the best ones for your dessert, or have one basket-full of apples that have been hand-picked because they were the ripest, juiciest, most delicious?
Well, now I’m craving apple pie, but the point, of course, is that having your leads pre-sorted and given at least a preliminary determination of their financial qualification ensures your sales team has an understanding of which leads are likely “ripest” for picking. It also ensures your team isn’t spending their valuable time on leads who cannot afford your community.
In turn, that improved prospect list has the ability to help your CCRC’s bottom line by boosting move-ins, thus securing the community’s long-term financial viability. And when you use MoneyGauge to help tell your prospects a compelling story about financial affordability, you help keep your pipeline of financially qualified leads full.
What to learn more about how to better-tell your CCRC’s financial affordability story?
Contact us today to learn more about MoneyGaugeTM from myLifeSite and request a demo!
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