Creating Results’ Top 6 Takeaways from LeadingAge MA and RI Conferences
March is not only a great time in college basketball, but it has also been an exciting time for Creating Results when it comes to attending and gaining insights from senior living conferences. We’ve gathered all of the top tips and tricks from the various sessions to give you ways to improve your marketing “game.” From major trends in advertising to navigating social media, we’ve narrowed it down to the top 3-pointers from two recent conferences that will help you and your team.
1st Half: Ziegler/LeadingAge Massachusetts Senior Living Symposium
Insight: 8.8% of Massachusetts 65+ seniors are at or below the poverty level (vs. 9.6% of U.S. seniors).
Speaker: Lisa McCracken, Ziegler
Session: The State of Senior Living Capital Markets
Marketing Action: It’s beneficial to know the trends in the both the poverty levels and the other end of the spectrum so that you can speak to the correct consumer. This is why we advise our clients to purchase mailing lists based on their net worth and their income value. Otherwise if you’re selling a luxury product you would be wasting money by sending a message about your community to those that are in this growing group of older adults.
Insight: “33% of time is wasted in Board meetings because we are doing more telling than engaging.”
Speaker: Melissa Radford, LeadingAge
Session: (Re) Engage Your Board
Marketing Action: If you’re finding that you’re wasting time at Board meetings, have an agenda, send it out and get buy-in ahead of time and stick to it.
Insight: Creating Results’ definition of engagement is “the act of turning people on to your brand in a way that improves your business.”
Speaker(s): Todd Harff & Erin Read, Creating Results
Learn more: http://creatingresults.com/leadingagema15
Session: The End of Advertising – The Advent of Engagement
Marketing Action: Make sure you know your audience and who you are engaging with. What is of value to them? Use your insights and learnings to tailor a segmented message to this group. Building a relationship will go much farther than a sales pitch. If you missed this session, click here to download a complimentary whitepaper around one of the ways Todd and Erin recommended to engage your audience, experiential marketing.
2nd Half: LeadingAge RI: Be the Voice
Insight: By giving people purpose (jobs, participation, satisfaction) you tend to have greater results in improving their quality of life, even in later stages of memory loss.
Speaker: Sharon Johnson, The Hearthstone Institute
Session: Research-based Strategies for Creating Meaningful Engagement for Persons Living With Dementia
Marketing Action: Is there a local organization or charity nearby? Form a committee within your memory-care to get residents involved. Give them each a task or a job based on their ability. Whether it’s making cookies for a child-care center or setting up a table in the local park, this could not only foster a more vibrant environment within your community, it would be a great PR opportunity!
Insight: “Passion is what creates a champion in the soul of an ordinary person.”
Speaker: Matt Jones, Motivational Speaker, 3-Time Cancer Survivor and marathon runner
Session: Aging Services is a Marathon
Marketing Action: Use the passions of those within your community or organization to highlight the benefits you offer seniors. Client North Hill does a great job of this. We helped put the ideas to “paper” and created a video series of both residents and team members telling their stories about their passions and what gives them purpose.
(If you can’t see the video above, please click here.)
Insight: The 5 critical components of handling social media within your organization are …
Speakers: Erin Read and Yours Truly, Creating Results
Session: The Ins & Outs of Social Media Marketing for Retirement Communities
1. Pick the right channels – know where your prospective customers and influencers are now, where they’re headed.
2. Consider what your social audience wants – inside scoop, $$ off, relevance, humor.
3. Get committed – can’t set it and forget it; ongoing investment of time, money and resources. Your brand is now a publisher, a content provider.
4. Get action-oriented! Always incorporate calls to action that tie to your business goals.
5. Measure.
Marketing Action: Want to know what all of this means? Did you miss the show? Go get the FREE handouts which includes a special infographic featuring data from Creating Results’ 2013 Social, Silver Surfers survey.
Did YOU attend either the LeadingAge Rhode Island annual conference or the Ziegler / LeadingAge Massachusetts Symposium? Please share your take-aways below!