Senior Living Organization Grows Online Presence and Boosts Occupancy

The Challenge

Unqualified Leads and Underperforming Occupancy Rates

For nearly a century, this regional senior living organization has provided compassionate, exceptional care for seniors, boasting a broad spectrum of services from independent living to skilled nursing care, including a dedicated non-profit arm.

Despite their rich legacy and comprehensive offerings, navigating the complexities of digital marketing proved challenging, hindering their ability to attract website traffic, generate new contacts, and ultimately convert leads into residents. This predicament led them to seek the expertise of Senior Care Growth by Whittington Consulting, aiming to revitalize their online presence and marketing strategies.

After conducting a thorough evaluation, it became evident that the senior living organization faced significant challenges necessitating an enhancement of its digital marketing efforts. The internal team was overwhelmed by the complexities of modern digital marketing, and traditional advertising methods such as billboards and radio spots lacked effective tracking mechanisms. There was also a clear disconnect between their offline and online marketing strategies, hindering the ability to effectively track and increase potential resident inquiries. Additionally, the corporate contact page was inundated with unqualified leads, further straining administrative resources.

The organization's community websites presented additional hurdles, suffering from complicated navigation and an absence of conversion opportunities. They needed a solution to streamline the buyer's journey, improve transparency, and enhance brand consistency.

To achieve increased occupancy rates, their Google Grants account, social media advertising account, and search engine optimization all needed to be improved. The organization needed a lower cost per lead and higher website conversion rates. A robust lead-generation strategy was needed to support the company's goals. The organization recognized the need for a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, including an overhaul of its HubSpot website and CRM portal.

Our Solution

Grow Their Audience, Build Trust and Increase Move-Ins

We started by developing a detailed marketing strategy – a roadmap that focused on paid advertising and website improvements. Their advertising campaigns were overhauled, including search, display, and social advertising, with geotargeting based on demographics. Prior to our engagement, the client wasn’t able to spend all of their Google Grant.

We fine-tuned their account for increased utilization by changing their targeting, adding and removing keywords, and testing new ads. Their corporate web pages were revamped to align with the organization's mission, vision, and brand.

To address the community website needs, our team conducted thorough buyer's journey mapping and simplified navigation across all community websites. We optimized community web pages for conversions by implementing tiered calls to action and layering in ungated top-of-funnel content.

Additionally, transparency was improved with comprehensive FAQs and transparent pricing, while brand imagery and copy were updated for consistency.

These efforts focused on building their audience by generating more qualified visitors to the website, building trust in their organization, and increasing move-ins. We also focused on ways to report on qualified leads for the organization accurately.

The Result

Increased Conversion and Lower Cost Per Lead

Time spent on the corporate pages of the website improved from under a minute to an impressive three and a half minutes. Visitors to the website find and read educational content, and the organization builds trust with prospective residents and their families.

As a result of the community website changes we designed and developed, they saw significant improvements in user experience and engagement. Mobile optimization ensured accessibility across devices, while “smart content” tailored the user experience based on the stage of the buying decision. Visitors see different content depending on where they are in the buyer’s journey, helping increase relevance.

Ultimately, these enhancements facilitated a smoother journey from awareness to decision for potential residents, leading to increased conversions and customer satisfaction.

Notable Wins

New landing pages and web updates increased website conversion rate by 22%
Our Google Grant ($10,000/mo. of free Google advertising) optimizations led to a 3,500% increase in Grant utilization, meaning the organization got 3,500% more exposure at no additional cost
771% spike in conversion rate across paid Facebook ads with a 186% uptick in website form fill completions, reducing their cost per lead
Google Ads optimizations brought them a 123% year-over-year increase in leads and their cost per lead decreased by 58%, with only a 15% increase in ad spend

In addition, the introduction of custom dashboards and reporting automation streamlined the reporting process, making it more efficient and insightful for the organization.