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In honor of National Technology Day, we’ve put together a list of apps we use that definitely make our work better and lives easier.
Quick note: All of these apps have free plans, but there are paid versions with additional features.
If you’ve been on a Zoom call with me over the last year, you’ve seen my Fathom notetaker. It’s also been my nerdy go-to conversation starter, “Do you use Fathom on Zoom?”
Before Fathom, taking notes during a Zoom call was messy and sharing a Zoom video was even more challenging. But with Fathom, all of that is extremely easy.
When you install Fathom and begin a Zoom meeting, you’ll notice that it will join your Zoom room as an additional user. Once you’ve added it to the Zoom room, you’ll have a Fathom navigator appear on your screen. The navigator allows you to mark specific timestamps and add notes in your meeting.
As soon as the meeting is over, the meeting recording is available in Fathom’s cloud with a full transcript (the whole thing is usually ready within two minutes — depending on the meeting length).
I could say a lot more. But if you use Zoom, you need to use Fathom.
Fathom is currently 100% free with no paid options.
Click here to visit Fathom.
I used to design a lot of collateral and images with programs like Adobe’s InDesign and Photoshop. But now that we have Canva, I’ve dropped both of those programs.
The amount of templates, free designs and icons, and basic image editing you can do in Canva is amazing.
If you ever design PowerPoint slides, basic logos or branding materials, social media posts, or just about anything else, you should check out Canva.
You can do a lot with Canva for free. But they do have a paid version that gives you access to additional features, templates, and icons.
Click here to visit Canva.
I can’t imagine what our team would do without a tool like Slack. Maybe we would email each other 85 times a day? Gross.
Slack is a great way to quickly stay in touch with your team throughout the day.
If you manage a team of marketing directors and sales people, Slack would be a great place for all of you to share ideas, solve challenges, and encourage each other without sending an email.
Slack is free but also offers a paid version.
Click here to check out Slack.
I used to put my daily tasks on paper, but I would often forget recurring tasks or leave my desk to work at a coffee shop and forget what I wrote down.
With ClickUp, I can view my tasks on my laptop, tablet, and phone. I can create recurring tasks, automate tasks through Zapier (that’s the next app I’m mentioning), and set a content calendar.
ClickUp is also a great way to stay accountable with a team or share a task with a team member.
ClickUp is free but also offers a paid version.
Click here to view ClickUp.
Have you ever wondered, “There has to be a really easy way to easily connect software and apps without having to know any kind of code.”
If so, Zapier or Make is your answer.
Zapier and Make essentially do the same thing, but we use both of them in our business because they each work with apps that the other doesn’t work with.
You can do things like:
The possibilities are endless.
They both offer free and paid versions.
Click here to view Zapier or click here to view Make.
If you enjoy attending conferences and taking notes on an iPad, you should download notability.
Notability offers the features of a typical note-taking app with the ability to record audio at the same time. It will timestamp your notes to line up with the audio. For example, if the speaker says something that you write down, when you go back and listen to the audio later and want to skip to the part when the speaker said that one thing, you can just click on the note you wrote and it will jump ahead to that section.
They simply call it: Audio-recording synced to your notes.
Notability offers a free and paid version.
Click here to view Notability.
We use a ton of software and apps, but these are a few of our favorites. If there is a big one we missed, you should let us know!
Southwest Airlines had a massive failure this week. The reason? They might publicly tell you “weather” or “staffing problems” — both of which are true. But the real reason was revealed by one of their own; a Southwest pilot for 35 years said this failure was caused by “antiquated software systems” and “no automation.”
I know there is a lot that goes into that, and this is coming from just one pilot. But I also believe there is a strong comparison to make between the Southwest disaster and the terrible speed to lead data from senior living communities we gathered this year.
In case you missed it, here is a quick summary of what we did:
When we started getting the numbers back, we found a crisis:
Almost half of our inquiries were never responded to (49% to be exact).
SeniorLivingPROS 2022 Mystery Shops
I hope you can see the crisis that is caused by “antiquated software systems” and “no automation.”
But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are three facts about improving your speed to lead.
We typically have said “five minutes or less” in the past, but the data shows that every minute that passes decreases your chances at connecting with the lead. So to give your sales team the best chances, your standard should be one minute.
It can be easy to think, “But could we possibly respond too quickly to a lead?” Nope. Studies show the faster you respond, the better odds you have. Period.
We need to be realistic about what a human being can do. You cannot hold your sales director / marketing director at the community to the one-minute standard with the many responsibilities, jobs, and tasks they have on their plate. What if they are giving a tour and a new lead hits their inbox? It may take them hours to get back to their desk to open that email.
Now that we’ve established the fact that one person will not be able to meet that standard, we must think about how to meet the speed to lead standard every time. And that can be done with automation.
Good automation will reach out to every new lead in one-minute or less with personalized messaging that doesn’t feel robotic.
Besides knowing that every lead will be responded to in one minute, another benefit of automation is that you can A/B test different messaging and determine what works the best for your community.
At this point, you’re probably wondering how expensive this would be.
For $297 a month, we can help you:
It won’t take weeks to get this up and running on your website. With our tools, you can change your speed to lead with a few simple website code additions. We give the code to your web team, they add it to the website, and your speed to lead is fixed.
Many communities across the country are implementing tools to fix their speed to lead. And we think that within a couple of years, the communities that don’t fix their speed to lead will be bought out by those that do.
Southwest Airlines had a crisis because they did not prepare for the future. Don’t let your assisted living communities follow the same mistake.
Ready to solve your crisis? Click here to book a call.
2023 is just days away and chances are you already have a solid 2023 marketing plan. But take a quick look at the list below to be sure these items are on your list:
If you don’t do anything else in 2023, do this.
Please get rid of the forms on your Schedule A Tour, Book A Visit, and Schedule A Visit pages. If you’re relying on your marketing directors to respond to inquiries after they submit a tour request form, you’re losing tours and move-ins.
You need to put an actual calendar on your website for users to choose a specific day and time. And that calendar should be synced to your marketing director’s calendar.
Once the lead confirms the tour, it is automatically added to your director’s calendar, and the lead should begin receiving reminder messages before the tour.
If you want something like this for your website, just contact us. We make it really easy to get this up and going.
It’s really sad that this is still a big problem in the senior living industry when it doesn’t have to be. We mystery shopped thousands of community websites this year, and here are a few of the disappointing highlights:
These numbers tell us that (1) we’re not serving families and their loved ones like we should and (2) we’re leaving thousands and millions of dollars on the table.
That’s the bad news. But there is good news. It doesn’t have to be this way, the solution is cheap, and it can be implemented overnight.
⚪ It doesn’t have to be this way.
The way many communities respond to new leads is the way they responded to new leads 20 years ago. But you and I both know the landscape has drastically changed so the way we did things 20 years ago will not work today.
You need to implement automation in your follow-up because good automation will follow-up at the right time every time. Humans will follow up whenever they can — which, for many busy sales people in your community, may honestly be 48 hours later (which is not good enough).
Before we go any further, I will acknowledge that the word automation might conjure up memories of frustrating chat bots you’ve used in the past. Some companies still use chat bots like that, but there is fantastic automation that is available. It’s personable, feels like a human, and won’t annoy your leads.
⚪ The solution is cheap.
Every website lead should be contacted in two minutes or less (because there is a lot of data that shows why this is important). And you may think something like that would be pricey. But it’s not.
Our tool that follows up with every lead in two minutes or less is $297 a month per community.
⚪ It can be implemented overnight.
I recently heard a leader in the senior living marketing and sales world say that they wanted to implement a good speed-to-lead solution but that it “couldn’t be implemented overnight.”
That’s not true.
We can put our tools on your website, and they’re ready to go. You can pay today, we give our tools to your web team, they put the tools on your website, and your speed-to-lead is fixed.
Not only did our mystery shops show us that speed-to-lead was bad, but the frequency of follow-up was terrible, and the messaging did not connect.
⚪ You need consistent follow-up
It’s one thing to follow-up fast; it’s another thing to do it consistently. The best way to be able to measure the effectiveness of your follow-up is to rely on automation to do it the exact same way every time. Then, a couple of months later, you can look at the results, tweak, set goals for the next couple of months. It’s impossible to know how effective your follow-up is if you’re doing it differently every time. Automation solves that problem.
⚪ You need to follow-up more
Our mystery shopping shows us that senior living communities don’t follow-up enough. During the first seven days, of the communities that did respond to our inquiries, we usually only received one follow-up message (text, email, and call included). That’s not nearly enough. Through the first seven days, you should aim for 4–5 touches.
⚪ Your follow-up messaging needs to connect
A lot of the messaging we’ve seen doesn’t do a good job of connecting with the problems that the spouse or adult child is dealing with. The responses to our inquiry are filled with industry jargon, way too many PDF attachments of brochures, and long paragraphs of text.
When we follow-up like that, we overwhelm people. What they really need is for someone to say, “This is Luke at Pine Greens. I just received a notice that you viewed our pricing. Can you tell me a little more about what led you to view our pricing today?”
We all know video is killing it these days so let’s do something about it!
When it comes to connecting with your leads, there are many great tools in the industry like OneDay, SalesMail, and others. These apps make it really easy to send personalized videos to leads. We received some in response to our inquiries, and they are impressive!
The next thing you need to put on your website is video testimonials from family members, residents, and team members. Before you start thinking about how difficult that may be too accomplish, I promise you it’s really easy. Just reach out to us to use our brand new video testimonial generation platform, or we can recommend some other options to you.
Here is what you need to do to help your marketers reach 100% occupancy in 2023
If you do those four things, you’ll find increased occupancy and happier sales people.
It’s always a good idea to be looking ahead and the next year’s marketing trends. In senior living, we believe there are at least seven marketing trends that will affect the senior living industry. If you position yourself correctly in these trends, you’ll take three steps ahead of your competitors.
By the end of 2020, studies show that half of all searches will be voice-activated. Let that sink in for a moment. Today, more than ever, seniors and their adult children are using their phones and smart speakers voice services to learn about retirement community options. So, do you know what Siri or Alexa says about your community? Grab your phone and find out!
We’ll cover the best way to set up your community for success in a later blog post series.
In 2019, Facebook changed its housing, employment, and credit ads policy to “prohibit unlawful discrimination.” We’ve found this new update to be challenging to work with simply because retirement communities have age restrictions in place. While you can reach out to Facebook for a special exemption to these policies, we don’t think it’s worth your time. And we thank there are better ways to advertise on Facebook by using an email list or targeting visitors that “like” or “follow” your Facebook page.
Google introduced new housing ad policies in October 2020.
So keep an eye out for additional restrictions like these on other advertising platforms in 2021. There will most likely be updates or changes made to policies like these in the new year.
If you aren’t using automation tools to help your leads down the sales funnel, you’re losing money. Decide right now that 2021 will be the year that you begin to implement automation marketing tools like Hubspot or Mailchimp.
In case you aren’t convinced that automation tools work, here are a few numbers that should change your mind:
You get the idea. Adopt and adapt to marketing automation tools because they work, they’ve never been easier to use, and they make you money.
Email drip marketing or email marketing campaigns is one form of marketing automation. Here is the basic idea: (1) someone books an assisted living tour on your website, (2) their email address is added to an automated email campaign that sends useful information about your community’s assisted living, and (3) they become more and more connected to your community until they move-in.
There are three main benefits to using email drip campaigns to nurture relationships with your leads.
First, you can offer precise content to a precise segment of your audience. Think about how this would not work generically to understand why it works so well when your audience is segmented. Let’s say you buy a book from your local bookstore about how to grow better tomatoes at home. The next day, you receive an email from them about how their motorcycle books are now on sale. Do you think you would stay committed to their email list? Probably not. But if that bookstore sent information about how to improve your tomato garden’s mulch or a coupon for any book about gardening, you would most likely stay engaged with their content.
You can do the same thing with your senior living community. Segment your audience into categories like assisted living, independent living, short-term rehab, memory care, new leads, leads over a year old, cold leads, hot leads, leads who attended an event, and so on.
A short, 500-word blog post might be really easy for you to write, but it’s not doing much for your website. If you really want to improve your SEO, you don’t need to publish any blog posts that are less than 2,000 words. Instead, aim for your posts to be between 2,000–3,000 words long.
According to Hubspot’s data and studies, a blog post of around 2,500 words is the kind of blog post that works best at producing leads. However, Hubspot also recommends that if you covered the topic in 1,000 words or less, then it’s okay to post it — just know that it’s easier for longer blog posts to rank higher than for shorter posts. In theory, Google looks at a longer, richer post as having more probability of answering a user’s question than a shorter, thinner post.
Here is one example of a blog post idea that will get you to 2,000 words or more: 25 Ways Retirement Community Life Is Better than Being Alone At Home.
We’re seeing more and more senior living websites offer live chat to its users. Sometimes it’s a real person and other times it’s AI-powered. The bottom line is that if you’re not offering live chat, your competitors are or they’re going to offer it soon.
Senior Housing News reported that one community that implemented live chat had 50 new unique leads, 15 scheduled tours, and two move-ins. Is that some additional traffic you can use? Probably so.
We know how difficult it can be to think of new ways to generate leads and schedule more tours. But we’re telling that if you use live chat on your website, you will see more leads and more tours.
This is why — when users visit your website, they’re looking for information and answers. A live chat satisfies their needs faster than a typical contact form. And we all know that the communities who respond first and please their users first are more likely to continue the relationship with that senior or adult child.
Moz.com shows that Google updated it’s search algorithm at least 10 times in 2020. We can almost guarantee you that there will be additional changes in 2021. That’s why it’s a good idea to have an eye on what Google is doing. If you’re the first community to adapt to Google’s changes, guess what? They will like your website just a little bit more than your other retirement community competitors.
