How Sales and Marketing Teams Can Use Senior Living Tech to Maximize Their Efforts

Over the past year or so, we’ve seen conversations around senior living technology investments shift. Historically, communities adopted this tech to achieve one key outcome: greater resident engagement. But as technology solutions have evolved, so too have senior living leaders’ expectations of them.

Today, operators and community leaders want technology that enriches the resident experience and supports senior living staff. To that end, here are four ways your marketing and sales teams can use senior living tech to do their jobs more effectively.

1. Send Messages to Prospective Resident Groups with Communication Tools

Typically, bi-directional communication tools are for internal community use (reminders about pool renovations, shift scheduling notifications for staff, etc.). But salespeople and marketing team members can use this tool to segment and broadcast messages to external audiences, like prospective residents.

For example, let’s say you’ve recently hosted a community tour for a group of residents and their families. With the bi-directional communication tool, your sales or marketing teams can immediately follow up with a message thanking them for their time and laying out any next steps.

Plus, you can build these “templated” messages within the platform itself. This means staff can create, manage, send, and analyze messages from the same place. At a time when the number of SaaS applications keeps expanding – the average company uses 371  – your sales and marketing teams will appreciate this streamlined approach to outreach.

2. Upload Photos from Resident Engagement Platforms for Social Media and Sales Outreach

Authenticity is a cornerstone of effective marketing. And that extends to your community’s social media presence. One way to establish an authentic persona online for your community? Share what goes on there. That’s made easier with community engagement platforms. Here’s why.

Engagement platforms let residents upload photos and videos that memorialize choir rehearsals, painting classes, weekly brunches, and more. (Think of it like a Facebook for just your senior living community.) Your marketing team can view those images and, with residents’ approval, repurpose them for social media.

To borrow a valuable writing tip that also applies to your posting strategy: show don’t tell. If you ran a successful Fourth of July barbecue, don’t just say that you ran it successfully on social media – show why it was successful with photos of smiling faces, sparklers, or grilled burgers.

Your sales team can also use these images in email outreach to, say, underscore your community’s differentiators. One example: if your sales team is highlighting the wellness-centered approach to your life enrichment program, they can include photos of residents taking tai chi classes.

3. Capture Member Reviews with Custom Form Builders and Survey Templates

Good reviews are like gold. And your community needs the right tools to extract them. Enter custom form builders and survey templates.

Custom form builders help your marketing team create satisfaction surveys that ultimately help inform your community’s day-to-day. Want to know the impact your new Echo Dots are having on residents? Create a survey that measures aspects of community life (wellness, convenience, belonging, accessibility, etc.) in relation to these voice assistant devices.

If the responses are overwhelmingly positive, sales and marketing teams can…

• Use that information to help guide any future investments in senior living technology that emphasizes convenience and accessibility.
• Share those positive results in pitch decks, written outreach to prospects, and over social media.
• Build strategies that center your community’s effective implementation of technology.

Bonus: if your sales and marketing functions want a lighter lift with sourcing reviews, they can use generative AI tools to fill out templates or review presets that come with the form builder.

4. Attract Potential Residents and Families with Technology Trial Accounts

Before choosing their future home, prospective residents increasingly want to know what sort of technology communities offer. One way your sales and marketing teams can ensure older adults feel comfortable with, and satisfied by, your community’s senior living technology?

Offer them trial accounts on your engagement platform. Even just one week of access can give older adults the chance to test various features (checking attendance calendars, reviewing the dining menu, direct messaging onsite caregivers, etc.). That experience with your engagement platform can go a long way toward instilling users’ trust in your community.

Your sales and marketing people can also offer trials to family members if you have a family engagement platform. This is especially beneficial as the sandwich generation takes on a greater role in their parents’ long-term care planning.

Heck, you can even take this one step further and start a day pass program. With it, older adults in your area can see what life in your community is like, from the technology you’ve implemented to the ice cream socials you have planned.

Whatever you end up doing, the main idea here is that letting your community speak for itself can help your marketing and sales teams drive demand.

Your Senior Living Technology Should Support Every Aspect of Community Life

Engagement is a key component of any senior living community. But it’s not the only one – far from it. So why should your technology only support it and not the other parts of your community, like sales and marketing teams? Communities need technology solutions that encompass the whole enterprise – not just a single part. For more on how Icon’s technology solutions appeal to every member of your community, shoot us a message. We’re happy to talk through our all-in-one approach to senior living tech!