Marketing Is a Growing Focus for Senior Living: 5 Senior Living Technology Solutions That Save Your Staff Time

Nearly half of senior living operators expect to grow their marketing budgets in 2024, according to a recent Senior Housing News survey. With senior living demand increasing across the board, operators are smart to try and capture as much of it as possible with stronger marketing capabilities.

One big form these increased investments can take: senior living technology solutions geared toward marketing efforts. Here, we outline five must-have solutions for your senior living marketing function and share why these tools shouldn’t just improve your marketers’ work; they should also simplify it.

1. Digital Design Tools for Your Marketing Assets

Whether you’re marketing events to current residents or marketing your community to prospective families, you need a way to easily create attention-grabbing visuals. You might be asking: Why not just use Adobe products? You certainly can. If your staff members are proficient with Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, you can adopt those platforms.

But Adobe products have a fairly steep learning curve compared to design platforms with drag-and-drop elements and extensive templates. And when staff members are busy with various initiatives, there’s limited time to adopt and understand complex tools.

Our take: adopt the platform that’s easier to use right away. A design studio application cuts down on time without compromising quality. What’s more: certain tools can integrate with other senior living technology solutions, making it easier for your team to upload their finished designs to the appropriate channels. This means you could distribute your content so it appears on in-room TVs, in your email marketing platform, and on digital signage throughout your community. 

2. CRMs for Lead Routing and Outreach Management

While it’s true the older adult population is growing rapidly – a projected 47 percent increase by 2050 – that doesn’t mean your community can just wait for prospective residents to flood your lobby and ask for tours. You need to facilitate the conversations your marketing and sales teams have with potential residents and their families.

That’s where a CRM comes in.

Is a CRM strictly a senior living technology solution? No. But the right CRM will integrate with various senior living technology solutions you already have – or it’ll offer an open architecture that makes it easy to build custom integrations and streamline workflows. (Sensing a theme about the importance of interoperability here?)

Ultimately, a CRM will help ensure your marketing team finds and strikes up conversations with as many interested stakeholders as possible. That makes it easier for you to build occupancy and demonstrate your commitment to personalized, authentic communication – from the very first call or email.

3. Community Engagement Platform Trials and Shared Digital Calendars for Lead Nurturing

Community engagement solutions and digital calendars aren’t just great for encouraging resident participation in life enrichment activities. They can also help drive your marketing efforts.

How? By giving prospective residents a feel for your community before moving in. For instance, you might give prospective residents a trial account on your community engagement platform. This account would permit users to explore your community – digitally – in the exact same way you residents do. Prospects might check out the photos that residents posted from a recent choir rehearsal before pressing a button that takes them to the weekly dining menu.

The value of this free trial – exposure to your community – also occurs when you embed your activity calendars on your main website. This move gives prospects and their families a window into your community that shows what kinds of lives your residents live.

Access and authenticity pay dividends when it comes to standing out from your competitors.

4. Communication Tools for Outreach and Audience Segmentation

There’s a good chance you might have a communication tool already. It may operate like a glorified Slack, but it works. That is, until you need to conduct any sort of outbound messaging. Remember, your marketing teams aren’t just speaking to residents; they’re also engaging with thousands of people beyond your community. That’s why you should look for a communication tool (pssst) that offers an email marketing platform.

These email marketing tools make it easier for you to segment audiences. Maybe you want a way to share updates with residents whose lease will be up in the next 60 days. And then maybe you want to share a one-pager on your new rec center with prospective residents who’ve gone cold in your pipeline. You can segment audiences, draft messages, and track performance on the same platform.

The kicker: an email marketing tool like the one you have with Communication 360 is easier to use, costs less, and integrates more easily into your senior living tech stack than a HubSpot or Marketo.

Not entirely sure how to craft the messages you plan to send? Our email marketing tool leverages the power of GenAI to help staff members write templated messages, like invitations or tour follow-ups, in a fraction of the time. And because the tool captures the responses you get from audience members, you can more accurately report on which messages resonate with your audience and drive occupancy rates.

5. Family Engagement Platforms to Collect Member Feedback

Reviews of your community are a marketing gold mine. You can promote these reviews in outreach emails, put them on one-pagers, and blast them on your website.

But you can’t do that without first sourcing them. One of the best ways to do that: find a family engagement platform that lets you send NPS surveys to your user base. Even better, find a platform that can automatically prompt family members to fill out a google review after completing a complimentary NPS survey.

For example, our Family Engagement platform will prompt family members who rate the community on an NPS survey to fill out a Google review. This automation doesn’t just contribute to your marketing efforts; it also saves staff members time.

Normally, your marketing team might have to independently find and message the appropriate families about a Google review. That process involvesporing over data and drafting the pitch-perfect message. A simple prompt bypasses that work and gives your staff members more time to focus on further enhancing the community experience for everyone who engages with your brand.

That streamlined process makes it easier for you to (A) find members of your community who want to sing your praises and (B) amplify their voices.

Senior Living Technology Solutions Help You Promote Authenticity in Your Marketing

When older adults are evaluating senior living options, they’re not just finding a place to sleep or play pickleball. They’re finding a new community – a new way of living. That’s a massive decision, and it’s complicated when older adults and their families can’t tell what a senior living community is actually like.

Your marketing collateral is often the first window older adults and their families have into your brand. You need that window to be crystal clear. You need it to show what makes your community special – what makes it an iconic place for residents, families, and even staff members.

That authenticity is a lot easier to achieve when you have the right tools at your disposal. Senior living technology solutions are built for you; they’re built to make a difference for your marketing team and for every single person who engages with your community.Want to learn more about how Icon’s all-in-one communication and engagement platform levels up your marketing efforts? Book a demo!