A nursing home differs from most other businesses due to the responsibility of handling near and dear ones of people. Due to a lack of time and resources, most people rely on nursing homes to give good facilities and care to their relatives. However, there are many old and established nursing homes that dominate the market and growing your nursing home is possible only if you adopt the right marketing strategies.
This article will provide you with power-packed marketing ideas for your nursing home which you can employ to boost admissions. While many nursing homes are stuck to the traditional advertising methods, you can take the market share by adopting the below-given marketing strategies for nursing homes.
1) Digital Nursing Home
Your website is your digital nursing home and so you must take care of it effectively to drive patients to your physical nursing home. Just putting up a website casually means you are bound to lose many potential patients. You must have the below-given elements in your website:
A) A professional design with well-organized content.
B) A direct scheduling/call booking feature to take care of active leads as soon as they show interest.
C) Mobile-friendly design as a big portion of your site visitors will reach you while browsing on mobile devices.
D) Fast loading website as low attention span visitors will quickly quit your website if your site takes time to load.
E) Facilities (meals, social life, supervision, medical care, etc) provided in your nursing home with photos and videos.
F) Video of the inside view of your nursing home.
G) Accreditation, License and Achievements
H) Testimonials of people who have sent their loved ones.
2) Press Release
For any new event or announcement related to your nursing home, you must inculcate the habit of sending a press release as it will give multiple advantages. First, it will give instant public attention and views to your announcement and website. Second, it will help in establishing your reputation owing to your announcement getting published on many news sites. Third, it will help positively in increasing the ranking of your website in Google which will drive more visitors and consequently admissions to your nursing home. For a one-time cost, the level of benefits provided by press release is disproportionately higher and is therefore utilized as a powerful medium of marketing.
3) Google Local Results
Google usually shows 3 results from local businesses and services for searches that it considers are local-oriented. The first step in this process is to create a Google My Business page which is very easy and takes a few minutes. Once the page gets created, Google considers various factors to decide which listings must appear out of all the available options locally. You can increase the number of times your listing is shown by taking service of any digital marketing agency that handles local listing SEO or you can otherwise also go through tutorials online to learn and implement it all by yourself.
4) Good Online Placement
To get visitors consistently on your website, it is essential that your site is favorably placed in Google search results i.e on the first page. Google considers many factors to decide the ranking of a website in its search results. The technical name for dealing with organic ranking s called as “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO). SEO is a dynamic game and you have to remain vigilant of the recent changes to stay ahead in this game. A good alternative is to hire an SEO agency to look after it.
5) PPC
Pay per click ads are one of the fastest marketing means for businesses and services online. You can utilize pay-per-click (PPC) ads to drive traffic consistently to your digital properties (website, social media, etc). Ads on Google and Facebook are more rewarding as they have a very big user base. However, if you don’t know uch about ad creation on these platforms, it is advised to devote some time learning about it as it can cause negative margins if you cannot target the right keywords and interests on Google and Facebook respectively. You can also take the service of any digital marketing agency to run advertising for your nursing home.
6) Retargeting
People may be in different state of mind while browsing information about nursing homes. Only a few people visiting your website may actually seek admission of their relative in your nursing home. To enhance this conversion rate, you can use retargeting ads which means that your ads will be shown to your website visitors on other sites and social networks too so that in a way your ad will be following them whereever they will visit online. This will cause more recall value and will lead interested prospects to become customers.
7) Social Media
Social media marketing for your nursing home is important because people spend a good portion of their time on social media nowadays. You must ensure your active presence on all top social media platforms especially Facebook and Instagram. You can share photos, videos and testimonials regularly to build an audience base. Facebook also allows you to join local groups using which you can reach more people in your area. Similary you can build an audience base relevant to your industry on Instagram by posting images that are linked to your demographic.
8) Video Storytelling
Since people will have a longer stay in a nursing home, the relatives of such people will need a good level of trust in your nursing home to leave their family members in your care. A video is a powerful way to convey the care and facilities provided by your nursing home. It can give a virtual tour of your nursing home to interested people. You can upload such videos along with video testimonials on your website, on Youtube and on your social media to create a good impact for conversions.
9) Hosting Open House
You can host an open house for your nursing home to let more people experience the real facilities and care available at your nursing home. You can announce the open house hosting event through press releases, on your website, on social media and other marketing mediums like newspaper ads, flyers, etc. This will spread out word of mouth publicity and will lead to more people being interested in your service. As a thank you gift for attendees, you can give custom printed and low-cost gifts so that they can remember and recommend your service. Such gifts can be custom printed towels, T-shirts, calender, etc. You can get it printed (with your nursing home name and logo) and delivered in bulk from online sites.
10) Low-Cost Merchandise Marketing
You can get your nursing home name and logo printed on many things like towels, hankeys, pens, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, etc. Once you have such merchandise, you can use it in many ways to spread the name of your business. You can ask for leaving reviews and testimonials on social media to people who send their family members to your nursing home and can give this merchandise in return. You can get your employees to wear these custom printed T-shirts and spread the word. You can hold a contest on social media to reward few people who would share your business on their social media pages.
11) High Ranking Directories and Sites
Many directories that enjoy the trust and authority of people and rank high in search engines are the prime targets where you must definitely leave your business details. Some of these sites are Yelp, Crunchbase, Craigslist, Quora, etc. By getting your nursing home details spread across multiple channels, you open up a new client pulling funnel for a one-time listing effort.
12) Networking
You can partner and network with other businesses and services that can send you patients for nursing home. These include doctors, insurance agents, massage therapists, pharmacy stores, physiotherapists, etc. You can either provide commissions to them on a per admission basis or can agree to cross-promotion of services.
13) Reporters
Getting your articles featured in local newspapers is a very powerful way to establish the authority of your nursing home business. You can come around with articles catering to the problems faced by family members or any other relevant and interesting content to pitch to newspapers. Once your articles start getting published, you can showcase this achievement on other marketing channels like websites, social networks, etc.
14) Offline Advertising
Offline marketing is a one of the traditional ways to increase admissions in your nursing home. You can use billboard and banner advertising near to places where your target demographic is most likely to hang around. These places can include famous physiotherapists, famous hospitals, clinics, parks, etc.
15) Reviews
Whenever people will come across the name of your nursing home, a major portion of them will type your nursing home name in Google to see reviews of your business. If you have good and positive reviews in place already then many of them will shortlist you. However, if you have very few or negative reviews, then you will lose these potential clients. To generate good reviews, you must take care of your patients well and must also ask their family members to leave ratings and reviews online. If you find very few people are leaving reviews, you can use the merchandise option given earlier to boost reviews.
16) Email Marketing
Since only a few people visiting your website will actually take admission of their relatives in your nursing home, you can increase this ratio significantly by adopting email marketing for your nursing home. You just have to provide the option to your website visitors to leave their email in exchange for something exciting like a free ebook around a relevant topic and then you can follow up on these leads to establish direct communication and to convert them into your customers.
17) Seminars
You can host free seminars on various topics that cater to your target demographic. You can choose topics like taking care of the elderly, informing government schemes and policies related to elderly health, the health of disabled people, etc. Once people come to your seminar, you can cross-promote and advertise your nursing home services to them. You can announce this seminar through press releases, newspaper ads, leaflets, on your website, etc.
18) Free Health Camps
You can host a free health check-up camp for the elderly, disabled and other people that are your core demographic. You can utilize such free camps to make people aware of your services.
19) Birthday Parties
You can host birthday parties of patients enrolled in your nursing home and can ask their friends and relatives to attend them. This way you can regularly get new people visiting your premises and knowing more about your nursing home. It will also act as an add-on facility of your nursing care business that you can showcase on your website and social media.
These comprehensive nursing homes marketing ideas are more than sufficient to take your revenues to next level despite the level of competition. We look forward to hearing from you in the comments section below.
