If you’re a marketer for a senior living community, here’s two questions to ask yourself: Is your senior living community marketing on Facebook? Is your senior living community marketing on Facebook well?
Many senior living communities are on Facebook these days, but that doesn’t mean every community is using their Facebook’s page’s potential to the fullest.
62% of online seniors aged 65+ are on Facebook, and 72% of online users between the age 50-64 (aka adults with senior parents) are also on Facebook, according to a recent study. That means your target demographic is the most active on Facebook that it ever has been, and if you’re not attracting their attention through a dynamic and engaging Facebook marketing campaign, you could be kissing your leads goodbye to competitors.
5 Tips for Marketing Your Senior Living Community on Facebook
How can you be sure your independent living, senior living, or nursing home is making best of it’s Facebook presence? Check out our five tips for optimizing your Facebook profile below!
1. Become a Resource in Senior Living & Senior Health
How do you set yourself apart from your competition? By letting customers know YOU are the foremost authority on senior living in your area. How do you do this? By showcasing your knowledge on senior living and senior health related topics on your Facebook page. Prove yourself as a thought-leader and authority in senior living through posts like:
- Answering FAQs regarding senior living and senior health
- Sharing blog posts on your website about senior topics
- Sharing accolades your community receives
- Talk about the history of your organization through #ThrowbackThursday posts on how your community has evolved over the years
- Give weekly tips on senior health topics, like what to eat as you get older, best brain-stimulating hobbies, etc.
- Create newer forms of content like podcasts and ebooks, and share links to page
- Design senior health related infographics (infographics have a high ‘share’ rate and can help increase your organic reach!)
2. Make Location Pages for Your Different Communities
One issue we see a lot with senior living communities is they want to accomplish a lot on their Facebook page–they want to market their different branches, post activity schedules for each of their communities, share events, update families with resident photos, etc. While this regularly updated content is great, it becomes increasingly difficult when you have separate communities like assisted living, independent living, nursing home, and senior home care, all being marketed on one page.
One of the ways we like to tackle this is by creating separate location pages under the main brand page using Business Manager’s store locations feature. Originally designed for creating separate pages for retail stores or restaurants with multiple locations, location pages allow senior living communities to break each of their communities out into a separate page under the umbrella of the main page. That way, each community can have it’s own posts, it’s own ads, and you can optimize each page’s About Us, Our Story, services, and photos to suit its needs.
3. Make Your Brand Human
Healthcare is a human to human field. One of the biggest mistakes you can do as a senior living community is to mask the humans that make your brand great! Users love to interact with people, not businesses. Some ways to humanize your brand include:
- Sharing photos and videos of resident activities
- Video interviews with staff of why they love working with seniors
- Sharing testimonials from residents with a picture of their face
- Showing your staff at events in the community you participate in, like charity drives, fundraising galas, parades, etc.
- Facebook Live FAQ videos with sales staff on application process, moving in process, etc. to answer user questions in real time
4. Utilize Facebook Events
Senior living communities have frequent events, whether it be open houses, lectures, workshops, fundraising events, employee recruitment fairs, and more. Get mass exposure for your event by creating and optimizing a Facebook Event Page. Increase attendees by collecting RSVPs or selling tickets from interested parties right from your event page! You can also boost events to likers of your page or specific audiences (like those with Diabetes interests to a workshop on managing senior diabetes). Post in the event page updating attendees on developments leading up to the event and share behind the scene sneak peaks to spark further interest. Always remember to share the event on the page the day of the pick up any last minute stragglers!
5. Advertise Your Community With Facebook Ads
Facebook’s algorithm is a “pay to play,” which means if you’re not paying for your posts and ads to be seen, it’s downright impossible for new users to find you organically. While Facebook has recently made updates to their Special Ads Category which affects senior living Facebook Ads, there are still ways you can effectively target relevant audiences and market your community through Facebook Ads Manager. From remarketing users who have visited your website to remarketing users based on your email lists (customer lead email list, newsletter subscribers, etc.) to sending ads to a lookalike audience, or creating non-housing specific ads, there are many strategic ways to market your community despite the new ads rules.
Are you a Senior Living Community that needs help marketing on Facebook?
At Mannix Marketing, we have experience working with a number of senior living communities’ social media presence. We know what it takes to help your Facebook marketing stand apart from the rest. From Facebook Blueprints to Monthly Facebook Page Maintenance to Facebook Ads, the senior living marketing specialists here at Mannix Marketing are ready to help!
If you are serious about improving your senior living community’s Facebook presence and start getting leads from Facebook, contact us online, or give us a call at 518-743-9424 to schedule a free 15-minute review of your plan and get recommendations from our Senior Living Strategists!
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