BendTech

This is a repost of this G5 article

By Jody O’Donnell, SEO Manager

“You need SEO.”

“Your website has to be optimized.”

“You don’t want to be the only Senior Housing operator in your area without an optimized website.”

Sure. That’s great. But what does any of that mean?

Well, let me tell you.

SEO Defined

Is it Search Engine Optimization? Is it keywords? Is it the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? Is it Pay Per Click, meta tags, Google Maps, Yahoo Directory, Kansas and Toto? Yes to all of the above. Except maybe Toto.

English translation: Search Engine Optimization is how you organize your website content, meaning the structure and presentation of the information so when people search for Senior Housing in your geographic region, you pop up on the Search Engine Results Pages.

Succinct translation: The art and science of making Web pages attractive to the search engines. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

This blog is also posted in Long Term Living Magazine.

By Dave Beltramini, Director of Paid Advertising

There are scores of ways to reach prospective Senior Housing residents online, but here’s a look at the most effective channels.

PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising)

If your locations have vacancies, PPC is mandatory. PPC picks up where SEO leaves off and allows you to cover the long tail. For example, if you’ve used SEO tactics to properly optimize your site for the term “memory care,” what happens to the hundreds of thousands of searches for “dementia”? They go elsewhere. PPC can fill in that gap.

Additionally, PPC can serve as a branding tool. Working with an Advanced PPC management team allows support for the different stages of the purchase process with different ads, different search terms, and different, relevant landing pages. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

G5 Search Marketing has broadened its vertical focus beyond self storage and now also serves senior housing, multi-family and student housing with its search services. All are aimed at “mid-market” players.

The company reports that its client base has grown more than 80 percent in the past year, and it now serves nearly 2,000 client locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Additional revenue growth is attributed to existing client demand for such new products and services as a Twitter Widget, Real Time Reservations Module and Social Media Advertising.

“We’ve taken the time to learn the nuances of each new vertical and tailor our solutions to meet the needs of company owners and operators,” notes CEO Dan Hobin in a press release.

This is a repost of this G5 article

The Personal Side of Search

By Amy Foster Trenz

Four weeks ago I flew across the country to attend the 2009 Advanced Sales & Marketing Summit for Senior Housing, Assisted Living and Nursing Industries in Naples, Florida. This was my first professional conference in the Senior Housing sector (and, I quickly realized, a must-attend event). I was there to listen to industry experts address new ways of maximizing sales efforts to increase occupancy.

While I sat in the day-and-a-half summit session, my parents were sitting in their beachfront condominium just two miles south of the conference hotel. My parents, who will turn 85 next month, are recent full-time Florida residents after spending the last 20 years splitting their time and lives between the Midwestern town of my youth and Naples.

The author sits with her parents and young son.

They’ve both victoriously battled cancerous cells, but in hindsight those occurrences appear to be anomalies. Overall, their health has been remarkably good: healthy eaters, avid exercisers, mental fortitude.

Until recently. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

This blog was originally published by Long Term Living.

Senior Housing Operators Can Grow Presence Off and Online

When it comes to marketing your Senior Housing community online, there are three factors that affect your search engine rankings:

1) Paid Listings –Sponsored ads that run across the top and down the right side of the search engine results

2) Organic Listings –The non-highlighted listings you see – not paid ads and not maps

3) Maps – This third factor is currently a hot topic as search engine leader Google is leveraging its maps section in a way that could feasibly change how businesses advertise online when targeting local customers

Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

This blog was originally published by Long Term Living Magazine.
Social Media is not like other marketing practices. It’s not a one-way street. When you pay for an advertisement – you’re telling your story. With social media – you also must listen. It’s a conversation.

In our last blog, we spoke about the best social media channels for engaging with Senior Housing prospects: 1)Facebook 2)Twitter 3)LinkedIn 4)MySpace; 5)A Corporate Blog.

Now that we know where we should be spending our “social” time, what should we be doing. What follows are recommended steps for entering the social sphere and using social media to market with prospects.

1. Assign one person within your company to spearhead social marketing.

One person means one voice is speaking for your company, providing consistency in communication and actions.

2. Create Accounts on the Top 5 Recommended Social Media Sites.

For each of the sites listed above, secure your company name – including a relevant user ID (for example, on Twitter you can find G5 at @G5SMarketing) and unique URL. Once you have ‘secured your name’ in the Top 5, you can drill down further.

3. Build your company identity or social profile on at least the top three sites (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Then follow these steps:
a. Brand Your Profile – Make it clear to site members that this is a company profile. Examples: Use your logo, some event photos from your community.
b. Link to your Company Site – Increases the profile’s authenticity and generates traffic
c. Include Unique Content – Gives site members a reason to visit your company’s group page or become a fan. Examples: short-form (YouTube) videos and/or photos of your community.
d. Develop Interactive Content – Encourages site members to engage with your company page versus a static brand message. Examples: E-cards, video/audio clips, contests. You can also use Facebook to invite any or all of your fans to events at your community – a great way to move your social site interactions into the ‘real world’.

4. Locate your target market(s) and current residents on social sites and start listening
Ignorance is no longer bliss; it’s imperative you know what people are saying about your community and your company so you can respond accordingly. To listen in on the conversation, first set up Google Alerts and Tweet Beeps to receive e-mail updates whenever specific words and/or phrases are used on Google search results or Twitter. This could mean your community name, but also relevant phrases such as ‘senior housing (your location)’ so you can respond to people who may be looking for services.

5. Interact with those markets and current customers
Listen for and respond to relevant requests about a specific need that your company can address. Then address those requests. Be the expert in your city; you know your business and you know you’re offering a good product. Show families looking for senior housing that you have what they need and you will see results.

Remember that there is no “magic bullet” in social media. Being a part of the conversation, making yourself available and knowing what is out there are the most important elements. Don’t hide from the inevitable – social media is not going away and every business is going to be expected to have a presence. The sooner you create your presence, the sooner you can start reaping the rewards of being the senior housing community that understands the market.

This is a repost of this G5 article

By Devin Davis

Wanting the best situation for a loved one drives senior housing prospects to seek referrals. And there’s no quicker way to source referrals and reviews than on the Internet – through Social Media channels.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Top 5 Social Media Channels for engaging with Senior Housing prospects:

1. Facebook

In the past year, Facebook has become synonymous with Social Media. And with good reason. This site boasts the largest online community with 3000,000,000 members and users across every demographic (the oft-quoted fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the coveted Senior Housing decision-makers – women 55+). Net: Having a presence on Facebook is a necessity. Ignore it at your own peril. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced something called “Google Local Listing Ads”. These ads are targeted at specific regions and attached to what is commonly referred to as a “10 pack” – a grouping of locations on a map. Part of the change has been moving the map of 10 locations (10 pack) down to 7 (7 pack).

In our original tests, which focused on two of the markets we serve (Senior Housing and Self Storage) we were able to draw a number of conclusions.

But first – a bit of the background.

So far, Google has only opened up this opportunity in two specific geographic locations to start (San Diego and San Francisco) and the parameters are quite tight. (So tight, in fact, that a South San Francisco client was unable to participate in the testing). We have a number of clients who did fit into these categories, however.

This is giving us a chance to test what’s out there before a lot of other people in our industry can. It’s a great opportunity. We’re able to see how well these ads work, how they compare to other ads we’re running in the area – and be one of the first to help clients make informed decision for our clients as to what is working and what isn’t.

So, what have we found? Surprising results.

A number of our clients show up in this single map result screenshot seen above.

Our Director of Paid Advertising Dave Beltramini (@dbeltramini) compares these ads, in their native state, to the “proximity theory” for college pickups.

In a sentence: “When you see somebody you find attractive, but you don’t have anything to say, you just sort of walk up close to them and hope something will happen.”

Why does he say this? Simple. These ads are running near the maps portion of a Google search result – the visually compelling portion. Typical paid ads run above those maps – and they have somewhere in the neighborhood of 89 characters to work with – a legitimate piece of ad space. The “Google Local Listing Ads” however, are little more than a company name and address.

In many ways, as Greg Sterling pointed out in his article for Search Engine Land discussing this announcement – these ads are very similar to a Yahoo program called Local Feature Listings.

So what is the result?

Glad you asked!

For Senior Housing, we’ve seen a Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) that is on par with our average Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. Basically, it’s saving our clients money to take advantage of this service – in our limited tests. (Though our locally targeted PPC campaigns are still doing slightly better).

For Self Storage, however, the news is not as good. We are seeing a CTR that is about 1/3 to ¼ of our pay per click campaigns. When you drill down to our campaigns that are also focusing on specific geographic regions (most of them) that number drops to a paltry 1/6.

Currently, we see the biggest hurdle as pricing. It is on a per-location basis. This means as it now stands, for Senior Housing, it is a good price per click, but the self storage vertical remains challenging in a cost-benefit sense.

But rest assured. Once we know if it’s worth it, so will you.

This is a repost of this G5 article

Where do your residents come from?

This blog was originally published on the Long Term Living Blog.

Most senior housing providers will tell you they find residents in their geographic region. How people find them isn’t a mystery. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools such as Yardi help keep track of where those residents and prospects originate.

There is an inherent problem with that.

A local marketing director for a senior housing community and myself have a cordial relationship. One day, I asked him how he keeps track of his prospects.

His response?

“As best I can.”

His dilemma is not an unusual one. He’s a one-man show. Sure, they have a lead tracking system. But the problem is – he has to enter that information manually. This means remembering specific details of a prospect, potentially after three or four back-to-back tours on a busy day. He can rely on notes to a certain extent – but there will always be gaps and missing information.

Couple that with the information you manage to capture from a phone lead and it should be fairly obvious where the problems arise. While having too many prospects, particularly in our current climate, is not a major issue for most. Finding ways to properly manage the prospects you have can be. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a repost of this G5 article

This Blog Post was originally published by Long Term Living.

By Devin Davis

Social Media Marketing. It’s everywhere. Major news outlets across the country are talking about it. Industry magazines are talking about it (heck, you’ve probably seen it in this magazine.

But, what, exactly is it? As the bard said, therein lies the rub.

Luckily, we have Wikipedia. According to the online user-generated encyclopedia it is defined as: “a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Twitter is an excellent place to reach the crowds.

That sounds about right – using social networks to reach an audience – and possibly keep a current one. Today, we’ll focus on just one of those “channels” – Twitter.

That begs the question: What is Twitter? Wikipedia

– do you have an answer on that one, too? Read the rest of this entry »