One of the first lessons of marketing is to create personas (or avatars).
These are a demographic sketch of the audience you are trying to reach. For example:
- Age
- Gender identity
- Income level
- Education level
- Geography
Then for each audience, you need to analyze their pain points and how you are the solution. What is the benefit you bring?
Benefits for older adults (clients)
The Florida chapter of the Aging Life Care Association® did a superb marketing study some years back where they asked older adults who were working with a care manager, what they liked most or identified as the benefits. They said things such as:
- Understanding options
- Creating a plan for peace of mind
- Medical advocacy
- Care coordination
- Emotional support
- Saving money
- Making sure wishes are followed
Benefits for family caregivers
A different audience (those who were responsible for the care of an older adult) had a different list, although there was some overlap:
- Peace of mind for everyone involved
- An objective assessment
- Preventing and managing crises
- Medical advocacy
- Recommending resources
- Resolving family conflict
Your service is not one size fits all.
Different audiences have different issues, so you need to tailor the solutions you present to the appropriate issues. Older adults are not as interested in “an objective assessment” as their kids are. Nor was “preventing and managing crises” on their list, although we can see why it would be a high priority for adult children.
You have more audiences than clients and their children.
As a vibrant business, no small part of your clients come from referrers in the eldercare professions. Are you sharing how you might help them and make their jobs easier?
- Elderlaw attorneys. Can you provide expert testimony? Do you specialize in solo agers? Can you serve as a health care power of attorney?
- Financial planners. Can you provide an aging in place consultation to estimate costs? Make comparisons with local long-term care facilities?
- Assisted living communities. What can you do to stabilize chronic conditions? Reduce hospitalizations? Extend length of residency?
- Skilled nursing facilities. How can you support their staff with training sessions?
- Bank trust officers. Can you monitor home care providers to be sure quality care is being provided? Can you serve as a medical advocate? Do you offer enrichment services to address quality of life?
- Discharge planners. How can you ease transitions and reduce thirty-day readmissions?
- Physicians. What extra layer of support can you provide to improve adherence and boost quality of life?
To make your website truly effective, you need to speak to ALL your audiences.
The reason you appeal to a financial planner or bank trust officer is going to be quite different from the reason you appeal to a physician or discharge planner. And these reasons are of course different from the reasons clients or their families will be attracted to you.
Ideally, you want a separate page for each audience so they don’t have to stumble over benefits that don’t apply to them. Think of it as the marketing equivalent of “population health”: Highly targeted messaging that tells a specific audience that you understand their issues completely.
More than B2B and B2C
Traditionally, this differentiation is called “business to business” marketing (B2B) and “business to consumer” (B2C). But it doesn’t stop there.
Attracting employees
If you are a home care company or a hospice or home health or hospital, you are acutely feeling the labor shortage. And by extension, the competition for employees. You not only have to court clients, families, and referrers, but your website also needs to explain why your company is the employer of choice. You need to project a great company culture and show how much you value your staff.
More than one Our Services page
Next time you look at your website, ask yourself if that single “Our Services” page is really doing you justice. If not, consider writing text that describes your ability to address the unique problems of each of your audiences
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