Sales and marketing teams from across the senior living industry are using a variety of new ideas and campaigns to boost sales and attract future residents.
Sales and marketing teams in 2024 have the challenge of appealing to both today’s and tomorrow’s residents. Given that baby boomer preferences are somewhat nuanced, operators have tried to break the mold and appeal to their wants and needs in new ways. Those methods were on full display in the 2024 Senior Housing News Aspect Awards, which showcases creativity and forward-thinking ideas in sales and marketing.
The winning sales and marketing efforts – from operators including Arrow Senior Living, Beztak and Discovery Senior Living – show what new approaches operators are using to win over residents during a crucial time for gaining occupancy.
Best Brand Launch: Arrow Senior Living’s “The V Living Experience”
St. Louis-based Arrow’ Senior Living had the challenge of expanding on the company’s existing brand Vitalia, which Managing Director of Marketing Nicole Rosza said has become a household name in Northeast Ohio.
The company needed a way to promote a new sub-brand for independent living villas, for the company’s Strongsville, Ohio, location. So the company launched “The V Living Experience,” a campaign that won the top spot in the award series’ “New Brand Launch” category.
The V Living Experience via Arrow Senior Living
The ad campaign included three phases: promoting urgency with setting up digital foundations, including launching the website and getting printed signage out; creating anticipation with events, social media promotion and drone and 3D tours; then promoting the villas opening a website, digital marketing, direct mailers and photography showcasing the community.
To promote the campaign, Rosza said the team took an aggressive approach for outreach, with a direct mail campaign every four weeks and utilizing the similarities in branding between The V Living and Vitalia to bring in interest.
“We wanted to make sure that we were driving urgency but also excitement with the new brand,” Rosza said. “[We weren’t] afraid to try new things to get the right target audiences … we pushed towards a younger demographic than assisted living and memory care since they don’t need care.”
Shannon Novak, Arrow’s senior managing director of marketing, added the team hosted events at wineries and Top Golf to show potential residents the lifestyle they can experience at the villas out in the community at large, rather than being “in a lodge together.”
The approach appealed to the boomers, Novak said, and resulted in a 53.6% increase in new website leads. Within the first six months of the villas opening at the Strongsville location, the community reached 70% occupancy. In the six months that followed, the community’s average occupancy grew to 93%.
“These people are looking for that carefree living lifestyle, and it showed us we are hitting the right target audience,” Rosza said. “And it clearly showed where we grew with occupancy within the first year.”
Winning an Aspect Award validated all of the hard work the marketing team took to prepare and execute on the brand launch, according to Rosza and Novak.
“It was a great challenge for us to see how we can find the successes in it because we knew that we could really do something unique and different for this market that we’re in, so we feel honored and it just feels good,” Rosza said.
Best Print, Direct Mail or Billboard Campaign: Beztak’s “For the Joys of Senior Living”
“For the Joys of Senior Living” isn’t a new concept for Beztak and the company’s sales and marketing teams have used the slogan for years, according to Erica Dovitz, the company’s assistant vice president of marketing.
But the campaign focused more on the buildings, services and amenities, and there was an opportunity to build on it from a marketing perspective.
In 2023, Beztak set out to increase brand awareness for its All Seasons portfolio, particularly focusing on the resort-style living offered at the communities.
The company’s efforts won it the top spot in the Aspect Award’s Print, Direct Mail and Billboard Campaign category.
The Joys of Senior Living via Beztak
Highlighting how residents can live their lives to the fullest was the best way to showcase the company’s communities in an ad, Dovitz said.
The ads were distributed via print ads in local newspapers and magazines, direct mailers with QR codes and email campaigns with links to increase traffic to the company’s website. They all depicted residents smiling and having fun to promote the company’s “stress-free and active lifestyle benefits.”
“We were getting good reactions from it,” Dovitz said.
At the end of the day, the company saw a “surge” in leads with a 75% increase from the direct mailers, a 16% increase in website traffic from the email campaign and an 11.5% increase in portfolio-wide website leads compared to 2022, with a 21% enhancement in the conversion of new leads to new move-ins.
“It’s encouraging to keep trying new things and keep pushing that boundary … and not always sticking to the script and trying to go outside the box,” Dovitz said.
Best Multimedia Campaign: Discovery Senior Living’s “I’m Worried About Mom”
Discovery Senior Living’s “I’m Worried About Mom” campaign was born from a need to share the message that “help is available” – it was also born from personal experience.
The multimedia campaign set out to drive lead generation, facilitate move-ins and raise awareness of communities by highlighting some of the relief that can be experienced by caretakers of residents with declining cognition. The campaign used five distinct images to allude to aging parents needing reminders around their home.
That effort helped lead Discovery take the top spot in the Multimedia Campaign Aspect Awards’ Best Multimedia Campaign category.
I’m Worried About Mom via Discovery Senior Living
For Laura McDaniel, creative project manager for Discovery Senior Living, the inspiration for the team’s “I’m Worried About Mom” campaign came from moments in her own life.
“My husband has observed his parents grappling with memory-related challenges, and his concern peaked when he expressed worry about his mother following a phone call,” McDaniel said. “When he got off the phone the first thing he said to me was, ‘I’m Worried About Mom.’”
The project team used a motif of post-it notes in the ads, each with reminders such as the names of family members and remembering to turn off a stove.
With the ads, the project teams aimed to strike a balance in tone between the gravity of caring for an older adult living with cognitive decline and staying positive and hopeful about what lies ahead.
“Our aim was to ensure that the campaign did not elicit negative emotions or overwhelm the audience, but rather provide them with something they could connect with,” McDaniel told Senior Housing News. “We understand what it’s like to be in their shoes, facing the same fears and uncertainties.”
To prepare for the campaign’s launch, the Discovery team spent time discussing with friends and colleagues who had family members struggling with dementia to learn more about what they typically need reminders for. That personal touch has also led to an increased awareness surrounding memory loss in local community markets, McDaniel said.
Discovery is also in the process of launching an upcoming testimonial campaign called “Stories Speak Volumes,” which McDaniel said will highlight the qualities of communities for their markets.
Initial results of the campaign have been promising, with submission documents noting low bounce rates at 30% compared to 70% from other campaigns, 2.5 average page views per session on the website and a paid email blast reached an average of three minutes on websites, up from just over a minute.
The award also serves as additional validation for all of the work put into the campaign, McDaniel added.
“Being honored with this award validates the effort and commitment put into the campaign,” she said. “It serves as a source of motivation for future projects, highlighting the impact of transforming a personal experience into something that can resonate with others facing similar challenges.”
