Author: Varsity Team

I once worked at a large retirement community. The residents came from all walks of life and had very diverse views of the world. One day, I was talking with a couple just prior to election season. With politics consuming the media, it made sense that the topic became part of the conversation. I knew this couple had fairly liberal views, while many others in the community tended to be conservative. I asked them how they adapted socially during the election.

“Well, we just avoid people that we know will want to talk politics and disagree with us. Many of our neighbors sit and watch Fox News all day. We aren’t going to change their opinions, and they won’t change ours. So, why go through the exercise? It’s just easier to avoid it. Like during meals, we know which tables not to sit at or near,” said the woman.

During my time at that community, it wasn’t uncommon for political officials to make campaign stops on the campus. With more than 1,000 residents and staff, it was an excellent location for getting your name out there. Plus, we all know that older Americans are more likely to vote and generally spend more time learning about issues that affect them (such as health care). Knowing all this, what politician wouldn’t want to swing by a retirement community full of potentially influential voters? The administration also enjoyed having candidates and office holders visit the community because it buoyed the community’s reputation and provided an opportunity for free lobbying about issues involving aging services. Naturally, these visits focused the political spotlight — if even just for a short time — and got residents and employees talking.

As aging services organizations like LeadingAge devote ever-increasing budgets to lobbying, the role of politics continues to balloon. This puts residents and providers into sometimes unenviable positions. For example, an administrator may want to have lunch with a local representative to talk about issues relating to her community. Meanwhile, the residents hear about this and ask why she’s supporting a candidate that doesn’t match their views. Perhaps the residents even ask the administrator what her political leanings are, which could only exacerbate the issue, leading to a harmful situation.

While it’s not a topic that many think about, senior bullying is a very real problem, and politics are one way it comes out. Think back to the woman at the start of this story. She said that she avoids people who want to talk politics. She is being forced to change her behavior to avoid uncomfortable situations induced by others. Is this bullying? Probably not, but it’s easy to see how residents could become so vocal in their views that it intimidates others and rises to the level of bullying.

So, with all this being said, what can providers and marketers do to help these situations? Start by settig the tone from the top — and we mean the very top! The board of directors and administration need to be on the same page, regardless of what that page might be. Most human resources departments have policies in place regarding political activities while at work, but it can never hurt to go back and ensure that it covers all the bases. For instance, does it include guidance on how to deal with political activities from residents? All of this should be done with one goal in mind — and that’s creating a culture of civility between everyone on your campus.

Politics are part of life in America. We can’t ignore them, and we shouldn’t expect our residents and employees to, either. However, we can and should discuss proper boundaries around the topic and be proactive in creating civil spaces on our campuses. Politics, by nature, will always be divisive, but that doesn’t mean they have to divide our communities.

As communications professionals in the world of marketing, the way we frame language around our products is very important. In the digital realm, it becomes vital — especially in a world of search engine marketing and optimization that’s driven by customer vocabulary. Through this, users influence how organizations market themselves; meanwhile, providers try to influence a user’s search language by changing industry-accepted terms.

A great example of this is the term “Continuing Care Retirement Community.” It was adopted by the aging services field, but over time, it failed to truly describe what consumers want. Recently, the industry leaders (including our team at Varsity) pulled together to recommend the term “Life Plan Community” be adopted as a more aspirational term for the Boomers. Let’s pull back a bit further and think critically about how we continue to use language as senior living marketers.

If you perform a Google search for retirement communities or senior living options, you’ll generally run into two euphemisms used by marketers — “luxury” and “affordable.” I ask myself, if I were in the market for aging services, what do these terms say to me?

Luxury — “Luxury means the finest amenities and high-end dining” or, perhaps, “Do I have enough money to afford this property?”

Versus

Affordable — “Oh, great. A community that won’t break the bank and that I could actually afford” or, perhaps, “I guess I’ll settle for whatever an affordable community has because I can’t afford luxury.”

There are upsides and downsides to how we interpret these shorthand phrases. Certainly, marketers like them because they force consumers to self-segment. Those without assets will naturally avoid luxury, and those with money wouldn’t be interested in the more limited offerings found in the affordable space. Certainly, as we manage search engine marketing campaigns, providers often identify “affordable” as a negative keyword, meaning that if a user enters that phrase in his or her search, an ad will not be shown because the organization assumes that the user can’t afford its offerings.

Maybe you’re like us, and you’ve noticed something missing. Yes, just like the rest of America, we’re forgetting the middle class. Middle class used to be something everyone aspired to. It was a positive to be middle class, and people were proud of that label. Today, it seems that if you aren’t part of the upper, then you’re just part of the lower. When did that change? When did aging services stop engaging with the middle class?

For instance, let’s look at these search terms from Google Trends. This data is only for the United States, over the last 12 months, and shows the popularity of each phrase when it comes to searches:

The blue bar is “affordable senior living.”

The red bar is “luxury senior living.”

The yellow bar at the bottom is “middle class senior living.”

As you can see, no one searches for “middle class senior living.” There are plenty of reasons why this may be, but certainly it’s not a term used by providers to market their products. No one wants to be labeled “middle class,” it seems. What, then, is the term used by average Americans to find a middle-of-the-road community? In this case, there isn’t a universal answer — and, in my mind, that’s an opportunity.

While many communities are focusing on luxury and are trying to bring in asset-laden residents, there’s a strong middle class, driven by Baby Boomers, that are going to be looking for a retirement option. If providers can find a way to cater to this segment, they could potentially have much to gain. Marketers need to begin working now to define what middle class retirement accommodations look like and educate potential residents on how to find them.

Language is an amazingly powerful tool. As marketing professionals, we have a way of impacting how people perceive and interact with the products we make. No one would describe an Apple product as an affordable brand, but many do think of it as a luxury. Yet, for many Americans, it’s a luxury they can afford and represents a certain amount of prestige and status.

As we look to the future of marketing in the senior space, how do we capitalize on this and tell middle class Americans that a quality retirement experience is a luxury they, too, can afford?

That’s something that we, at Varsity, are thinking quite a lot about.

One thing nearly every retirement community can agree on is that they feel like they go unnoticed. Marketing managers around the country are all too familiar with the phrase, “We’ve lived in this area our entire lives and never knew you were here or what you did.” Of course, this refrain drives retirement living professionals batty, as they are often working very hard — and spending lots of money — in an effort to get someone to consider making their property home. To this end, one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle is a robust public relations plan that both informs the wider neighborhood of their existence and acts as a marketing tool that helps to bring in prospective residents.

Getting local media outlets to cover a retirement community isn’t always easy. While we, as professionals working in the industry, see and hear all of the amazing stories our residents share, it is often difficult to get reporters and journalists to pay attention. And why should they? While Mr. Jones may have an amazing story about his involvement in the Korean conflict, there is probably a Mr. Jones at every community. Finding an angle for a story that piques the interest of the media can be difficult, but we have some tips on where you can find those stories.

First, think quirky! Some of the best story hooks in your community may be hidden just under the surface and are things that you don’t even notice anymore. That resident whose apartment is entirely decorated with elephants may be old news to you, but his or her quirky collection may just be the interesting hook that a reporter will bite at. Nearly everyone has something quirky that makes him or her unique, so don’t be afraid to share it.

Next, try to tie someone’s life story into what’s currently trending. Perhaps a neighborhood in your community is undergoing a revitalization, and it’s the same area in which many of your residents grew up. Hearing how the neighborhood has changed, grown or even remained somewhat the same over the course of several decades can be a fun story to share! Every resident has a unique outlook based on his or her life experience, so sharing how those memories reflect on today’s society can be a great starting point for an article or interview.

Finally, embrace popular culture. What’s the latest fad that kids are into? Finding a way to connect your population to that fad or a public relations piece can be great fun! One great idea we had was to ask residents to interact with a fidget spinner, the toy craze that hit earlier this summer. While many parents and teachers saw the gizmos as silly, we found that some retirees loved to play with the toy — and we captured their reactions as they did!

Great public relations stories for your community are occurring every day. Finding a way to make the unique and different is what will appeal to reporters. If you remember to look for the quirky, keep an eye on trends and embrace popular culture, you’ll uncover a slew of stories in no time flat!

It kills more people than breast and prostate cancer combined. It takes the lives of one in three seniors. And only 45% of people who are diagnosed, are told they have it. It’s Alzheimer’s, the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.

More than 28 million boomers will get Alzheimer’s by 2050, and spending on this disease will eat up 25% of Medicare funds. It’s the only disease in the top ten we can’t prevent, cure or slow. But we can take action. And today is World Alzheimer’s Day, the perfect time to start. To learn more, watch the video.

Which celebrity recently helped prepare meals and deliver them to seniors? A good egg who’s very tired of bacon jokes. His name is Kevin Bacon, and recently he did his part to fight hunger by volunteering at a NYC Meals on Wheels.

Since we work in an industry that serves seniors, it’s important to be aware that 6.4 million of them suffer from hunger. What better time to call attention to this life-threatening issue than World Hunger Month, going on now.

You can be six degrees away from Kevin Bacon and help your favorite hunger charity win $5,000 by taking the good egg challenge and spoofing his funny Web film and shorts.

If you put a preschool inside a retirement community, what would happen?

Something very unexpected: Both the children and the seniors underwent an amazing transformation.

At Providence Mount St. Vincent, a senior living community in the Seattle area, a preschool is actually housed inside the community’s campus. On a daily basis, the children sing, dance, draw and visit with residents. The interactions bring laughter, companionship, learning and understanding to all of their lives.

Around 500 communities in the U.S. offer similar programs, and filmmaker Evan Briggs would like to see this model implemented on a larger scale.

Briggs is making a documentary about the preschool to raise publicity about the benefits of intergenerational interactions. This video is a trailer she made to raise funds on Kickstarter to finish her documentary. If you’d like to support her efforts, you can do so here.

Undoubtedly you’ve heard about Google’s “Mobilegeddon” – we’ve been working with our clients to stay ahead of this curve. Well, we wanted to break it down and help you be mobile-savvy.So, what is “Mobilegeddon” all about? Google has changed its algorithm related to mobile search and smartphones — desktop and tablets will be unaffected by the new algorithm, for now. 

Moving forward, when searches are conducted on mobile devices, Google will flag the mobile-friendly sites and give them higher priority in the organic search listings. Higher organic search rankings equates to a much higher likelihood of click-throughs (awareness) and leads (purchase intent) and vice versa for non-mobile-friendly sites. Considering how the top #1 and #2 organic search spots attract an average of 20-30 percent of the first search results page’s clicks, this only amplifies the importance for your company to ensure your site is mobile optimized.

​Depending on your industry, smartphone users can make up a significant portion of search volume. In fact, mobile constitutes roughly half of all Google searches. Furthermore, on the consumer side, over half of Boomers now own smartphones, while overall penetration in the U.S. has grown to 77 percent. The tides of device preference and usage are certainly changing, and your brand will ultimately benefit by rolling along with the tides.

A nice bright spot in this is that, with all things digital, this can be addressed in real time. When you’re ready to roll out your mobile-friendly site, Google will begin to recognize the change and incorporate it in higher into the search results. Also, the tweaks to the algorithm began on April 21 and will be rolled out over the next few weeks. So a dramatic change might not appear right away. But, at the same time, this doesn’t mean you should wait to react. Proactive planning is a must in today’s ever-changing online world.Time will tell regarding the true impact of this shift on search results for each website, but this would be the ideal time to refresh your website as it relates to mobile responsiveness. But with Google accounting for nearly three-fourths of the total search engine market, this algorithm change is not something to be ignored.

How can you tell if your website passes the mobile-friendliness test? Just click here and enter your website address. In a matter of seconds you’ll know if you get the message “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly!” or “Not mobile-friendly“.Don’t wait to see what impact this has on your site. We’ve already analyzed this and discussed the rise of mobile device website visits with a number of clients, now whom are highly interested in moving forward with this strategic investment. Give us a call to discuss how Varsity could help you ensure that this Google algorithm change isn’t going to hurt your business and give your competitors an unfair advantage — our interactive team is ready and has the chops to help you be even stronger in the all important search and mobile worlds.

“Once upon a time…” The phrase takes many of us back to our childhoods. It brings back memories of snuggling under the covers as a parent told us a bedtime story, or sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor as the teacher read out loud. We listened raptly, wondering where the story would take us next. Even as adults, we love stories and the journeys they take us on. It’s stories that grab our attention and keep it.

Consumers love stories, too. They enjoy learning about the history of a company and where it is going next. In college, I learned about the marketing concept “what’s in it for me?” and how important it was to answer that question through storytelling. That was close to 25 years ago, and the idea remains as strong now as it was then.

Our culture has been handed down for centuries through the oral tradition of storytelling. It’s in our nature to tell stories. People love to relate an anecdote when friends ask them about a purchase they’ve made. So, if you share a story about your own product with your customers, you’ll reap the benefits of having it passed on to others. This process is how a good story can grow and develop a life of its own.

Creating a story about your brand is a great way to let your customers know who you are and what you stand for. It’s through this narrative that you gain their interest and, more importantly, their trust. It doesn’t need to be some huge tome, telling them every little thing about your brand. It just needs to be enough to give them a taste, make them want more and, most importantly, help them remember you and your product.

In addition to my career in advertising and marketing, I’ve spent the last 15 years making and selling my own artwork. My customers love to hear the story behind each of my pieces. Even if they don’t buy anything, I tell them the story about my studio name. I can’t tell you how many people come back and say, “I remember you and that interesting story of how your studio got to be called ‘Kerensamere.’”

In this digital age, one might think that storytelling is dead, but that is simply not the case. If anything, storytelling is prevalent in our society now more than ever. Online videos are a great example of storytelling. It’s amazing how one well-crafted video can tell so much in such a brief time. Make it a good one, and it goes viral. Next thing you know, everyone is telling your story for you.

Not everyone is a good storyteller. Back in the Middle Ages, communities relied on bards to come to town and recite stories. Not just anyone could be a bard; it took a certain skill. It’s kind of like the difference between a person who’s good at telling jokes, and one who isn’t. If it’s not told right, the joke falls flat. You don’t want this to happen with your own brand story. That’s where hiring the right team can make all the difference in how well your story is told and retold.

Crafting and presenting your story is a skill that comes with practice and insight. You need to understand your own brand as well as your audience. What is it that you want people to know? How do you get them to care about your story? This is where hiring a team like Varsity comes into play. We pride ourselves in our ability to create brand narratives that tell your story to the people you want to hear it and get them to repeat it for you.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Grown Up Advertising is authored by our creative director and industry veteran Stephen Gordet, and covers the do’s and don’ts of talking to the mature market.

One of the most difficult aspects of retirement community marketing is that no one wants your product. Have you ever heard anyone say, “I can’t wait until I’m old enough and infirm enough to move into a retirement community!”? Probably not.

Most seniors begin to consider a senior living community after a medical event such as a fall or serious illness, or a life-changing situation like the death of a spouse or a sudden inability to maintain a home.

Every sale involves an attitude change. Prospects need to be convinced that the move to a retirement community will allow them to not just be safe, but to experience a fulfilling and rewarding life. We need prospects to come out to the community on multiple occasions, experience the social opportunities, enjoy the meals, and envision for themselves the possibilities of a fulfilling life there.

This can only happen over time, which is why our on-staff sales consultant, Maura Richards, tells us that it takes an average of 20 “intimate touches” to actually close a sale. So when we develop advertising, we incorporate not only branding, but also event marketing to get prospects out to the community as frequently as possible, along with special offers to create a sense of urgency.

Please take a look at the ad above that we created for Covenant Village of Florida. Our strategy is reflected in the branding. Based on our research, we knew that strongly faith-oriented individuals would be most attracted to this community. We wanted to target them, but not to the exclusion of others. The “covenant” language and concept that we developed did just that.

Then we added tactics: We promoted frequent on-site events that were of particular interest to seniors, getting them out to this beautiful community. Finally, we developed urgency through strong calls to action emphasizing the limited number of apartments and special move-in offers.

We implemented our plan through print, direct mail, paid search, specialized Web landing pages, and strong public relations and earned media components.

The result: We met and exceeded occupancy goals. Our success proves that, as in football, a correctly focused strategy and perfectly executed tactics give you a winning game. Contact us if you’re interested in receiving a full case study for more detail.

MARKETING INSIGHT: A perfectly crafted strategy isn’t enough. Carefully consider what is tactically necessary to close the sale.

It looks like Boomers and a growing number of seniors are becoming fully entrenched in online media. Although they still trail their younger cohorts, this year alone, 71% of those aged 50-64 and 59% over 65 have used at least one social networking site (Facebook still rules) compared with 26% in 2010 and 1% in 2008. They also love online video sites (Winner: YouTube), and 77% are using their mobile device simultaneously with “second screens.”

But as we discovered through our most recent research, those stats are only part of the story. Check out the infographic below to see what media types they’re using, and how much time they’re actually spending there.

MARKETING INSIGHT: We’re seeing a ton of content around the mature market and their relationship with the shifting technology and media landscape – from the downright informative to the just plain condescending. But as more Americans shift their media consumption habits, brands must also retool their content marketing strategies to satisfy prospects’ needs. On the technology side, device manufacturers need to keep access and usage top-of-mind, while on the marketing side, content producers should be cognizant of practicality and relevance.

*Source: Google & Ipsos MediaCT, “Reaching Today’s Boomers and Seniors Online,” May 1, 2013

Regards,

The Varsity Team