Category: Seniors Housing

Many senior communities pride themselves on welcoming new residents, but these days, they must roll out the red carpet for another group as well: the furry friends of those residents.

We’ve found through our own research that pets are extremely important to the next generation of retirees. As more and more Boomers turn 65, that trend is only expected to grow. Some communities already go beyond standard pet-friendly policies to offer added services catering to four-legged residents.

Pet-focused programs can also be offered in different forms at different care levels so that residents can continue to reap the important health benefits of interactions with animals as they age.

Here are ten pet-focused services communities may want to consider offering if they aren’t already:

1. Dog park
2. Yappy hour (residents bring pets to socialize during happy hour)
3. Pet-related merchandise in the community gift shop
4. Pet care program (walking, feeding, litter-changing, playful exercise, medication administration, etc.)
5. Pet salon or mobile grooming
6. Vet house calls
7. Day care or boarding for pets
8. Community dogs and cats
9. Pet therapy
10. Pet-oriented events like celebrations and adoption fairs

Marketing Insight:

As animal-loving Boomers enter the senior living market in droves, it’s time to fully capitalize on the health and financial benefits of providing their pets with creature comforts.

It can be a challenge coming up with exciting new activities in senior living, but one community used its swimming pool to offer something truly unique, aqua pole classes. Here are some other creative ideas for your pool activity calendar beyond water aerobics and lap swimming:

• Relay races
• Synchronized swimming
• Water walking
• Inner tube basketball
• Kayak races

Water exercise benefits community residents in many ways, including improving mental health, strengthening bones and boosting metabolism—all without harming joints. And according to the CDC, people report enjoying water-based exercises more than exercising on land. Best of all, swimmers have about half the risk of death compared with inactive people.

What creative uses can you find for your community swimming pool?

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.

Music has been shown to enhance brain function, reduce stress and build relationships.

And the more connected people feel to the music, the better. One study found that  seniors who sang along to tunes scored significantly better on cognitive tests than those who just listened.

In LA, a group of seniors has even formed its own band. “The Fifth Dementia” is made up of musicians with degenerative diseases and high school students.  Watch the video to see how they find a common language.

The band is part of Music Mends Minds, Inc., an organization created by Carol and Irwin Rosenstein when Irwin, a musician, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and discovered that music was beneficial to him. The organization’s mission is to use music to help control the progression of cognitive decline in seniors and build support systems for students.

The program has been a huge hit, and more musicians are still needed. Know someone who’s interested? Learn more here.

Once again, we participated in the LeadingAge PA Annual Conference & Exposition, which was held this June in Hershey, Pa. Key leaders gathered to discuss ideas that will shape the future of senior living.

We wanted to share a few of the inspiring solutions we heard.

Swimming with the sharks. On her sixth attempt, 64-year-old Diane Nyad successfully battled sharks, venomous jellyfish and hypothermia to swim from Cuba to Key West. Her motivating advice for reaching your dreams: build a strong support team, give it your all, learn from your failures and never give up.

Spinning stories into marketing gold. Asbury’s session emphasized the importance of finding the right human interest story and repurposing it in blogs, newsletter articles and social media posts, all linking back to your website. Strategic storytelling can be a gold mine of leads, publicity and brand awareness.

Tapping the independent living middle-income market. As the economic spread continues to grow, creating an affordable community for the “working class” is a concept worth looking at.

The end of advertising. Advertising isn’t going extinct—we just need to rethink it. It’s about finding new ways to have conversations with prospects, so we can discover and meet their needs. The engagement shouldn’t stop once residents move in; they need to be invested in the community so they’ll share their positive feelings with new prospects.

Our team would welcome the opportunity to discuss these insights or to simply begin exploring questions that will lead to solid strategies for your community’s continued success.

Maggie is 87. She lives alone and no longer drives. Her grown children live out of town, and her only regular companion is her grandson Mark who does her grocery shopping and handles her banking. Everyone says how helpful Mark is, but some family members have suspicions.They’ve noticed his new flat screen TV, fancy smartphone and expensive shoes.

When it comes to older people and their relationships, there could be more there than meets the eye. That’s why World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was created. Today, June 15, is a day when people around the world plan activities and wear purple to raise awareness of the abuse, neglect and exploitation of elders.

Here are six facts about elder abuse you may not know:

1. Over one in 10 elders is affected, but only one in 23 cases are reported.
2. 90 percent of elder abuse is committed by a family member.
3. Those over 80 are most likely to be abused.
4. Risk factors for the abuser include substance abuse, mental health disorders and financial issues.
5. Financial abuse is the fastest growing form of abuse.
6. Often, the abuser is the only form of companionship for the abused.

It’s important to raise awareness for this serious problem today by getting involved in World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. But it’s even more important to watch out for the red flags of abuse on the other 364 days of the year. To learn more about elder abuse and how to report it, visit www.ncea.aoa.gov or call 1-800-677-1116.

In the words of David Ogilvy, “The most important decision is how to position your product.” But how do we make that decision? When we’re developing a brand position, we always measure it by three criteria: It has to be true, it has to be unique and it has to be compelling. In this post, I’ll cover “compelling.”

A brand promise can be true and unique, but if consumers don’t care about it, then you won’t make any sales. So, how do we find out—before your message is plastered all over the marketplace—if it’s compelling to your customers?

By doing research. Lots of it. This is especially important in senior living, where the media constantly tells us what the next generation wants and needs. We can’t just paint this demographic with a broad brush. We need to know what prospective customers in your market want.

That’s where interviews, focus groups and other check-ins become really important. Sometimes clients don’t think they need to talk to consumers because they already know what they’ll say. But we can find nuggets of great value amidst the things we already know. And these insights can help craft a message that customers find truly compelling.

Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. As the Boomer generation hits retirement age, paying for healthcare will only get more challenging. So what’s the solution?

Some people turn to crowdfunding to fill in the gaps that Medicare and Social Security leave. The medical category is growing exponentially on sites like GoFundMe. According to a recent article in Time, “Medical, Illness and Healing” is GoFundMe’s most popular section, bringing in 26% of all donations. In 2014, it helped raise $147 million for medical costs, up from $6 million in 2012.

Crowdfunding does have drawbacks, especially for members of the 65 and over crowd, who often suffer from common chronic conditions of aging, not exotic diseases. According to a 2014 Georgia Tech study, showing that a condition is rare or unique drives people to donate. And in a New York Times story, a healthcare expert said, “The need for geriatric care is so far and wide that it’s hard to draw out interest.”

Some families with older relatives, having run out of options, feel they have no other choice but to ask for donations via crowdfunding. But what’s it like to be on the receiving end of these heartfelt electronic pleas? ?

In one case we know of, an entire group of extended family and friends received emails with a link to a crowdfunding site. One branch of the family was facing major financial expenses for their father, an elderly man with serious health issues. Because the father’s healthcare expenses had decimated his funds, his children felt they had no other option but to ask for contributions through the crowdfunding site. They plan to care for their father at home, and part of the donated money will go toward making the house wheelchair accessible.

Upon receiving the emails, the potential donors felt sympathetic to the situation, knowing how difficult it was for the man’s children to reach out. Still, the request caused a few ripples of controversy, as many of the family and friends were dealing with their own serious financial challenges. They pulled together and raised some money, but the man’s children are still short of their goal.

That’s not uncommon. Although some people are lucky enough to raise thousands of dollars through crowdfunding, most campaigns do not go viral and most pledges come from the user’s personal network of family and friends. The average amount raised at GoFundMe is just $1,126. Then, there are taxes to deal with, the site fee and the risk that the insurance company will deduct the amount received from its part of the payment.

For many people, crowdfunding is not a magic bullet. But, with hundreds of sites out there and more popping up all the time, it looks like it’s here to stay.

As healthcare expenses keep rising as our population ages, it seems that our inboxes may not only be clogged with medical bills, but with crowdfunding appeals.

101 Ways to Follow up:

Salespeople are always asking for more qualified leads. They don’t want to be a nuisance by calling the same people in the lead base over and over again. But since it takes an average of 15-20 touches from initial inquiry to move-in, the existing leads in your database are much farther down the sales pike than the new ones walking in the door. Providing they are qualified, and that they haven’t made a definite yes or no decision, they are active leads that need to be cultivated and advanced through the sales process.

This doesn’t mean just continually calling prospects, especially without an objective or a reason to call. That’s what can make you feel and look like a nuisance. Follow-up does need to be structured, but it also takes creativity and individuality to stand out from your competitors in your prospects’ minds. Make them feel special, understood and cared about, and you will be amazed at the results.

The ideas for following up are limitless. What if you ask a prospect out for coffee at a local coffee shop and then follow up with a thank-you note and a gift card for the coffee shop? Or what if she attends an event at your community with her daughter, and you capture a beautiful photo of the two of them that you frame and drop off for her? Or what if she happens to mention that she likes to watch HGTV, so you pick up an issue of the magazine and mail it to her with a note?

These small gestures do not cost much, and if they further solidify the relationship by showing that you listen and that you care, then they are much more cost-effective than traditional marketing tactics.

Be smart about how you spend your time, effort and money when following up, and let your creative juices flow. You’ll find the follow-up process to be more enjoyable and more effective.

Don’t forget; All of those “I’m not ready yet!” prospects are in your lead base already—and so are your next 5-10 sales.

Looking for creative ways to follow up? Email me at jstone@varsitybranding.com, and I’ll send you my free handout, “101 Ways to Follow up.”

“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.