Online Marketing Growing in Importance for Lead Generation
What the next five years hold in store for senior living marketing is hard to say, but one thing is certain, the role of online marketing will grow in importance. One key area for marketers to explore and understand is the connection between proactive marketing and prospect visits to the community’s web site. The days of tracking the success of a marketing effort based on phone calls may be ending. Like all consumers, seniors are finding the Internet to be a convenient means of exploring an offer or organization before committing to personal contact. A recent study from an allied field of senior living, non-profit fundraising, puts this in context. The survey, initiated by NonProfit Times, asked individuals whether they investigated an organization online before making a donation decision. The study found that 21% of adults 65 years of age or older went online before making a decision. This is compared to 44% of all adults in the survey. However, the telling figure is the growth from 2005 when the survey was first conducted. In that year, only 8% of adults 65 years of age or older researched an organization online. This represents a near tripling of the audience exhibiting this integrated behavior.
It is becoming evident that senior consumers are visiting web sites in response to marketing messages. Because of this, the role of a community’s web site is growing in importance. But unlike a phone call that allows for personal interaction with staff regardless of how minimal, a web site visit is anonymous until a prospect chooses to identify themselves. Converting this traffic to viable leads is critical to leveraging the marketing investment that generated the visit in the first place. Paying attention to this fact will be as important as phone skills have been in the past. How can you engage these visitors, provide value while they are there and encourage them to take a next step?
