Operating Communities – Don’t Sit This One Out
There may be a natural tendency to hunker down, control costs and ride out the tough times. Unfortunately, if you are an operating senior living community, that is not an option because you cannot control a critical variable — attrition. Attrition is inevitable and, if not met with new move-ins, can create serious revenue shortfalls due to unoccupied residences. To keep pace with attrition, and to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of resident services, communities must aggressively pursue maintaining their occupancy numbers. For many communities, that means ramping up marketing activities to levels they have not experienced perhaps since they opened. If faced with this situation, I urge you to look at this as an investment, not a cost.
Time and time again during a slow economy, businesses that maintain a solid marketing presence are well-positioned as economic conditions improve. They endure less hardship during bad times and are quickest to recover. Very often they find they can gain market share or a stronger footing against their competition, because they have filled a void created by those same competitors slashing budgets and receding from the playing field. Now is the time to ask yourself: What type of organization and marketer do I want to be? There is opportunity. Are you ready to pursue it?
Something else that occurs during slow economic times is that poor marketers falter. High water covers a lot of stumps, as a colleague of mine likes to say. Areas of weakness that were camouflaged by good times and lots of business opportunity now weigh down the business and hinder success. What are those areas for you? A less-than-effective sales team, an out-of-date web site, a web site poorly optimized to capture traffic, lack of awareness in the marketplace, no referral program, a poorly defined image or position.
Regardless of your personal situation, operating communities cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and wait for this to blow over. With each month comes the potential for more open residences that need residents. Waiting may just create a situation that, even in good times, is difficult to overcome.
The good news for these communities is that the prospect base isn’t experiencing less need. The benefits of a retirement community are just as real now as they were a year ago. Your product has value. What may be harder is finding those individuals who can act even in these tough times. I assure you, they are out there. And for these individuals, the current economic crisis may actually be the motivation they need to make a move. The more anxiety and discomfort they feel with their current situation, the more appealing the comfort of a community becomes.
Here are six action items every operating community should undertake to gain every advantage in the marketplace:
1) Maintain a consistent marketing program.
2) Target your efforts, don’t use a shotgun approach.
3) Work your lead base.
4) Create a powerful web site.
5) Evaluate the skill sets of your sales team.
6) Track the results.
In the coming weeks, we will be sharing specific ideas in each of these areas. We encourage you to post a response to share your thoughts and ideas.
