Repositioning a Community Takes, Well, a Community
Recently I was consulting with a client on repositioning their community. It is a common situation. The community began decades ago as a nursing home, which at the time brought a needed and innovative service offering to their area. Fast forward five decades and the community is still known as a nursing home, despite having strong independent and assisted living options available, not to mention a culture focused more on wellness than on the care model indicative of 1950s nursing homes.
The topic of how to reposition a community could be a subject for a series of posts. But I will limit this post to a single thought: Repositioning a community is not accomplished through developing new advertising/communications – at least not entirely. To reposition a community in the minds of your consumer audience, that is, to get them to think differently about who you are and what you do, your audience must:
1) Know your complete offering
2) Understand the value
3) Believe it
Think about this list for a moment. Advertising/communications can accomplish some of this, but not all of this. This is why repositioning a community requires the involvement of the entire community team. Here’s a simple graphic that makes this point.
Achieving each successive goal takes increased personal contact. Knowledge can be gained from brochures or ads or even news stories, but understanding and ultimately belief come through interaction with community staff. It comes from building relationships and trust, and it comes from experiencing the reality of the messages first delivered through communications.
As I referenced in the opening, repositioning is a much broader subject and this one point is in itself over-simplified. But it is an important concept, whether your community is repositioning or not. Effective marketing is a team effort that involves more than just communications or even sales. There must be continuity for the consumer at each step, moving them forward from knowledge to understanding to belief.
I think it helps, too, if the same goals apply to members of the community team. If, for example, we don’t know the complete spectrum of services we offer, we won’t be able to share critical information with the public. If we don’t understand the value to the consumer, we may end up answering questions they aren’t asking. And if we don’t believe in our own product, we will be seen as insincere.
Great insight Melanie. I love this. What a great reminder to give teams the tools to be successful at the same time you give them the responsibility. I am thinking a post about the value of proper oreintation of new associates and the value of re-orientation/training of existing team members would be a good follow-up to this one. Thanks as always for your time and comments.