Retirement Community Marketing: Involving Stakeholders

The decision of how to manage an aging family member's living situation is one of life's most difficult. As a marketer, you understand that there are multiple stakeholders involved in making the final decision: the individual, the family, healthcare professionals and others. As a result, it's extremely important to ensure you're reaching all of them with your facility's message.

No doubt the retirement and elder care community landscape has gotten increasingly competitive with lots of players struggling to maintain full occupancy. Reaching key markets is crucial. One thing that I've been intrigued by recently is the idea of invite-only, private communities. These customized social media sites are great places to involve stakeholders from the patients family to healthcare providers and case workers.

How Does It Work?

American Express has done a great job of creating a community with their OPEN Forum small business community. OPEN Forum members can connect with other businesses, get tips and share advice on the site. By providing great tools along with the tagline "Powering small business success," American Express has illustrated that they are an established thought leader in small business.

What's the Recipe?

I think you take a heap of good, relevant content, add a splash of exclusivity and a feeling of intimacy - and voila, you hopefully have a community of people who are apt to share.

Take one group of stakeholders often involved in making these decisions: case workers. Case workers are often overworked and manage heavy case loads. Imagine how your facility's knowledge of these situations could help them get their job done. Many people working at the retirement or elder care community know exactly what the case worker may be going through. So, perhaps a private community for case workers where they can share challenges and successes with each other, as well as find helpful tips and articles from your staff would be popular.

Reaching out to key stakeholders can be difficult, but when you put yourself in their shoes it can be easier to see how you and your facility's knowledge can help them get their job done - whether it's finding a place to send a loved one or assisting those who are making those tough decisions. Have you had success reaching out to stakeholders? I'd love to hear from you. Please share below.

This blog post was originally published on the Priority Blog at priorityresults.com/blog. Priority Integrated Marketing is now BlueSpire Strategic Marketing.