The Business of Aging

Importance of Content. Lessons from Yahoo Buying Associated Content.

On our sister site's (HRmarketer.com) blog we made a post today "Yahoo Gives Up $100M for More Ad Bait aka Associated Content".

I'm not going to cut and paste the post here so I encourage you to visit the blog and read it. This relates to a post I made here a few months ago titled "Carefully Consider What Ads You Place on Your Web Site and Blog".

As I wrote on the HRmarketer post, we take content very seriously at both HRmarketer and SeniorCareMarketer.  At HRmarketer, we produce a lot of content for our clients.  We think producing great non promotional content (that is search optimized) is a key marketing and PR strategy for HR and senior care vendors. Content (white papers, research, articles, e-books, etc.) can be used to establish your company as a thought leader leading to increased online visibility and sales leads.

But putting bad content out there just for the sake of generating leads almost always fails - fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.

If you agree, I think you'll enjoy the post on HRmarketer. 

Print Media Dying a Slow Death. Get Social and Get Online.

Erica Morris from PR Week wrote an article about a 2010 Media Survey they worked with CA Walker to conduct. Data is based on completed surveys from 268 media professionals and 285 PR professionals during January 11-19. Results were tested at a confidence level of 90%.

The findings were very interesting. A few findings stood out for me:

1. Growing importance (and acceptance) of pitching to journalists through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
2. Half of surveyed journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover.
3. Nearly 40% of journalists say pitches incorporating multimedia and high res photos help them better understand a story.
4. 84% of journalists consider email the best way to receive pitches.
5. Nearly 60% of journalists expect a further decline in print circulation and growing importance on the Web and other online channels. A blog post I made yesterday on HRmarketer discussed how the S.F. Chronicle circulation dropped 22 percent in last year! While there are exceptions we are seeing a definite trend of dropping circulations amongst print media.  

My reaction to these points:

• Senior Care vendors must do a better job at connecting, following and using social media in their media relations. Our SeniorCareMarketer.com customers have plenty of tools available to facilitate this including our database of social networking account information for senior care and boomer media and our real-time feeds of their media tweets. But they are not being used to there maximum value by most vendors.
• Knowing journalists prefer email is a plus for companies using SeniorCareMarketer.com because they can send media releases to senior care and boomer journalists. But many vendors still do not engage in ongoing media relations. This is a missed opportunity. 
• Finally, the fact that 50% of journalists say that only 0-25% of pitches they receive are related to what they cover is shocking to me. Elrond Lawrence, one of our media relations experts at our sister product HRmarketer, wrote several articles on effective media relations - read them here. And SeniorCareMarketer.com customers should review the notes we compile for journalists before sending them news releases (e.g., what they cover, what they want, etc.).

The bottom line is that print media is dying a slow death as online visibility grows in importance. More and more data is confirming this fact. As a result, companies targeting seniors and boomers  must aggressively invest in social media, SEO, SEM and other tactics that result in online visibility, web site traffic and sales leads.

Here are some free resources from SeniorCareMarketer that discuss many of the above points.

Selling to the Senior Market? SeniorCareMarketer.com Formally Launches!

We announced a number of months ago the beta launch of SeniorCareMarketer.com.  This week Fisher Vista, LLC formally launched SeniorCareMarketer (see Business Week article) to companies that market their services and products to the rapidly-growing senior care market. These companies now have a new high-tech tool at their disposal.

I anticipate the product to be well received by healthcare companies due to the success of its sister product, HRmarketer.com that was launched in 2002 and is the largest service of its type in the human resource marketplace.

SeniorCareMarketer.com combines databases of marketing and public relations opportunities with press release distribution, campaign management, and social networking services. A full range of Internet marketing and SEO services are also available.

SeniorCareMarketer.com is a direct response to the growing number of companies marketing products and services related to the expanding elder care industry, fueled by the aging of the Baby Boomer generation. An estimated 70 million Americans will be over the age of 65 by the year 2030 - equal to one out of every five Americans.

Included among SeniorCareMarketer.com's vast databases are profiles of journalists and bloggers who cover the industry, media outlets (including advertising information, editorial calendars and list rental information for direct marketing), conferences and trade shows, speaking opportunities, award competitions, and more. All are designed to help companies reach the many buyers and purchasing influencers of products and services relating to the care of older adults--including family caregivers, medical doctors, nurses, homecare agencies, hospitals, geriatric care managers, pharmacists, assisted living facilities, social service agencies, physical therapists, and even seniors themselves.

For more information, visit www.SeniorCareMarketer.comand view a screen tour here.

You can also create a FREE profile if your company in the SeniorCareMarketer Buyers Guide by visiting:  http://www.seniorcaremarketer.com/site/home/community/seniorcaresuppliers.php

Differentiating Your Home Care Business

I sat in on a very informative webinar this morning sponsored by Corecubed, a marketing agency that helps owners of home care (private duty) companies with their marketing.

Our company SeniorCareMarketer.com and Corecubed have a lot in common in that we believe in leveraging "content" with a combination of traditional and Web 2.0 marketing/PR tactics to build visibility of your company and drive leads.

The speaker on the webinar, Merili Orsini, spoke a lot about the "spectrum of care options" for in-home care and the marketing strategy of marketing to "referral targets". Good stuff. Merili gave an excellent presentation - she knows what she is talking about.

The webinar got me thinking about in-home care and marketing.  The growth of in-home care agencies is staggering. Several prominent business publications have identified home care as one of the top franchising opportunity at the moment. Generally speaking, there are two types of in-home care companies - franchises and locally owned independent agencies. Some well known providers include:

• Aegin Place
• Always Best Care
• Caring Hearts
• Comforcare
• Comfort Keepers
• Home Care Assistance
• Home Health Mates
• Home helpers
• Home Instead
• Homewatch CareGivers
• LivHOME
• Right at Home
• Seniors Helping Seniors
• Synergy HomeCare
• Visiting Angels

As the primary caregiver for my mom I've had some experience (as a buyer of home care services) with in-home care - from hourly to full time live-ins.  In fact, while researching potential agencies for my mom, I've spoken with most of the companies listed above as well as a handful of independently owned firms.  I've had great experiences and I've had some horrible experiences (where what was promised was not even close to being delivered).

There are a lot of ways to effectively brand and market your home care agency which I'm not going to get into in this blog posting. But I do want to make two very important points that many home care agencies are not aware of or at least their marketing does not reflect it.

Point #1 - You May Be a Local Agency But Many of Your Customers (Buyers) Are Not

You are probably having great success with your local marketing activities from advertising (print/Yellow Pages, cable TV, radio, display), sponsorships, trades show exhibiting, direct marketing, etc.) but these campaigns are just that - local.  Many of your buyers (e.g., caregivers) are long-distance (e.g., live greater than 50 miles from the personal they are caring for) and they may not be seeing your campaigns. Consider these long distance caregiving facts:

• The number of long-distance caregivers in the U.S. who are caring for an older relative range are between 5 million and 7 million. Long-distance caregivers are generally defined as living more than one hour from the older adult needing assistance. - Source: National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP.
•  Caregivers live an average of 480 miles from the people for which they care. - Source: Long Distance Caregiver Project - Alzheimer's Association LA & Riverside, Los Angeles, CA.

As a result, regardless of the size of your business, you should be easily found online and dedicate a significant amount of resources to SEO, online marketing and of course make sure you have a great web site.   This is also why Corecubed's markeitng strategy of targeting referral targets is so important.  And why our product, SeniorCareMarketer is so valuable.

Point #2 - The Most Valuable Service You Can Provide During the Buying Process is Information, Guidance and Support - FOR FREE!

Think of this as sampling or a loss leader in marketing lingo. Most buyers of in home care services are not the actual people who need the service. The buyers are the children or other family members of the person needing in home care. And most of these people have no experience with elder care. Unlike child care where parents have plenty of time to prepare for their child's care needs (e.g., throughout pregnancy) elder care needs typically arise with no advanced notice. So the most valuable service you can provide these buyers is information, guidance and support. Yet, call any in-home care agency and most will connect you to a sales rep who lead right into a sales pitch about their firm. As competition heats up in this field, I would advise in-home care companies to hire or contract with geriatric case managers who can spend one or two hours providing free consultation with the prospect.  Sure, this will increase your selling/operational costs and you may even talk some people out of in-home care (if it is the right decision) but my hunch is your buyers will be grateful for the service and this in turn will reward you with increased business. And it makes for some great branding and marketing campaigns. And who knows, you may even be able to turn the new offering into a profitable consulting or resource and referral service.

Nonprofits and Senior Care Companies Adopting Web 2.0

Great article in a recent DMNews issue titled Nonprofits adopt social media.  The article cites AARP and The Arthritis Foundation as examples of nonprofits that have recently revamped their web sites (with great success) to incorporate more social networking features.

Key points are:

• Nonprofits have discovered the appeal of social networking applications, especially their ability to offer constituents better ways to communicate with one another and the organization.

• As their audiences become more tech-savvy, the web sites of nonprofits need to be more dynamic such as being able to allow members to create and custom­ize their user profiles by posting photos, video and journals and tags.

• Incorporating social media enhances the nonprofits online pres­ence.  This can be quite valuable for fund raising. Or, as Delia Carter, a group VP of strategic communications at the Arthritis Foundation says:

"The social media platform gives the non­profit “direct access to the people whose hands we need to be getting information into. It provides a way to develop a relation­ship with people that may not know about us but who come in through a friend's page. That's important, because we need to create awareness and people with arthritis tell our story a lot better than we ever could.”

Whether you are a for profit or nonprofit the benefits of web 2.0, online social media /networking are the same in that they give your organization increased (1) online visibility, (2) web site traffic and (3) sales leads  (yes, even nonprofits need sales leads). 

Our recent report Where Senior Care Suppliers Spent Their Marketing and PR Dollars in the Last 12 Months and What’s Ahead confirmed many of these same findings.  

And this is why every company needs a search-optimized web site that incorporates web 2.0 and social networking technologies, as well as ongoing marketing and PR activities that leverage these investments and help to support the goals of visibility, traffic and leads.