Home care providers meet the essential needs of aging Americans every day. Unfortunately, many home care agencies struggle to find new clients and, in turn, people in their areas may struggle to accomplish everyday tasks themselves. Digital marketing offers the solutions that home care agencies need to reach the people who need their services yet don't know how to find them. Let's look at how you can use digital marketing to connect with potential clients and their families.
Making Yourself Visible
Before you can bring in new clients, they have to find you, which means increasing your visibility. This happens in three distinct stages:
Identifying your target audience.
Using media channels that your target audience uses.
Refining your message.
Identify Your Audience
In digital marketing, you have a few avenues to help you identify your target audience. These include:
Social media and advertising demographics: Facebook, Google and other platforms have tools to help you identify and target specific demographics based on your industry.
Market research into local competitors: Conducting market research in your area will help you identify who your competitors are targeting and what avenues they're using.
Networking with others in your area: Networking with local doctors, hospitals and other care providers ensures that you not only have resources to help you meet client needs but also that you have access to professionals who can help you identify your target audience.
Target The Channels Your Audience Uses
Once you know who your target audience is, it's time to meet them where they are. Some of the tools you use to find your audience will also help you find where to target them. For example, the same networking channels that helped you identify your ideal clients also serve as excellent referral channels.
You also need to identify the following:
Their preferred social media channels.
Their search engine preferences.
Their web and mobile use habits.
Their television, print and radio preferences.
What community resources they use.
You can learn which platforms and channels your target audience uses by conducting surveys, analyzing web analytics and using social media listening tools. Additionally, you can study industry reports and engage with your audience directly to gain insights into their preferences and habits.
Refine Your Message
Once you've identified your target demographic and know the channels they use to access information, it's time to refine your marketing message to reach them. As you build (or rebuild) your brand messaging, consider:
Search engine optimization (SEO): Consider keyword usage, content relevance, image placement and alternative text, site navigation, calls to action and other aspects of your website that help draw users in and keep them on your site.
Value-added content for your website, blog and social media posts: In addition to ensuring that your content is relevant to your business, make sure you provide additional value. This increases brand awareness and builds trust with your target audience. It also gives people a reason to return to your website and share your blog and social media posts.
The kind of language (words, tone) that most appeals to your target audience: Understand how your target audience communicates. Do they respond well to formal language, or is a more casual tone appealing to them? You need to balance important technical terminology with everyday language to ensure that you communicate necessary information (such as state requirements and service offerings and limitations) while being accessible to people who are not healthcare providers.
Cross-channel marketing: How will your message vary between ads, social media posts and offline marketing efforts? When discussing insurance and state requirements for home care on your website, you'll need to use precise and often technical language. However, when sharing information on social media, a more casual tone is important. Similarly, images optimized for online use may not translate well to a print format.
A Deeper Look At Cross-Channel Marketing
One mistake I've seen many companies make when engaging in cross-channel marketing is simply resharing the same information across channels. For example, when posting on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter), companies share the same information, wording and images. While this is a time-saver, the audiences for these platforms are different, and the way people engage with each platform is unique.
It's best to look at each platform as an alternative way to share messages rather than one of three places to share one message. Facebook users are more likely to engage with long-form posts. Instagram favors videos and images. X thrives on short messages. So, when looking at these three platforms, Facebook would be where you share your full message, Instagram would be where you post your video or photo spread and X would be where you share your sound-bite.
Bringing Your Home Care Agency Into The Digital Age
Digital marketing offers home care agencies new ways to engage with potential clients and current patients. When used well, it can increase brand awareness and build trust, while creating new ways for your clients and colleagues to refer your agency to friends and patients. It simply takes understanding the tools digital marketing provides and translating them to this challenging field.
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