The coronavirus pandemic has forced all businesses to change their sales marketing strategies. The most important this is to adopt these new practices as early as possible.
If you are managing an assisted living community, implementing these five new sales marketing strategies will help you reach out to your customers even during these social-distancing times.
1. Stop Selling, Start Helping
The focus of your sales messages should be on ‘helping’ instead of ‘selling’ at all times and more so during these uncertain times. Most people are anxious, stressed and unable to decide what’s best for their aging loved ones.
Instead of trying to push a sale, take a step back and spend some time reaching out to them. Ask them how they and their family are coping with the restrictions and changes. Give advice freely or make genuine suggestions if they ask for your opinion.
Yes, it will take up more of your time but it is time well-spent. You will have built a strong rapport with prospects and earned their trust. This is something that they will remember when they are looking for a reliable community for their aging loved one.
2. Close The Leads In Your Pipeline
Do you spend most of your marketing dollars on looking for new prospects? While that may have made sense during the pre-pandemic era, it’s time to do things differently now.
You would have already gotten leads with your earlier sales marketing strategies. With lead volumes decreasing during this time, your time and money will be better spent on focusing on how to close the leads you already have instead of chasing new leads.
The first thing you can do towards this is to reach out to your prospects and ask how you can help them – remember, the focus is on helping, not selling.
3. Clean Up And Update Your CRM
Business is slow at this time but there’s still a lot you can do. The best way to put this downtime to good use is by cleaning up and maintaining your CRM.
When business was brisk, you wouldn’t have had much time to organize your database and chances are high it must be pretty outdated.
An organized, updated CRM will make it easier for your sales team to ask prospects the most relevant and helpful questions, which in turn will help you close more leads in your pipeline.
4. Use Social Media To Communicate With Prospects
If you haven’t tapped into social media for marketing, now is the perfect time to start. During this time when face-to-face meetings are discouraged, more and more people are tuning in to Facebook Live to obtain information from reliable sources.
Why not become the reliable resource for your target audience?
You can use Facebook Live to give prospects useful insight into how your community is handling these difficult times and what precautions you have put in place to protect your residents. Show them videos of your premises highlighting areas of most concern such as food, cleanliness and safety of residents.
Most important of all, let your videos be upbeat and positive.
5. Create COVID-Specific Landing Pages
Is your landing page still saying ‘Come on over and tour our premises?’ It’s no longer relevant at this time as touring senior homes is discouraged as it puts the elderly residents at risk.
As soon as possible change your landing page so that it reflects the current situation.
Your landing page should demonstrate your response to the coronavirus situation and highlight how your community is reaching out to and supporting residents and their families, as well as the staff.
Readers want and value the truth so resist the urge to sugarcoat the situation and share solid truths that will help them make more informed decisions.
