The target audience for senior living is varied, and companies must adjust their marketing messaging depending on which group each ad is specifically targeting. For senior living, the audience typically comprises of the residents themselves and their adult children.
Both audiences have distinct needs and concerns, which you must address in each group’s marketing to tailor it to their concerns and earn clients for your senior and assisted living facilities.
Here's how you can differentiate marketing for each group:
Tips for Targeting the Adult Children of Seniors
Many older residents rely on their children to find senior living communities for them, whether due to health issues or age. Their criteria is different than residents. To adjust your senior living marketing to cater to them, try doing some of the following:
Emphasize Peace of Mind
Adult children primarily worry about their parents' well-being and look for facilities that offer peace of mind. Use your marketing to highlight your senior living community's safety, security, and healthcare services. Explain how choosing your community will provide their parents a comfortable and safe place to live.
Focus on Convenience
Many adult children are busy with their lives and careers. Showcase your community's convenience, such as on-site healthcare, meal services, transportation, and social activities to make life easier for seniors and their children. These services will make resident-parents less dependent on their children while letting them receive proper care.
Highlight Caregiver Support
Choosing to place their parents in a senior care facility is an emotional and challenging event. Acknowledge the stress of being a caregiver to position your community as a solution. Hosting support groups at your facility or having staff on standby to support adult children when needed demonstrates that your facility offers qualitative care.
Technology Integration
Adult children often appreciate communities that use technology for accessible communication and monitoring of their parents. Highlight features like video calls, resident health monitoring apps, and digital calendars for events and appointments.
Engage in Open Communication
Maintain open lines of communication with adult children to provide regular updates about their parents' well-being and involve them in care decisions. This transparency can build trust and help them feel confident in the care their parents are receiving.
Showcase Family-Friendly Amenities
Highlight amenities that encourage family visits, such as comfortable visiting areas, family dining options, and spacious apartments that accommodate visits. Making it easier for family members to spend quality time with their parents encourages visits and helps them both feel better.
Offer Financial Transparency
Adult children may be involved in the financial aspects of their parents' move, so be transparent about pricing, fees, and financial planning options. They may have power-of-attorney or control of financing in other ways that make cost a direct factor in their decision-making.
Tips for Targeting Senior Residents Themselves
While adult children may look at caregiving and convenience, senior residents will look for factors that support their lifestyles and independence. As the ones living at the facility, they will look for different things that make it a comfortable place to live.
Prioritize Independence
Seniors value their independence and often struggle with accepting that they cannot do as much. Emphasize how your community supports independent living, such as maintenance-free apartments, accessible amenities, and engaging activities to give them free reign of their lives, even in old age.
Personalized Care and Wellness
Seniors appreciate communities focusing on their unique needs. Highlight wellness programs, healthcare services, and customized care plans tailored to their preferences. Giving them options to choose lets them find the care that best serves their needs.
Community and Social Activities
Social lives are important to seniors, and setting up your facility to let them seek social opportunities and to engage with peers deeply enriches their stay there. Showcase your community's diverse social calendar, including clubs, classes, outings, and events hosted at the facility.
Amenities for Enjoyment
Highlight amenities that seniors can enjoy, such as gardens, libraries, fitness centers, and arts and crafts studios. These features contribute to a fulfilling lifestyle and give residents many options for things to do each day.
Simplify Daily Life
Seniors often seek simplicity in their daily routines and don’t want to worry about many aspects daily upkeep of their surroundings. Describe how your community simplifies tasks like housekeeping, laundry, meal preparation, and transportation, allowing them to focus on recreation.
Respect Privacy and Dignity
Seniors value their privacy and dignity. Ensure that your community respects these principles and offers private living spaces and respectful care.
Engage in Resident Feedback
Involve residents in decision-making and seek their feedback to continuously improve your community. Seniors appreciate being heard and having a say in their living environment.
Highlight the Transition Support
By showcasing your support, address seniors' concerns about transitioning to a senior living community. Offer assistance with downsizing, moving, and settling in comfortably to help them adjust to their new arrangements.
Choosing to live in a facility is a big adjustment and often not an easy decision to get to in the first place. Supporting them at this phase helps reaffirm that they made the proper decision in moving there.
Create a Warm and Welcoming Atmosphere
Emphasize your community's warm and welcoming environment through testimonials, resident stories, and images that capture the sense of belonging. Develop your facility into a true community and help cultivate a welcoming, active setting.
Target Multiple Audiences to Earn More Residents
Remember that your marketing messages should resonate emotionally with multiple audiences. Tailoring your content and communication channels to speak to the concerns and criteria of senior residents and their adult children and seniors helps you develop effective marketing and maintain consistency in your messaging to build trust with both groups.
McClatchy’s Senior Living Team focuses exclusively on this industry, bringing a deep understanding of its unique nuances and challenges to every campaign. Combining our efforts under one roof creates a powerful synergy that enhances brand performance, streamlines response times, and ensures industry-appropriate content alignment.
Reach out today to learn how McClatchy’s team can help!
