Three Ways to Market Your Home Care Website in a Post-COVID World

Are you wondering, “How can I market my home care website?”

Let’s talk about three ways to market your home care website in a post-COVID world. My name is Kevin Banet, my company is Savvy Senior Marketing. I’d like to talk to you today about how things will be different going forward and how best to market your home care agency with your website.

Let’s dive in. With COVID, the home care world will be different. It’s something of a misnomer to say “post-COVID world.” All it means is that marketing techniques are going more digital.

Going forward, there’s going to be more emphasis on digital marketing than ever before for home care agencies. In other words, to minimize personal contact which could risk infection, your marketers will be meeting with video sales letters, something like this one, and video conferencing. You can see how people have become used to that in recent weeks as the stay-at-home orders have forced them to be confined in their own home.

(Click above to see video of this post)

Three ways to market your home care website

Let’s take a look at three ways to market your home care website. First of all, I’d like to talk about telling your story. There was an article recently in Forbes magazine online, “Why storytelling should be a priority for marketers.” Now, this is good, especially if you’re a privately-held or local home care agency. People want to know why they should go to you rather than to the big national chains. Why is your home care different? How can you better serve people? People want to have mom and dad taken care of in a very personal one-to-one approach. They want to deal with real people. They want to get people on the phone quickly. They want to deal with the same person again and again on the phone and in person as well.

Let’s take a look at this Forbes article that shows how to personalize your marketing approach.

“Storytelling enables marketers to develop a deeper connection with the audience. Storytelling is a fundamental human experience that unites people and drives stronger deeper connections.”

Now let’s look at the Wall Street Journal. They recently read carried an article, “An Entrepreneur’s Story Can Be the Perfect Marketing Tool”, and it states,

“You see them on company websites and commercials. Businesses, particularly small ones with limited marketing budgets, use stories about their company to grab the attention of consumers lenders and investors.”

How three home care websites market themselves

So if you’re asking “How to market a home care website?” here’s how.

Let’s take a look at three home-care agency websites and see how they carry out the various angles on marketing their website. I’d like to talk about three different levels of marketing your home care website. First of all, as I mentioned, is tell your story.

Secondly, make your website a sales funnel so you capture the prospects and you get them to either call you up or send you an email or fill out an information form. And thirdly, you have to attract website visitors. Let’s take a look. The angle here is tell your story. This is the website of Best Elder Home Care. They’re located in Aurora, Illinois, and I want to focus on the personal approach here. They talk about Our Staff over here, which is kind of a boilerplate explanation. It’s good, it’s good.

But here, this is more personal, because it talks about the individual people. Their pictures, their names here, and it talks about how both these men are primary care physicians with many years of experience taking care of people including the elderly. Over here is a short description of their agency manager.

Let’s go on to another website. Here is A Time for Care, and they’re located in Fox Lake, Illinois. On the About page we have a little short paragraph about Christina Lawrence, the president, and it explains how she got involved in home care. She says, “After spending more than 30 years in technology, Chris decided it was time to focus on her passion for the elderly and disabled.”

Let’s look at another website. This one is called For Papa’s Sake, and it’s also located in the Chicago area. Here we have the owner, Ellen Simon, and as she explains up here, it had to do with her father who was in a nursing home, and he always tried to make people happy, tried to make them laugh. And so, they decided to name their agency For Papa’s Sake in his memory. It’s a touching story. Here a little biography about Ellen Simon and her husband Robert. It goes on with other names of people who are involved there, and it helps you to get to know them, to have that emotional connection, because you see their picture and you read their description.

Here’s yet another website. Safe at Home Healthcare is based in Oswego, Illinois, and as you can see right up front here — let’s go on here to the homepage, there is a video where the owner explains some essential aspects of home care, why you need it, why you need a good home care service agency.

So take these tips on marketing a home care website to make your company stand out from the crowd. No one’s story is just like your own.

It’s very personal; videos are great ways to connect with people, and I suggest that you make a video of yourself. It doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production or anything. Just straight forward, tell your story. A few minutes is fine. Practice it a couple of times so that you are comfortable with the delivery.

A lead magnet can capture home care prospects

Now, over here on the right is a technique that not enough home care agencies use. This is a free book, and all you do is you simply sign up and put in your street address and, in this way, you give something away free, you’re show your good will. The person who gets it has more of a connection with you, and it doesn’t have to be a full-blown book. It can be an information sheet, it could be a whitepaper or something that gives them more information, and does it in an attractive way.

These are also called lead magnets because they’re like magnets they draw in your leads. via email, or schedule a brief meeting with us.

Your home care website as a sales funnel

Now, this segues right into my second point. Make your website a sales funnel. You have to make it easy for people to contact you. Here’s the phone number, right across the top here. Here, on the bottom of the website, you have other contact information here. This is where they’re located, and you can go anywhere and quickly get to the Contact Us page, which is right here, and with the owner’s email address.

Some websites have a form on the bottom of every site where they have their phone number and email, so the trick is to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you. Some websites have little pop-up chat boxes in the corner, where you can chat with a company rep. That’s a helpful service as well.

Other websites have a pop-up form; it just jumps up to the middle of the page; you can set it to pop up after 10 seconds or 15 seconds, or whatever. You might think the popups are annoying, but studies have shown that it’s a great way to capture people’s attention and involvement.

Get website visitors!

Now, thirdly, I’d like to talk about getting website visitors. Putting up a website is not enough. You have to draw a lot of people to your website, and the two primary means are, first of all, 1) search engine optimization, and, secondly, 2) paid advertising. These can be Google ads or Facebook ads. A third option is social media, but if you’re talking about chit-chatting with all kinds of people as a way to gain leads, I don’t have very much faith in that.

Let’s talk first about search engine optimization. This is a way to configure your website to attract local visitors. So when they search for “home care agency near me,” your agency is going to come up on the first page. If you can get in the top five listings, or even top three, that would be really good. If you’re not on the first page, you might as well forget it.

Seventy-five percent of the people who contact companies are going to do so through what they see on the front page, and this is Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Of course, if you take paid ads, your ad will be on the front page, too.

So, there you have it! Three ways to market your home care website in a post-COVID world. First of all, tell your story. Secondly, make your website a sales funnel. Thirdly, get website visitors.

I hope this little video has helped you to better market your home care agency.

Please read more about how we can help you with search engine optimization or with website design. We help home care agencies attract and keep home care clients. To talk about improving your home care marketing, please call the number at the top of this page, contact us via email, or schedule a brief meeting with us.