I was getting frustrated.
I was running a marketing program that I was sure could win clients for home care agencies. My plan consisted of ads on Facebook aimed at beleaguered adult children caring for mom or dad who had trouble living alone.
I thought it would work like a charm.
Those who clicked on the ads got my free ebook, “5 Ways to Know that Your Loved One Needs Home Care.”
People were clicking on the ad and getting the freebie. They even gave their name and phone number, and in return got a steady stream of emails from our marketing service.
But they weren’t buying.
“I’m not ready to make a decision,” they would say when I called them.
As a marketer of home care services, I knew that my ad program took a lot of effort and cost. If I was charging my clients their hard-earned cash and they were not getting results, they were not going to be happy.
And I was not happy, either.
Have you ever felt this kind of disappointment after trying different marketing methods? You try ads, social media, or send your marketing person out like a cowboy facing the bad guy at high noon?
And you smolder over reading about all the methods that the marketers promise will work if you just pour enough money into their system.
I thought, if I’m spending all this effort trying to win over my target audience – women age 55 and over caring for their aging parents – why not use that energy to win over people who could refer such clients again and again?
Repeat referrals
If it takes long-term nurturing, why not make friends with an assembly line supply of clients, instead of just a one-time win now and then?
Why not turn that effort to reach out to the discharge planners – social workers, DONs, case managers and other healthcare professionals who were looking for reliable caregivers and healthcare workers all the time?
Yes, it was difficult for the home care company owners I knew to identify, contact and build relationships with these folks. It takes time. These contacts were elusive and hard to win over.
But I relish a challenge.
What if I did the legwork for these home care marketers – found out the potential referral partners in each city where the home care agency had caregivers, and built a relationship with them? This might just be the lowest-hanging fruit.
In fact, the sales industry has workers called sales enablers who do just this. The do all the grunge work – pore over lists of online businesses, buy business contacts, or just call these places up. When they get their names, they send emails and even use direct mail through the post office.
I could do the same, and more.
Then when I make direct contact with these potential partners, I would hand those names over to the home care company for a quick follow-up.
I could take the angst out of sales work.
A warm lead will take you miles farther than a cold one.
And I would not just forget about these prospects. Relationships have to be kept up, even with the most loyal clients and partners. So I would set up an email service that would cater to these healthcare workers’ professional interests. My emails would provide helpful information about their professions.
It would be a true news service – not just plugs for my home care client.
Not everyone was convinced about my great idea.
“Kevin, it won’t work. These people need face to face contact,” I was told by a successful home care marketer.
And yet, I had confidence that my system would work.
In fact, I had won over clients for my own home care marketing system with a series of emails. These home care owners called or emailed me after I sent them my emails. I had not even called them, and used only a Christmas card for my direct mail effort.
I found that if you 1) choose the right audience, and 2) speak directly to their pain points, your emails will hit a bulls’ eye on their decision to buy.
Yes, email will work, and it is even more effective when combined with other media channels, such as direct mail.
My new recruitment system for home care owners would be an aggressive multi-channel approach.
Our Client Acquisition Program
Months later, we launched our Client Acquisition Program with a home care company in the northern Chicago suburbs. We hit the ground running and identified 87 nursing homes/rehabs in northern Cook and Lake Counties. We also found 252 hospital discharge planners in that area with valid emails that included social workers, DONs, etc.
With this program, we found six potential referral partners within a month of starting the program. We had personally communicated with four of these people. The other two worked in the same facility as one of the four, and we were given their names, too.
It was a good start.
We handed the names over to the marketing person of our home care client, and that person has begun to make contact with these people.
Imagine me at the next desk
With our Client Acquisition Program, I work as a valued team member with you. Imagine a highly-skilled marketing expert who specializes in home care sales at a desk next to you. Someone who knows how to make a marketing system work in the home care field. Someone who is constantly reading the latest methods in sales and technology and who applies the most successful methods to home care.
Another benefit of our program is that we act as another team member of your staff. We will keep up with your marketer to encourage them and make sure they are following through with these contacts. Sometimes all it takes is an enthusiastic professional on your extended staff to keep the emotional ball rolling in your office.
We also assign referral partners exclusively to your home care agency. In other words, for a given discharge planner, we will promote your company and no other competitor.
Here again are the action points of this program:
- Identify potential referral partners at health facilities.
- Make individual contact with them via phone, email, and direct mail.
- Hand the names over to your marketer.
- For discharge planners that we find for you, we promote only your company and no other competitor.
- Work with your marketer as your trusted partner.
- Follow through with continued emails and direct mail to these referral partners.
If all this worked for your home care agency, wouldn’t that take a load off your mind?
Wouldn’t it feel good to have the lion’s share of the initial marketing tasks done for you?
From our office, we will do the grunt work, the legwork of initial sales, and continue to keep up with these referral partners through our news service.
And we aren’t just throwing this at the wall to see if it sticks. We know this program works.
And we will show you results.
Our goal is to get a certain number of new paying clients for you each month, so that you will get more revenue than what you invested with us. We want this program to be well worth it for you.
Will you qualify?
There are some important details that you need to know, such as the qualifications a home care company needs to work with us. And it’s only fair to let you know of the level of involvement and cooperation required by you on a monthly basis. We will let you know the details.
Are you ready for this kind of program?
The first qualification is that your home care company must be established and serving clients.
If you have home care clients who are served by dependable caregivers, but need to grow, contact us. Or, if you are thinking about expanding your staff and are wondering whether to hire a marketer as an employee, or outsource a service such as ours, you should ask about our program.
Read more about the requirements of our Client Acquistion Program.
Please note that we can take on only a limited number of new clients per month.
We have marketing areas in the Chicago metro area that area now available. So please call soon to make arrangements.
Why not use this marketing method to bring in more clients and customers? Get in touch with us at Savvy Senior Marketing by making an appointment for a free 20-minute phone consult, or by sending us an email.
